Responsibility Descending

by G. Scott Huggins

The Century Ship burned.

From her mainmast cell, Responsibility heard the screams, and the roar of the flames. Flames engulfing square miles of sailcloth and rope. She scrabbled at the trapdoor, but it was bolted shut.

Outside, her mother burned the ship, searching for her.

Responsibility peered out the tiny windows, but smoke filled her eyes. She tried to cry out, to shout to the dragon that she was here, was burning. But what good would it do to shout that name? Her mother knew it not. Her mother had called her…

Responsibility hid under her wings from the flames, vainly trying to remember the name that would save her.

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Tumbleweeds and Little Girls

by Jeff Bowles

They had the tumbleweed ambassador on the news a month before the big battle. The news guy and news girl said he was intelligent, and then a local representative of the Plains and Wildlife Service translated for him because tumbleweeds can’t talk and must sign everything by rolling and hopping and what not.

“We mean your people no harm,” said the Plains and Wildlife Service guy. He spoke kind of slow and choppy. I guessed he wasn’t actually, what do you call it? Fluent in tumbleweed?

He said, “The war has started, whether you realize it or not. The Prairie Queen has an army of deer and antelope and coyotes. She’s got the power of fire. She murdered our Wizard Father and made her castle from our dead tumbleweed brothers and sisters. The crazy bitch!”

I winced at this last word. I’m only twelve years old, after all. My dad used to talk real rough like that. He used to cuss and laugh and say to me, “Don’t repeat that to your mother, Amie Masterson. I don’t want to fight no little girl.” Then we’d roughhouse a bit. My dad died last year, though. Some kind of cancer. Mom never told me which.

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