Hans Gregory had enlisted to fight the Enemy. He had not enlisted to die. Every day he spent cowering from mortar shells flying overhead, and every day he hurled a few grenades over no-man’s land. He never saw the Enemy, not the faces of its soldiers at least. For Hans, the faces of the Enemy were the mauled faces of his comrades. He would have liked to turn his comrades into proper friends, but every time he tried to sit down and have a cup of tea with someone and chat about sports, the Enemy inevitably joined in.

He and his fellow rank-and-file soldiers wondered why they were fighting the Enemy in the first place, but no one really wanted to question their hate. Besides, it was always renewed with some new volley of bullets. If their own compassionate leaders couldn’t arrange peace — and their leaders certainly assured the public that they were compassionate — then it must be the Enemy who was at fault. So it was that he spent his first tour of duty — muddy, bloody, and jaded.

When Hans Gregory went home, he found a letter in his mailbox. It told him he was promoted, due to the importance of some obscure scrap of the Front he had suffered over, and also due to the fact that everyone who had played a bigger role was dead. Also, he was needed immediately. Without even making it to his front door, he turned right round and reported for duty. The Enemy was the enemy after all, and the Enemy never slept.

Through a series of unfortunate events — for other people at least — Hans became an army general. He got to have tea with all the other generals, in a little wooden room far away from the Front, and they sat in fine leather chairs and chatted about sports. Every once in a while a man of lower rank would ask politely for some battle plans, and the tea would get cold while they furrowed their brows over maps and enemy communiques. Then the man of lower rank would scurry off with some orders, and the generals would order themselves more tea.

During one such occasion, while they waited in nervous silence for the kettle, Hans decided to ask his comrades why they were fighting the Enemy. He got a series of dark looks, and someone started spouting propaganda quite excitedly. Another someone said, “You don’t… sympathize with them, do you?”

“No, of course not! I hate them as much as you. I can’t count how many soldiers I saw blown to bits by the Enemy. And I can’t count how many of them that I’ve ordered blown up. There’s not much we can do stop this exchange, anyway, I suppose. It’s up to the higher-ups. I just want to know how we started this whole bloody mess.”

“You mean how they started it, don’t you?”

Hans nodded at their hardened faces. He stopped going to the little wooden room after that. Instead he spent more time looking over maps and enemy communiques, and as a consequence he won many battles he never properly fought. And when he finally got leave to go back home, he was a national hero. In fact, he hardly got to his doorstep when a half dozen men in black suits and equally black sunglasses drove up in long cars of a similar hue.

As it turned out, Hans was such a national hero that he had won the election for Prime Minister without even running a campaign. He couldn’t help wondering why he was so popular considering that they were no nearer peace now than they ever had been in the past. When the Front advanced under his command, it just retreated somewhere else.

The black suited men took him to a serious-looking room in an impressive building, where there was a high-backed chair and a heavy oak desk and a polished red telephone. When Hans asked what the telephone was for, they told him it would put him in touch with the Enemy Prime Minister. It took him several days of signing papers and giving interviews before he worked up the courage to pick up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Good day, Prime Minister. How are you?”

“Er… Well. Thank you. Were you this friendly with my predecessor?”

“Yes, actually. We got along splendidly!”

“You mean you didn’t threaten one another, or boast about new military technology, or call each other pig-dogs?”

“Heavens no! Nothing of the sort. Mainly we complained about the weather and exchanged cookie recipes.”

“Cookie recipes?”

“Yes, I have a rather good one for gingersnaps.”

“But if you didn’t hate each other, why didn’t you call for peace?”

“None of our generals would believe us! We tried being subtle about it and made some foolhardy orders, but that just ended up getting more soldiers killed. The people of both our nations hate each other, Prime Minister, and there’s nothing we can do but let them play war.”

“And if we ordered them to stop?”

“My own predecessor tried that. It resulted in a military coup.”

“There’s no point being Prime Minister, is there. There’s no power in the job at all.”

“You’re catching on! We’re enemies, after all, and there’s no use losing sleep over it. Now, how about those gingersnaps?”

Hans hung up the phone. He was a little annoyed. Was there really no end to the bloodshed? He was far away from the shelling at the Front, but he had not forgotten it. He spent the days watching military plans come and go from his desk, and it dawned on him that no one was really planning the war at all. He let those in the field figure out the strategy for their little patch of ground, and they in turn rarely collaborated with one another.

So Hans began tracking the Front. It was not long before he detected a pattern.

Instead of a random series of advances and retreats, there seemed to be deliberate sequences. Some of these repeated at regular intervals, but when he questioned the generals in charge he got a different rational every time. And when he picked up the red phone, he found the Enemy to be just as clueless. This was a strange thing — there seemed to be an intelligence behind the shifting Front, yet the brain behind it was nowhere to be found.

Hans transcribed the patterns into analogue charts, and handed them to the head of his Cryptography Department. He told her they were radio signals picked up from enemy territory, and he wanted to confirm they were just noise.

Two days later, she returned. Her face was full of disappointment. “Well, it certainly wasn’t noise. It took some trouble to decode, but I believe you will find the message just as disappointing as if it really were noise.”

Hans was stunned. A message? There was a language there, even communication? But who was speaking, he had no idea. Someone was using the army as a voice. Yet it was no one he could identify. No human was sending the message, and no human was receiving it. He realized, turning quite pale, that the only ones that could be talking to each other were the nations themselves. Somehow two collections of people had become two sentient beings, and the citizens were just the cells.

Hans realized that the head of his Cryptography Department was still moving her mouth. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“I was just saying,” she repeated, rolling her eyes this time around, “that the message said: WHAT NICE WEATHER WE’RE HAVING.”

Hans instinctively looked out the window. He wondered what kind of weather nations considered to be nice.

Sleepy afternoon eyes
Legs still from moving
Thinking slow like light diffusion
Alone in the breeze
And wanting nothing else.

The truck with all the trees
Rolls slowly down the street.
The gypsy calls
To sell! The trees!
But no one comes to buy
And the truck just rolls on by.

There is a place that I know,
where I like sometimes to go,
on a hill near the sea
where the warm winds blow.

There are raised beds of vegetables,
carrots and peas,
little tomatoes and silky-leaved greens,
fine herbs and spices and colorful beans.

It’s dappled in sunlight and rustling leaves,
fragrant from flowers and fruit-bearing trees.
There are apples and olives, almonds and plums,
ripe for the picking when the right season comes.

The light of the morning and the late afternoon
filter through windows and fill all the rooms.
The rain, when it falls, plays most delicate tunes.

The honey wood floor sings soft on my feet
as I hum to myself and pick out my seat
on the low lazy steps by the windowsill ledge
with bread sweet with fruit from the blueberry hedge.

Then I lay in the grass under swaying bamboo
reading stories from books in a dress just as blue
as the sky between clouds forming great curlicues.

I sleep then with insect wings brushing my face,
dreaming that I only dream of this place.
A bright little house on a hill near the sea,
where living and laughter find someplace to be.

I awake to the muffled sound of snow
One thin frame betwixt warm and chill,
The smell of soft blankets beckoning dreams
As animate static holds the world still.

Lips apart
Flashing teeth
Another world
Sugared thoughts

Small regrets
Penny wishes
Playing light
Languid shade

Another world
Playing light
Collecting thoughts
An empty box

Hanging sheets
Hanging stars
Wind-chime leaves
Lips apart

Once upon a time there was a beautiful witch. She had two suitors. One was a young dark-haired shepherd whom she dearly loved. The other was a rich prince, vain and cruel. He always got what he wanted, and what he wanted most of all was the witch for his bride. So he kidnapped her.

Her beloved shepherd came to her rescue, but the prince caught him red-handed. The prince laughed and ripped out the shepherd’s heart. In desperation the witch changed the shepherd’s still-beating heart into a rosebud, and transformed the shepherd himself into a black crow so that she might save him.

Enraged, the prince tried to kill the bird, but it flew away. He locked the witch in a golden cage, and sent his most trustworthy servants to hide the rose in the most obscure corner of the world where it could never be found again.

In time the prince became king, and the witch his wife. She bore him a son, whom she named Sebastian. Sebastian grew into a handsome young man, astute in the arts of war. He commanded great loyalty among his soldiers, and conquered many new lands.

One day while walking through a foreign street, he spied a jewel upon the road. Upon closer inspection he saw it was not a jewel at all, but a rosebud. And though the day was cloudy, it shone as if the light of a spring sun were still upon it. He carried the rosebud with him and placed it in an ivory box in which he kept his most precious gems.

The next morning there was a crow sitting at Sebastian’s window. No matter how he tried to scare it off, it would not fly away. But this did not bother him greatly, for he was soon leaving to conquer another city.

However, the next morning, in a palace whose owner was no longer king, the crow was again sitting at the window of Sebastian’s room. And from there, no matter where he went or what he did, the crow was always to be found nearby when he awoke.

At last the young man gave in. He offered the crow a bowl water, and the bird drank from it thirstily. The next day he offered it some soldier’s gruel, and again the crow was thankful. On the third day he offered it some of his own fine bread, and the crow was so grateful that it flew straight onto Sebastian’s shoulder.

From that moment on, the crow was never to be found far from Sebastian. Even marching into the heart of battle, the crow stood fierce. His men believed that it gave them good luck, and they were more triumphant than ever before. When it seemed that they had conquered the entire world, they returned to the king’s palace, their caravans full of riches.

But when the king saw his son with the crow upon his shoulder, he flew into a rage and forbid the bird from entering the gate. And so Sebastian set his companion free, and in farewell he told it to follow its heart.

That night, saddened by his loss, Sebastian opened his ivory box to console himself with beauty. Inside the rosebud still bloomed with sunlight, more beautiful than any jewel. Yet in the blink of an eye it was gone, for the crow had swooped in through the window and grabbed it in its beak.

Sebastian ran after the bird, asking it to stop. He followed it through the many rooms of the palace, some he had never seem before, and up to the highest tower. There, in a golden cage, sat a woman in fine dress. Sebastian had never seen his mother before, and only stood in the doorway.

The crow flew to the woman and gave her the rosebud. On her right hand perched the bird, and in her left she held the rose. Presently it bloomed, and transformed into a beating human heart. The crow also melted away, and in her arms she held her beloved dark-haired shepherd.

The man gave to her his last breath in a kiss. She lingered there for a moment and then, with a sad smile upon her lips, the witch lay her head upon his breast and died.

The king burst suddenly into the room. He cried out against his dead rival for stealing his most precious possession, and railed against the cage. Sebastian realized then how vain and cruel his father was. He locked the door and left the king to rot in the company of the lovers he had wronged.

Sebastian became king with much celebration. He ruled his many kingdoms with grace and kindness. After many years had passed, he sent his best servants up to the tower to collect the bones of the witch and her beloved shepherd and bury them.

A rose bush grew from their grave, and it grows there yet. Its blossoms are more beautiful than any jewel, and to some they are more precious. For even on a cold grey day, they glow as if the sun shone upon them still.

Frank Upton looked through his telescope into the night sky. He did this on most nights, not having much else to do. Unlike other middle-aged men, he did not have a wife to cheat on or a pub to retreat to — he despised the taste of alcohol, as well as most of the human beings on the planet. So instead, he entertained himself by staring into the endless void of space and finding dying stars.There was a time when supernovas were rare. You could almost count them on your fingers and toes — at least if you had a mutant number of digits. But nowadays stars were blinking out at an incredible rate. In tiny bright flashes, they would explode and then collapse, into tiny dense neutron stars or even black holes. Frank could find a half dozen a night, more than he used to find in a year. He wasn’t worried, though — there were an awfully large number of stars still left in the sky.

This night was a record-breaker, though. Nine supernovas in the first hour of darkness, so many Frank was swiveling his telescope around like a fashion photographer trying to capture all the good angles. The professionals were probably much better than he was, but he still liked to record his own findings in a little brown notebook. Tonight his usually neat handwriting was becoming scribbles.

Then, all of a sudden, three or four supernovas happened all in a row, in a little arc in the bit of sky he was observing. But they were too big, too bright, too sudden to be supernovas. Frank was reminded of the sparkling sequins on his mother’s evening gown. He used to think the whole sky was made of sequins.

He blinked once, and the flashes were gone. He frowned a little, looking down at his notebook, trying to decide what to do with this anomaly. There was no reason to write them down, really. He had so many written down already, and at any rate, it was probably just a low-flying satellite. With one last skeptical look at the sky, he decided to go to bed early.

“Hello, there,” someone said quietly.

Frank was mildly surprised to find someone on his porch. He turned around, but no one was there.

“No, no. Down here!” the voice insisted.

Turning back, he looked down. Frank saw a miniscule flying saucer sitting on his open notebook.

“Yes, well, look. I don’t mean to be rude, but we haven’t got very long. The galaxy is coming apart at the seams — quite literally, in fact — and we need to pick up some family on our way out of town. Would you be a dear…?”

The spaceship was speaking to him. Or rather, someone was speaking to him through the spaceship. The voice was tiny and tinny, the Oxford accent mingling with a hint of static.

“What?” said Frank.

“Family. Relatives. Kin. You know, the kind of folk you see once a year if you have to, but only if they serve you a good dinner and do your dirty laundry?”

Frank nodded dumbly.

“Right then. Would you please tell your inhabitants that no matter who broke the crystal chandelier, we’re not about to leave them to rot when this place blows to bits.”

“Excuse me,” asked Frank as politely as he could. “My inhabitants?”

“You are a human being, are you not? A wise ape or what have you?” To this Frank nodded again. He thought he heard the little spaceship sigh. “This side of the family always did have a taste for modern architecture,” it said with disdain. Then, as if talking to itself, it said, “These newer models are simply impossible. Why not use a knocker or a simple doorbell like everyone else? Honestly.”

All of a sudden, Frank felt sick. He gagged, and almost threw up, and then for no reason at all he said, “Alright, alright, we’re coming…”

Then the most amazing thing happened. Every germ and every bacterium, from every part of his body, got up and moved away. The ones in his colon, the ones in his stomach, the ones in his nose, in his mouth, in his brain, on his skin… they all simply left. Frank could feel this happening more than see it, really, and it felt very odd. It was as if he had swallowed a gallon of drain cleaner and snorted a bit too much ginger, and had then been scrubbed with a bristle brush inside and out.

A new voice came over the spaceship’s microscopic speakerphone. It was a little tearful: “Um, goodbye. You were a… a wonderful home. But we’ll rebuild, won’t we? We’ll survive, we will! That’s what home-owner’s insurance is forrrr!”

With that, the miniature flying saucer lifted off from the notebook with a puff of smoke and much blinking of tiny lights, and flew away.

It was all a bit melodramatic, Frank thought. But at least he was glad to be rid of his germs. In fact, as he went to bed, he hardly noticed that every bacterium in his entire house was gone as well. If he had, he might have guessed that bacteria had simply vacated the entire planet, leaving in little spaceships like the one his had left in.

Frank went into the bedroom without washing up. He closed his eyes and lay on the bed for what seemed like hours. He just couldn’t fall asleep. He opened them again and glanced out of the window, staring into the starry night. Except it wasn’t starry anymore — it was made up of millions of flashes, like a stadium full of photographers. It was made of sequins.

And one by one, Frank Upton watched the stars die out.

Kara and I created this short stop-motion film over Fall Break, taking successive photos of the blackboard in the common room. Dewey played and recorded the score for us during finals week, and I put it all together. Introducing (drum roll, please)… The Perfectly Standard Adventures of Asgrim, Ainar, and Aldrich, now on YouTube.