Hello! If you're new here, here's how this works: in the beginning of the month, I ask a question. I get answers from people, hopefully. I take one of those answers and write a short story based on it, then put it out on the last day of the month. Sometimes they're actually pretty good, and sometimes they're a real mess. But at least every time I put some words on paper. Screen. Whatever.
Well, normally. This month I was stuck with a problem: there were too many good answers. I came up with two different ideas, based on a total of three different answers, that I wanted to try my hand at, and I just couldn't pick. So I wrote a bit of the beginning of both, so see which one I liked best. I still couldn't pick. So I wrote a full version of both. At this point it was clear which one was better. One of them was actually kinda good, but too short based on the rules I set for myself. The other one was within my normal word count range, but it wasn't very good at all. I was supposed to work on it a bit (a lot) more, but I had a pretty hectic week at work, so I simply did not have the energy for that, and then the end of the month rolled around again. I did manage to rewrite almost the whole second half on the last day, but it still could have used a lot more work. So you're getting both: the too short but actually descent story, and the normal-length could-have-been-good-with-another-two-three-evenings-of-work story that is inspired by a combination of two answers.
You can find both of these stories here.
I also read them into an audio format, if audiobooks are more your thing than actual written words.
One last note before getting to the stories: I didn't come up with July question myself. It was suggested to me by Erika. (And, to be honest, I got the rest by googling "questions to ask" or "conversation starters" or something, so I didn't come up with most of them myself either)
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What’s the oddest place you’ve ever spent the night in July?
The night sky above the ocean … (in a plane) (answer from Camilo)
We hover above the planet, over an ocean that is the only place on the entire globe that is mostly devoid of light. But even here there are spots, like twisted images of the stars dotting the sky in the endless space we passed through to get to this water-filled rock that seems to be so off balance. Even here, farthest away from what we have understood to be habitable for this species, to even here they have found their way, and they light their beacons and scream their existence into the void.
We do not understand why they do this. If they have a reason, we cannot determine what it is. Perhaps they do not have one. Perhaps they are much more like the other creatures on our home planet, one we have not seen in a long time, that did not truly understand the world but instead did what they felt at any moment. They only had the impulse to collect energy, to rest, to be comfortable, to spread. They did not think, not in the same way we did. We thought we found someone like us when we caught a glimpse of their beacon from so far away. To us it seemed an intentional message, sent by intentional creatures.
But now that we are here we see no more intention, only clutter. Only a deafening cacophony of meaningless noise. Now we see we must have been mistaken, must have seen meaning coded into something where there was none, where there was only noise made by creatures who make so much of it, some had escaped and found us. We understand much, see much, know much, but we are still fallible.
We hover above the dark ocean, littered with light, thinking. What do we do now? We have come all the way here to see this other intentionality, to find someone else like us. But we find ourselves in the same position where we were before. There is no intentionality here.
For a time we consider if it is better to rid the planet of all this noise, of these creatures that have spread everywhere. It seems to us they are an unwelcome distraction, both to others on the planet and to those outside of it. But we discard the idea. We do not know this planet, we do not know what removing a major component of its function would do to the rest of it, though we do believe it, after the turmoil of change ceases, to be an advantage to everything else living here. But even if we did know the result of our potential action, and we did know it to be good, this planet’s fate does not concern us, it is not our responsibility. There have been other planets where we have seen life destroy itself, and those planets have never been ours to fix, even when we have known we could have done it.
We stare down at the planet as a continent appears on the horizon, bright and flaring.
Maybe there is intentionality there. Unintentional beings could not make something so strong, something that is so beautiful and terrible at the same time.
The thought is not our thought. We growl at it. It did not last long. We do not know where it came from, except from somewhere among us. The longer we watch, the more clearly we see there is no intentionality here, and there is no space for thoughts such as that. And because there is no intentionality, there is nothing for us on this planet. We turn to leave.
We should stay a little longer.
We are startled. It has been aeons since there last were thoughts within us that were not our thoughts. We do not understand what is happening. We do not understand how a part of us can so strongly disagree with us. We followed a beacon, and we found nothing of interest. A planet crawling with life, but no intentional creatures. More and more of a continent is turning into visibility, its web of light irritating us. We turn to leave again.
But somewhere among us there is fascination for the blinding lights.
The patterns seem to indicate something intentional.
We hiss. The thoughts all have the same source. We do not like this source. We turn our attention inward, to find it, to silence it, to remove it like other creatures might a thorn from their flesh. We search, but we cannot find the source. It has fallen silent.
No matter. It is time for us to go. We turn to look at the chaos beneath us one last time.
Intentional, though perhaps not intelligent.
This time it is our thought. Not a thought of the whole of us, but enough that we recognise it as ours. So we pause. Somewhere within us there is joy at us pausing. Intentional, though perhaps not intelligent. We spend a time watching the continent turn into full view beneath us, contemplating this new possibility.
Perhaps the part of us is correct. Perhaps this is what it looks like when intentionality merges with ignorance, with naivete. Perhaps.
We cannot determine whether this is true from orbit. That would require going down to the surface, and we cannot do that. We are great in many ways, but ever since we left our own planet, we are too big, too clumsy for a surface world. We cannot do that.
But maybe we can send a part to go, to see, to possibly interact with the creatures here? We have never done it, but we believe it to be possible. We will feel the absence of a part of us, and the part will feel the absence of the rest of us. The connection will be essentially broken, but that we are certain can be mended with time after the reunion.
We are not in a hurry. We take our time, pondering through the risks, the possible benefits, while the planet turns below us. And we reach a conclusion, as we always do. If there is intentionality here, we do want to know. If there is a possibility, we want to have a confirmation, whichever the truth may be.
So we get to work. We begin to slowly, carefully detach a part. It is heavy work, and tiring. But we are committed to this course of action now, and every part of us believes it is for the best.
There is a different continent beneath us when it is finished. It is strange, the feeling of being alone, of being detached. It is unfamiliar, and it is uncomfortable, and it is distressing. But it does not matter. Going down to the surface is exciting, and we… No. I fully believe I will find what we are looking for.
I did, the entire time.
I say goodbye to them and begin my descent towards the atmosphere and the ground.
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What’s the oddest place you’ve ever spent the night in July?
In a medieval castle, in a graveyard … (answer from Tolppa, who listed a few other things too)
On the EB in Ireland my partner and I spent one night in a tent on the graveyard of a church fallen into ruin (answer from Hanna)
(I translated these answers from Finnish. I hope they still say what they were supposed to)
The cat had come back. The last time Timothy had seen her, she had looked ready to give birth, and now she surely had. Which meant there were kittens, hidden in a nest somewhere, safe from the world. He tried to play with the cat, but she didn’t seem to be in a playful mood. She kept hissing when his hand passed through as he tried to touch her back. She usually didn’t do that, and it threw his focus off. Usually he managed to scratch it at least every second time, and she liked it. Maybe it was too hungry from caring for her kittens, and simply wanted to find food and get back to the nest.
He let the cat go and floated around for a bit. He made his way through the rooms that had once been beautiful, but were now little more than stone walls. Only one of the rooms still had half a ceiling. It had been a castle, Timothy had long ago decided. He didn’t know it was true, exactly, but he had always wanted to live in a castle, and now he could, so that was all that mattered. He might have wanted a bigger castle, if he was honest, but this was much better than anything he ever had before.
He floated to sit on top of a high, crumbling wall and sat there, watching the sunset for a little bit.
“... to find a place to set up camp soon. It’s starting to get dark.”
If it had been possible for Timothy to fall off the wall, he would have. He looked around wildly, then spotted two people emerging from the forest to the more open area outside his castle, the one spotted with what he had named hopping stones, because they were perfect for hopping. He stared at the people.
“We could just stay here,” the woman said. The man looked around.
“It’s a graveyard,” he said.
“It’s a nice, open, flat area with soft ground. It’s a little overgrown, but it’s a lot better for setting up the tent than in the bush-filled forest. And there’s plenty of stones around for a firepit.”
“It’s a graveyard right next to a pile of ruins,” the man said. The woman looked at Timothy’s castle.
“I think you and I can both agree that this is more than a pile of ruins,” she said. When the man didn’t respond, she continued, “Look, do you want to keep walking? Because all I want right now is to get this pack off my back, some hot food, and then a good night’s sleep. And if I have to do that in a graveyard next to some ruins, then so be it. I also want a shower, but since that’s looking more unlikely by the minute, I’ll settle for everything else above.”
The man muttered something Timothy couldn’t hear, and they both dropped their packs. He lowered himself from the wall as the man started to put up a bright orange tent, and the woman took a walk around the hopping stones, collecting rocks from the ground as she went.
All Timothy could do was stare at them. He hadn’t seen other people in such a long time. It was weird. He wasn’t sure if it was a good weird or not. He often wished he had someone to play with that wasn’t the cat or the birds or the other animals in the forest. But now that they were here, he was feeling shy, and a little bit like they had simply walked into his home without permission and not even said hello. He knew they couldn’t see him or hear him, but that only made it a little better.
He circled them as they made camp, trying to decide what to do. After a long time he finally decided to be brave enough to talk to them. At least say hello. Welcome them to his home.
“Hello,” he said.
They didn’t react. There was no sign they had heard him. He cleared his throat and focused. If he could play with the cat, he could say hello to these nice people.
“Hello,” Timothy said again, and this time the man stiffened a little, looked over his shoulder. Not even close to the direction Timothy was in.
“Did you hear something?” he asked the woman. She looked at him for a moment, as if trying to decide if he was joking.
“If it was something other than the fire or the cat we saw earlier, you’re imagining it,” she then said.
That hurt Timothy’s feelings a bit. He wasn’t imagined. He was real, and right here, and he could hear her talking, and she was being rude.
He focused real hard, as hard as he could, and said, “I’m real. My name is Timothy. I just wanted to welcome you to my home.”
This time they both froze.
“You heard it this time too, right?” the man asked the woman. She was looking around, her eyes wide.
“Hello?” the woman called out. “Is someone there?”
“Yes, I’m here,” Timothy tried to say, but they didn’t seem to hear him. They listened for a moment in silence.
“It, um...“ the woman said, paused. “It was the wind, blowing an odd way through the ruins.”
“Maggie, I heard words”, the man said.
“Ok, we’re sitting in a spot where our voices are somehow weirdly echoed from the ruins,” she said, but she didn’t sound convinced. It sounded more like a question than an answer. They were both looking nervously around.
Wait, Timothy realised, were they afraid of him? But he only said hello and welcome. That’s not scary. That’s just good manners.
He fluttered around them, unsure what to do. He didn’t want to scare them, but he did want to talk to someone. It had been so long. He would have to think about this, so he set himself on the nearest hopping stone to do just that.
In a few minutes, with him not talking to them, they relaxed, but not all the way. They lit a fire to keep the oncoming dark from creeping in too close. Timothy remembered what campfires had been like, and he missed them. He imagined he could feel the heat of theirs sitting on the stone a little bit away. He probably couldn’t, but imagining was better than nothing.
The man dug out a pot from his pack and emptied a bottle into it, then set it right on top of the fire. He shook the now empty bottle in his hand.
“We’re running out of water,” he said. “I think we only have enough left for the morning, right? We’ll need to find a place to refill as early as possible tomorrow.”
The woman nodded. This gave Timothy an idea. He would show them they didn’t need to be afraid of him, that he only wanted to be their friend. There was a spring in the forest, a couple of minutes away. All the animals came there to drink, and he remembered being taught when he was younger that the water that bubbled from under the earth and filled natural springs was good to drink. They could fill their bottles in the spring, and he would have helped! The thought made him happy.
He left the clearing of the hopping stones and in no time he was at the spring. There he ran into a problem that he hadn’t realised he had until now: how to get the water to them? He dipped his hand into the water, and nothing happened. He imagined the cold, imagined touching the water, and small ripples appeared on the surface. He smiled. He tried to scoop up some water. For a second he thought he’d managed it, but then the water splashed through his hands again, and into the pool. So he tried again, and again, and again. One time he managed to get some water half-way back to the people, but then he got so excited that he forgot to focus, and all the water splashed to the ground. Both of them looked up at that, and in the right direction this time. They watched for a moment, then turned back to their cooking.
But Timothy didn’t give up. He tried once more, and got a little closer to the fire and the visitors. He tried twice more, and he got a little further still. And then finally he managed to hold water in his hands all the way to the fire.
He realised he hadn’t thought it through the moment he got to the visitors. He didn’t know what to do now with the water in his hands. At the same moment he realised this, they noticed him. Well, not him. They couldn’t see him, but they could see the water.
“What the…” the woman started, and Timothy panicked. The solidness of his hands disappeared, and the water splashed down onto the woman. She stumbled to her feet and swore loudly, which Timothy thought was rude. Sure, he had spilled the probably cold water all over her, but still.
“Can our echo throw water at us?” the man asked, his voice shaking. He was on his feet now too.
“I didn’t throw it,” Timothy huffed. He was just trying to be nice, and while accidentally dropping water on your guests wasn’t nice, throwing some was a lot worse. He would never do that.
The visitors were staring almost straight at the spot where he was, and with a start he realised they had heard him.
“I didn’t throw it. I was bringing you water, because you don’t have any left, and there’s a spring right at the edge of the woods.”
The other two stared. Then they moved together and started whispering, which, again, Timothy thought was rude. He only heard a little of what they were saying.
“...like a little kid…”
“...don’t exist, there’s no…”
“...is a spring, we could use…”
“...a trap, haven’t you seen a single…”
“...a little kid…”
“...the worst ones!”
“...bring us clean water…”
They quieted.
“Hello?” the woman said out loud and looked around. “Is there someone there? Whoever just spilled the water on me?”
Timothy concentrated again, really hard, not trying to be solid, but to maybe be visible. He hadn’t tried it ever before, he had never needed to, but he thought it should be possible. The man gasped.
“I’m here,” said Timothy, and this time they saw him, and they heard him. The woman mouthed something to the man and stepped closer.
“You said there’s a spring somewhere close?” her voice was very careful.
“Yes,” Timothy said, but then it became too much to stay visible, and he had to drop it. He rushed across the clearing as the woman spoke to the spot where he had been.
“Can you show me where?” she asked.
Timothy focused again.
“This way,” he said, and again they heard him. The woman turned around.
“Where?”
Timothy was tired. Carrying the water had been hard, harder than anything he had done in a long, long time. Maybe ever. And being visible was completely new, and speaking so they could hear was tricky. So he simply flashed visible for a little bit, until he saw the woman notice him.
“You’re really following that thing into the dark forest? You’re going to drown in that spring, if it even exists,” the man’s voice reached Timothy, faint, but loud enough he could make out the words. He didn’t like how they talked about him, but it was his duty as a host to offer his guests at least water. Or he thought it was. He had never had guests before.
“I won’t go out of earshot, if that makes you feel better,” she told the man as she reached the spot where Timothy was. Timothy moved to the direction of the well and flashed again. The woman followed him into the woods.
“I’m not sure why you expect him to want us harm,” the woman was talking to the man as she followed Timothy. “Honestly, I’m almost convinced I’m actually dreaming, but if this somehow happens to be true, I don’t know why ghosts or spirits or whatever couldn’t be friendly. In horror movies they’re obviously bad, because there wouldn’t be much horror otherwise, but I wouldn’t use movies as a source of information on this stuff if it turns out to be real. And there’s a spring here.”
She squatted by the spring and took a sip.
“Good, cold, clean water by the taste of it.”
She walked back to their fire, and got their bottles, and filled them in the spring. They boiled the water after they finished cooking, just in case.
They ate their dinner, and Timothy didn’t try to talk to them again. He wanted to, but he was too tired. So he just sat there, enjoying having other people around. It wasn’t quite company, but it was better than the cat.
Soon they went to sleep, and Timothy floated around the halls of his castle for the rest of the night.
“I had a dream,” the woman said when they woke up in the morning, “That there was a ghost that showed us to a spring right at the edge of the woods here, and we got to fill out bottles here instead of looking for the next house we can find this morning.”
“I had the same dream,” the man said, looking worried. He picked up one of their bottles, then another one. And another. “They’re all full,” he told her. She looked at him for a moment, thinking.
“Thank you, little ghost,” she then said, a small smile on her face. And Timothy smiled back, even though they couldn’t see it.
The visitors ate again, and packed, and refilled their bottles, and continued on their way. Timothy would miss having people around, but he was happy they had been there, and that he had helped them on their journey.
