(Entry for Fairy Tales and Architecture competition, 2014)
(Excerpt)
For on this very spot, today, there is and is not a crystal city; my home looms tall and translucent, unflinchingly straight as if to stab the sky. My city reflects a spectacle of rainbows straight into our eyes, the multi-faceted surfaces mutating and twisting our reflections. We would at one moment be small as fairies, then crouched old men, then finally the types of giants who are truly fit to inhabit the grand formations.
(When we take on this final form, the crystals seem to glow a little pinker, as if they find us finally worthy of our home’s majestic scale.)
Ours is a city of smooth surfaces, so smooth, in fact, that we never leave a trace. When I was little I had a deep fear, that one day I would slip and fall, and I would fall and slip and slide right out of the city and into the burning sun, without a trace, without a footprint left behind. And with even my reflections gone, Mom and Dad would slowly forget me, that I would slip away from their memories as well, sliding right off, and then I would truly cease to exist.
(Excerpt)
It’s whipping about fast down an alley, a bright red streak ahead of me as I run after it. MAUDE! I hear someone call my name, but I don’t stop to answer, and the echoes follow me down the sharp, rainbow-hued alley Maude, Maude, Maude, as I chase after my scarf. I turn a sharp right and duck to avoid a toppling formation. By the time I look up again my scarf is gone.
Ah, it was the tree! This tree, the only tree. I had forgotten it was here. When the city was still low we used to climb to the roof of my house, and we would watch the crown of the tree catch the sunlight, sprout green in the spring, turn orange in the fall. When I got older, I would venture out on adventures to try to find it, but by then the crystals were dense and tall, and it was: impossible.
(excerpt)
And I suppose that I am, for amber liquid is all around me, sucking me under, pulling at my feet. Every few steps I must stop and rescue a boot, mired in the sticky syrup, and it’s absolutely exhausting.
I let myself sink into a particularly deep pool of sap, my eyes level with the shivering golden surface.
I wonder if I can even make it up this tree. And now I’ve gone too far to make it down. Maybe I’ll just become preserved in this amber, folded in and fossilized: to be found eons and eons later.
I heave a sigh and float where I am, watching the small creatures that live here bustle about.
(Excerpt)
A giant man with blood-red eyes and a sharp, hungry beak cause the atmosphere around us to flex and flow. His movements conduct the claustrophobic space, shimmering white and closing in.
I try to fight off the invading strands, sticky and rough they surround me, engulfing me in heaving shadows and shades. Panic! Strands drop across my face and I scream and stumble: my protective goggles tumble from my face and is instantly buried in silk.
Suddenly, everything is still. I see without the filter of the dark lenses for the first time since I was a little girl, and the room seems to open up before my naked eyes, beautiful iridescent soft and dancing from a silk man. They caress my cheeks softly on their ways to the floor and ceiling where they tangle and harden into the heart of the tree.
(Excerpt)
Kind but tired red eyes look down at me, and the Silkman breaks into a warm smile.
“My eyes are red,” he whispers softly, “because I’m tired. And my nose is red…because I’m allergic to this fellow.”
He gestures with his head to his right shoulder, and the small four-legged bird flutters down to nestle against his cheek.
“Maude of the Crystal city,” he straightens up, “Why are you here?”