art by Shannon N. Kelly
Saurus
"What is it!?" Boy's eyes sparkled. "Is it anything?"
"Let me sit first, won't you?" I steadied myself with my good arm, and sat heavily on an Elder stone. "Let me see." I took the rectangular block from his grasp with both hands. It was lighter than I expected.
"Do you need to piss, Boy? Then quit your dancing. Sit here by me."
Anything else--anything metal, anything useful--he would have taken to the younger men. Never mind that I often had memories of such things, as well. They made of them what they could--blades, chisels, vessels.
Once I tried offering my knowledge. The name popped into my mind from who knows where. "That's a brake caliper," I had said.
"Oho!" Boy's father said. "A break what, hey? It's broken now, inn't?" The young men laughed.
"It was part of a car, part of what made them stop."
"Well now." Boy's father narrowed his eyes, looking past me down the hill, across the vacant, quiet land. "It worked pretty damn good, didn't it?"
Now I brushed the dust from the block in my lap, knocked away dried clots of soil from its edges.
Enjoying this story? Don't miss the next one!
SUBSCRIBE TO DSF
"This is a book," I said. "With stories, maybe."
Boy dragged his gaze away from the object in my lap to see if I was joking.
"There were once all kinds of books." My thumbnail found a place on the side of the block where the pages had not completely fused, and I pried it open.
"Is it stories?" Boy looked eagerly at the spread of pages, studying its antlike markings and blooms of mildew.
Inflamed; scarlet, vermilion; crimson; rubiate; maroon; damask; puce; stammel; cerise...
"No, Boy."
I knew this thing. My thumb searched for another crack in the binding.
Areaway; breezeway; vestibule, portal, portico, entry, threshold; lobby, foyer; propylaeum, stoa; narthex...
"I'm sorry, Boy. No stories."
I suddenly felt very tired. I didn't want to open any more pages. I didn't want to see all the names for money, or airplanes, or terms of endearment. I didn't want to read all the names for war.
"Here," I said, closing it and setting it back on Boy's lap. "Make up your own stories."
The End
This story was first published on Thursday, February 23rd, 2012
We hope you enjoyed
Saurus by
John Van Pelt.
Please support Daily Science Fiction by becoming a member.
Daily Science Fiction does not have a paywall, but we do have expenses—more than 95% of which are direct payments to authors for their stories. With your $15 membership, less than 6 cents per story, we can continue to provide genre fiction every weekday by email and on the website to thousands of readers for many years to come.
Support Daily Science Fiction
Please click to rate this story from 1 (ho-hum) to 7 (excellent!):
Please don't read too much into these ratings. For many reasons, a superior story may not get a superior score.
4.8 Rocket Dragons Average
Please join our mailing list and
receive free daily sci-fi (your email address will be kept
100% private):
