Thermonuclear
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Written by Priscilla Wong
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The boy who won the Science Contest dared to threaten Avery, the girl who won the Spelling Bee.
The shining girl who looked as though she ought to be Prom Queen never won enough attention to satiate her yearning for stardom. Her devices prophesied illusions of how her life was supposed to be, if fortune favored the working class. Her sisters, they moved like flowers in the desert wind, these girls with skin like coffee left too long in the sun. Allah's children, they called them Fatah and Shabah, their voices carrying across the streets like birds that never tire of their own songs. And when they laughed, it was as though the very earth had forgotten its own solemnity, even as their elders cast skyward glances, pleading for quiet in a world that had forgotten how to whisper.
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The boys from the Science Club debated over three sources of power - crude oil, hydrogen and electric.āāāāāāāā
Some were alabaster and more wore their skin like burnished copper and autumn beets, proud as young roosters at dawn. Knights and Samurai, they named themselves, though their mothers still called them habibi when they thought no one could hear. Yowai, they scattered like seeds in a storm, their bravado carried away on the same winds that brought the evening call to prayer.
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The champion of oil was copper.
The champion of hydrogen was alabaster.
The champion of electric wore his hair black as coal.
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The efficiency of electric outshined that of oil and hydrogen. Both copper and alabaster felt emasculated indeed, although black idolized the intensity of hydrogen most.
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There was a creep who wished to siphon all energy. This champion of autumn beets suffered the rider's folly. He was an addict of codependency.āāāāā
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The Rider's Folly.
The mare's flanks heaved beneath him like the last gasps of a bellows, but still he drove her on. Each dawn found them moving, each dusk saw them pause only long enough for the horse to crop thin grass while he dozed in the saddle. The sun burned paths across the sky and the moon traced silver arcs above them, and still they rode.
He had forgotten the feel of earth beneath his boots. His legs, once thick with muscle, had withered to rope-thin stalks wrapped around the horse's barrel. When he slept, his dreams were of endless motion, of hoofbeats drumming against packed dirt, of wind washing over him like river water.
Then came the morning when the mare's heart gave out. She dropped beneath him like a stone falling into still water, no warning, no farewell. Just the sudden absence of movement, of life. He sprawled in the dust beside her, and for the first time in years, felt the ground press against his bones.
His legs wouldn't hold him. They were useless things now, shrunken and weak as a newborn. He had driven his faithful companion to death, and in doing so, had killed something in himself. The earth seemed to mock him as he crawled beside the mare's cooling body, remembering too late that man was meant to walk upon his own two feet.
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Avery feigned incongruence to save her soul.ā