birds – ey i'm blogging here

Let’s see how much I can extract from this premise.

Mondo Goodbody does not expect the City of the Golden King to fall. That is to say in the first place that, to Mondo Goodbody, who has lived in the City of the Golden King their entire relatively short life, the thought simply does not occur that the flying city might cease to fly. To Mondo Goodbody, to ask if it could do that would be like asking if water could cease being wet. Mondo Goodbody, for all their strengths as a carpenter, was not one for frivolous thought experiments like that.

It is to say in the second place that, when the thought stops being experimental, Mondo Goodbody’s own first thought is that they’re flying.¹ Mondo Goodbody enjoys the idea of their newfound ability immensely, and it is only when they realise their collection of hand-carved wooden ducks has joined them in lift-off that the sun sets on that enjoyment. When Mondo Goodbody’s emotional night of terror sets in, enjoyment might as well never have been in the room.²

Ten seconds after the birds notice, Mondo Goodbody is as scared as they’ve ever been.

1
Flying, you see, is a thing birds do, and Mondo Goodbody knows about birds.
2
Unlike every single one of Mondo Goodbody’s possessions, all of which were far more in the room than, Mondo Goodbody felt, they really should be.

This came to me between dreams.

It was, on the one hand, quite easy to simply forget you lived in a flying city. Sure, the clouds were quite close, but that just meant the rain didn’t hit quite as hard as it would with more metres to travel. And yes, where a dirt city¹ might have the occasional body of water running through it, you had a body of air, but to bird was not meaningfully that different from to fish.

To be a citizen of the City of the Golden King² meant, for the most part, walking to the store like anyone else, riding your bike to work like anyone else, filing formal complaints with the Department of the Cave like anyone else.³ Life in the City of the Golden King was normal, easy, and pleasant. It was, the people thought, good.

So, when the other hand came and took away those illusions, the City of the Golden King was actually not first to learn the new cosmic truth that, while they weren’t paying attention, the age of magic had come to a sudden and abrupt end. But it was certainly amongst the first to know quite how hard this new cosmic truth could land.⁴

When the flying city fell, it was the birds who noticed first.

1
As so many derisively called them.
2
Having been renamed this after the death of the Golden King’s predecessor, the Flying King, who was named that for his uncanny magical ability to make cities fly.
3
Funerals, bathrooms, and other ways matter was disposed of worked differently, for reasons you can imagine.
4
If landing is what you wanted to call it.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Apr
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30

Tag: birds

The Bowl of Petunias (II)

The Bowl of Petunias, As It Fell