The Sign
flash fiction
The heat was sweltering, airless and oppressive. The land was parched and the gathered people were akin to a blistering, melted mess. No one was answering their plea. The western queen refused to touch the afflicted and no one had heard from the isles. It was a time of ruin, soon to be rot.
As the new oracle’s arms raised, his palms turned towards the sun, and as the people below him cheered for returned blessings, Errol knew that something was wrong. As the priests took to their knees and the priestesses bowed their heads, all happily complacent, Errol was scratching the inside of his wrists, frowning up at the display. His heart was racing. None noticed his nervous habit because the crowd around him was beginning its jubilee, as was their right, as was their need. Faith was being reinstated and strengthened for all except this one young man standing alone in the tide of crying hope. Errol’s faith, for the first time, was faltering, because he knew. Auren should not have been selected.
Auren, that frail farm-boy turned divine, standing in the practiced pose, surely with his own heart dropping, staring directly into that cloudless sky. His gaze was not supposed to shift, but it did, just for a moment before returning. Errol’s chest and throat both tightened. He couldn’t properly breathe. He’d seen Auren smile countless times: with his tears, his laughter, his fear, his panic, his elation—but this was something he was not familiar with. He’d never seen Auren’s countenance plastered with such a broad, proud, essential grin, and never had he seen that paired with such widely frightened eyes.
The celebration was beginning. Soon the streets surrounding this clearing would be impossible to navigate. Those who weren’t admitted entry to the grounds would be allowed inside once the oracle was taken away. The kingdom would not be sleeping that night, and perhaps not even the next. The true importance: Auren would be gone, forever, and something was wrong. Before anything could further commence, however, something happened.
The sky, cloudless as it was, began to rain. It started with a few drops, first mistaken for thrown perspiration, perhaps discarded by a hand or a sweat soaked sleeve. A rhythm gradually ensued, and then the sensation could not be misplaced. Everyone, nearly all at once, looked upwards, jaws either gaping or tightly clenched. The sounds of the oncoming celebration were hushed, and no one, not even the priests or priestesses, could utter anything other than a small gasp. Errol did not need to look at anything other than Auren, but now that his was the only gaze, his friend could not notice. He too was taken by the spectacle.
The rain fell harder, and then faster, so quickly that there were reactions of entangled fear and amazement, but Auren began to laugh. He laughed in a way which Errol knew quite well. He sounded relieved. Perhaps his faith had also been slipping, and this, this sudden relief from the heat, was all he needed to start to believe again. The same may have been true for the rest, for glee soon spread. The celebration would be much louder now, even without the poor farmers rushing to their homesteads. In contrast, Errol only felt more perplexed.
The people closest to the platform began to cry out towards Auren, and this snatched his attention from the strange sky. Errol watched as he smiled downwards, kneeling to see their expressions at a closer angle. They reached for him with trembling hands, and he touched them. His eyes were lit with something different. His grin was no longer performative. He felt them, and they felt him. Errol began to move towards the danger, but the priests and the priestesses upon the platform were just as perceptive. They whisked Auren away as the crowd began to push and shout.
In that movement, when Auren touched those first few hands, a type of blessing was born, rippling through the mass. Those favored few would be trampled as the desperate pursued their own destinies. Hallowed deaths for nothing, for the oracle was gone.