Wind and Water

Water is the lifeblood of,” Nysa paused, tapping her chin with a gelatinous pseudopod. “Life!” she triumphantly finished.

Aurora rolled her wispy eyes. “There is a good reason why you water spirits are so despised.”

“Because of our greatness?”

“Because of your self-centeredness. And your terrible one-liners.”

Nysa giggled. “One-liners. You speak like the humans.”

Aurora refused to rise to the provocation. Instead, she flew away in a random direction. Nysa followed along, riding the crystalline waves with effortless grace. The pair travelled in silence, accompanied only by an unmoving sun and the infinite expanse of ocean before them.

Soon, Aurora stopped. “Why are you following me?”

Nysa swam up one of the waves and leapt to hug Aurora, but the wind spirit’s body simply diffused, reforming as Nysa crash in the waters. “Why not?” Nysa replied as she stuck her head out of the water.

“Because you are annoying. Go away,” with that, Aurora flew in the opposite direction.

Nysa quickly dove and rippled through the water. Despite riding against the waves, she soon caught up, receiving an annoyed ‘tut’ from Aurora for her efforts. Nysa poked her head out again and spoke. “If you really didn’t want my company, you could have just flown up.”

Aurora stopped and folded her ethereal arms. “Look at you, so cheerful. Even after everything that happened.”

“Of course,” Nysa said, splashing the water around her. “Mother made me this way!”

“Gaia is dead!” Aurora spat, stilling the breeze around them. “And you’re still so cheerful! You’re still smiling!”

Nysa watched, confused, as Aurora zipped along the ocean, faster than before. Dead? Why did that matter? All things die, as Mother intended. She swam after Aurora, fresh questions grating at her heart.

Even as Aurora faded into a speck in the distance, Nysa continued swimming. If she didn’t want me to follow her, she would have flown up! Rallying her resolve, she continued swimming, the still sun beating overhead.

After several hours, Nysa saw the most peculiar sight. It was a place of sand and green and strange stilted structures. Land. Was Aurora here? She swam up to where the water ended, unwilling to go any further.

Aurora reformed opposite her. She sat on the sand, knees to her chest as the waves lapped her toes. Her nearly imperceptible eyes were cast downwards, her lips curled into something akin to shame.

Nysa cocked her head. “You are not like the other wind spirits.”

“Oh?” Aurora replied.

“All the wind spirits I met were whimsy, carefree. They were fun.”

Aurora snorted. “Am I not fun then?”

“Not at all,” Nysa carefully reached out to poke her face. Her pseudopod passed through her. “But I don’t care. We’re friends.”

“Friends?” Aurora asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, don’t you remember? We talked all the time when we were born, back before the older spirits left. You left too, even though you were so young. You ran after them, like how you ran away from me!”

“Ran…”

~

“Aurora run,” he cried.

“NO,” Aurora said. The man was bleeding. He was bleeding everywhere. She formed her body as densely as she could, hugging his legs and torso, but it only slowed the flow of blood.

She heard the discordant bellow of a distant horn, followed by a loud, metallic thumping that shook the rubble around them.

“Run,” the man said, voice growing weaker.

“No,” Aurora whimpered. She pushed against the blood as it slipped through her translucent form. “I won’t let go.”

~

Aurora diffused into thin air, leaving behind nearly imperceptible wispy trails as she slipped away. She reappeared momentarily to slam open a door to a stilted structure before disappearing again. Nysa stared after her. Why did she leave? She felt the urge to follow. Mother had made her care, and so she did. She looked down at the sand. But Mother also made her one with the water. The sands were forbidden to her, and so she stayed.

“Aurora?” Nysa called hopefully.

She waited for a minute, but no reply came. She kept staring at the sand. Mother made things live, and she made things die. If she did what was forbidden, maybe she would die too. She formed a brow from her liquid body, only to furrow it in contemplation. Aurora was her friend, after all. If all things die, she might as well do it for a friend.

She gently left the waves and rolled her watery mass over the sand. It was rough, coarse, and clung to her body. Tiny particles started floating through her, ending up in her eyes. She stared at the little pieces in wonder. She was alive!

She roiled through the sand, climbed the steps of the foreign structure, and entered through the open door. Aurora was huddled in the back corner of the room, a formless spiral of wind.

“Aurora?” Nysa called again, rolling up to face her.

Aurora did not reply. Instead, she formed her eyes stared at a wall, away from Nysa’s form.

“It’s ok if you don’t want to talk. The deep-sea is quiet. I spent a loooong time practising being quiet. I can be quiet with you!”

Nysa sat in silence for what felt like hours when it was, in fact, just fifteen minutes. As her boredom reached a tipping point, Aurora finally spoke. “I’m sorry for being so rude-”

“Why don’t you like death?”

Aurora formed a face, raising an eyebrow. “You don’t mince words, do you?”

“Mince,” Nysa said. “Wind spirits don’t say that. Why do you say that?”

Aurora sighed. She reformed her body into a cross-legged silhouette of a young woman. “Do you know why we left?”

Nysa shook her head, flicking away bits of sand in the process.

“We were going to war.”

~

“Lieutenant Samon,” a gruff, wizened old man barked. “Need I remind you that we are at war? Where the hell did you run off to? And what the hell is that?!”

Aurora watched from Samon’s shoulder as he stood with his back straight, arms clasped behind his back. “This is a wind spirit, sir. The rumours were true. The spirits have come to help us.”

The old man stepped up to Aurora, causing her to shy back. “And who the hell sent them?”

There was a long pause as all eyes turned to Aurora. She felt the urge to shy back. Wind spirits yield to pressure. They do not make a stand.

“Mother,” Aurora said, pushing her back straight. “Mother Gaia sent us.”

The old man glared at her for a moment, his face a mixture and contemplation, before finally settling on a wry smile. “About damn time God showed up to help us. Tell me spirit, what can you do?”

~

“War?” Nysa pondered. “That is not Mother’s way.”

Aurora nodded. “It was not.”

“Then why did she do it?”

“Because it needed to be done.”

Nysa curled into a slow whirlpool, widening her shimmering blue eyes as she waited for Aurora to continue.

“Gaia sent us to the humans to help them fight in the war.”

Nysa’s face tightened into a look of disgust. “Humans are stinky.”

“Humans were the first to fight the great enemy. They can do things no spirit can.”

“Oh! And spirits can do things no human can!”

Aurora nodded, slightly shocked by Nysa’s sudden burst of intellect. “Yes. That was why we joined forces. Together, we could face the enemy. Alone, we could not.”

“Did we win?”

 “Not in a way that mattered.”

“What does that mean?” Nysa asked, mystified.

Aurora’s lips curled into a faint resemblance of annoyance. “It means we’ve spoken enough today.”

She walked out of the room and took flight, gently floating along the beach as the dead sun pounded the sands with heat. Nysa poked her head out, keenly watching the direction where Aurora left.

She didn’t go up.

Nysa left off the stilted structure, landing on the ground in a puff of sand. She hopped into the sea and followed Aurora.

~

Aurora ran. She ran as men died around her, and spirits faded before her. The steel giants were immortal, invincible, unstoppable. Samon was dead. Her squad was dead. Her friends were dead.

A steel giant landed in front of her. Its body towered over the buildings of the human city. Its single red eye was fixated on her.

Aurora whimpered.

~

Nysa found Aurora sitting on the edge of a sheer cliff face. Nysa frowned. Aurora was up. Does that mean she wanted to be alone now? She stared at her for a minute before it got too hard to think. It would be easier to go up and ask Aurora instead.

Water spirits were not meant to climb, at least, they never had a need to. But Nysa found climbing to be a surprisingly easy, if albeit slow, process. Her liquid form trickled the cliff face, running along its cracks and footholds before finally ending up beside Aurora.

Nysa reformed and pounced on her. She wasn’t sure if it was because Aurora let her, or due to her naturally brilliant stealth skills, but Aurora did not diffuse, allowing Nysa to give her a big, watery hug.

The pair stayed like that for a moment before Aurora finally diffused again, leaving Nysa splattered all over the rocky ground.

“Is this your big plan to cheer me up?”

Nysa reformed again, staring up at Aurora’s floating form. “Cheer you up?” Nysa smiled. ‘Was that what I was doing?”

Aurora rolled her eyes. “You are as dumb as a rock.”

“That’s not true! I met a rock spirit once. She was way smarter than me.”

“That explains a lot about you.”

“Does it? Maybe I am smart after all…”

“Never mind,” Aurora said as she settled down beside Nysa. “You wondered why I speak like a human.”

Nysa perked up. “Yes, I had so many questions like that, but I kind of lost track of them.”

“I met a human. I met many humans, I worked with them. I learnt from them. But one human especially taught me how to change.’

Nysa frowned at that statement. “Spirits do not change.”

“Spirits never learnt to. But humans could change. For the better,” Aurora’s expression darkened. “Or for the worse.”

~

Aurora was sat in a command tent. The tattered remnants of Global Defence Command shared the table with her. They were young, inexperienced leaders, much like Aurora.

“Gaia’s avatar is engaging the Hive Queen. She’s holding, for now at least,” Aurora reported. “All remaining spirits are occupied making interdiction runs to distract the enemy titans. But we can’t break through to help Gaia.”

“The 157^th armoured liberation corps has already been deployed. The 99^th and 108^th people’s militia are moving to support them,” Lieutenant Varn shook his head. “That was the last of our reserves. We don’t have any more bodies to throw at the enemy.”

Lieutenant Garrick twisted his moustache. “We still have support companies. Medics, logistics personnel, artillery crews-”

“Artillery crews?” Captain Davis chortled. “Don’t you think they should be, oh I don’t know, crewing our artillery?”

“We don’t have any shells left!” Garrick slammed the table. “What’s the point?”

“The supply train-”

“The supply train has not responded to any communications in a week,” a powerful voice boomed at the end of the table. It was Colonel Aaron. “So let us assume that the train is dead.”

The room fell into silence. Aurora preferred the noise. Silence was defeat. Silence was death.

“The Hive Queen is the only enemy we need to worry about. She has never exposed herself before and likely never will again. This is our only opportunity to kill her,” he stared down the command staff. “If the Hive Queen dies, we win.”

Captain Davis snorted in derision. “Our own damned God is losing to that thing. How are we supposed to beat it? Even if we deploy the support companies, they’ll be slaughtered, and Gaia will die anyway.”

Aaron smiled, putting Aurora on guard. Samon never liked dramatic commanders. “I just got in touch with North American Subcommand. They just found a hidden cache of nuclear submarines. And two-hundred and eighty-eight warheads.”

For the first time in her life, Aurora felt a cold chill run down her spine.

~

“You never explained why,” Nysa said, prodding Aurora’s cheek. “Why did winning not matter? How can that even happen?”

Aurora shrugged. “We did win. The enemy is dead. But Gaia is dead too. Without Gaia, humans will die. The spirits too.”

Nysa cocked her head. “You don’t like death.”

“Did you only just figure that out?”

“If you don’t like death, why are you so upset? You are alive.”

Aurora’s gaze hardened. “Because everyone I care about is DEAD. Because I’M going to die too!” She slapped away Nysa’s attempt to pat her shoulder. “Stupid water spirit.”

“If you spend your time thinking about dying, aren’t you already dead?”

Aurora froze, slowly turning to meet Nysa’s gaze. “That has to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. And I’ve spoken to humans.”

“Think about it. Being alive is doing stuff. Being dead is not doing stuff,” Nysa gently flicked bits of sand at Aurora to emphasise her point. “If you think about not doing stuff all the time, you aren’t doing anything. That makes you dead.”

“Tch. Then what do you suggest I do then? Be less depressed? I’m sorry I can’t get over the deaths of untold billions.”

“If you like life so much, how about we do alive stuff. That will cheer you up!”

Aurora felt her eye twitch. “Nysa, the world is ending. We are all going-”

“To die,” Nysa finished with a giggle. “So? Everyone dies. Everything ends. Do you want your story to end sooner or later?”

“Later, obviously.”

‘Then follow me!” Nysa started flowing inland. “I’m going to help you be less unalive. There’s so much we have to do before the world ends.”

Aurora stared after her, dumbfounded. Did Nysa just… make sense? Samon was dead. Gaia was dead. Everyone she cared about was dead.

Except herself.

Nysa had turned around, watching her expectantly as she flowed backwards. Soon, she crashed into a palm tree, prompting her to reform and gently swat at the ancient palm.

Aurora smiled. Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad after all.