My cat. :)

The Lightsmith
Part 1
*****
A balmy afternoon and the pink sea lapped up on a beach of blue sand.
Overhead, three moons, one wreathed with rings, were at the point of setting.
The couple who lay on beach towels, listened to a radio broadcast of Fidel Castro's
speeches, with an anthem of industrial music playing in the background.
Small sharks equipped with legs gambolled in the surf and cast knowing glances up
the beach at the pair.

He was a lightsmith and at his work wracked azure lightning on grids
of aquamarine, for the entertainment of paying customers.
She wove shaded air and sold secrets.

In their silence, only the plush-hisss of breakers registered.
In their minds was a meld which no observer, writer or reader could truly fathom.
And out at sea, leagues deep, where the red light faded to black,
the leviathan dreamed on.



Part 2
*****
The lightsmith shaded his eyes and looked out to sea.
Further out, the waters had darkened to violet,
and on the horizon iron grey clouds were piling up.
Out over the ocean, a vast vortichurn was forming.
A cone of condensing water vapour which towered high into the stratosphere,
with cycling winds at its heart.
Slate dark, lit occasionally by electrical discharge somewhere inside its bulk,
the vortichurn slowly moved toward shore.
The woman stirred at his elbow, roused by the loss in warmth, and the darkening of the sky.
She noticed that the increasing,
cool winds had brought out goose bumps on the pale blue skin of her partner,
and that his nipples had hardened into small knots of mauve.
She curled her tail round her feet, propped herself up with one elbow and surveyed her male.
The mass of cloud towered over them now, and around them the sand began to boil.
From amid the blue sand grains emerged thousands of blood red crabs, as large as the air weaver's hand.
Sensing the electricity in the air, the crabs were abandoning the land
and marching armylike into the foaming pink surf.
The lightsmith looked at his lady.
Orange flesh tiger striped with black.
Well coloured, with only the eyes retaining the mirrorshade silver.
He felt his passion rising rapidly.
The clouds blotted out all light and the keen winds made him cold.
He sought out the nearby source of warmth.
As their ferverent coupling reached its crescendo,
the first stinging drops of rain struck the beach.
Where the droplets struck, the sand grains sizzled,
shivered and dissolved in little wisps of smoke.
The intense acidity bit into the lightsmith's back
as he arched over his lover in both agony and release.
He lay over her.
Utterly spent, like a salmon that having spawned,
lies in the shallows and waits to die.
The rain beat a fierce tattoo over his limbs, trunk and head.
Much later, the woman levered the man gently off her,
and then crawled quietly out.
With a last sad glance down at the lightsmith,
she walked along the beach and into the dunes.
Later, the blood red crabs emerged from the surf, and consumed the corpse.



Part 3
*****
It was dark.
Broken glass, soil and shattered brick crunched underfoot.
There was the smell of decay.
Footsteps echoed and were swallowed in a vast space.
A visitor had come to this dark world,
and by touch alone he explored the brick wall before him.
At a thought, his fingers burst forth radiance.
Away from him stretched a great plain of cracked cement.
Before him was a colossal tower of orange brickwork.
In the magnesium glare he could see that the tower loomed above him unbroken for
hundreds of feet and then spread into a panoply of turrets, balconies and walkways.
Up there were windows shuttered with wood, and structures roofed in iron.
This was the appointed place, but his lady was not in evidence.
Applying the strength of his shoulder to the only ground level entrance,
he stepped over the threshold and into a place of opulent splendour.
A chandelier of carved glass struck glints from glassed cabinets of trinkets
and silverware which sat on mahogany tables.
Selecting a crystal decanter of port from a lacquered tray, the visitor walked
from room to room, looking at the paintings of stern people in gilt frames,
and admiring his present incarnation in oval mirrors.
Silk-white shirt with lace at the collar and sleeves, sensible black trousers,
a broad leather belt and black pointed shoes.
Silver eyes struck a discordant note, but few emulators got everything right on the first pass.
Sipping the port he decided that the Errol Flynn suited him.
The air was filled with the scent of roses and piped music:
New Orleans Jazz.
Room after room opened to his questing fingers.
Somewhere a server must have been working overtime, as he found rooms of
platinum grass waving in an unseen breeze, piles of papers which folded themselves
into flowers, and steel children who played vicious pranks on each other with oxyacetylene torches.
He passed through a surgery filled with tools for trepanning politicians and around
a TV news studio where a decapitated android read the news off an autoqueue.
In a marble columned ballroom he conversed with emulations of Jesus, Napoleon
and Charles Manson, danced over parquet floors with Marie Antoinette, and spat
green liquid at targets with an alien from Zeta IV.
He sampled plates of canape and marvelled at the authenticity of the milleau.
Journeying away from all the light and noise, he systematically searched the ground floor of the tower.
The port was making him pleasantly drunk, but he was certain that there were no stairs out of this level.
Clearly this was going to be a very enjoyable game of hide and seek.
At his next step the rug gave under him, and he fell forward.
Lightsmith, decanter and red rug, all fell into a large square shaft.






Part 4
*****
The lightsmith fell several bodylengths before hitting a solid floor.
He lay stunned for a moment tangled in the rug.
Finally, groaning, he stirred.
His left arm hurt abominably, and his right hand had been cut by shards of crystal.
It was pitch dark here, and the man found that light could not be summoned.
He paused to listen.
Distantly, and somewhere below, water dripped slowly.
The sound echoed through a large chamber in which he lay.
There were no other sounds.
Standing shakily, he felt around him.
He quickly ascertained that he stood on a small platform with a parapet
and a vertical drop on three sides.
On the forth were a set of narrow descending steps.
He felt dizzy and weak.
It was cold here.
He retreated from the open side of his cage, and wrapped the rug around him.
Lying back against the opposite wall, the man dozed.
*

Driven by thirst, the lightsmith descended the stairway.
The room was thrown into a series of narrow platforms and stairways, surrounded
with precipitous drops.
He found his way to water by touch.
Drinking deeply from a stone basin made him feel better.
After washing his wounded hand, he reascended the crooked path.
Finally, he could climb no further.
He had reached what seemed the highest point of the chamber.
Standing on a large flat floor, he felt his way to the rear wall.
Somewhere in the darkness he had passed the stairs up to his platform.
But he did not care because, inset in the wall of the great room, was a doorway.
Beyond was a staircase, lit by torches in sconces,
which spiralled to the top of the tower.
Crossing a narrow bridge between two turrets, the lightsmith entered a domain of
hanging muslin and delicate scents.
The air around him seemed bouy him up.
With an effort he made it to a turquoise chaise longue, where he fashioned
roses of light feebly.
The air weaver was here, indistinct in a halo of vapour.
With delicate touches, she healed his wounds, and drew him to a bed of satin.


Later, she whispered a heresy in his ear.





Part 5
*****
Rushing out of his apartment on the strip, the bleary eyed individual went to a
nearby Virtual Reality Combat Arcade, and stood in a digitising booth.
Grabbing the data slug that carried his image, he returned and reconnected to the Virealitor.
They met in a cottage by some unknown sea.
Much later, they walked arm in arm over cliff tops, buffeted by wind, and watched
surf break against the base of the cliff.
She was shorter than he had imagined she would be.
And he was weedier than any of the Clark Gables or other images that he had used.
They found this didn't matter to each other.
There was much comfort to be had here.
They spent most of their time talking.
She was a data tech, and he a software engineer.
Different pasts and from different countries.
They met in person later that year.
****

The Lightsmith won the NEXUS Short Story Competition at Waikato University in 1994.