previous part: https://jordynsaelor.com/2026/06/11/scarlet/
all parts: https://jordynsaelor.com/cant-catch-me-now/
***
So say the caricaurs,
once,
many species
lived around the lake,
dracans and caricaurs,
joblins and borres,
plant queens and sky frights.
Then
the beliefs of the people
created gods over the wellspring
and gods over the vast desert
and gods over the sky
and the gods
with their egos
started a war
over somethin’ stupid
like
who had the most followers
or
who was the wisest
but most youthful
or
who could throw the biggest tantrum
and
the desert wasn’t always so large, you know,
the rocks weren’t always so bare,
once, scarlet flowers bloomed there,
once, silver hollypaws grew.
But the war razed the land
and the sky split nightly
and the inhabitants
around the lake
agreed on a pact
to deny their gods’ existence
in order to survive
but the dracans
secretly betrayed the pact
and prayed to their moon
all night
and all dawn
so the other gods weakened
from lack of devotion
and the moon,
growing in strength,
tore them apart
with his gravity
and left the corpses
across the sky–
so the dust that settles over the air each night
are the echoes of those dead gods;
their
unanswered prayers
their
near-infinite life forces still falling from heaven
their
self-important attitudes,
their
power
their
pain,
and the moon
lets it gather
each night
and still shows his face
every once in a while
to remind everyone
who won the war
and what will happen
if you oppose her,
who now owns
the water
and the trees.
So everyone
but the dracans
left the lake
in disgrace
and searched for new shores.
The caricaurs
settled around a river bend
but it wasn’t big enough for everyone
so the joblins and borres,
plant queens and sky frights,
went other ways
and the caricaurs haven’t met any of them
in generations–
not since
the river dried
and they built the underground canal–
and don’t have pictures of what the others look like,
just names,
but they took it upon themselves to remember
in case the others forgot
their history,
so
their real question was,
was I a joblin
or borre?
I didn’t seem like a plant queen
or sky fright,
but maybe I was one of those?
It hit me
that their laughing
wasn’t at my demands
or how stupid they thought me
but at
the fact they might’ve found
some ally out of history
who forgot where he came from–
except,
I doubted I was any of those things,
unless
some ancient borres and joblins
were water dwellers
who left a lake
to journey into a dry waste
then somehow went to another world
and got turned into land dwellers by a witch–
so,
extremely unlikely.
Unless
the sea deity
brought me here
for a reason,
but no
it said my ancestors came from an ocean
and this land
only had a lake
and also
the moon
who supposedly killed other gods
didn’t kill the sea deity,
it’d spoken to me.
So I said–
***
Wow, what’s this? A brand new book??
(header photo by Alfo Medeiros on Pexels.com)
Jordyn Saelor 