April 2023 site update and The Flying Apricot introduction

Hello, hello!
Just a quick update about Sunday Short Stories and all the jumbled-up alphabets that reside therein.

In celebration of writing two hundred short stories, I’m going to be putting more time into something longer for the rest of 2023

But what does that mean?

Well, it mostly means that I will no longer be sticking to the weekly schedule of short stories appearing right here every Sunday
What it elusively means, is that “something longer this way comes” and I’d be thrilled to one day have something like that up here for free, or have it assembled into a medium that is easier to put a bookmark in.

Is that it for the site then?

Not at all.
There will still be Sundays and there will still be short stories. The only thing changing is the fact they won’t be every week.

What about this week?

I’m glad you asked.
This week I’m happy to share a sketch of a longer story that I was planning back in 2021. It may continue one day, but for now, enjoy the introduction to The Flying Apricot.

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A quiet fire rambled upon the coals of Benjamin Porter’s hearth.
It was winter. Languid embers crackled wearily against snow drenched logs as a fatigued hearth was set though grim routine, rather than for any hope of warmth.
Built into the sea facing corner of a port town a neat nook of bricks and iron lay carefully cobbled together and formed themselves into the fireplace of Benjamin’s home: the stone hewn in such a way so that it would radiate a pleasant heat throughout the clockmaker’s store, placed merrily upon the corner of Portview Rd and Argyle St.
The Port on Borders was usually dreary as this time of the year, but recently an ice weighted sleet had been carried across the city with unerring percussion. A windstorm, fearsome and unabating, continued its bluster for another day, and made every moment feel as though it were a second away from a door being blown shut.
‘This is good weather for thinking.’ Benjamin would often say to his customers as they made polite mention of the inclement weather–a historically dangerous topic when discussed with a Lundrian.
‘Watching rain patter against a window does wonders for a person’s thinking.’  
And he knew the rain like it was a brother.

From time unrecorded, the island of Lundra had been visited by rain, hail, fog, and every single variety of falling water that a weather system could be capable of.
The Lundrian people had been drenched, drowned, saturated, and puddle-stricken, so often that they had imagined up a veritable plethera of ways to describe the rain. So vast was their synonymous lexicography, that an entire afternoon could be spent debating how exactly the rain was truly falling.    
Rain, as it has been said, does wonders for a person’s thinking.      

Benjamin had left his homeland in search of the sun, and ventured east towards the lands of learned people and places where a newspaper wasn’t so difficult to read on a park bench. Curious to the untamed nature of the world, Benjamin had regularly read tales of grand adventure in his youth, becoming excited by the chance to see the lands unmapped by the cartographer’s guild. But the wild held a bit too much peril for a Porter, and Benjamin was thankfully taken on as clock makers apprentice one week after he had landed in the Port on Borders, thoroughly bruised and now fearful of travel.  
He wasn’t a coward by any means, there was a burning desire for knowledge that pushed him forward each morning, that called for him to venture again out into the unmapped. But when the fire was warm, and when a blanket had fallen across his knees, he would realise that adventure could be engaged though a more sedentary nature.

Benjamin worked with care, taking a particular fondness to the craft of pocket watches. He had in time become known as a respectable fellow on ever busy Argyle St, and through his many efforts, the man named Benjamin Porter had managed to buy a simple house that was warm and relatively free of leaks.

Argyle street was a long way from the storied trade halls of the port, but in a sprawling city dotted on the border of three separate nations, there were many people that were worse off than he, without roof or hearth to keep them dry. No, Benjamin was happy in his terraced brick filigree.
It was a simple building, a single story with good neighbours either side, a living quarters, a workshop at the back and a clock shop at the front. From his veranda he could see the port winding its way into the distance, and in times of better weather he would often marvel at how open the blue sky could truly be.   
He would decorate his home in memory of Lundra. Books, blankets, and all too many places to sit down, crowded his small shop, giving it that Lundrian snug feeling that his customers would be greeted by as they browsed.
In truth Benjamin Porter had most everything that a person could ask for, health, home and happiness. But there was the smallest itch in the heel of his shoe. A faint ember that remembered why he had left his homeland as a young man. 

He had problem to solve.  
By the light of a lantern–he didn’t agree with the candlemaker’s wax prices–Benjamin sat at his favourite old desk and wracked his brains for a solution to a riddle he had been given as a child. Scratching and re-scrawling his thoughts onto a crowded schematic, the clockmaker had failed to hear the urgent bell-chime of a customer, awaiting service at the store front.          

In short, time is now, but after a moment it will be gone and now will become time again. Words have the potential to hold time for a person, but to another these words will be new. Everything will continue to roll onwards, albeit stopping as the previously read is unforgotten by memory-

He stopped and read the passage again, hoping that this time it made sense.
‘That troublesome creature we know as memory,’ Benjamin pondered aloud, feeling the word as he spoke as if it were a key turning in the incorrect lock. It was close, he felt that memory had something to do with the riddle of time but was no closer to finding its meaning.
Years ago, he had made a friend upon his voyage from Sandulk. By chance, a traveller by the name of John had felt inclined to ramble with Benjamin through stories of legend and lore. With beard as grey as it was long, the road beaten nature of this stranger had cast a spell on Benjamin and they had quickly become friends. For three months they shared good company, teasing each other with inane riddles and finding humour within jokes that many others would think obscure. Benjamin had learnt a great wealth from his time with John and he promised the old traveller that if they were to meet again, no inconvenience would prevent him from joining in on an adventure grand.

-Cla-dong –

A sudden clatter interrupted Benjamin’s musings as a familiar bell flew through his study in a panic of ringing and clattered into a grandfather clock, chipping the varnish and falling to stillness against the floor with a dazzled kind of ding that took place without the resonance or care to try ringing again.
‘Hello sir. You may have noticed that you bell appears to be broken,’ A slowly paced voice called out from front of the shop. It was the precisely ordered voice of a person who held a mind as clear as wax paper and implied a kind of weight to their intonation that you shouldn’t readily disagree with without a good escape route.

‘Just a minute,’ Benjamin replied with a squeak.
Looking for something blunt enough to appear threatening, the clockmaker picked up a stray lump of quartz and tiptoed towards the front counter to see if he was about to be robbed.
Lundrians were a hardy bunch, they believed that an unsolvable problem gave a good sense of direction, and accepted calamity as the beginning of moving on. No strangers to the words “the worst flood on record” many Lundrians had watched their home float off downstream at some point, and as a people, knew that rain always had the chance to fall just that little bit harder.
So, tallying up how many of his display clocks he was prepared to fight with, Benjamin shuffled towards his counter and hoped that the probable burglar hadn’t noticed that he was wearing a pair of slippers.

‘Mr Porter?’ a stone slab enquired, somehow managing to orient the short question into the form of a threat.
Too large to possibly be a human, the customer took up so much of the shop that Benjamin wondered how he had managed to get through the front door. It wasn’t a man, Benjamin decided. Such a mass of neutrally restrained hostile intention must clearly be some kind of bewitched mountainside, rather than a thing of flesh and blood.
But the scowl was human, the mountain’s face was adorned with a repeating curve on downward sloping lines that illuminated the point of face-drapery long before they had passed by the person’s brick-like chin.

‘This is his store.’ Benjamin replied hoping that the sentence was elusive enough to give him time, but not be so overcomplex that it could send his visitor into a rage.
Ben had very neat boxes that he arranged the people who visited his shop, and the change from customer to visitor was an important clarification that this person was now allotted to.  

‘I’ve got a delivery for him,’ the human boulder said, cracking its knuckles to emphasise some point that only stones are cognisant of, ‘It’s a letter, see that he gets it, or I’ll be back for a return to sender.’
Placing a haggard looking envelope down upon the counter as if a child being placed into a cot, the figure threw a fearsome salute and strode from the store, pausing as if struck by the need to add one final clarification.
‘The post office does not abide undelivered mail, sir. Remember that.’

Exhaling as the mountain-sided postman finally had left the store, Benjamin felt every clock in his store tick forward one second in unison and the spell of fear had departed.
‘Bloody posties.’ he said, when earshot was beyond the range of a longbow, ‘Put a person in a uniform and they’re doing the kings duty. Pigeons deliver the mail too you know.’
Placing down the rock of quartz, for it was no use against paper, Benjamin held the envelope at arms-length and debated tossing it into the fireplace or not.
It could be a bill, he thought, moving the curiosity about as if attempting to test the weight of what was inside. No, too loose for a bill and anything from the Clockmaker’s guild uses a heavier paper. Wouldn’t be family, couldn’t be from anyone on Argyle St.
The envelope was yellowed, residue from past stamps had been pulled off and tacked back on in a patch work of previous deliveries, several tears had been hastily repaired with some kind of tack. Benjamin squinted and was surprised to notice his own name written amongst the crossed-out names of recipients past. This letter had seen quite a journey.
Hesitantly flicking the envelope open, there was a quiet sigh from somewhere unknown and the off feeling of a final chapter reaching its closure.
‘How old is this?’ Benjamin wondered aloud, as he withdrew a small piece of card and gingerly began to read its scrawl within.

Benjamin,
This shall one day find you and I hope it does so in good stead. I’ve travelled north and seen lights play across the sky like fawns in the spring grass. I’ve sailed down ash-coloured rivers and stopped in towns made from the bones of something ancient. You promised to join me on an adventure one day. If this reaches you and we both are still alive, find me in Liat. I think it’s time to finally answer that riddle of yours.
-John Kahler, 

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J. McCray
2023