The Ties that Bind 1 – LLaD Short Story

The Ties that Bind – A Short Story in the World of „Like Light and Dark“

Author: Erich Planker, Editing: Miriam Laschenko

Madness! That was the only word to describe the situation. A crazy, insane, totally bonkers idea that could only have sprung up from the mind of an absolute lunatic! Pointless, meaningless, incomprehensible to a normal person and yet very much MY reality. OUR reality to be more precise. The world of 200 elves standing motionless in an open yard, each one exactly one meter apart from each other, while the merciless sun fried us like meat in a hot pan. The only shadows in the yard came from the edges of the building that surrounded us and these were tauntingly small. It was noon. On one of what felt like the hottest days of this summer. But even if it had been afternoon or evening, I bet the shade would never have reached us. Whoever designed that yard, planned to never let that happen. The perfect torture device.

Our “choice” of clothing made it even worse. Dark metal soaks up the sun like nothing else in this world, and we were wearing lots of it. The metal greaves that covered our legs made it feel like I was being branded like cattle. My iron breastplate was baking my chest and my helmet made sweat run down my face like I was standing under a waterfall. The leather trousers, gloves, boots and shirt felt like they were fusing with my skin and maybe that was the idea. To replace our soft grey-blue skin with the black leather of our battledress. Maybe they wanted us to be baked into our armour, burn us like clay figures to come out hard and tough. If that was the idea, then Moonfather shield us all!

Already several other “Clays” had collapsed from exhaustion and had been taken away by the healers. I toyed with the idea of “fainting” too, in order to escape this oven, but decided against it when I saw that it wasn’t a one-way ticket out of here. The healers were checking your breathing and other vital functions first, and I saw instances of other recruits being straightened up and forced back into the line, instead of being transported away to the healer’s hall. Either they were faking it and getting back was their punishment, or they weren’t critical enough, and they had to suffer more in order to “earn” their way to the healers.

And then there were the acoustics. No matter where you stood, you could hear him. Barking into your ear, like he was only a few meters away from you. Too loud to ignore. His words were seeping into your mind, invading it, until you could no longer think about anything else, other than the „glorious message“ he was telling you.

Your life as you lived it before is over! From now on, you will no longer spend your afternoons lying in bed, massaging your privates until your parents call you to dinner. Gone are the days when the toughest part of your life was carrying your favourite snuggle blanket to school and raising your hand every once in a while to stay awake. Or daydreaming about finally rolling in the hay with Ansa-always-wet or Eemil-ever-hard!