//------------------------------// // Spring 2: I Won’t Be Home No More // Story: Harvest Seasons // by Bucephalus //------------------------------// Spring Chapter 2 I Won’t Be Home No More If there ever was a reason for a person’s fight-or-flight reflex to take over, it was when the sound of something completely unknown quickly approaching was combined with the one hearing it being completely naked. George Sparrow had experienced many things in his life, and while he might have been the type to slink away into the shadows when the situation so called, he could also gather his courage and stand his ground when that was needed. He could not, however, do it when he had not a single piece of cloth to cover his shame. “Okay, screw this. No way am I gonna meet any unknown visitors naked!” George said and shot up from the ground. With a speed that was in great dissonance with his large stature, George sprinted across the yard, heading straight for the bushes that were growing like wildfire around the farmstead. They were tall enough that they would hide him completely if he laid low, and in the shadows so that he could watch the mysterious newcomers without being spotted himself. At the edge of his hearing, George registered that whoever the talking pair had been, they had probably arrived at the edge of the yard just as he exited the area lit up by the small bonfire. In a desperate attempt to hide himself, he jumped the last few meters to the bushes and dove towards them, attempting to roll to safety and hide himself in a manner not unlike what he had seen soldiers do in movies; at least the 80’s action-genre variants. It was too bad that only a fraction of a second before hitting the green foliage, George’s eyes registered one unfortunate fact: there was a vast amount of stinging nettle among the overgrown plant-life. It took all of George’s willpower to suppress his need to let out a scream that would have made a 10-year old girl green with envy. Still, he could thank his reflexes as they automatically directed his hands to protect his nether regions as he ripped through the green leaves. Hitting the ground, George rolled around and lay on his stomach, head down, to conceal himself within the bushes. Two seconds later he had curled up in pain as the burning, stinging sensation spread all throughout his naked, unprotected body. Try as he might, he was unable to suppress a hiss that escaped through his lips to replace the litany of curses that his mind had already generated. While George twitched among the foliage, his mind was eventually drawn out of the pulsating pain by the weirdest sound he had ever heard. It was something akin to a high-pitched neigh that eventually lowered itself and devolved into a series of nickers that sounded oddly punctuated, with pauses and tonal shifts. This strange noise was quickly answered to by another, similar in construct, but coming out in somewhat higher pitch. Almost like… communication? George thought to himself, unable to believe he had even suggested something like that. Now curious about the strange set of sounds that continued, he slowly crept across the ground towards the edge of the bush for a better look. As he moved, he did his best to ignore the light touches of the nettle leaves as they brushes against his back, but when one of them fluttered across his buttocks, he couldn’t help but to let out a muffled yelp, feeling his eyes watering in pain. Eventually George made it to a good spot where he could view what was happening at the yard, and peered into the area illuminated by the fire that had warmed his oil drum bath. There, he could see two shapes against the light of the flames, and after a moment of letting his eyes adjust, he started making out just what it was that he was staring at. “More miniature horses?” George grunted, unable to stop himself from speaking aloud in amazement. There, in the middle of the yard, stood two creatures that were very much like what he had been just a few minutes ago. Big, round head, small body, stumpy four legs that were impossible to use for walking, and eyes that seemed far too expressive for animal as stupid as a horse. The other horse-like creature was a calm orange in color, while the other, smaller than its companion, was light-yellow. The two of them were staring intently at the flames and their surroundings, pawing at the ground with their hooves. But I’m sure I heard someone speaking when I was still in the bath, a language I could understand no less. Human language means humans, right? So, what are these two? The pets of the two I heard? Does that mean I turned, for a day, into some freaky variety of trendy toy horses popular in this region? Damn, and here I thought things couldn’t get worse. There’s no way I’m letting anyone know about that, or they’ll just lock me away, either because they think I’m crazy, or because they expect me to change back. Strutting around in an animal fashion show is the last thing I want to do! George mused, Still, poor things. In no way can they be comfortable with their own existence. Just look at those hideously bright colors, oddly shaped bodies and the little clothing put… on… them… A horrible, horrible theory hit George’s brain like an out-of-bounds Siberian express. No-no-no-no! Even if I could speak normally when I looked as stupid as them, that doesn’t mean they can actually communicate like me, and are sapient! What I spoke was my native language, clearly! Those things are just… doing whatever horsey-noises they want! George thought, cold sweat running across his forehead, Having clothing by no means implies they’re sapient! I mean, I’ve seen crazy cat ladies dress up their tortured pets in things far more degrading! Plus, I’m sure I heard someone speak in a way I could understand! However, the more George watched the two odd horses, the further the feeling of dreadful realization crept up his spine. The way they seemed to be examining the oil drum bath, the way they looked at each other when making their whinnying noises, the way the orange one tipped its hat as if acknowledging something… it was all too unnatural to be merely the product of some sadistic toy horse trainer working for the rich and bored. Also, what bothered George the most was just how expressive faces those horses had. There was something oddly, eerily human in them. He saw quizzical expression rise on the “face” of the smaller one while the taller seemed to be lost in deep thought. This was followed by the latter clicking its tongue and pointing at the oil drum and the still-burning fire. No, I’m just overthinking this! George thought, an almost obsessed smile creeping up his face, There’s no way those things are sapient! If they were, they’d have already noticed the direction the oil drum fell and made the connection. It was at that exact moment that the taller of the creatures pointed straight at the trail of water on the ground, and continued to nod towards the general direction where George had escaped to. C-calm down, George! This still means nothing! Maybe they’re hunters of some sort, and can track down prey! Wait… predatory horses? That’s even worse, damn it! George gnashed his teeth as he fervently observed the situation escalate. Still, nothing is suggesting they’re searching for me like sapient creatures would. In that instance, the larger creature let out a strange whinnying sound that echoed through the dark farmstead, all while gazing around the direction where the trail left by George pointed at; that is, his hiding spot. I-i-i-it was just a random noise! No reason for alarm! George thought, desperately clinging to the last straws of common sense, It’s not like it called out to anyone hiding out here! Then, following the example of the bigger creature, the smaller one let out the exact same sound, also gazing into his direction. “Oh come on! Stop rebutting my every attempt of rationalizing this, you crazy freaks of nature!” George screamed in frustration, hitting the ground with fists and causing the bush to shake violently. There was a deep moment of silence, stretching for almost ten seconds. Then the two creatures looked at each other, nodded, and charged towards George’s revealed hiding spot. Crap-crap-crap-crap! George cursed in his mind as he started backpedaling furiously, not caring if either his family jewels or his buttocks were lashed by the stinging nettle. Great time to lose your cool, George! Really, a model job! He had thrown away all the pretense of trying to be stealthy, and instead threw himself backwards so that his back was against the ground. Digging his heels and his hands into the soft ground, he pushed himself back like a crab on steroids, speeding through the bush while keeping his eyes on the approaching danger he saw faintly through the foliage. However, George Sparrow knew it was of no use: in a short moment, those creatures would be upon him, and then it was all over. Whether he wanted it or not, he would be revealed to two apparently sapient toy horses in all his naked glory. Bollocks! What did I do to deserve this!? George thought while growling in frustration, I only bought a farm! One that was completely in ruins! For that I get to spend a day in a form of a drunken mistake between Incitatus and Rainbow Brite!? Only to find myself back as human when I’m naked and about to be assaulted by the local Tokyo-brand equine!? Reno’s mullet, how is this supposed to be fa— Suddenly, the night-sky, the foliage, and indeed his field of vision seemed to rapidly escape from him, ever upwards. George’s thoughts had been rudely interrupted when he suddenly found himself weightless. At least, that’s how it felt for him for a brief blink of an eye. This sensation was soon followed by pain as he hit a large rock with his back, rolled around and continued falling. Barreling down a rather large hole hidden deep within the overgrown bush of stinging nettle, George quickly got closely acquainted with the sediment layers below the surface of the farmstead. As he hit every single piece jutting from the edges of the hole on his way down, George had only the bemusing pastime of coming up with new swear-words to occupy himself. After which came the complete darkness. ◊◊◊—Harvest Seasons: Spring—◊◊◊ Waking up in a cold, damp cave after what felt like hours spent on a moss-covered floor was nothing new to George Sparrow. Far from it, he had actually spent good deal of his life in similar situations. Still, it was not the sort of feeling he enjoyed, especially after what had felt like an endless fall down a hole barely large enough to let his tall frame pass through. As his eyes fluttered open and George realized he could still count himself amongst the living, whatever that meant in the familiar-yet-eerily-Richard-Scarry-esque world he had been thrust into, his first instinct was to shoot up and inspect his limbs. To his great relief, he still had the five fingers in plain sight, illuminated by the moonlight that poured through the hole. It seemed that the night was still continuing, though he had no idea exactly how long he had been out. Still, despite losing his consciousness, he had not turned back into a crime against nature. That itself was a good sign, or at least George thought so. “Still… just what sort of rabbit hole did I fall into?” George murmured as he started looking around, “Dirty and old for a dirty and old Alice, I suppose.” Inspecting his surroundings, George came to a quick conclusion that wherever he was, it was not a natural cave; or rather, it might have been at some point, but now that it had stone slabs acting as a floor and few decrepit pillars holding up the ceiling, it had definitely become manmade. The cave itself was vaguely circular in shape, quite cramped and filled with what seemed like ruins of a shrine of some sort. Marble bricks dotted the area and thanks to the fact that the ceiling was not high enough for George to stand straight, he got a good look at the remnants of a small dome that been buried inside earth. Ten meters in diameter, the cave felt even tinier thanks to the aforementioned columns. Most of the space in the middle was taken by what seemed like a spring, now long dried up, that had been carved in the floor in the middle of the cave. What really piqued George’s interest about the strange, small cave was, however, the smell permeating the place. While in the farmstead, he had gotten quite accustomed to the rustic smell of age and neglect that lingered there. Here, in this shrine, the situation was quite different. If he had to describe the smell, he could only come up with words like “ancient” and “untamed,” even “forgotten.” Every city, every place, has their own distinctive smell, George mused, Then why is it that two places so close to each other differ in their smell so greatly? If it was the natural progression of a smell between locations neighboring each other, I could understand it, but this… this shrine or whatever it is… it feels almost foreign to this land. It was then that he spotted it: at the back of the cave, hidden beneath the moss growing from the walls, something glimmering in the moonlight caught his eye. George carefully moved forward, though despite his efforts managed to bump his head twice in the uneven ceiling. Reaching the back wall, he slowly wiped away the moss to reveal what was hidden beneath it. “Mural?” George’s voice went from flat to curious, and back again. Though he had said mural, what was left of the thing could hardly be called such anymore. There was a large rectangular space in the wall that once must’ve been brilliant blue in color, but now only had faded, dusty remnants of it left. Small circles had been carved in the rectangle, but George couldn’t make out if they were supposed to form a bigger whole, as over half of the mural was literally missing. It was if a gigantic claw had raked across the wall, slashing away the upper part of the picture. Drawing his hand across the dust-and-moss-covered surface, George was surprised to find something different at the very lowermost point of the mural. There, among the small circles dotting the background, was a bigger one, this one protruding from the walls. It felt soft to the touch, so it couldn’t be a natural occurrence; it had to have been carved there for a reason. However, a large circle flanked by two smaller ones, one at upper-right and one at lower-left, told him nothing of importance. “It still seems almost familiar, though,” George muttered as he stared a hole in the mural, “Just can’t remember why....” George sighed in annoyance and rose up, intending to step away from the mural. Unfortunately, he failed to remember the height of the ceiling, and painfully struck the edge of the dome peeking from the ground above him. Cursing heavily, George landed on his behind, ending up sitting right before the picture that seemed to be the dominant feature of the shrine. Shaking his head, George let out one more string imaginative of profanities, intending to get up… and, instead, fell silent as his eyes saw one more detail at the back wall. There, under the mural, was a string of words. Moreover, they weren’t just words: they were words George could read. It was the first written text George had found in this strange world of toy horses and oil drum baths, and it gave him the proof that he had so desperately needed after the incident with the freaky creatures: at least someone in this world knew human languages. That meant that somewhere out there, humans should exist. Somewhere out there he could, perhaps, get an explanation to this crazy incident he had been drawn into. With a small grin on his face, a testimony of his newfound energy, George finally turned his attention to the actual content of the text carved in the wall. Its shape in ruins, its bounty gone Forgetting everything, they simply move on Ages go by, the last faithful dies And the fate of the land is left to the skies Desperate times, desperate needs Make life grow and pull out the weeds In three years you must succeed in this task To leave this worldly cage you did not ask Behind these actions are the oldest of reasons Everything happens for the Harvest Seasons Letting out a sharp hiss as wind passed through his lips, George slumped backwards and lay down on the cold floor. The words engraved in the stone before him repeated in circles in his mind, pounding his understanding with a message he didn’t really wish he understood. Sure enough, it had been written in a form akin to a riddle, but still… “I think I get what that damn thing is trying to tell me,” George said. He couldn’t help but feel irritated. What annoyed him even more was the fact that he could not exactly pinpoint the reason why he felt that way. Was it because he found the riddle easy to solve? Or was it because of what it told him? It could have been either reason, but in the end, George simply decided it was a bit of both. Looking at each line individually painted a cohesive picture that seemed to ridicule George with its message. The first part of the riddle had been the easiest. The talk about ruins and gone bounty, and how the “faithful” had died was obviously referring to how the farm had fallen to disuse and eventually even the last of the people tending it had died. The fate of the place had been left to the whims of the weather, in other words, skies. Next came the paragraph about the need to make life grow and pull out the weeds: if that wasn’t a reference to making the fields around the farm to grow crops again, George was prepared to quit smoking. In addition, the rhyme even gave it a time-limit to do it in order to leave “this worldly cage” that the reader of the rhyme had not asked for. If there was any cage George felt trapped right now, it had to be the strange world he had been thrust into by the storm. “But, three years? You’ve got to be kidding me,” George said as his eyes narrowed in anger. The last paragraph was a bit harder than the rest, but in the end, even that did not pose much of a problem. It was relatively easy to figure out that the “oldest of reasons” was livelihood, the need to stay alive… and that “Harvest Seasons” meant the time when a farmer could collect his livelihood from the fields. In other words, it was nothing but twisting the agricultural knife in the wound. It was a bitter truth that stared at George from within the words of the mural. “So a stone wall is telling me to spend three years in this place with freaky creatures that break enough rules of nature to be put on a death row…? That’s my only way home?” George muttered, staring up into the hole, where he could see the silver disc of the moon, “What the hell?” George felt something rising from within him. It almost felt like one of the times he had been kicked in the stomach, forcing whatever he had eaten out along with gastric juices. This time, however, it didn’t try to exit through his throat; no, this time it was aimed at his heart. Burning sensation swelled and rumbled from deep within him, causing his hands to sweat and his teeth to grind against each other, resulting in a loud crack. Somewhere at the back of his mind he faintly realized it was his back teeth where the sound had come from, but he could no longer care. “What the hell?” George spat. His vision blurred like he hadn’t blinked in a while; and he probably hadn’t. Every hair in his body seemed to stand up as the emotions churning and turning inside the deep pit within him roared. George’s nails dug into his palms as his hands instinctively formed fists, his favorite defenses against anything that was enough to get an emotion out of him. Unbearable loneliness; Impotent rage; Hopeless unfairness; Confused despair. It all mixed within him, becoming a serpent that tossed and thrashed against his stomach, screaming to get out. It was a rattlesnake coiled deep within him, baring its fangs at the sheer absurdity and stupidity of the situation. Where had he gone wrong? Was gambling really such a sin? Or had he somehow offended some unknown figure that decided the fate of men? There were no answers; only an incomprehensible mural and comprehensible text which told him to grin and bear it for the next three years in a world he did not know. In other words, his life back home had been deemed worth less than a ruined farm. “What the hell!?” As his scream, packed with enough bitter tears and mordent emotions to kill a murder of crows, was sent out to the night sky, George slammed his fists repeatedly against the ground like a child throwing a temper tantrum. His question wasn’t answered and the shrine did not break. The only thing he saw was the uncaring, cold surface of the moon he wasn’t sure he even knew. In that hole hidden within the stinging nettle, in a shrine that felt foreign to the land, he finally learned what had become the single word to describe his life: “Unfair.” It wasn’t until hours later that his breathing, rapid and erratic like a wounded beast’s, finally calmed down, and George Sparrow fell asleep; and, even then, he dreamt of only misery and pain pulsating through his scraped fists.