Here’s a thing I did a while ago that I’ll chunk out in sections over time. It’s more of a surreal sci-fi adventure novella with some mysteries and curiousities that may or may not tie together——you can decide. Let me know what you think in the comments. 
History always buries itself alive. After that, the known and unknown break down into ephemeral artifacts, impossible to hold. It’s how the enigmatic detail of the universe remains incomprehensible until revealed as experience for a brief moment, like how the air smells of warm sour breath by the banks of the Sindonglahya as the boatmen tip their paddles lazily in the crushing afternoon hump, barely moving against the current. A blurry sun coats everything in a sticky spectrum of tone. Here and there, glimpses of reptilian activity flash elusively in the dunes, and knotted cedars loom down the shore, shadowy agents ready to ambush traffic on the water. Some say the river has no beginning and no end—that it feeds on itself in languid perpetuity, restless and relentless, ever-changing with infinite visions of the past and the future.
The world once had a name here, but it didn’t fit this place now, redone and reimagined. Recycled really. There was no singular cataclysmic happening that changed everything. Problems, too many to count, smoldered over vast swaths of time. The planet was simply falling through space with all the other cosmic debris, pinballing from fits of destruction to blips of renewal. There was no grand scheme of things. The only absolute was the breath-taking unpredictability of what could happen next.
This is where one possible story unfolds for Dez Mantis, recent tech graduate, and serpent enthusiast; the relationship, not as dissonant as it seems. A keen observer and prolific documentarian, Dez was a curious and ambitious sort, always up for anything. They often hung around the old launchpad turned market square, observing and talking with the locals of the remote river outpost, recording the stories of the district.
Dez sat on the edge of a garden box and watched a fly land on their foot. Kicking it away, they followed the flight path, then took note of the merchants’ children, usually erratic, moving with curious purpose. Chalk drawing and ball chasing, they shifted with a playful subtlety, following the shade through the morning heat across the biocrete tiles.
This day did feel different. Not auspicious, it teetered closer to profoundly mundane, as though every established pattern, expectation, and ritual became shamefully self-aware and then gave itself away with awkward spasms of existential clarity. The traffic felt pointless. The shops seemed overly formal. The birds, for some reason, were flying scavenger demons, and no one else around seemed to pay any attention.
Dez craned their neck tracking one of the chaotic white devils maneuvering over the buildings on Sierpinski Street until it suddenly fell from the sky and landed somewhere on the roof of the Olga Fripp Block with what Dez imagined to be an unceremonious thud.
The air was thick and crowded with swamp gas and cicadas; any extracurricular exertion was ill-advised at this time of day. Nothing should have felt compelling about investigating this incident, but it weighed on Dez as they got up and crossed the narrow street, ignoring the honks and hisses from the mono-motos zipping by. Did someone shoot it down? Was it even a bird? What was it doing? Is it dead? Is it alive and suffering—beak open, gasping grotesquely, like a fallen gargoyle.
The preoccupation dogged them along the way to Fountain House, where they were meeting Juujee Mahbekbinder for a co-mingle.
As Dez approached the chunky green and grey pyramid, they could hear the splashes of chatter pile up in a spiky indistinct chorus from the open-air balconies piped with creeper and crotons.
The Jasper Falk Memorial Temple Cascade and Garden, shortened to Fountain House, had served many purposes over the years. Tomb, park, lair, and condominium, to name a few. But these days, it was used as an aggregation for those looking to connect and practice mingling, a social activity involving the mixing and sharing of personal microbiomes, particularly the now ubiquitous archaea Fantastrigo metadido, a rogue single-cell creature that crash-landed with the Columbo Asteroid, a very long time ago.
After stacks of academic study, experimentation, and some cultural normalization, these visitors became part of everyone. Like it or not. Pathologically innocuous, they used pheromone-like secretions, daemophones, to communicate with each other, powered by—and attuned to—electrochemical neural activity in their host. This symbiotic relationship enabled people to empathize and communicate in a new way when mingling in close proximity.
Not quite telepathy, but more an intimate third-party dialogue without the construct of language, you could feel the intention and the complexity of emotion. With some practice, you could even send and receive transmissions of sensory experience; images, scents, sounds, tastes, and tactile information. In some undefined way, people generally felt more connected and communal. Unsurprisingly, not everyone was eager to embrace the suspicious new science. Some people were wary of new things. It was new things that created problems. But to mingling practitioners, these microorganisms were part of an elevated consciousness and became communication amplifiers in a new paradigm of interaction.
Here in Lost Council, the alien Fantastrigo metadido were colloquially known as Tads. Others called them Headies, Cephs, FMs, and Brain Bunnies up and down the Sindonglahya, depending on who you asked.
Juujee was already seated on the second level at a stone table and bench. A small waterfall shimmered behind her and projected a rainbow fragment above her head.
Dez sighed, decompressing as they sat down and tilted a wide-brimmed hat off their head, revealing a recently shaved scalp save two long ringlets that bounced from the temples and framed a freckled nose and grey eyes that wrinkled in the corners from too much squinting. A plain brown pair of work clothes hung loosely on their angular shoulders and hips, cinched up with a braided belt. Opposite, a light, almost transparent, billowing white gown draped over Juujee’s dark brown skin. Her wild hair tied up in a tall green band, she pulled at her ears and narrowed her far-set eyes.
“You look off today, Dez—what’s up?”
Dez groaned and adjusted the bench to accommodate their long skinny legs. “I’m fine, just—preoccupied,'' they mumbled, then declaratively with a forced smile, “You seem good!”
Juujee frowned, leaning forward; the mingling began with images of a flapping white demon phasing in and out of focus, then a smear of birdshit and the thumping rhythm of a repetitive drum. She looked confused and a little disturbed.
“What is all this? This—flying monster thing and the crap and the creepy drumming?” she prodded, lightly kicking Dez’s toes under the table.
“It’s not what it looks like—I can’t say exactly—let me tell you what happened—” Dez explained and tried to describe the weird bird event but could feel the Tads mistelling the story as they continued relaying other seemingly random information.
Juujee threw up her hands, stopping the narrative, “This co-mingle isn’t working, Dez—let’s try another time.”
She stood up and casually stuck her hand in the falling water behind her and flicked some at Dez in a playful motion, “See ya ‘round, lost or found,” she sang, walking toward the other tables looking for more agreeable partners.
Nobody knew the exact origin of the name Lost Council, but there is no shortage of stories. The history of the settlement is a bit unclear, though most agree it was an early example of how the post-thaw, post-flood migration led to new population pockets in out-of-the-way places.
The most common story passed down for generations tells the tale of a land rush queen, Mehetabel, and her entourage. After their descent into the river valley from the mountains in the east, they came across a slow-moving stream. Setting up camp overlooking the trickle of water, they spent the night. In the morning, the stream had tripled in size, and they were now encircled by water on an island of rock and sand. The resourceful tribe made good use of the river. The water was teeming with fish, and they spent the whole next day angling and smoking their catch.
Then, the following day, the river was even bigger. While they could look back and see the shore, the current was getting stronger, so Mehetabel met with her advisors, who all, fearful of being washed away, asked her to retreat and lead them back to the safety of the mountains. The rest of the tribe, flush with smoked fish, wanted to wait it out and stay until the swollen river receded when they could continue on their quest for arable land.
As Mehetabel pondered her next move, the council of three, suspecting she would side with her people, conspired to get rid of her while she slept and float her body away downriver. They would then wake up the following morning and lead the group back, away from the dangerous river that swept their queen away in the night.
In these pre-mingling times, deceit and manipulation were very effective unless exposed by conventional means. In this case, a child named Arly overheard the would-be assailants and reported back to Mehetabel. Alarmed and angry about the nasty plot, she planned a counter-attack and set her sleeping bag on a large boulder at the high point of the island, filled it with rocks and branches, then wrapped her scarf in a ball where her head would’ve been.
The wind and rain picked up that night, and the river started racing as the water level rose even more. Mehetabel hid behind a bush with her long staff and waited until the three loomed over her dummy, then quickly and quietly ran up, cross-checking them into the river where they were all swept away in the storm.
The next morning the tribe woke up to Mehetabel announcing that her council was lost in the torrent and this was an omen to never look back, to persevere, and to push for progress in all things. And though the river never receded, they did manage to raft across to the far shore, where they settled, farming the land, developing the gardens, and building the community of Lost Council.
Part 2 >>
That opening paragraph is a hell of a hook. Looking forward to part 2
Loving the vague tension and rhythm.