3.12|THE THOUSAND YEAR MELANCHOLY

3.12|The Thousand Year melancholy

Grahim glided over a garden of glowing silkworms, each one able to broadcast the timeline and eventualities of any given lifespan. Entire trees were shedding and wilting recently, no thanks to her daughter's creations. She found the one she was looking for, plucked it off the tree and put it on a silken web to get a better read.

Mika Mannerly's life while long, was not kind. At the age of 16, she was forcibly evacuated from her homeworld, the Solar Society. She didn't know what happened to anyone, only hearing the idle gossip from others in the Interposatory. The bread lines were long, the overpopulation plagued the population centers, there was rationing for resources. She received a job as a factory worker which she hated, and lived on the verge of starvation, waiting to get fired or sent home. It was there she met a young man named Issac, who noticed her mistreatment by their boss and took an interest in her.

Issac Isley was also from another world, Au - The world that fell. In his world, magic once existed, but Novus Cormeum had turned it into a wasteland and those from noble families with the top echelon of magic, sought refuge from the famine in other worlds. Issac and Mika began to support each other, they began a daring and passionate romance. Even with all the steaming factories, the oppression of the state and dimensional situation, they made the most of it in the vaunted steampunk valley of the Railworld beneath the Interposatory's territory. They eventually got married, and Mika finally had someone to protect her with.

Life became like a dream. Issac would follow Mika anywhere. He began to repair rails and machines in the underground, earning a substantial amount of money. When he found out Mika was perfect and would further his lineage, Issac was overjoyed. They went to the underground fights of the Motor Casters and made bets every week. One night Mika felt particularly lucky and bet nearly half of what they had- and won. Overnight they earned spectacular riches. Her child, Rika was a beautiful girl who she cherished and loved. Issac began to buy out the rail companies one by one, gathering a monopoly on the Railworld, the only alternative to Interposatory's statist control on the surface. Before long she had her second child, a boy that she named Fingard. Mika Isley would tell her kids of the world she came from, of their scholarly and wise grandmother. Of the Hex, of Wardens and the wonders that she'd left behind, but when they'd ask if it was all for real, she'd chuckle and say it was all a fairy tale. Issac had increasingly gotten into alcohol, and racked up obscene debt with the Motor Caster sharks. One night their mansion was ransacked and Issac was murdered in a robbery. Mika fled with her two teenage children and went to the surface, where the world was in the midst of insurrection. The old totalitarian state was overthrown and the Republic of Interposition was established. Life became peaceful. Time moved forward in the blink of an eye.

Her children grew up successful and healthy, Fingard becoming a carpenter, and Rika went on to own her own carriage service company. Life took its natural course and on her 1024th birthday, her two kids, both with wives of their own bought her a gleaming leather tome-case with a scrapbook of memories. She sat on a rocking chair, recounting a vague, sad far off memory of where she'd come from. Her children sat with her, and listened quietly. "Listen carefully my precious ones. This one recalls the origin of the Hex.. It began with a flicker, and then sparked by a woman they called the Prophet. The Prophet had a step-brother and a step-sister, and one day.."

The sound of buzzing swarms was discovered over all else. Her children couldn't hear a single word she said beyond that. The sky encapsulated into shade and a nest of Zes-Lethiska flitted across the skies above. The buzzing grew louder as they flew closer to the city. The entire world fell into pestilence. A flash of crimson colored sky, a swarm of Zes-Lethiska. It swarmed past her children, who flinched. It was all they could do. A new wave of insect-swarm flew past. Fingard took Mika's hand, he stood, the both of them screaming. His bloodshot eyes begged his wife to do something, to help. A Zes had already bitten off her head.

She sat on her rocking chair, closing her eyes as she watched them drag away and devour her son. Rika ran to her screaming for help, she was crying and crying, she started coughing as a lavender gas began coating her lungs and causing her to suffocate, nerves poisoned until she croaked. They crawled and leapt towards Mika, and that was the end of Miss Isley.