The Autumn Arc – Day 1

The moon dreamt…

Thomas lay on the sofa, visions of ice and death cascading before his mind’s eye, coalescing and dissociating to the tempo of his randomized playlist. Beethoven and Debussy had brought images of soft blue ice and barren landscape, Holst had ushered in rains of fire, Dvorak had seen the last remnants of humanity struggling for survival under a sunless sky, and Chopin had brought a ray of sunshine. The AVR then began blasting the guttural roars of Amon Amarth, the roars of marauding heavy metal vikings breaking Thomas out of his stupor, the clash of steel sending his heart racing.

It took a while for his mind to get used to the world outside the dream– to the dew coalescing on his window that blurred his view of the Golden Gate Bridge, to the soft light of dawn, to the smell of coffee that was permeating his little studio apartment, to his stomach that was growling to be fed– it took a while to fully wake up to a new reality.

What was wrong with him, he wondered as he poured himself another cup of coffee and placed two slices of bread in the toaster. Why were his dreams becoming so damn weird? Were they just dreams, or was the apocalypse really coming? The humming birds, that usually came around this time of year, were missing. The sun looked bigger than it should have, and paler somehow. The clouds looked stranger than they used to– like dragons flying through the sky.

There was a knock at his door, a sharp rat-a-tat-tat. He’d have known that knock anywhere.

“John,” he smiled, as he opened the door, “glad you came today. I need a ride.”

“Oh, just buy a Clipper card already, you cheap bastard,” his brother said with annoyance. He was dressed for a meeting, looking sharp in a suit that was creased in all the right places. He’d even put on a lapel pin, which meant he was hoping to bag some baby boomer big wigs today.

“Clipper? You’d stop visiting me if I started using public transport. Could I borrow a twenty? I’m a little short today.”

John shook his head, quoting the only Shakespeare he knew, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be. I don’t want to dull the edge of your husbandry.”

“My husbandry?” Thomas asked, feigning shock. John’s presence always made Thomas cheer up. Maybe John would be able to help with the weird dreams, but Thomas was reticent about sharing the experience. It was scary, and made him sound like a mad man.

“What’s up, little man?” asked John, sensing the change in his mood.

“What if you knew that the world was going to end? That meteors were going to fall from the sky, the sky was going to be so thick with clouds that they wouldn’t let in the sunlight, nuclear winter, and stuff like that. All our money would be pretty darn useless then, wouldn’t it? All our jobs and infrastructure wouldn’t mean a thing. Civilization would be in complete collapse. What would people like you or me do in a world like that, a financial analyst and a history major?”

“Well,” John closed his eyes in thought, wincing through closed lids as Thomas chomped on his burnt toast, “we’d be dead meat if that was all we were. Humans adapt, don’t they? Tell you what, once you’re done with this semester let’s take a vacation to Canada and muck around in the wilderness and learn some survival skills. That would cheer us both up, eh?”

“Eh,” Thomas agreed.

A humming bird flew past his window.

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The digital witch liked and shared…

Callie caressed the cheek of her muse as she hummed a song. Her inspiration, trapped in the laminate of her wardrobe, gazed back at her through sad and wide eyes that were glazed with speckles of plywood.
“A thousand subscribers in a day,” Callie crooned to her muse. “Thank you, dear one.”
She heard footsteps outside her door, the hard thuds of her mother. “Eat your breakfast,” her mother yelled, with a token preamble of knocking followed by a harsh and forceful dislodgement of her door. Talk about an invasion of private space. Her mother could have taught the Nazis a few things or two about the Blitzkrieg with those moves. It was about time Callie got her door’s lock fixed. “Your bus will be here any minute,” Callie’s mother continued her spitfire attack, her tapping foot heralding the coming of artillery fire. “I’ve never seen a girl as scatter brained as you. Now stop staring into space like a dolt and get moving.”

Callie rolled her eyes. Why couldn’t she wake up to birdsong every morning, and begin the day in peace and harmony?

“Okay Mom, I’m coming. You may take your leave.”

Her mother bobbed a mock curtsey and left, thank the Goddess for small miracles. Callie checked her feed one last time. Her subscribers had gone up by fifty within as many minutes, and her poetry recital video had gone up by a thousand views. How long would this magic last? This would buy her coven two months of premium service on HecatAPP, at least. She blew her trapped muse one last kiss and left the room.

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