Ras and Cas: A Short Story

A broken-down thunderstorm trampled the ground and filled the sky with displaced dust. Bits of quartz and feldspar swirled in the air to create a sweeping field of confused particles. The eroded rocks swarmed together to collide with the thin rays of light cast out from both the true and artificial suns. Bowing to the density of the sand, the raw desert landscape began to dim.

Ras wiped the beads of sweat from her forehead directly into her red curls. She held her bronzed hands up to shield her sensitive lavender eyes from the remains of the storm. Hunching over, her grey robe folded into the wide curves of her body making her appear as a weathered statue. “Walk parallel, carefully, so we can avoid most of the impact. Can you hear me? Our sideways trail has birthed another,” she called out to her stumbling companion as she was nearly lost in a towering column of dust.

Cas’s tall slender body and long electric blue hair became knitted between the fierce gusts. A pink feather pierced in her ear was swept across her fair skin to tap upon her narrow chin. “We can’t escape this nasty funnel. It’s widening, uh, too far. And it’ll suck us right in.” A salty taste in her mouth let her know she was churning through more energy than she could possibly produce. “We should shelter in place. Khashine doesn’t favor us in this moment.”

“Eh? Did you call out to your personal goddess? She won’t help us now. We’ve already painted this path with our sweat and even she can see it glisten.” Ras tugged on the piece of rope at her hips that tied the two young women together so they wouldn’t get separated. “Look! There’s something there between the darkened swirls and the specks of light in the distance. I can almost make out some kind of reflective tower within the clouds.”

“Where? Where is it?”

“I’m sure I see something.” Ras’s weak eyes attempted to manifest a vision of something that wasn’t actually there. “I tell you, we’re closer to the protected area than ever before. We’re so close.”

The winds picked up. Lightning strikes skewered their path while leaping between the dried-out limbs of trees resting between the two weary friends. Cas lost her footing and tripped into the fissures of the hardened land. She turned over on to her back and refused to get up, choosing to remain hidden between the dying shrubs instead. The grey fuzz of particles swayed in suspended circles that repeated over and over again in slightly different patterns. A punctuated frenzy moved above her in what seemed like the manic jabs from thousands of uncoordinated fists.

“Hold on a moment, raspberry.” Cas spit up a wad of phlegm to clear her throat. “This torrent of air has grown far too close to us. We should wait this out,” she uttered while pulling the rope between them closer to her body.

Ras sat down next to her fallen partner. “There’s rough harmony in the gritty sands. It’s beautiful. That shifty cloud won’t rain down on us, it’s meant for somewhere else and we’re almost there.” Her purple teeth, stained by an act of bioremediation, emerged from her wide grin. She drew two dots into the ground and slid her fingers slightly forward. “So little to go and our tents shook for a reason. They’ve been trembling for nearly a moon cycle. I tell you they’re building something out there, another iteration to advance their development…”

“They don’t know what they’re building,” Cas snapped back as she interrupted her. “Their development. Theirs! The more I see out here in the fallout, the more I know they only build in a way that takes away from us. Our wandering planet never used to bear the fixed scars it does now. Look what they’ve done. We’ve been trekking through the hollow shell of their struggles. War rubble. Broken promises. Even this collapsed storm moving alongside us, it’s nothing but, uh, ancient dust trying to remind us of how everything can be torn apart over time. We shouldn’t continue on.”

“We took the first steps already.” Ras’s face grew stern lines as she stared ahead to probe the matter further. “We’ve already started out. So early on as mushroom cloud beneficiaries of our time and age. We’ve come so far. Doesn’t that mean something?”

“Khashine, blessings upon her, blessings upon the atmospheric dweller, she only knows the journey up and down not side to side. I suppose it does mean something, uh, how far we’ve come. If only everything in this blasted canyon revolved around some spooky nonlocality we wouldn’t have to move at all. But no, the distance we’ve traveled matters and factors right into my soreness. I’m exhausted. I’m exhausted by all of this.”

The twisting winds passed between them. The two briefly fell silent as the sands slapped their fragile enclave of distorted branches and deep-rooted bushes. When Cas was ready to speak again she had to clear her throat to get the words out.

“Wh-wh-where do you really think we’re going? The protected area? The decontaminated area? More like a fortified prison that plays out like a nightmare. And what’s at the center of that nightmare? They’ve turned their own sophisticated tools against themselves, they’ve abused their own guardrails, if any ever existed at all. They’ve grown used to being tracked and censored. They’ve corroded the fabric of the soul.” She gripped her chest and then let go. “They ripped it…they ripped it away, what concealed a pulse and a passion. They tore it away and drifted farther away from us out here. Why should we close that gap now? The citizens they let out on expedition passes, uh, they only frown when we see them. They’re not happy. They belittle us all the time. What do they call us?”

“Contams.”

“What makes us contaminated? We survived the blasts. We survived. They began to die off and there’s no hot mixing between us and them. We’ve no edit chambers to strengthen us. We survived even without that enclosed compound they’re working on. We survived. And, uh, I don’t understand why. I don’t understand why. And if you do, then tell me. Tell me why we survived.”

Cas pounded the ground with both of her fists in frustration, digging them down into the brittle crust. As if responding to her angst, the soil crumbled and the winds slowed down. The air whistled less but when it did whisper the tender sounds accompanied Cas’s vulnerable howls. The dust storm began to pass as quickly as it had arrived.

###

The gray hue faded into the pink atmosphere. Distant mountaintops reappeared as frantic clouds hurriedly modified their muddled appearance and began to dissipate. The true and artificial suns coordinated their movements along invisible horizontal and vertical lines. Each radiating sphere found its appropriate position within the now steady plateau of the sky.

Ras patted down the folds in her robe that took on much of the dust. Her woven undershirt was covered in sweat but hadn’t frayed in the stronger lengthwise threads or the crosswise fillings. She inspected her homespun sandals where the yellow yarn met her toes and was fortunate to find they only suffered some small tears.

“We must capitalize on this change in weather.”

“Must we? Let’s rest here some more, raspberry. I’m still spent.” Cas twisted her body and adjusted her robe which was loosely fitted to her shoulders. “Join me down here and we’ll pluck at the withered weeds of all the unpleasantries they let root in their ‘protected area.’ You’ve heard this from me before.” She raised her voice slightly. “They enforced and set the wrong standards. They marched right into an ugly giant state…”

“So said the Trojan princess from another planet.”

“They flaunted their lack of integrity and their disgruntled intentions. They marched right into the epicenter of sprawling disasters that flattened out everything…”

“So said the silly out of touch war prize.”

“They followed-through on their crusade of hate. They marched right into the wrong kind of multipolar chaos…”

“So said the cursed woman who spoke the truth.”

“Truth. I used to know the word. All I see now is a dreadful conformity. Loyalty. What is firm but not fair.” Cas bit her lip and became more calm. “Ah, but there are many truths and at the same time there is only one. The truth is elusive, uh, when they open their mouths and that's just how they want it. Does the force of their ‘protected’ animosities weigh down more on our rugged form of learned thought, just to disgrace us throughout the ages? It’s not out there, the truth. The way they define it, it’s not out there. It takes perspective and it’s inside us. Hiding in the strange curiosities of adolescence. Feeding off the worn and wise experiences of mid-adulthood. Creeping through the naked eyes of senility. Truth! All the wrong lot of misguided philosophers and terrible tyrants want to make it their own. Oh, what a menacing word to a meaningful world.”

Ras wrapped her hands around her body close to her ribs. She scanned the unsteady ground and shuffled her feet through the gravel. “I just want to see what they’re building. That’s all.” She paced back and forth to compose her thoughts. “I know we’re better off in the Outer Territories. Wild and free. You don’t have to convince me of that. I just want to see the sectors they’ve built out, that’s it. Before the elders drift us away I don’t want to have to use my imagination to fill in what they’re constructing. It could be another threat to us.”

“Oh, I’m sure it must be. The way they’ve crafted it, it must be a threat? They’ve already built out our fictions in grotesque ways. They prune away the traits we naturally cultivated over thousands of years. They pass on the wrong kind of understanding to their artificial creations because they don’t, uh, fully understand themselves yet. All of this could be less than horrible and more than wonderful. Must be wonderful someday soon for someone else? But they exploit our scant materials and sacrifice our resources to the mechanical gods they call wreckers and excavators.”

Ras had no reply as she paused and scratched her head. She stared out beyond the still silhouette resting in front of her to survey the rows of yellowed weeds the parched land couldn’t quite strangle. “Sometimes, I become disoriented when I’m walking about on my own. I look backwards to see the way forward because that’s the only way I know how to blaze a new path. I see how we used to live. Mumbling through memories. Shrieking out faith. Talking in growls. Writing with sticks. Reading by fire.” Ras briefly paused and squinted her eyes as she looked out. “The true and artificial suns fall enough, like they have, and I’m more at peace with that past, more at ease with the steps that took me here. But I’m still blinded by a strobe of naked colors. I know the light will soon fade. And I want to know there’s a future ahead, even when I look back. Where’s our future? Is it somewhere beyond the flare and glare of the suns? Where’s the future we were born to chase after, Cassandra? There’s got to be a trail ahead to explore.”

“Khashine knows, there’s always a way forward. It might take a bit more than simply back propagating through our past to correct our future, who knows? And it doesn’t have to lead, uh, to the walled-off colony out there. It could take us well beyond that.” Cas stood up, stretching out her long arms. She loosened the rope around her waist so that it barely clung to her hips before it dropped to the ground. “Does it really matter if we don’t set eyes on the protected area today? Does it really matter that much?”

“I thought so. When the two of us woke to the aged plasma colliders in the sky at dawn to venture through this toxic scree. I sure thought so.” Ras coiled up the rope that had connected them and affixed it to her robe. “But now I’m sifting through your ominous words amongst the ruins and rumbles of rocks that have grown so small we kick at them under our feet. I don’t know. Everything I thought this morning is beginning to break apart like the sands, crumbling in ways that don’t seem to serve me well. It’s in my nature to explore. The signs you posted up on this trail shouted out ‘beware’ and ‘caution.’ All I saw was ‘seek’ and ‘faster.’ I thought there’d be a chance we’d find refuge in what they would build. I wanted to peer into their future and perhaps blend our paths but I get it. We can’t.”

“This area, their world, this decontaminated realm, these lines and sectors have never been a shared space for us. They should be..."

"They really should be."

"They were for the Abelians. They were for the Gerullians. They were for those who came before us.”

“Maybe…maybe if we ran fast enough, we’d barrel right through their gates. Wouldn't that be something? We'd just barge right through,” Ras laughed as she looked at Cas with a face that multiplied her smiles.

“The elders would dream up a grand story of how we morphed into otherworldly creatures just to find a way in.”

“Right.”

“They’d sing our praises as we trounced the zero-faced creations and laid out a claim to the decontaminated area. We’d fend off the projections, the synthetic voices, the bumblechuss games. The elders would chant about the, uh, savage animal inside us, about cycles and apocalyptic shifts and that in the end we’d learn something about ourselves.”

“What? What would we learn?”

“I’m not sure.” Cas searched through her pockets and grabbed a preservative stick. “But the way they’d tell it, you’d sure want to find out.” She split the stick in half and gave some to Ras who bit her portion and inhaled.

Ras could feel her tense body grow calm as she brushed her fingers through the tight curls of her red hair. She envisioned the curls unfurling to ensnare civilization in a trap, twisting and wrapping beyond her fingertips. Her hair spun around and around until the protected area she had been searching for appeared. The compound took on the shape of a fort and then the fort took on the shape of a shelter. She could see that the building blocks of war and of peace were linked in every foundation where truma was layered in bonding patterns with trauma. Tiny faults appeared. They were never smoothed out and so they became permanent. The same process repeated over and over again so everything bore a flawed resemblance of how things used to be. When she realized this, everything around her blurred together.

###

Most of the stars sparkled as they formed a trail of guiding lights. Ras stood alongside Cas as they paused to gain their bearings again. The pulsing objects were observed to shift upward, establishing their current direction. They adjusted their course, carefully aligning their path so that the bright beacons in the night sky would bring them back to their village.

“What are the words from The Habitude? ‘The silver river of bright orbs overflows beyond our plains and pains.’ I think that describes this well,” Ras remarked as she looked out at the celestial bodies which surrounded her.

“It’s awe inspiring, when you wade into how deep our spiraling cluster is. I’ve spent most of my life taking notes on the sky. I’m almost a stargazer by trade.”

“Keep at it.”

“I feel awkward and clumsy when I don’t have my head tilted up at an angle.” Cas lifted her arms in a rolling motion. “The stars seem to undulate by way of some invisible cosmic wave engineered strictly for the sky.”

The ocean of darkness swept in fully and brought with it a drop in temperature. The plumes of air they exhaled turned a purplish hue as the radioactive eating microbes multiplied in their respiratory tract and mouth. Cas put on her hood and tightened her robe. Her body heated up and her pale skin took on a faint glow. Ras followed her and rolled out her sleeves to shield more of her body from the cold.

“Look at those stars flickering. There’s so much movement for constellations that seem to be so still and affixed, eh?”

“I don’t suppose anything can remain absolutely still in this universe, raspberry. But most of that movement is just a vibrating of the atmosphere, a bend across the sky. And there’s even more up there we can’t see. Groups of stars rotating just a bit too fast for what they’re made of. Dense points in space, efficiently compressing more information than we could ever imagine. The elders say they don’t exist at all but when I read the sky I know there’s chapters there they tend to miss. And what they miss, uh, might one day explain everything for us.”

“Sure.”

“You know, I’ve given the stars new names.”

“Really? There’s so many of them.”

“Just the brightest ones. I don’t like what our ancestors used to call them. All the alphanumeric labels make no real sense out here. That large one guiding us, I call Wisdom.” Cas raised her hand up as if she could grab the distant object. “Everything is within Wisdom’s grasp. The night sky rotates around that hint of light we’re following back to our seasonal encampment.”

“What’s this one called?” Ras motioned in front of her and pointed out a faint star.

“I haven’t named any of the dim ones. I’m thinking of calling them all ‘freckles.’ There’s a tradition of calling blemishes on the skin a gift from the stars but maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe it’s our gift to the sky so they’ll remember to look out for us. They’ll let us know when we’re out of line. They’ll put us in our proper place and guide us forward when it’s time to align with the cosmos again. Move us on, stars! Move us on, Khashine!” Cas yelled out as if her goddess was perched high above them. “Excite us until the sky splashes back again with vivid colors. Move us on! Pull us forward with your friction. We’re all wanderers feeding off each other, rubbing up against space and time with a piece of aged amber to produce a charge and set our course.”

“Move us on!” Ras joined in as she nudged Cas on the shoulder. “Past the entanglements of spectacles and chance. Past the mistakes of our far-flung ancestors.”

  “Move us on!”

The dirt path narrowed as they reached familiar ground.

    “Move us on!”

An intricate layering of vaulted canvases and tents sprouted up.

      “Move us on!”

There was a smoldering in the air but the communal fire…wasn’t…out.

        “Move us on!”