Kasumi-no-Kuni — flash fiction

This piece is based on the flash fiction prompt posted earlier and follows my personal guidelines as described in this post.

Subgenre: Silkpunk / Ghost-Tech

Rin looked out over the Land of Mists from the tower she kept her watch from, a tower built entirely of unmarked rice paper and bamboo where she slept when she needed rest, and where she ate when she was given offerings by visitors coming to pay their respect to the memories of the ancestors — those memories captured in the paper of the lands proper. True to the name, the mists and clouds flowed through the city with only a single living resident, that being Rin. The white fog snaked through the streets inked with the stories of ancestors, often obscuring the memories unless someone were to stand before them.

But it was always and ever only Rin, the stone bearer. She was the only one allowed within the vast labyrinthine and ephemeral streets that spilled out from the tower’s base and cast over a never-ending sea. Eventually, her memories would find themselves painted on the rice paper when her time to pass came and someone else would bear stones in her stead. Until then, she walked these streets alone, moving shifting stones to balance out the heavy memories as they formed, preventing the paper and bamboo lands from getting too weighty in one place or another, causing the land to capsize and slip into waters beneath.

She ate the modest bowl of rice left to her for her morning meal and called to her kite. “Sumi!” she shouted to the vast mists below, though the bird was probably nearby.

And, sure enough, the black kite swooped from the tower heights with a shriek of greeting to let her know he was there. He landed on a bamboo post next to Rin and she gave the bird a slice of meat.

“Well, my friend, what do the threads of qi hold for us today?”

Sumi was a rare bird in that he could sense the gossamer-thin strands of qi threaded through the city, silken fine webs that held that telegraphed the sense of memories as they drifted in and faded from the record. He could “see” where the balances were not in balance, and could guide her to the places most in need of stones to even out the weight of the land resting upon the sea.

But Sumi did not see with his eyes in the way most birds of his breed might see. The last stone bearer had found Sumi at birth, blind and given up by his flock. That bearer, Kaito on the Sea, nursed Sumi to health and trained the bird to see without seeing before he, too, joined his heart to paint his memories in the empty city.

Kaito left a scroll, which told Sumi’s story and, when Rin came to serve, she asked Sumi to continue to serve as he did before. It required only the smallest bribery of meat or fish for his continued service, and there were fish in plenty in the never-ending sea.

Sumi took to wing with a shriek and Rin hurried along behind him. The bird seemed to be in a hurry compared to most days and Rin had to jog to keep pace. For Sumi to rush as he was, it would mean there was a significant change in the balance of the city. Rin suspected she would too busy to drink her normal midmorning tea, as she ran down the corridors of rice paper writ with calligraphy: some in broad, fat strokes, others in miniscule cramped lines. When she had still read the memories while walking through the streets, there had been no rhyme nor reason to their contents or styles. Often, memories would drift into a different memory, so much so that reading them became an exercise in frustration and futility, as none ever seemed to contain memories complete.

Rin had to grab a bamboo pole as she went around a narrow bend in a street and was glad she had not let it go as that is when the street abruptly ended. Sumi was perched across the void, on more memories across what would have been a broad street had there been a street and not a channel of the sea in between.

As she caught her breath, Rin wondered how this might be. Never, in all of her time serving in the lands of the mist had she seen such a thing as a missing street, especially one growing wider as she watched. Sumi screeched as she watched on of the far ends spin out and the mass flowing away from her breaking free with a cracking sound.

Sumi flew back to her side of the chasm. “I think, my friend,” she said to the bird, “that our problems this morning go beyond the shifting of stones.”

The blind bird faced her and called again. Rin took out a bit of raw fish and fed it to Sumi. “We should go report this to the monastery. This is far beyond the likes of you or me.”

In response, Sumi took to the wings, guiding Rin through the shifting streets to the tower at the edge of Kasumi-no-Kuni, safely past the rifts growing over the never-ending sea. If she did not run like the wind, there might not be enough of the land of mists for the monks to try and recall back into being, if such a thing could be done at all. And so, Rin ran like the wind following Sumi on the path of what still-healthy qi remained.

~1000 words, 70 minutes writing time

Author’s note: Kasumi-no-Kuni means “Land of Mists” in Japanese. Because I only know a handful of words in Japanese, the name comes from the internet and this mystical city is purely a product of my mind. It is not related at all to those other uses of the phrase or story locations by other writers or creators. Nor is the story meant to be representative of actual Japanese mythology or culture.

I wanted to use a “living” kite (in this case a Black Kite, which is a raptor), instead of the prompt’s implied paper and bamboo kite (as in “let’s go fly a kite”.) His name, Sumi, means “ink”.

I’ve never attempted a tale in the genre of “silkpunk”, so you’ll have to pardon any flaws in my flash fiction. It was a delightful challenge, but I wish I had been better rested before taking it up, as my lack of sleep the past few days probably detracted from the overall quality. As always, I may edit this over the next few days to clean up the worst errors that may have made it through.