"Imagine that this experience happened to you. You're a small artist in the 21st century that no one cares or gives a second thought about. Everyone says that your art is complete garbage and will never be remembered or cherished. then, in your darkest of days, a man in a suit takes you in his time machine and takes you to a popular museum which holds your work, work that people thought was trash and worthless, being placed in a museum full of priceless other works of art. Then the time traveller asks a museum employee about you, the artist, and they say that you were the greatest man or woman to ever live and your art is nothing but beauty. That's enough to make anyone have hope in their lives and make them cry tears of joy."
- one Comment under the Video -- Mike666 c/- Anon Guest
Who am I? ze wrote. Who cares? I mean, who really cares? I keep working but it goes nowhere and does nothing to change anyone's life. Like, I know I mean a lot to the five entire people who are reading this, but... I wish I had the power to do more.
Who am I? ze wrote. I am a voice in the darkness, trying to change the level of the rising waters with an eyedropper because that's all I have. Desperately searching for a way to get a bucket when the only torch I have is a freakin' laser pointer.
The writer hit 'post' and strolled outdoors for some much needed sunshine and green time. Allergen mask under their cotton plague mask so both hirself and anyone ze met could be protected. Ze expected three lectures from the maskless about how ze had joined the sheeple who didn't know the real threat was 5G or Bill Gates' measures to track people somehow. Ze'd been allergic to most airborne things since before the plague struck but now wearing a mask was not for anyone's protection. It was easy to get depressed in that kind of social atmosphere.
Sunshine helped. So did time among the ferns in the local park. In the right conditions it was easy to believe that certain paths could lead into Fae realms or were portals into other realities. Even on a clear day like today, ze expected some creature from anotherwhen to whisk hir away to perhaps a better time or place. Perhaps even one of the worlds ze had built.
Admittedly, the big box was a bit of a surprise. Ze thought it was someone's art installation since it clearly didn't belong in this neighbourhood. It was an artefact from another time, made in the wrong dimensions, with a place of origin so very, very far from hir neighbourhood. The person hanging around nearby didn't quite fit either. It wasn't any one thing about them, but a conglomeration of little errors that added up to something liminal.
They presented as male, but ze didn't want to guess incorrectly. Their mask matched the bow-tie, and they weren't wearing socks in their brogued shoes. There was something about the hair that could be humanly plausible, but it sat on the very knife's edge of that definition.
If ze posted about this encounter in a certain place, the immediate reply would be, Yeah you totally met one of the Fae. Of course ze knew better than to post about this. Ze knew better than to try and document it. Hir phone just... didn't work along this path. That was part of its magic.
The stranger greeted hir by name and with a formal bow. A bow ze returned because why not? In these times? Things might as well go completely batshit.
"I have come," said the stranger, "to refill your jar of hopes and dreams."
It was something ze had never blogged about. The jar of paper stars. Carefully cut strips of paper with goals and hopes written out on each strip and then carefully folded into their aspirational shapes.
As those goals shattered, as those dreams dissolved, ze had been taking them out. One by one. Reading them. Kissing them goodbye. Then finally watching them burn in a candle's flame.
This year so far had been a very disheartening century.
"Okay," ze said. "Lead on and let the winds take me where they whist."
There was a smile underneath the Fae's mask, and they gestured hir into a box. Of course it was bigger on the inside. Of course it contained stars and galaxies in its ceiling. Of course it was an unlikely merging of crystals, steampunk, and glistening living metals. This had to be one of hir more interesting hallucinations and by the end of it, ze would emerge on the other side of Hidden Fern Path with only a normal number of minutes having passed.
Ze journalled them and kept them only between hirself and hir therapist. They would evolve into other worlds at a later date. Much changed in the transformation, of course.
They emerged from the box in a library, and went through the labyrinth of shelves to a small lecture hall where the placard outside said, Unappreciated Genius with a sub-header, before their time.
Nobody got on hir case about wearing hir masks. Someone passing by said, "Better health to you," in the same way someone might automatically say, "bless you" when someone sneezed.
"We're just in time," said the Fae.
There on the big screen was an image from one of hir journals. Ze had written it the previous year, but the imagery stuck with hir. A heavily crosshatched image of a humanoid in a small, flooding room. They were busy taking water from around them and passing it into a high drainage vent with a teaspoon. The caption underneath said, Because nobody wants to be up to their chin in water.
"Who am I," the lecturer said. "I am a voice in the darkness, trying to change the level of the rising waters with an eyedropper because that's all I have..."
"That's--" how the hell did this person get to that? Ze just posted it minutes ago. No wait. The Fae could play with time when they wanted.
Ze looked to hir fae guide, who winked and put a finger against their mask. As if to say, Shh. Secrets.
"Its a very common feeling in the years of the super-plagues, when depression was a common malady and trying to fix the world seemed impossible when corporate interests were against that. Aelis was the first to articulate the feeling so eloquently that it inspired millions."
That was... that was hir username, but. Millions? This had to be an ego-driven hallucination. For sure.
"The worlds ze escaped to have become part of our shared imagery now, but back in hir time, ze was isolated and apart from any acclaim. This one... peculiar mad mind, wandering through ferns and daydreaming of better worlds may have done more in their time to work out the mess of twenty-first century industrialism and forge a path beyond it. It was years before we followed hir lead, but the framework was certainly one ze built.
The display showed titles. Three of them, ze knew. Ze was still trying to get them edited to a level where some publisher might green-light them. There were more, but tears blurred hir vision.
"In parody coupled with brutal realities of hir era, ze successfully highlighted exactly how cultures could sour, and ze also found a way to escape those things that wasn't entirely limited to fiction. Hir heroes were almost always mundane. Their power seemingly small and irrelevant. The obstacles always seemingly insurmountable... but the trick was in nibbling away at the fatal flaw. Finding that flaw... was also the trick."
The audience laughed.
"It is, to my mind, a tragedy that ze was only appreciated by 'like five entire people'--" another shared giggle, "-- in hir lifetime. Ze should have been held up as a shining example to the world of literature shortly after ze self-published hir third book. One of the seminal works of the era that changed everything."
The Fae lead her out of the room. "Be like your heroes," they said. "Never give up. Keep working at it. Things will change, and when they change, they do it for the better. Because you kept writing. No matter what."
Either the dream faded away or ze disassociated for a handful of minutes because the next thing they knew, ze was standing at the other end of Hidden Fern Path and staring at ducks in the pond. Ze shook the last of the brain fuzz off and went home. Ze cut a wide strip of hir brightest holiday wrapping paper and, on the unpatterned side wrote, One day, my words will be on bookshelves. Ze folded it into a star and added it to hir jar.
Other, more normal stars had, Things will change, and change for the better, and, My words will help others. Simple affirmations that ze could not crumble to ash no matter what.
No matter what, those stars would stay in hir jar. It would never be at risk of being empty again.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / design56]
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