Pieces of Spring: Flash Fictions Written in Qingming
The Magician’s Apprentice
Written by XGDD
Translated by Wenying
Looking at the reflective side of his stainless-steel spoon, the man readjusted his hair and tie several times before he finally knocked, holding the leash of his sheep in another hand.
Inside, the Magician snapped his fingers. The sheep soon collapsed into a mess of white foam and a bicycle frame.
The candidate started introducing his four-year-long project, stammering all along the way: Yet unmelted spring snow, combined with shaving foam, built up the basic priming of a white, fluffy creature. The main frame of an OFO bike served as the skeletal construction, and finally…
‘Bits of your own toenails for hooves and horns, huh? You’ve put in too much of a dose, young man. Haven’t you noticed that thick stench hovering around? If only you put in some lemon to compensate for that… Never mind. Nowadays I don’t even have a pick of my own students anymore.’ The magician clicked his tongue, then wobbled towards that pile of foam, picking out the nail bits and steel frame.
It didn’t look good indeed. Yet before the apprentice candidate could make up his mind to come forward and help, the old man had finished the sorting.
‘The guy that came in earlier. You think he is a twat, don’t you? What a foolish judgement…’The magician snapped his fingers again.
The silent, bulged-eye person standing nearby suddenly turned into a frog. An owl leapt out of nowhere and swallowed it, shapeshifting into a woman itself. The foam and melting snow on the ground consolidated rapidly, forming threads of a white dress, wrapping an equally pale body within.
‘It’s nothing but a lunch.’ The woman held up a silvery mirror and started grooming her hair. ‘I go by the pronoun “she”, by the way.’
It was then he noticed that the breast pocket on his shirt got lighter. There used to be a metal spoon in it.
We Still Do Not Understand the World She Lives in
Written by D.D
Translation by Wenying
Marry the little lamb had spent her whole life on a lemon—even herself was ignorant of that until recently.
Lemons. Think about it! Aren’t those the tiny golden orbs that seep some kind of sour juice when you bite them? How’s that possible?
That was her first reaction when Henry the old ram told them about this fact. It was during a Friday geography class at the Second Primary School of Sheepton, when she was still in the fourth class of third grade.
Mary had this textbook with a cartoonish old guy printed on the cover. She cherished it a lot, and there was an illustration in it showing a handsome ram – she named him Keith –standing on top of a golden peak. It was until this Friday that Mary realized this illustration was not about exhibiting the strength and perseverance of the sheep kind at all. It was just a mere demonstration of a geographic phenomenon.
Mary hated that book now.
She even started to believe that Keith the handsome was just as lame and boring as the looney old guy on book cover.
It is all the fault of being told that she lived on a lemon.
During the following weekend, Mary could not help but kept worrying. What if the lemon underneath her suddenly roll around, making her lose her balance and embarrass herself in public? Thus, she decided to not go out. But she had nothing to do inside the sheep pen either. It bothered her that she could not imagine a world beyond this lemon.
Is this lemon world hanging on some kind of lemon tree? Upon what land is this lemon tree growing then? Most importantly, on this other land, is there also a lamb frustrated by the facts just like herself?
Mary wondered and daydreamed, wasting an entire two days of leisure time.
On Monday, she went to see Henry with all her questions. He told Mary that the lemon was kept in a silver spoon, held by a bearded human youth called Muhammad, inside of a heaven where time ceases eternally. In that heaven, there were 8.6766*10^49 angels dancing upon a needle tip.
Mary believed this explanation. She stopped worrying altogether.
That is the story of how Mary the little lamb learned to not think critically.
Pilgrims
Written by Arthur Liu
Translated by Wenying
When birds were asleep on top of the branches, I sat down face to face with Annie.
Streaks of liveliness unraveled everywhere. The snow of early spring fell into her tea cup, and bubbles of lemonade soda rose and broke underneath the tree shade. Sheep found in the heart of grassland were baaing, as if offering an ode to the delicacies turning lush among their hooves.
I looked at Annie, and she returned my gaze with her eternal smile. Everything sprung into life, even new-born duckweeds were shivering on the pool surface. The smiling girl on a tea party. It was my favorite illustration from the painting book that I inherited from my adventurous father.
For a child who had long dreamed of spring yet never witnessed a real one, to find the actual scene of this illustration would be the apex of my entire life. At the end of this pilgrimage, Annie would be the spring for me.
……
Then, with an entire eyeful of dreams, I woke up from my slumber and saw the stars spreading like a silver cobweb throughout the sky.
A distant low rumble. Yet another ruin had collapsed. Sensing the resonance afar, I left the camp, and marked on my map yet another location that no longer needed exploration.
I remembered the tales I’ve learned when decoding those ancient languages in library. Oceans turning into forest; Follies of marking the exact site of a sunken sword by leaving carved sigils on side of a boat where it originally slipped into water, and what not. The remains of civilization were dissolving right in front of our eyes. Yet the doubt and disappointment about this pilgrimage were only reserved for the night. When the sun rose, I must reassume my confidence.
When I return to our tent, my daughter had just woken up.
‘You awake?’
‘Uh-huh.’
Our fuel-depleted spaceship remained reticent underneath a forest of steel. Beneath a sky turning white in morning hours, this is a pilgrimage with no return.
‘We will find it today, I promise.’
Somewhere in the sky, dim light of our frozen home planet reached us after thirty thousand years of lonely travels through vacuum. It slowly faded into the imminent dawn.
We reached out our tentacles to greet each other, picked up the illustration, then went on our way a short while later.
Experimental Clips
Written by EtherXet
Translated by Wenying
Snow was about to fall.
A smudge of orange light twirled around, reaching up from bottom of the view. A hand was then visible, casually dangling upon the long bamboo stick, which was bathed in the same warm light. The other hand of this person was held slightly anterior, acting as the turning point for the stick. It blocked the light radiating from the bulk of lantern ahead.
……
The spring came damp and gloomy, failing to cheer up passers-by all the time.
I might as well just return home.
……
That lantern and the two hands holding it was still scurrying onward. In the gradually brightened up background, a lonely house squatted at the joint of city and forest, like some kind of montage. Yet it lacked the front wall to block your view, similar to a doll house.
Something as repetitive as climbing the stairs should have been avoided in any kind of film-making, yet…
……
On side of the missing wall, pale panels of a ladder hovered like some kind of fish skeleton. The long bamboo stick swayed, then disappeared from top of the view. Yet the lantern light remained, and you can still see the movement of those pair of hands. Everything was descending, or rather, perhaps you were ascending.
On right-most tip of the pine tree, at the location for fish maw on this ladder of skeleton, you found where you were heading for.
……
Please enter the password…
Darn what should I do with this segment…
……
On that login screen, a row of twelve Shaun the sheep appeared and started rustling around sequentially from left to right. A second row of eighteen ones followed suit. Then came another row of twenty-four restless sheep. The screen was too small to cramp in a fourth row now, so the newly brightened up bumping sheep started to curl around and form circles. They were originally the size of a needle tip, but once you blinked, they grew up to the size of a grain of rice. There was no room for thoughts anymore. Blooming electronic sheep filled out the entire view.
……
‘Snow! It snowed!’ Several hundreds of tiny shrieks dropped onto your eardrums.
Yet moments later, they disappeared like bubbles drifting away.
……
You stopped wondering about where you were anymore.
Ahead was a vast, empty land. Was that snow underneath your feet? The textbook styled lighting makes those falling snow clogs clearly visible even for half-blinded voles.
A sense of vastness. The olfactory simulator dispensed fresh fragrance of grasses.
……
A dim orange star started orbiting in a curved trace.
……
‘I can’t believe this.’ That senior of mine was a pure genius, yet he had a look similar to a ripe pumpkin. He opened up a sizzling can of coke, then turned three rounds and a half in his rolling chair. ‘For real? This 6D recording clip has made us so much money!’
I switched the view in my right pupil back to the live streaming of revels on the movie festival. Two undergrads have brought our finished experimental clips over. They now stood confused and dumbfounded on stage. To have them make up a meaning for this pile of random stuff in five minutes was definitely as hard as to ask them hand in their senior thesis right away.
……
At that point I was craving for some ice cream, so I opened the door of our fridge. My fingers passed over the dim orange light bulb inside, and I put in my password on the login panel to gain access to my section of the fridge.
In the live streaming, our film was just about to reach its climax. Upon the dark sky, a blur of orange light slightly curved upwards, and a sunken surface occurred in that light, glinting with a metal-like sheen. There was a shallow, squared dip on that curved surface.
‘A moon replaced by utter flaws and imperfectness! What an amazing technique for expression!’
I moved the spoon in my mouth against my canine teeth, then licked at that slight dip on it.
A Snow Land of His Own
Written by a pocket knife
Translated by Wenying
‘A cup of lemonade tea, please.’
That dude is in his usual outfit: plaid shirt and a pair of glasses with black frame. His hair is all ruffled up, and he simply drops into the seat right across from me in all his glory.
An idiot who knows nothing but coding. Brilliant. How the hells have I found him attractive in the first place I could not fathom.
Same old dressing style as everyone else. Same old hairstyle as everyone else. He didn’t even show any uniqueness in the beverage that he ordered. From every single perspective, this is a guy who can bore one to death.
It is as if predictiveness is hardwired into his cognitive programs.
‘Look at that sky. I bet it’s gonna snow soon.’
‘Wha-? How’s that possible? It’s April already.’
I glance through the window half-heartedly. The gloomy sky is like a heavy curtain draping over the entire city. Just as I return my gaze with boredom, a flash of something white occurs in my peripherals.
‘Wait… Seriously!’
That tiny bit of white sticks itself onto the window glass, showing off its perfect hexagonal structure. It is without doubt a snowflake.
Moments later, a myriad of spring snow falls down from that lead gray curtain, as if wings of angels.
‘See? Do you like that?’
‘Yeah!’
He sounds as if it is he who has made the snow happen.
The window glass holds his blurred reflection. This dude hasn’t looked up even once throughout the entire time. He seems unimpressed by the beauty of the snow scene, toying with a spoon in his hand all along.
‘Here’s your lemonade tea. Enjoy.’
He then holds up the spoon and swirled around in the cup with barely any interest. The dude seems more intrigued by the vortex he created than the tea itself.
‘How did you guessed that it was going to snow?’
Three minutes later, I finally lose control over my curiosity, throwing question at him and interrupting his long silent observation.
It has always been like that. Somehow, he can always correctly predict things that seem impossible.
‘That’s because…’
He stammers, then swallows hesitantly, his Adam’s apple moving up and down.
‘There is no spoon.’
Lemony Snow
Written by Ling Feng
Translated by Wenying
When she was young, her mom would always make lemonade tea for her. They used to compete with each other at lemon-biting and see who was the first to pucker. Sometimes her grandma would join them as well. It was the happiest years of her life.
Yet one day when she ran into kitchen, only a snowman awaited. Her grandma’s apron was tied around the cone-shaped body of this snowman, silent and serene. She played with it happily, as this was her first time seeing a snowman.
Yet her mom pulled her away. ‘Your grandma was… gone.’
It was a newly-found type of phenomena related to gene mutations. People would turn into snowman after death. Not only that, under the effect of aging and diseases, snowmanification would also occur at a gradual pace, making the actual progression towards death a visualized process. An unexplainable correlation between snowing and death also showed up. For instance, the day when her grandma passed away, there was spring snow falling at the same time .
After reaching adolescence, she became less and less tolerant towards her mom’s attempts to govern over her life. In the end, she decided to go abroad for college, and had her own startup business later. She chased after the trend and joined a group that focused on development of treatments that reverse the snowmanification. Her mom tried moving over and lived with her for a short while, but then just gave up. ‘Can’t understand what they were saying on TV …’ She used to make joke of herself regarding her experiences overseas.
At least VR communication provided great convenience, allowing her to submerge completely into her work. Several years later, her group discovered cure for stopping the snowmanification process, thus leading to the listing of the company, gaining critical success. People no longer have to watch death getting hold of themselves step by step, with no means to fight back. Rationality again defeated mysticism.
Yet they still turned into snowmen after death. She couldn’t decode the reason for this, and therefore became more and more frustrated. Evidences that were against her treatment solution were accumulating: post treatment, the average survival age and score of happiness were both dropping.
In the end, the treatment they developed were forced to be taken off from the market. She was getting tired and decided to go back home. When her mom appeared at the airport with a big smile, she was shocked to find her skin soft and crunchy, just like new snow.
A day in the following spring, she found a snowman of her mom in the kitchen. The kettle was shrieking with boiled water inside. In grief, she embraced that cone-shaped body, and gave her a kiss.
It tasted like lemon. She could no longer hold her tears.
At this point, her daughter’s voice was transmitted through VR communication. ‘Mom, what’s outside!’
She glanced through the window. Clogs soft and white were drifting down from the sky. Spring snow again? No. Those were actually sheep. They were falling down in complete calmness, baaing from time to time, but showing no signs of panic.
In tears, she was first confused, but then smiled. She replied but almost forgot to speak in English. ‘Chun Tian. Dear, the spring is coming.’