Brona and the Task Curse

HI READER: Please consider reading my book on Wattpad:

https://www.wattpad.com/story/251305992-brona-and-the-task-curse

The story is better edited here^. The version of Brona and the Task Curse on Inkitt will have inconsistencies and contradictions that I have not fixed.

Chapter 01 - Staring at Spoons:

The creek running through Late Sun, though hundreds of kilometres long, was aptly called a creek. In most stretches, its waters just barely wet the stones beneath it. Its water could be found in any dint or crag, squeezed between the interlocked stone paths, or moated around a home. Given its reticent nature, it was a wonder how it ever managed to integrate itself with the town so heartily, and more curiously, why it commandeered so much attention. For many, it was the suspicion that the creek would one day split the town in two since each run of its waters carried along some of the ground with it. For most though, the creek garnered attention because it was the region’s sole supplier of fresh water.

To fill a bucket took two buckets. One left upright for collection, the other to sit on its side until it filled with a finger’s worth of water. Bending up and down to collect meager portions of water was a back-aching experience. Tightness in voice was a trademark characteristic of every Sunnish citizen— save for a little girl who lived in a house by a forest, in a hilly area overlooking the main settlement below.

The two buckets took pity on Brona, so they tried to cheer her up every morning by levitating and swooping and filling themselves up with water, just for her! No one else’s buckets in town did that. It was just for her.

At least – she liked to think of it that way.

The trade-off for Distorting her two metallic buckets was that Brona had to kneel barefoot in the creek, with pants pulled up above her knees, as she shed the warmth she’d left her house with earlier. The spell must have fed on the jolting twangs of shivers running up her body or her noticeable discomfort. Using Ouroborics was easier than manually collecting water herself, but it was still a poor deal, even if she wasn’t seizing her lower back like her neighbours. She envied her shoes lying on the bank by the water’s edge, gradually acclimatizing to the morning air rather than suffering a complete molestation of cold like herself. Brona tightened the blanket around her shoulders. To have made things faster, she would have liked to collect water from a deeper part of the creek, but that would mean she would need to pass the nearest neighbour and being sworn at was an awful way to begin the day.

Whether or not someone did swear at Brona didn’t really change her temperament though. She tended to wear a scowl on her face. If it wasn’t caused by her mother forgetting to come home, it was the irritation caused by the short tendrils of her brown hair that poked her in the face. Her eyes didn’t do much to convey any childlike warmth either, a dull grey that sucked the joy from any party and a skin tone close to match (but that was common of every other Sun-deprived person in Late Sun).

Brona watched as the second bucket poured its last contribution of water into its brother. Completing the task, it fell from its aerial poise with a jolt, as though it was in shock that its gift of self-movement had been a bastardization all along.

Which it was – of course.

The bucket fell into the creek and began to drift down the stream. “Whope whope, I still need you,” said Brona, catching it by the handle. She hobbled carrying both buckets back to the shoreline and hung the empty one on a tree branch that loomed over the creek.

Yellowed blades of grass and sandy earth clung to the sides of Brona’s feet. She didn’t think it good to put on her shoes yet, so she stuffed them into the waistline of her pants. They would probably fall out or fall down her pant leg as she walked back up the hill to her house.

Based on the relative brightness – or more accurately to say – dimness of her surroundings, Brona could tell it was about the second hour into the seven-hour dawn. Late Sun boasted hours-long mornings and evenings. A phenomenon which was normally only seen in mountain settlements (where the early and late day only seemed longer because the mountains blocked out the sunlight). The reason it happened in Late Sun was a mystery, with the tallest blockade being the trees from the forest up on the hills, but they were not nearly tall enough to block out the sun for the larger part of a day. This didn’t bother the pale skinned residents too much, except for the chalky vitamin D pill they had to suffer along with their morning breakfast. Consequently, seeing the differences between dim and slightly less dim light was vital to tell time in order not to lose track of the day. It required a trained eye unless you owned a watch.

Brona didn’t.

In front of her revealed the mouth of the path, exiting the steep forest trail and arriving in an overgrown yard which looked like a poorly sewn tapestry of uneven, mish-mashed colours. Mostly grasses and wildflowers dominated her plot, which was good for the bees. Drudging through the tall grasses didn’t risk any rashes or bug bites either since Brona cast a Distortion to eradicate all the ticks and bull thistles in the surrounding area. She’d initially set a path of stones from the opening of the forest trail leading down to her front door, but she didn’t pound the rocks into the ground strongly enough, and so the resulting path was very difficult to walk on and only succeeded in twisting her ankle any time she attempted to use it. Brona pushed herself to run the last stretch to her front door. Some of the water from the bucket waded onto her feet.

A rusted roof and sun-stained stucco made up Brona’s house underneath an entanglement of viny plant life strangling one another to cover the already-occupied area beneath it. The buds of the little flowers that would one day become black berries had begun forming around the peeling door frame. Everything on her property had a dull greenness to it —or was at least being choked by it – but something out of place, something that wasn’t there earlier this morning, something reflective caught her notice.

Spoons.

Some had intricate, floral designs, one was golden, but most were plain and silvery. They were ordered in a tidy row on the stony doorstep, all reflecting a warped version of Brona’s face as she looked down. Brona shook her head. Regardless how much some of these spoons may have been worth, clearly people thought sending a message was more important than the lack of spoons in their own homes. Brona sighed and collected them.

She pulled the screen door and propped it open with the stopper. Fortunately, the first room of the house was the kitchen, so Brona didn’t need to carry the bucket much further. The house was designed for efficiency, built by her uncle who had a short fuse for dealing with bullshit, so rooms were positioned in hierarchy of usage. They didn’t even have a dining room, because really, how often would they host guests? Especially since Brona was the black sheep of Late Sun – they’d be likelier to gather people to host her exorcism than a supper. Normally the back door could be seen from the entrance, but a slim figure clad in a purple slip was sitting on the kitchen table, blocking the morning light, and reading the paper.

“Your neighbours brought you some gifts,” said Grendt, putting her paper down and gesturing towards the bouquet of spoons. “I would’ve brought them in myself, but by the look on their faces, it was really a ‘fuck you’ meant just for you,” she smirked, her black-brown eyes swimming with mischief. Those eyes pissed Brona off.

“Help me with this bucket, Grendt.”

Grendt slouched further, lifting her coffee mug, “Oof, sorry, my hand is full,” she said with exaggerated pain. “—But could you pass me one of those spoons? The honey’s settled on the bottom of my cup, I wanna stir it.”

Brona sifted through the spoons to find the dirtiest one but paused for a moment as she caught her reflection again. The reflection in spoons was ugly. Distorted. The people of Late Sun left Brona spoons as a reminder of her own hideousness—her ability to pervert the natural world around her with her Distortions, which Brona always thought was hypocritical of the Sunnish considering they could also Distort, albeit to a lesser degree. It was their therapy to prod at the strongest source of Ouroborics in Late Sun, Brona figured, as a means of coping with the problem they were all implicated in.

Whipping the dirty spoon at Grendt, Brona hobbled and plunked the bucket down beside the sink and opened one of the many shelves under the countertop to dump her new gifts into a compartment already teeming with spoons. She proceeded to turn on the stove and boil some water. She gathered the remaining flakes of dry porridge from a linen bag into a measuring cup to start breakfast. Wiping the spoon against her slip, Grendt broke the uncomfortable silence by announcing the latest news from the only paper in Late Sun: The Daily Black and White.

“Your friend Callum is doing well in the town polls…Looks like he’ll win his re-election as Head Informed… Not like there’s much to be informed about here though,” said Grendt with her worldly perspective. “He’s more of the ‘keep-everyone’s-shit-together’ organizer than the man who’s gonna find the source of the Tasker.”

“Yesterday.” Brona hissed, ignoring Grendt’s attempt at conversation. “Yesterday night, you weren’t home like you said you’d be.” Grendt pulled her eyes from the paper, looking around the kitchen, focusing on the eerie patches of mold on the walls and ceiling that had appeared overnight. “I didn’t have enough hands to help me, I ran out of ingredients while I was doing it, and the whole thing exploded and set some kind of curse on the house! Or it actually is mold! I’m too scared to touch it!” spat Brona.

“I can see that Distortion didn’t go as planned. You probably mixed the ingredients too quickly again. Impatience is not a quality I like to see in my Durnann –but it’s not like I have a choice in my disciple, do I?” she scoffed, her dark smirk creasing the lines around her mouth. “We can’t all catch on as fast as I did.”

Although Grendt’s haughtiness was irritating, it wasn’t completely unfounded. For thousands of years, Grendt had served as council and chief Distorter to a prosperous patriarchal kingdom, where she developed efficient salvaging Distortions, so that resources could be filtered and reused (such as metals and cementing stones), produced goods which enhanced the less Ouroborically skilled people, as well as designed barriers and protections which protected the kingdom from invasion. She was so impressive, that part of the standardized school curriculum included a section on her work and her influence in history.

Brona whipped a rigid hand to her mouth and bit the first finger. Grendt cocked a brow at the rude gesture, but smiled in response nonetheless. It was true that it was because of Brona’s impatience that her Distortion, which was supposed to be a stain-erasing chutney, discoloured the walls with tufts of very much visible mold, but she was angry that Grendt had gone back on her word again, leaving Brona to figure out Ouroborics on her own. And how was it possible that Grendt managed to leave her? She was a Blood Projection.

Long legs straightened as Grendt set the paper down and hopped of the table. She walked towards a wicker basket below a slit in the wall containing letters. One was iconically from Brona’s uncle, a bright red envelope from a letterset he’d been given decades ago. He probably sent a letter just to let her know of his whereabouts, which was routine of him to write Brona. His letters were always brief; location, reason for being there, and next destination. Brona loved her uncle, but his straightforwardness was a bore to read. She thought it would just be easier for the both of them if he’d just send the envelope to indicate he was still alive. There was one other letter in the basket, lying flat at the bottom, which was equally iconic: Black with silver letters on the cover reading ‘Brona’, with no return address, nor stamp.

“Seeing as you’re already in such a good mood this morning, I guess you’ll be happy to know you’ve got mail,” said Grendt, pulling the black letter out from the basket.

Brona wanted to drop her head into her bowl of porridge. Getting mail in Late Sun was a guarantee to any citizen that your day was about to get far worse than picking porridge from your hair. The mail was something that afflicted everyone, and no matter if you killed the mail carrier or set fire to the postal office, a certain piece of your mail was always guaranteed to come to you.

Black was the colour of choice for the envelope, but also for the letter inside. This kind of mail didn’t come every day, and not consistently either. Some people got it less, others it was a more of a regular routine. Brona was one more particularly prone to its postal whims.

The magic called itself the Task Curse. It was a piece of rogue Ouroborics which festered and became corrupted. Spelled out in silvery letters would be the name of the person in the house it wished to torment, the task for the day in the enclosed letter, as well as the threat if you chose not to act. It targeted every citizen in Late Sun, preventing them from ever leaving or leave to suffer the consequences. The tasks ranged from things as easy as patting your stomach after every sentence, to burning your own house down before supper hour.

The threats, however, were standardly very compelling. Claiming the curse would kill a close relative or loved one if you didn’t perform the task. Not all threats were carried out, the curse could be lazy like that sometimes, but it was enough that no one risked it, and enough reason for everyone to remain compliant.

The energy which fuelled the Sunnish to travels hours up steep slopes only to leave spoons on a child’s doorstep was the loathing suspicion that she was the source of the curse. It had appeared shortly after Brona had been born, and her proficiency in Ouroborics didn’t help to detract attention from her.

Brona tore her letter open, accidentally ripping a piece off her instructions. As long as they were still readable, it didn’t matter. The curse would not be offended by that.

Dear Brona,

Step on every stone cemented in the roads of Late Sun before 4PM.

I’ll kill your Uncle if you don’t.

Sincerely,

The Task Curse.

Ever the subtle one, thought Brona. She crumpled the letter into her pants pocket. The task was doable. As it was, she’d wanted to collect some ingredients to attempt the erasure chutney again with Grendt of course. She could map out a stone-stepping route that would lead her to the entrance of the grass fields upon completion.

Grendt finished her coffee and went to the stove. She shut off the heat and fixed Brona some porridge mixed with dried dates, cinnamon, mixed seeds, and a grated apple. The food flittered across the kitchen island towards Brona and landed with the sound of ceramic hitting wood, with a spoon landing in the bowl with a clink. Grendt placed the glass milk bottle separately so Brona could help herself. Grendt also brought a sleek hardcover volume to the table.

“Here,” she said, gesturing to the walls and ceiling, “Let’s get rid of this stuff.” Grendt opened the book and flipped hundreds of pages over to a page somewhere near the end. The page had very few words, it was mostly pictures of hand gestures. The words were upside down and written in Circric, the language of Ouroborics, which Brona was still learning, but the page also showed an illustrated image of flecks of dirt separating from a square cloth which Brona felt explained the Distortion. Grendt mimicked the hand shapes in the book, then pressed her hands against the house walls (under the table, Brona also gestured her hands to mirror Grendt’s). She then pulled up a chair, stood on it, and pressed her hands to the ceiling. The tangles of mold went rigid and began to sift off the walls like powder onto the floor. To help the process a bit, Grendt kicked the walls to shake them, causing the mold to fall faster (as well as the naturally collected dust over the years). The mess was now on the floor, which Brona thought was no improvement, but Grendt seemed to be satisfied.

“You don’t have that book memorized? I thought you were a great Distorter.” mocked Brona with her mouth full.

“I had only the important ones memorized and the ones I made up myself,” said Grendt coolly. “When you’re employed by an entire country, they don’t ask you to wash their clothes for them.” Grendt pressed her lips, “But here I am making breakfast for a four-year old.”

“I’m six.”

“Well when you’re a great Distorter, make sure you hide your blood better than I did. Teaching kids is way more stressful than working for millions.” Then Grendt muttered something about how the dead should be resting.

The dim light seeping through the kitchen sink window indicated that the time was close to 7:30AM. If Brona was to accomplish anything today, she would have to first humiliate herself per the letter’s wishes. Brona swallowed the lumpy remains of her porridge breakfast and put her shoes on to begin the day the Task Curse had laid out for her.

***

Five thousand six hundred and twenty-six stones so far, only maybe eighty more to go? Brona guessed. There were probably more interlocked stones on the upside of the half-bridges which led into Late Sun, but there was no way for Brona to reach the tops of the bridges to check – and the curse was so young itself, it probably didn’t know either. Brona wedged charcoal lumps into the grooves of her shoe soles to mark every stone, effectively debasing public property, making people just a bit angrier with her than usual. She didn’t lift her head up often to look around, not only because people glared at her, but also because missing a single stone would mean her uncle would die. Possibly.

She only looked up when something was out of place and making a scene, which happened to be the other two people who received letters today; One, a man, was making a ruckus patting the walls of every building he walked by. The other, a woman, had to place two books behind her and one in front for every step she took, rotating the order of the books for every step. Brona didn’t understand why the woman didn’t just stay home that day.

The tasks almost seemed comical at times, which was curious considering the curse took no pleasure in it at all. In fact, the Task Curse didn’t feel anything. Just like Brona’s buckets, it wasn’t actually alive. The only reason why people said, ’the Tasker feels lazy today’, or ’The Tasker has a cruel sense of humour’ was because Ouroborics tended to take shape of human personality once it was around long enough. If a Distortion was performed by wild animals, eventually you’d see the magic acting in such a way that it would be forging for nuts like a squirrel, or attacking rabbits for their meat. Humans identify strongly with their inner character, and so Ouroborics performed by them tended to develop a personality. Brona wasn’t prepared for the sass that her buckets were likely to give her one day.

Five thousand seven hundred and fifty-three... Five thousand seven hundred and fifty-four... Five thousand seven hundred and fifty-five! Brona twisted her shoe with a zealous fervour as the tightness in her chest eased. The last stone cemented in the ground of Late Sun was caked in crushed charcoal, saving her uncle from his fate.

“Oh, shit!” exclaimed Brona, as she reached for her pants pocket to take out the letter. But her pocket was empty, aside from the ash that the letter had turned to when she completed the task. That was just another pocket in a line of pants that was going to be sticky and smelling of smoke for a long time.

Sunlight split through the skies with an unnatural influx. Alarming to outsiders, but a perfectly accepted happening in Late Sun when the sun’s rays appeared, marking the end of the seven-hour dawn. The landscape brightened to reveal the vast historical architecture of the town, such as the hundred-foot-tall bridges which spurred out from the province but led to nowhere, ending somewhere over the chasm which surrounded the landmass. The fog which hung just below ground level of Late Sun’s lowest altitude cleared and the greenery which grew on the sides of the walls of people’s homes unfurled and revealed the full span of their leaves, producing an almost artificial, green-coloured glow to the surroundings. From the corner of her eye, the sunlight exposed a figure near Brona.

Carrying a stack of items was a man outfitted in a sea green dress, with matching flats, and elbow-length gloves. His ash brown hair had a soft matte glow in the sunlight as well. He appeared to be attempting a balancing act with a cake wrapped in wax paper, two dresses and a large binder.

“Hey witch!” the man exclaimed. Brona walked over to the young gentleman. A crowd of people had turned their heads towards the commotion until they saw who the ‘witch’ in question was and encouraged the forthcoming harassment. The man pushed all his belongings into Brona’s waiting arms, which stacked above her head and blocked her eyesight.

“Follow my voice,” said the man straightening from a crouch. Brona listened and followed as the man continued to shout: “Please everyone, remember to vote in the next few days! Polling closes three nights from now! We cannot enter infinite without Tenefrit!” Brona rolled her eyes at the slogan but continued to follow the man until the interlocked stone beneath her feet became a familiar dirt road.

The man clicked his tongue, which Brona knew meant ‘hold on, we’re not in the clear yet’. The light walking of two girls passed them by, then two hands descended on either side of the stack, regaining Brona’s sight.

“What’s the stuff for, Callum?” asked Brona eyeing Callum as he resumed his awkward balancing act. “I can keep holding something for you.”

“This dress is for my rally speech two days from now,” he said, lifting a full-length gown with flowers blossoming from the bosom, “Then this one is an old one that I got a hole in that Mr. Glen offered to sew up, and the cake—,” said Callum puckishly, “The cake was supposed to be for a private dinner tomorrow with myself and the Northern Environmental Lead —but a street witch confronted me and took it for herself and her careless caretaker.” He dumped the cake back into Brona’s arms.

Brona blushed accepting the gift, “Thanks, Callum.”

“Oh this doesn’t come without payment, witchling. A politician is only as good as his speech. You just agreed to listen to me practice all night and provide careful, constructive criticism.”

For a moment, Brona considered dropping the cake and running back to Grendt, but it was rare for Brona to have time with Callum lately, since the election campaign demanded his full attention: garnering a positive public opinion and reminding people to vote, so she conceded that a boring evening practicing boring speeches was better than no time with her friend at all.

Callum of the West Estate Tenefrit was one of Late Sun’s few political figures, having helped reinstate the Sunnish electoral system after thousands of years as a self-regulating province. He’d won the bi-yearly elections three times in a row since his sixteenth birthday. His winning platform was his rigor to free the Sunnish of the Task Curse and help Late Sun regain its status as a functioning dominion in the growing world with valuable insights. With the Task Curse, the outside world largely ignored the province where the people were unable to leave. As Callum saw it, being a part of a political system which aligned with the neighbouring provinces would help him gain access to the contacts necessary to receive expert council on rogue Ouroborics, which would hopefully help him find the source of the blight.

Callum’s search for the source of the Task Curse naturally led him to Brona early on. Following rumours and a trail of spoons, he found Brona’s house situated directly opposite of his home, on the Eastern side of Late Sun. Brona was only three at the time, but through some simple tests which involved throwing objects at the child to see how she would react to stress, Callum quickly deduced that the child being raised by her uncle and Blood Projection was not the source of the curse. Brona exhibited a clear aptitude for Ouroborics, having shattered the plates before they hit her, but not without a willing exchange. Callum remembered seeing Brona bite her arm to self-inflict pain as the trade to flip the table to protect herself. The Task Curse was wild, without a will dictating its course, so the originator had to be unwillingly using Ouroborics, perhaps even unknowingly. Despite putting the evidence before his fellow citizens that Brona was not the cause of the curse, the people ignored the reality and continued to hold their suspicions. As Brona had rationalized many times before, she was their coping mechanism, but as long as no one turned violent against her, she could manage her fortune in spoons. It wasn’t like she needed their friendship to survive.

“Did you see that green lightening last week?” asked Brona. “It was so freaky, Grendt didn’t let me go outside, but we watched from my bedroom and I took notes and I have some theories.”

Callum grimaced. “Not lightening, actually— I may have had a part in that. One of my connections from Dargun secured a vile of Donacchium for me, a polarized metal which is attracted to Ouroboric Strings.”

“Me and Grendt are Braided with those Strings! Is that why some of that light came towards our house?”

“I’m not surprised that Grendt didn’t let you outside. Donacchium burns upon contact with any Distorter, but don’t worry, I only used a small amount. The worst that would have happened if it found itself to you would be akin to a static shock. She probably saw it used in past wars against people like herself, so I understand her apprehension.” Some anger swelled inside Brona as she realized Grendt withheld useful information from her once again. “You see, before I can tackle dismantling the Tasker I need to find the origin and find a path that will lead me to it. I’ve been conducting some tests to see if the curse is bound to the same restrictions as conventional Ouroborics.”

Brona cocked her head to the side. “Restrictions? Why do you care about what the Tasker can’t do? That stuff won’t hurt us.”

“The limitations of a construct tells you equally as much about it as knowing what it can do. It all comes down to the basic principles of Ouroborics, really. We know that for every take, there needs to be an equal give –which tracks with physics, that for every action there is a reaction. Furthermore, we know the main limitations of Ouroborics: no control over other autonomies, no flesh healing, no artificial maturation, and no time distortion— if there even is such a thing as time. Based on those principles, we can reasonably believe that everything in between those limitations is manifestable.

“So… what did the not-lightening tell you about the Tasker?” asked Brona, not fully following Callum’s rant.

“The Tasker either follows the rules, or it doesn’t. If its orthodox, then the Donacchium metal will follow the path of the strongest String, burning until it either spends itself, or it reaches the source and continues to burn there, ultimately revealing a path.”

“And if the Task Curse isn’t Or-po-dops?”

Callum chuckled, “The Donacchium never landed. It shot over the forest and faded in the air hanging over it. At the very least, I thought I had enough Donacchium shavings to reach end-to-end of our province but using anymore of it would have been a hazard to you and the rest of the Sunnish. Either way, the results left me with two assertations: There is a powerful source of Ouroborics in the forest which is possibly the source of the curse, or the Tasker has mutated and is undetectable by Donacchium, and the forest is unrelated. In either case, we are dealing with a very powerful force, or an unpredictable one.”

Brona looked to the crescent shaped forest that crowded the confines of Late Sun. It was seldom explored despite the Late Sun settlement having brought people to the area thousands of years ago. There were hardly any paths, let alone any paths which delved more than a few kilometres into the depths of the forest. Brona frequented the woods on a near daily basis, usually to harvest materials for Ouroborics or to practice a Distortion away from Grendt’s line of sight so she wouldn’t laugh at her when it failed. “I’ve been scouring the forest this past week looking for someone or something imbued with Strings. I’ve even been using some Donacchium to help me find a path, but when I’m in the forest’s midst, the Donacchium just fizzles out into all directions. Very curious,” expressed Callum.

“That probably happens cause of all the Wood Folke. You might have been standing in the centre of their thicket.” Said Brona as-a-matter-of-factly.

Callum perked, “That’s right— You’re well acquainted with their sort, aren’t you?”

Brona’s expression flattened, “I wouldn’t say we’re on great terms— We just have a mutually beneficial relationship. They help me find parts for Distortions, I give them cool-looking rocks. It’s shallow.”

“Well if the Wood Folke won’t help me, would you mind helping me look sometime?” Callum stooped down and picked up a small stone off the path, “I can pay you handsomely.” Brona rolled her eyes and Callum belted the stone at her legs. Brona used that pain to Distort a tree branch into shaking over Callum to drop bugs down his dress.

***

The walk up the path was becoming increasingly tiresome. The time it took to walk from Brona’s home to Late Sun’s main square was less than an hour, but the distance from Callum’s house was well over three. Callum was completely composed while trekking up the steep angle, his movements no less graceful than they were an hour ago, but Brona was already dragging her feet and mouth-breathing. Natural sun was a scarce nicety any day, but in it being spring, the sun’s rays were stronger which didn’t help Brona’s sweaty body to move up the hill any faster.

As though the skies sympathized with Brona, a grey haze fell like a sheet over Late Sun. Light rain developed and cooled the surrounding air. Callum’s dress pressed closely to his chest, but the handkerchief pleating remained voluminous, somehow. He shielded his binder with the other two dresses and started at a faster gate. Brona used her body to defend her thinly wrapped cake as she attempted to match Callum’s speed. Luckily, Brona and Callum were already at the peak of the Western hill and it would only be a few more minutes’ walk to reach Callum’s home.

“Okay Brona, thinking time. You got any Distortions that can keep us dry?”

“Grendt showed me once that if you chew watercress and put mud on your face and draw this symbol in the air”, Brona gestured unclearly, “then you can summon the largest plant-based cloth from a ten-kilometre radius, but I haven’t been able to get the spell to work for me yet even when standing beside the laundry outside, so I think that—.”

Callum cut Brona off, “How is putting mud on your face a better alternative to getting a little bit of rain on you?” Brona paused for a moment wondering if Grendt was just bull-shitting her again. “Hey, it’s no matter anyways, we’re almost there,” said Callum, stooping to lift Brona up onto his free arm and run until they reached a familiar pair of gates crusted with rust. Callum’s land spanned hundreds of acres over the surrounding hills and backed into the same looping forest that was Brona’s backyard as well, just at the opposite end. Waiting at the gate was a basset hound, sitting roughly five feet tall.

“Donegal, could you please get Brona’s spare clothes? She’s going to be staying the night. Also, inform the rest of the staff so they don’t try to chase her off the property,” said Callum.

Donegal barked in reply and turned towards the estate.

As Callum and Brona walked behind the basset hound, other large dogs of various breeds came off the lawn to line the walkway on either side, greeting Callum home. Once Callum walked past a dog, some returned to their human forms, which Brona saw some of the maids transform and continue back to the mansion using a side door. All of Callum’s staff were brought-in from the nearby province of Selt, which was a leading nation in transformative Ouroborics. Brona was working up the courage to ask the staff one day if they would teach her how to transform into an animal herself.

The West Estate was a four-story monstrosity. The plants at ground level looked like scraggly arms reaching for the mansion’s roof but falling short of their attempts. The stones making up the outer walls laughed down at them not realizing they had already lost the war on purity being covered in moss and stained by the oxidized residue from the copper fittings. There was also a regal stoniness to everything on the property that made it seem like the house, the outer furniture and even the plant life, was all carved from the same block of limestone some hundreds of years ago.

“Brona, give me your clothes, I’ll dry them for you,” said Donegal, appearing in his human form holding a towel and a fresh set of garments at the mouth of the main entrance. Donegal and the rest of the staff living with Callum didn’t actually work for him, they were historians studying Leaver culture. They performed menial tasks and laboured eight-hour workdays of their own volition to emulate life in a Leaver settlements. Instead of getting money for compensation like a Leaver would, Callum allowed them stay in his home and gave them access to his historical record library. Even among other historians, these Seltans were an odd bunch practicing their study topic, but it was their preferred method of research and it harmed no one. Brona also thought they were weird but they all got along really well each other and she liked their vibes. She peeled the sopping clothing from her skin and handed them to Donegal. The clothes hung off his hands like they wanted to be on the floor.

“I’m going to go get changed myself—,” said Callum, trying to take his flats off as he walked up the staircase, “—but you get comfy in the study. I’ll have Aine get you something to eat, and then we’ll get started.” Brona gave Callum a thumbs up as she wiped herself dry with the towel. A Labrador brushed past her leaving hairs on her waist and bare legs, which Brona absent-mindedly tried to wipe away with her hands, effectively getting the hair stuck to her palms. She folded her towel onto the floor and sat on it until she air-dried and the dog hair unpeeled before putting on the shirt and pants from Donegal.

Brona walked through the house hallways looking at the many paintings. She knew where to expect cracks on the tiled floors, and she could probably replicate the wallpaper from memory –but the artistry in Callum’s house always had something new to be spotted. The entire series of artworks were done by someone initialled ‘WF’ as signed at the bottom corner of every painting. Callum said he thought they were a series, though he could never confirm it as he’d never met the artist. The first few paintings, nearest to the entrance, were the cheeriest, framed in floral wood-carved frames daubed in gold. They depicted a boy holding someone smaller in his hand; sometimes a girl, sometimes boy. They were painted in bright colours with maximum saturation, as Callum would say, which elicited a delighted feeling from the viewer as bright colours could only be seen in the light, and humans associated light with good and safety. Then the mid series of paintings depicted two men, one handsome and smiling, and one who looked like a drug addict rotting in the corner. There was a juxtaposition of moods in the painting, looking from one man to the other, feeling that ‘everything will alright’ to ‘why even bother’. The brighter of the two men was also the only one clothed. The last two paintings nearing the end of the hallway showed a split in continuity in the already confusing story. In one painting, the cheery man was triumphant over the ugly one, with the ugly man’s head ripped from his bony shoulders. The opposite sister-painting depicted the ugly man with no one but himself sitting overtop a pile of tiny bodies and tending to a bleeding mouth. The detail was as though the painter used but one hair of the brush to paint the entire series and the transition of colours was imperceptible. From areas of light to areas of dark, Brona couldn’t pinpoint when the colours started to change. She was crap at most things aside from Ouroborics, but art seemed like a healthy outlet to bleed her emotions when Grendt was being an ass.

There was one other painting that was framed outside the hallway, but Brona was sure it was a standalone, not belonging to the series despite it also being created by WF: An androgenous person, with a breast on their left side and a flat masculine chest on their right, firmly toned shoulders and muscular arms holding a metallic ring of two Ouroboroi swallowing one another. The man-lady wore a thin circlet that, upon closer inspection, could be seen to be made of figures of tiny people braided into a crown-like shape that grew like thorns from the person’s head. There was an additional detail, the matter of the backdrop to the painting, that bothered Brona: there were 3 lines, two on either side of the person and one sitting behind, that showed a skyline between them. The rest of the backdrop was a wheat colour that did not match the colours of the foreground portrait. It had weird symbolism to say the least. Brona thought the painter was likely high when making this one.

Turning her heel, Brona saw Callum’s study become visible, the sun from the adjacent window pushing attention towards the door in its light. It was simpler than one would expect from the extravagance of the rest of the house. Every wall but one was lined with bookshelves containing books of various topics, but mostly science texts, and all were of the latest editions. There was one corner of the room that stood out more than the rest because it was the only area that contained brightly coloured book covers. They were all about the dresses; how to sew them, how to achieve pattern harmony and ideas for colour combinations. Callum was quite the enthusiast, often using his breaktime in his politicking to design custom dresses for himself and Brona and would take advantage of any ear willing to listen to his blathering on the latest styles.

Brona went ahead and sat behind the study desk by the window. Despite the bumbling staff, it was grossly quiet in the room. She needed to make some white noise for her sanity and started shuffling the paper on Callum’s desk into a neat stack.

His notes were written in cursive which sometimes tapered into swirly math calculations in the margins of the pages. Brona felt she could follow Callum’s flickering thought process as he went from idea to testing the feasibility of his thoughts through math. Or so she assumed. He contemplated many different theories of the Task Curse’s existence, as perhaps it was something dormant that was always a part of Late Sun that only just emerged in the last few years, or that it was perhaps a collective illness that the Sunnish were suffering from, and it was the manifestation of that sickness. Some sheets were data collected on Sunnish citizens and the frequency of Task Letters they received over the years. Those notes were familiar, Brona helped makes them. She was also at the top of that list. Another paper was a line graph labelled ‘The Tenefrit Harshness Scale’, with individual data points reading threats people had received in their letters. Most data points were in the upper right of the graph indicating extreme harshness. Were these points labelled as harsh according to Callum or according to the person who received them? It seemed too relative to be able to quantify, yet Callum kept a record of these things.

Perhaps Callum just thought to start somewhere. To notice a pattern would require some raw observations first anyways, although the data still seemed somewhat erratic. It looked like Callum had about five years’ worth of data, but the first three years were less well-documented than the most recent two. He had also mapped out the range of the curse over a diagram of the province. By Callum’s estimate, the curse confined itself to the Distorter settlement on the South-East end, but a note on the side of the map read ’animals affected?’ with a crescent-mark encapsulating the forest areas.

There was another item on Callum’s desk that was just a scribbled piece of lined paper with a list of questions. Does the Tasker follow the rules of Ouroborics? Has it mutated? What to do if the Tasks become undoable? Those questions hung in most people’s minds, though the last one stood out particularly to Brona. The question made her blood feel cold.

Expand curse to the growing world to free Late Sun?

A woman came through the study doors, who Brona assumed was Aine, holding a salver with food on it. She was singing a carefree hum as she set the salver down on the desk, not paying any attention to what Brona was doing. The woman moved to reveal a bowl of chilled wheatberries mixed with poppy seeds. She left Brona without saying a word.

Brona was hungry, but she had to return her attention to the paper in her hand. Expand the Task Curse to the whole world…Was that idea ugly? It irritated Brona that the mansion staff from Selt were allotted a larger degree of freedom than herself. They didn’t even seem sad that the Sunnish were stuck. Like the rest of the growing world, they just didn’t care. If everyone was suffering from the same curse, they would be working harder to fix it, or it would become the new normal and then it wouldn’t be considered suffering anymore. Right?

It sounded like a plausible solution, even though it meant condemning the world to the same problem. The growing world was infinite; from its conception to modern day, it was an ever-growing orb, always expanding in all directions, creating new lands, providing new resources and surely, had the potential to out-grow this dismal curse. At the very least, if the curse’s assigned tasks reached beyond their province, Brona and Callum could leave its confines and see the rest of the growing world, enter study collegiates, meet new people…

Brona asked herself again: was it bad that she liked that idea?

Aine burst the study doors once again, breaking the room’s silence with a flurry of apologies, appearing to have forgotten to hand Brona an eating utensil along with her porridge. She returned to Brona’s side and grabbed a silvery thing from her smock, pushed in her chair and handed Brona a spoon.