Folio Two, Page Twenty-Two (svegra mos rokron tal-roh)

Right now you might be thinking, “What does getting trapped in a cabinet by your own shortsightedness have to do with the racy story you promised me? How does your suicide factor into this at all?”

Think of a leaf rushing through a canyon stream or the dead soldiers on the Màsamo battlefield.

The tree the leaf came from germinated from a seed that landed in precisely the right location for a breeze to snatch a leaf one morning and drop it onto the water.

The Battle of Màsamo happened because interplanetary politicians made too many contradictory back room deals that came to light in 1890. None of the men or women who died knew that life would bring them to serve Ameisa’s United Coalition following the Basahi Genocide. They didn’t know about the chemical warfare that would deform their limbs and make them die just hours after they touched down on the planet—they had gone forward with the mission even though the reconnaissance data had been corrupted in two sections. If a historical account of the battle neglected the deals, it would make little sense.

Every piece in the puzzle of that horrible summer locked together at the precise moment that cabinet door opened. It is necessary to gather the components: Anumë’s hatred, my idealistic vision of the future, Nikis’s obsession with propriety, and my mother’s death. Within the greater puzzle are many tiny pieces. For instance,

  • Why did Anumë hate me so much?
  • How could someone so close to me in blood feel so little compassion?
  • What ever possessed me to believe I could be as great as my mother?
  • Why did Salus never tell me to stop? Why did she always expose me to new things even after my reactions frightened her?
  • What happened to Nikis to make her so socially conservative?
  • Who did Nikis prefer, Anumë or me?
  • Why did my mother die?
  • — no, how did my mother die? What malfunction could possibly have led to so much death and destruction?
  • How would others react to my mother’s death?
— and then we must notice that this is not a classical puzzle, but one of those new ones that rotates and contorts just so when each piece has found its proper place. Such puzzles can spin for years before they fall apart and it is the spinning, not the fatal end, that should drive us onward.

« Folio Two, Page Twenty-One
Folio Two, Page Twenty-Three »

Posted by Kaye at 2:06 PM
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About the Author

When I had attained the ripe old age of five weeks, my parents brought me to an amateur astronomy convention called Stellafane. A journalist doing a piece on children at the convention recorded that my mother called me “a refugee from Betelgeuse,” a red giant star in the constellation Orion.

In a small American town, my mother revealed these origins to me and I set out on my life mission: to explore strange new places, to seek out new experiences and new perspectives; and to boldly pursue my dreams.


I graduated from high school in May 2005. By that time, I had several novel drafts, a large and brilliant constructed language, and notebooks of emo poetry to back up my claims to the Betelgeusian throne. At Smith College, I learned to hone my writing and editing skills. (My emo poetry from college only fills ¼ of a notebook.) I also developed a passion for current events, politics, public policy, astronomy, and literary science fiction.


Now, a recent Smith College graduate, I blog and go to grad school. My web novella, Akačehennyi on a Diet of Dreams, was completed earlier this year. I also write KALLISTI, a Hellenic Polytheist-oriented blog. My poetry has appeared in print in AlienSkin and in Eternal Haunted Summer.

Thanks for choosing to read Ossia. I hope you enjoy it and that you stick around for stories to come.

Kayleigh Ayn Bohémier

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