I've been listening to the new Nightwish album Human. :||: Nature really obsessively since it came out and it inspired me to write little flash fiction pieces loosely based on each song.
I'm going to be titling each flash fiction piece and then in brackets put the song that the piece was inspired by. I'll also be adding a YouTube link if anyone wants to listen to the song before reading. Here is the second song of Nightwish's new album that inspired this piece of flash fiction: Noise
Pain For Freedom
Year 6504 AC
Village of Paham, Kingdom of Krogia
In a cave on the coast
Adrella stilled her trembling hands and tried to regain control of her breathing. She stared at the god-mark on her right, little finger. Blue, outlines of fish curled around the digit, marking her as Sido’s. He was the God of the Sea and he’d claimed her, owned her since the day she was born. She could worship no other god. Sure, he’d granted her a boon, as if her very soul could be bought. It was a stupid, worthless boon, as well. She could speak with fish.
She snorted, such a “precious” gift. She'd grown up in a small fishing village and every day all she heard were screams echoing across the water. She could barely bring herself to eat because the cries of the fish would ring in her ears, making her want to vomit.
She’d made the mistake of trying to talk to the fish before.She’d been so eager to make use of this boon when she was a small girl. She’d waded into the water and waited until a beautiful, rainbow colored fish had approached her. It told her all sorts of secrets and even led her to a place where it had seen a beautiful shell, almost completely covered by sand. This experience jhad cemented for her that it was really a curse, disguised as a blessing.
So, she had decided to sever her connection with Sido, turn her back from him.
She’d saved all the money she could and finally was able to get a message out of Paham on a ship and to a village of Unbound. The Unbound were people who had turned away from their gods. Some chose instead to worship The Creator (even if it was unknown if he really existed). Others chose to worship darker, more primal forces, rumored to be buried deep beneath the earth. Others still chose to worship no one, instead living their lives free from what they felt was an obligation to a religion they had no choice in joining.
It was the last group that made up the village she’d sent the message to. Adrella had figured they would send her a message on how to proceed, so when a young, elven woman knocked on her shack door, there had been some confusion.
The woman had a huge burn, all mottled and deformed skin, circling her neck. Dark shapes of what must have once been a god-mark lurked just underneath but were too distorted for Adrella to make out. Her golden eyes (a side-effect of turning one’s back on the gods) glowed like the sunset and Adrella knew she was making the right choice. This was a woman free from the expectations and obligations of the fickle gods.
The two women sat in a sandy cave just outside of the village. The woman, Marta, had brought with her the acidic paste that was used by all who wanted to become Unbound. It was made from a beetle that she had told Adrella was black with large white spots, collected from a far-off island near Wirrowwir. The beetles were ground together until they made a thick, black paste that smelled so bad it made her eyes water.
Adrella held her breath and dipped her little finger, the one covered in what she’d once thought were beautiful and stylized fish, into the paste.
An excruciating pain unlike anything she’d ever felt seized her body. It was a burning that started in her finger and then radiated up her arm. It continued to race up her body, leaving fire in its wake until it took root in her chest. She hadn’t realized she was screaming until Marta shoved something firm covered in cloth into her mouth.
“Quiet,” the elven woman snapped.
A white hot pain shot through her head and she doubled over, taking care to not remove her finger from the paste.
The pain started to fade away slowly after a few minutes, time during which Adrella was sure she’d lost consciousness briefly. Now the burning pain was only limited to her one finger. She had succeeded.
She pulled her finger out of the paste and Marta was immediately there, throwing the container of paste into a corner of the cave and starting to clean the finger. She was gentle but efficient in removing all the leftover paste and blood.
She got a brief glimpse of the finger, red, deformed, and bloody, before the Unbound woman was wrapping it in a bandage, hiding it from her eyes.
Adrella took a deep breath, letting the salty sea air fill her chest. She let it wash away the lingering pain (although her finger still burned). She felt herself calm and strained to hear anything other than the soft lapping of the waves outside.
All was calm and silent and she was free.