Writer Unblocked

New Earth

By Rachel H Grant

A new Planet Earth. This was it. They had found it. Sapphire seas hissed under a powerful sun, emerald land purring in between, the taste of untainted nature.

Lawrence smirked. This trip had been a good choice. His career as a travel writer had hit a lull, but then this assignment had seized him with the lure of fame. A space voyage to find a new inhabitable planet, one that would act as an outpost for Planet Earth, a new dawn of twinned planets and sister societies. His piece was going to make him very rich.

Captain Jenny was preparing to land. Her shining brown locks and deep grey eyes glinted in the soft light of the control panel. “There are buildings below!” she cried excitedly. “This planet is inhabited! We need to go very carefully on this one. Let me leave the spaceship on my own first, to show we come in peace.”

Jenny discovered a welcome party on disembarking. An elderly man with long white hair, dressed in flowing robes of gold, stood next to a young woman with silver hair and amber eyes.

The man was holding a strange, humming metallic device. “We know you come in peace.” He spoke slowly. “We’ve been watching you approach. Our priests confirmed your peaceful intent. Please ignore this gadget I am holding. It is an intergalactic translator. It is why you understand what I say. I am Toski, leader of this planet, and this is my daughter, Princess Zeta.”

“We come from Planet Earth,” intoned Jenny slowly, slightly mesmerised by the old man’s still stare.

“Show me.”

Zeta brought forward a globe of light. Jenny peered in to it. It was a map of the stars. This she could do, she knew this galaxy like her own address book. She used a lever to move around, then stopped, puzzled. Earth was not where it should be.

“No, it can’t be,” Toski muttered, shaking. “You can not be from that planet, the missing planet? Planet Eternal Light, destroyed two thousand years ago. That is why our people came here. We are the survivors, and we built a new civilisation.  But you think you are from there? It must be space crunch. That is what we call it when space travel shifts you between dimensions, or in to other realities. You can’t go back now. You will find nothing there. Or worse … some very alien civilisation on what you think of as your planet.”

Jenny was stupefied. When she briefed her team, they voted to abort their mission and return home directly.

But on their return, there was no Earth. They circled Mars, and Venus, but Earth did not reappear.

“It’s true,” whispered Jenny sadly. “We are in another reality. Earth is no more.”

Lawrence was fizzing with fury. There would be no one to sell his story to now.

“We must return,” declared Jenny decisively. “To New Earth. I’m sure Toski will let us live with them.”

Lawrence was almost dancing with rage. His career was assuredly over now. “I want to try again,” he whined. “I want to circle space until Earth, our Earth, returns. Eventually we must cross this space crunch thing to our own reality? That’s what I want to do.” And then publish the story of a lifetime, he thought with satisfaction.

“It’s your choice,” said Jenny simply, “although I would recommend you stick with us. You know how to drive the pod, yes? I will program some flights for you, one around the solar system, returning to Earth. You can put that one on repeat. The other flight will be to New Earth. That is your rescue flight. The space pod will have enough fuel for another month.”

And so Lawrence circled the solar system, day in and day out. Earth did not reappear. At one point Venus looked verdant, like an Earth, however on the next circle of the solar system, when he planned to land there, it had reverted to its usual self.

Eventually, furiously, he knew he had to give in. Earth was gone.

The flight to New Earth was non-eventful. Jenny had programmed the pod to land at exactly the same place as before. They would be there, he mused with what was finally relief, to welcome him to the new planet. Perhaps his career wasn’t over, after all. He could start his own media outfit, if one did not already exist. His own newspaper. Did they have television? He could be at the forefront, a communications pioneer.

He was landing. But something was wrong. There were no buildings.

There was nothing but luscious green grass, towering trees, a shimmering stream, dancing in the soft sunlight.

He walked and walked. Nothing. Nature had consumed this planet. There were no people.

Slowly he sat down. The space pod was running short of fuel. He could not leave.

Lawrence would have to make it on his own. So much for a glorious media career here.

Overhead a bird soared, a lone companion in the silence. He would wait. One day, he knew, a spaceship would come. From Old Earth, from another New Earth. Somewhere out there was intelligent life. They would find him.

He hoped.

In the distance a bird cawed, and then all was quiet once more. Lawrence slowly lay down and tried to sleep. When he woke up, perhaps this would all be a dream, and another dimension would claim him.

The sound of his snoring merged with the song of the stream.  The trees danced in the wind, as the sun slid down a pink and violet sky. The planet slept in silence, as it had done for a thousand years.

Lawrence turned over restlessly, and then was still. Night had claimed the land.

Rain Fairy

Fairy Azura danced in the rain, pirouetting through the garden puddle with glee abandon. It was such fun being a fairy. Her job was just that: to play! An angel of the rain, the healing power of water lit up her heart.

Azura spent her days protecting the waters of the earth, from the majestic oceans themselves to this, a simple garden puddle. Water held within it the gateway to a fourth dimensional paradise, an ocean world, the waters broken up by small islands of flowers, all colours of the rainbow lighting up the sea. This was her real home, and where she returned at night to rest.

However this small puddle was fun. Because water was a master healer, even this tiny pocket of water held a magic vibration.

Slowly she finished her dance. It was time to fly away to the next pool of water requiring help. But she could not, her wings would not work. Desperately she tried to lift them up, but they were heavy and would not move. This water she was in must be cursed, it had placed some vicious chains around her.

Instinctively, she knew what it was. Weedkiller had been sprayed on the paving stones beneath the puddle. She could feel the chemical trying to erode her lungs, and pulling down her wings.

Weedkiller was toxic to all nature fairies, damping down their light. Azura tried again to lift her wings, but could not. So she closed her eyes, and began a sacred chant. With every word she murmured, she could feel the weedkiller changing, its chemistry rearranging itself so that the poison was neutralised. Her wings began to flap with a new life. She flew away, and the whole fairy kingdom became protected, as one, from weedkiller.

Azura flew high in the sky, and then circled above the sea. It was time to play again, this time with the dolphins.

Across the world, fairies began to fly with joy, enjoying a new freedom, in a world where pollutants could no longer harm them.

Song of the Seals

Inspiration that sets fire to your heart and bakes fresh words in your brain, creating new and heated writing you didn’t believe you had in you … we all dream of that. 

Today I found it. At a thinly peopled beach enjoying the fresh spray of the North Sea, where human concerns were belittled and blew away in an ancient wind. And the sound of a dozen or more seals, singing to each other, a moaning lament of all time, what tears sound like – nothing more, nothing less, and a prayer for the future.

Their haunting song is still in my heart. If I can write with even a tiny ounce of their inner fervour, then I know I can make something. Just a little something, that contains a microcosmic crumb of beauty, and the poetry of their pain. And so I will write, to a remembered song in my heart.