SENTIENT CATTLE

Entry for the Forest & Fawn Faerie Short Story Writing Challenge (1995 words)

Summary: Alfhard, a fae, goes on a voyage to another world to find a new home for his people, and thinks he has found kindred folk.

Prompts required to be included in the story submission:

• The first and last sentence must be "Nothing is/was as it seems/seemed." 

• A character notorious for breaking things.

• A message in a bottle.

Nothing was as it seemed. It was ironic, even karmic, considering that when mortals came across the fae, they saw them through glamoured eyes while experiencing things not as they truly were. The holographic recreational suite in no way captured nature other than with false projections, devoid of scent and substance, a technological glamour. The bird songs were reproduced by computer algorithms that came out tinny and hollow from the speakers hidden within the walls. Even the songs themselves were gibberish, lacking syntax or meaning. No lonely call of a male thrush seeking a female mate.

Alfhard passed a hand through the holographic image of an oak tree, missing the feel of real tree bark. Something went on the fritz. Suddenly, the images in the suite that were programmed to recreate the forest wilds of his homeland in Wales back on Earth began to blink out.

Yet another mechanical item that had broken when he touched it.

Since Alfhard had come out of cryosleep, nearly everything he touched broke, he was the epicenter of every malfunction. Human designed technology and the magic of the fae did not intermingle very well, in fact, it was a disaster. Alfhard’s reputation among the crew and the other passengers who were revived from cryosleep the two weeks before they arrived at the fourth planet from Lyrfantia Prime was so bad, he was not even allowed to type on the touch keyboard for his meals. A crew member had to do it for him, otherwise that molecular food reproducer would be out of commission to serve everyone else until a maintenance crew member could fix it, spouting phrases he didn’t understand, like “fried circuits.”

Alfhard could easily read human minds. He knew he was silently thought of as a “klutz,” “Schleprock,” in reference to some ancient cartoon figure from centuries prior that broke everything he touched, and even a “gremlin.”

Walking down a hallway recently, Alfhard overheard thoughts of some of the crew wishing that he had been kept in cryosleep until after they had arrived at their destination, but the two weeks were to allow people to regain muscles that had atrophied during cryosleep. But Alfhard wasn’t human, he was fae posing as a human. He woke up with the same strength and muscle mass as when he closed his eyes for the last time back on Earth.

The Kingdom of the Fae needed a new home. Humans had not ruined Earth. It was a star within fifty light years that had gone supernova, and the energy heading towards Earth would scorch the planet, rendering it a barren rock. Had the supernova happened at least one hundred sixty light years away or farther, Alfhard would not be the walking and talking equivalent of a message in a bottle cast among the stars of the galaxy, seeking to find life and a home elsewhere. If there was life, would the fae be welcomed where they could connect with the life on that new planet and live in harmony with nature as they had done before humans walked without using their knuckles.

Slinking out of the holographic suite discreetly, hoping he would not get justly blamed for yet another malfunction on the ship, he strolled to the mess hall. As he walked towards a food reproducer, a crew member jumped out in front of him, startling him.

“You hungry? Let’s me punch that in for you,” the crew member Nelson said nervously, jumping in to prevent Alfhard from touching the food reproducer again. “What are you in the mood for?”

“Blackberries, cheese, some fresh baked bread and some mead.” It didn’t matter what Alfhard requested, it all came out tasting the same, bland pablum made up of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, and some other trace elements, with the molecules rearranged to give the appearance of the food. The humans said it even tasted like the original food grown and cultured on Earth. To Alfred, the food had no living essence to it. Not even the food was as it seemed. Just chemicals for nutrition. Alfhard only ate to avoid starving, forcing himself to chew mouthful after mouthful of falsely colored, prettily arranged slop.

Alfhard could not swim in the pool provided for the ship’s passengers to use. The electronics that kept the gravity for the pool stable, so water didn’t float all over the place, failed the moment he dove in. Next, to while away his time, he went to the library, but that consisted of electronic tablets in which one downloaded a book and then read it while swiping a finger. He missed even what half the terminology meant when it was explained to him. He just wanted a good, solid wood pulp or vellum book in which to read. His last resort was the holographic suite.

Alfred still had one more week of waiting before they had arrived at what he hoped would be a new home for his people. He was not the only one venturing into the galaxy. There was at least a dozen other fae on ships just like he was on, traveling to exoplanets. The mission was for a fae to go to a new planet, live there for at least a revolution around that planet’s star, and then report back. Earth had another forty-eight years until the supernova shock wave arrived, and most of the planets that the fae were investigating completed an annual revolution in two years, Earth time, or less. That would give them plenty of time to evacuate to a new home.

There were those fae who said that if Earth were to die, they should die with their mother who birthed them with her essence, bonded with her fae children, infusing their souls with all the living plants. But to continue living is not just a human trait, for all living things seek to live on, plants through seeds, mushrooms and ferns through spores, and creatures, magical and mortal, through children.

For the next week to keep himself occupied and avoid touching anything other than the flavorless food, Alfhard sat in a forward-facing compartment, gleaming in its sanitary bleakness. The room allowed him to watch the stars streak by to pass the time. It amazed him that humans could create a vehicle that traveled faster than light, and communications to connect with other humans instantly across vast distances to transmit data. All these wonders, yet they had lost the miracle of imagination, the belief in fae that now only existed in tales he could not read on the electronic tablets.

At least all the doors were automated, so he did not have to touch them to move about the ship.

Finally, the I.S.S. Rowan arrived at Lyrfantia Prime Four, LP4, slowing down and falling into a stable orbit.

Alfhard was willing to be patient and take one of the later shuttles, but the crew and other passengers were so eager to boot him off the ship to no longer suffer the catastrophic walking disaster, they practically shoved him on the first one to the planet.

LP4 was shrouded with a cloud cover that shielded the whole planet. Exploration drones that had arrived there a few years ago showed a planet lush with vegetation, oxygen at acceptable levels and ideal temperatures for human and fae life. There was no visual confirmation of any sentient life, so far. No one had ever walked on the surface before, Alfhard would be among the first to experience LP4 in person, to set foot upon that new world.

The windows on the shuttle were closed during descent, so other than the pink and cream-colored cloud cover, Alfhard did not know what to expect except for the transmitted drone footage he saw before boarding the ship to LP4.

When the shuttle door opened, people gasped in awe.

“It’s just like back home on Earth. This is so much Hawaii!” one female passenger exclaimed with amazement.

“I can’t believe it. I never thought I would see redwoods again,” a male passenger breathed, stupefied.

Alfhard stepped out and immediately felt at home. Moss covered rocks, clear flowing streams, acres of rowan, ash, gnarled oaks and ferns abound. It even smelled like home. It reminded him of Wales before the humans clear cut and paved over most of the country except for a few precious forest preserves in which the fae hunkered down deep in the Earth. It was the paradise he once remembered thousands of years ago.

From behind a tree walked a woman as lovely as the fairest of fae.

“Greetings and welcome stranger. I can tell that you are different from the others. You are like us, living in harmony with nature.”

The rest of the passengers were wandering off in various directions, talking to themselves in some trance. He did not care, as the fae viewed humans no better than cattle.

“Come,” the ephebic and comely maiden bid him. “Join us in dancing and feasting. It has been so long since you had enjoyed such pursuits.”

It was true, the fae had not danced, sang nor frolicked for the last few hundred years like they had in the past. When humans used to believe in the fae, it was sport to ensnare a human, to trick them by having them eat rotten carrion, thinking they were dining upon ambrosia. Then after years had passed, the human thinking only minutes had flown by, would return to their world to discover everyone they knew had died decades ago, leaving them to lament and wither away, pining for fae food that was merely glamoured rubbish. Alfhard could tell the humans he landed with were already enchanted by his newfound cousins in spirit.

Alfhard was taken to the royal court and presented, where afterwards he danced and ate, drinking distilled nectar that rivaled anything he drank on Earth. The food was rich, with milk and honey flowing freely. It truly was paradise.

“Come, let us trick the humans as you did. We shall have fun and games,” the Queen of the Court bid her honored fae guest.

Alfhard was instructed to go and send the signal to the I.S.S. Rowan that it was safe and to send the rest of the passengers down.

Upon entering the shuttle, the door shut, and the oxygen filters kicked in. It was then Alfhard noticed that he was emaciated. The blackberries he had stashed in a small pouch for dining upon later were nothing but rocks. Looking at the chronometer of the shuttle, what he thought was a mere five minutes had been days. Lowering the shuttle shield to view the world he was so enraptured by, he saw the LP4 native fae for what they truly were. Vampires that lived on the life force of others, the creatures more terrifying than the most ghoulish of trolls. The landscape was riddled with nothing but large rocks, devoid of life except the vampires, who had apparently glamoured the images for the drones too.

The vampires were busy sucking the life force from all the passengers who had disembarked and had fallen under their thrall. The passengers’ bodies were nearly mummified, eyes sunken, faces painted with rapture upon them, skin drawn tight over grinning skeletons cradled in the creatures’ arms. Alfhard had been played, his own life force drained to near nothingness.

Just as he tricked other humans for his amusement, he now reaped the same karmic fate. As some humans had turned to dust shortly after returning to the mortal realm having spent time with the fae, so did Alfhard notice that he too was fading quickly.

Grabbing a rock from his pouch that he had originally thought was a piece of honeycomb, he used it to avoid touching the communications panel to send a warning up to the I.S.S. Rowan as a last act before dying.

“DO NOT SEND ANY MORE SHUTTLES. DEATH AWAITS. DRONE FOOTAGE FALSE. NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS.”