Today's offering is a short little story. I'm not really sure where it goes or what to say about it, other than that the setting was inspired by Dark Days.
Happy New Year!
-Matt
"Apprentice" By Matt Mok
The boy stared at the old woman's dark wrinkled hands, his eyes affixed on the flame that glowed in them. It hovered inches above her palms, but caused no pain to appear on her wizened and freckled face. Her smile was one of serenity, of peace that belied her surroundings.
He was a stranger in the city's abandoned tunnels underneath the civilized world. Yet he was inexplicably drawn, the idea striking all at once, an incomplete thought coursing through his head. The boy had walked out the front door of his house, took two buses, and walked half an hour until he found the entrance to a place of which he had no recollection.
A hidden city had unfolded before him, a collection of shacks built from discarded poster board and sheet metal. The deeper he descended into the forsaken subway tunnels, the more elaborate the structures became. Where once there were burning trash cans for light, there were now bulbs running off stolen power. All around him, the city's vagabonds returned home with their day's spoils to canned soup heated on hotplates and coffee in collections of mismatched mugs.
The boy had realized with a start that he was lost when a man touched him on the shoulder. The boy was not from below—that was plain to see—and the man asked of his intentions. A name came to him this time, fluttering in his memory before it evaporated. "Magda," he had said. "I'm looking for Magda." The man blew into his fingerless mittens and rubbed his hands together, and after some scrutiny, had pointed the way toward the old matriarch.
He watched now as the old woman repeatedly pinched the flame off of the candle and threw it into her other hand, collecting an ever-growing liquid swirl of red and orange. When she stopped, the flame that rose from the inferno in her hands licked at the roof of her shack.
"What—"
Old Magda hushed the boy and cupped her hands together, extinguishing the fire. It reemerged within her hands in seconds, but with a cool emerald glow that made her fingers appear translucent. She opened her hands to reveal a brilliant orb of roiling green fire that seemed to be contained in an invisible sphere. The old woman bent down over it and blew softly. The boy had drawn very close by then, and could hardly feel the breath of air, but the flame went out just the same, as if doused by water.
"How…" he said, his voice dry from the heat.
Old Magda pursed her lips, smiled, and said, "My child, I will teach you."
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