THE CROFTON CHRONICLE # 12
Flicker jolted awake to a loud rumble of lightning, signalling the arrival of a brainstorm.
Her human sat frozen in front of a blank page. Small exhales. Sweaty hands. The familiar dread of trying to write something brilliant but not knowing where to begin leaked into the cortex, spreading through the vast neural forest that the neurons call home. Flicker is one of its countless cells, a tiny carrier of impulses and sparks of thought, weaving through the glowing roots and dense canopy of the brain.
The storm rolled relentlessly through the woods. A current of frustration shook the tall axon trees, their silver boughs rattling as thunder rippled across the trees. The sparse sparks streaked through the suffocating air, each carrying the delicate beginning of an idea. They shone like fireflies on summer nights, some bright, some faltering dimmer. Unlike most of the other cells that were chasing after the brightest glows, Flicker hovered above a knotty tree branch, flickering nervously as the downpour continued. She tracked each spark with careful eyes, pausing at the slightest wobble. One small, pale spark drifted near her, too dim for others to consider, yet Flicker lingered.
Its uneven pulse made her chest tighten. She wanted to steady it, to guide it, but was she good enough? Could it be too risky? She wondered. Her hands twitched and hesitated, until she finally nudged forward, imperfectly and unsurely. But even in that uncertain moment, a small flame of determination flared inside Flicker as she gently cupped the spark in her hands, feeling its fragile pulse tremble beneath her fingers.
“ The cortex is unstable here,” a familiar voice cut through,“ If you’ re not careful...”
Lume’ s crisp light emerged from a nearby branch, steady and precise despite the chaos. He usually searched for the brighter sparks, but now his gaze fell on Flicker.
“ I know,” Flicker whispered, barely audible through the gust.“ It’ ll fade before making it. But I..., I think I can manage.”
She knew well that if she fumbled, it wouldn’ t just fade, the storm would swallow it whole, leaving everything in even more chaos.
“ Why not choose a stronger one?” Lume asked skeptically.
“ Because it matters...” she murmured, mostly to herself,“ Even a small spark can change everything.” Flicker had to keep moving, she couldn’ t let her hesitation stall her forever.
So she ventured forward past the memory reservoirs with Lume following behind her, now silent. They were pools of glowing fragments of old ideas, half remembered images, and fleeting emotions. Some shimmered faintly, covered by fog like the morning mist in early spring while others were black and opaque, resisting her touch. Each pool echoed the human’ s thoughts, unpredictable and frantic, changing their path in ways she had to anticipate.
The deeper she travelled, the more distorted and chaotic everything became. A strike of lightning revealed the more and more alien looking trees. Some trunks were the palest shade of white imaginable, bleached by overthinking. Others had darkened into the ebony of the late night sky in winter, burnt by a never fulfilled desire for perfection. Besides the colour, the shapes of the trees were also peculiar, as if in deep agony. Branches warped and twisted, curling back on themselves, caught in the same loop the human’ s mind had been circling for hours.
FLICKER