Her Feral Figment

The rustic cottage’s kitchen rises from hot to sweltering as Fennel places raw meat into the rusted pan, creating a boisterous, viper-like hiss and a plume of acrid smoke. She sighs, already knowing what Mah’ will say.

“You’re burning the gruellow meat! Wake up!” Mah’ says on-queue with a cracked, quivering voice. Across the one-room cottage, the older woman lay within a burlap hammock under layers of burgundy blankets that make her a rotund lump despite her emaciated face. “I tell the girl, watch the heat when you cook gruellow. The meat’s all grease. It’ll burn. But does she listen? Never! Dense, she is.”

Rage and hurt bubble in Fennel’s throat. She stirs as her mind switches to autopilot. Out the window, the furious sun sets over the drought-ridden, dead fields of red dirt. Hulking extractors sit in perpetual idleness, resembling rusted combines with spider-like attachments that once dug deep gashes into the land – back when it was still their land and not an abandoned requisition of the Coalition. 

Fennel falls down a deep well of thought, but it’s not a memory she visits. She creates a scene of Mah’, but not Mah’, kneeling in the dirt alongside Pah’ and her two young children. She’s young, hair still chestnut, with bright, vibrant eyes. She cracks open a rock and reveals a lemon-shaded powder inside. She palms the powder and sprinkles it onto the ground—white flowers sprout where it lands. Young Fennel and Chervil squeal, and the mother laughs with delight. It is Mah’, but not Mah’. Instead, this is Mawlee — the version of her mother of which Fennel dreams. 

A sharp, red burn rips her back to reality as her sweated hand brushes against the pan’s metal. Yelping, she grabs a damp rag and presses her hand, but the pain remains. A wooden chest the size of a small bread loaf hides in the nearby cupboard. Fennel plucks a small, crude rock from inside, cracks it open like an egg, and pours out an aquamarine powder onto her burn. The pain fades, and Fennel even manages a smile.

“A damned waste of meir. You act like an endless supply of it’s still out in that field for the taking. As if they didn’t gut this place,” she continues.

“Come on, Mah’, that hurt like hell. I just used one,” Fennel says, smile fading.

Mah’ then waves her left arm. Lines of scar tissue spiral downward from wrinkled fingers. “You think they put meir on my arm when it got stuck in the extractor? Nope. Wasn’t

meant for the meir farmer’s daughter. And I survived. Meir’s not meant for us housekeepers. It’s meant for those who can use the stuff. Like my Pah’, your Pah’, and sweet Chervil.”

 As Mah’ rambles, Fennel stirs with a wooden spoon, and a vision splashes in her mind. Mawlee fusses over her daughter’s burn, running cold water over her singed hand and bathing it in rich, cerulean meir.

“Oh dear, you’re going to be alright, my lula-lilly. You’re going to be alright,” Mawlee says.

“Mah’, you know, I can use meir. I watched Pah’ teach Chervil. I practiced on my own,” Fennel says as she places the gruellow meat into earthenware bowls. She sneers at the sight of it, but it’s the best she could do with such poor meat. “I was pretty good at it.”

“You might’ve had a knack for it when you were a girl, just like I did, but it’s not for us.”

“Doesn’t have to be like that,” Fennel says, her voice shrinking, smoldering with an internal fire hot enough to incinerate.

Another vision comes. Mawlee and Fennel sit atop the Ulcenick Realm’s rocky mountainscapes, a cool wind spraying light rain over them. 

“Breathe, lula-lily,” Mawlee says. “Feel the meir in the soil. Feel its power.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way?” Mah’ yells, dissolving Fennel’s fantasy. “You don’t have the head for it. Can’t even cook gruellow. Besides, it was that way for my Mah’, me, and it’s that way for you. And it’s that way for all the women in the Ulcenick Realm. Get used to it, Gal.”

Mah’s face is as worn as the parched land, eyes as hard as the meir stones she’s been forbidden to use. Fennel wonders if there’s any hope of a better life hidden away in there, buried under years of strife and bitterness. Or, perhaps, Mah’ likes this place she’s set herself in. Regardless, Fennel knows better than to ask. 

_ _ _

Fennel and Mah’ sit in the humid cottage in silence at the barrel-turned-table. All throughout the house, Fennel sees chores waiting. The floors to scrub. The sound of the gruellows outside that need their feed. Mah’s sponge bath. Fennel shivers at the thought. Yet Mah’ winces at some internal pain.

“Eat,” Fennel says. “It’ll help you feel better.”

“Not hungry,” Mah’ says.

“You gave me all that grief about burning the food and now–”

“Shut your mouth!” Mah’ says with a shrill yell.

Fennel slams down her hand onto the table and buries her face. She holds back a flood of rage-fueled retorts and fire. What would happen if she let her thoughts out into the world? What if her ideas became action and substance? She doesn’t think Mah’ could handle it.

“Fennel,” Mah’ says with a voice that begins to echo a tone of panic.

She looks at her mother, and her anger shifts to concern.

“Get me the meir. The pain is killing me,” Mah’ says.

New outrage blossoms inside Fennel. Yet before she can speak up, Mah’ whips her bowl of food against the wall in a spasm. A splash of brown meat streaks down the wall as she releases a long, hoarse moan. Fennel isn’t sure if the incident is a tantrum or a convulsion from pain. 

“Dammit all, help me, Fennel,” Mah’ screams.

Fennel rushes to the meir and cracks open a rock. Yet before returning to Mah’, she sees through the window a singular light beaming in the field and a figure approaching the cottage.

“Bring it here!” Mah’ yells.

“Someone’s coming,” Fennel says.

“It ain’t a Coalition cruiser, is it?” Mah’ says.

But before Fennel can reply, a booming male voice pierces the cottage’s shoddy walls.

“Where’s my welcome party?” he says.

Mah’ shifts from painful desperation to total elation in an instant. She jolts upward, gripping the table’s edge with white-knuckled passion. She stares wide-eyed at Fennel, who’s more apprehensive than excited.

“It’s your brother. It’s my Chervil,” Mah’ gasps. “He’s come home.”

The door flings open, and a tall, young man strolls in, arms extended. He wears a long, gray trench coat with “C.M.R.” in bright red sewed onto the right breastplate.

“Well, this place hasn’t changed,” he says with a chuckle.

Mah’ shrieks and hobbles over to Chervil and hugs him so tight that Fennel suspects one of them will break.

“My boy’s come home,” Mah’ says, tears streaming down her face.

_ _ _

Mah’ and Chervil sit at the table as Fennel scrubs the wall from the shattered bowl of food. Fennel hardly says a word, unsure how to look at her brother without throttling him for leaving her alone with their mother.

“No, I can’t stay more than a night,” Chervil says. “I’m heading from the Thimblerook Realm to the Yaladan Realm, and I figured I could spend the night on this dead rock,” Chervil says, winking at Fennel, who ignores him. His face shifts from cheeky to concerned.

“Always so eager to leave me,” Mah’ says. “Look at that awful trench coat. What do “M” and “R” stand for again? You know ’round these parts, we just call those nasty folk the Coalition. Up and taking our land, and meir, and, now, our sons.” Her Ulcenick accent flairs.

Chervil’s cocky demeanor deflates while tension rises. Fennel feels it every time Chervil returns. She sighs, knowing that when hel leaves Mah’ will be crueler than before he came.

“You know it’s the Coalition of Meir Realms. Don’t act dumb for my sake.” Chervil’s teeth are already beginning to grit at his mother.

Mah’ giggles like a child caught with a cookie behind her back.

“I just like to make my baby feel smart,” Mah’ says.

“Well, don’t. Please,” Chervil says.

Fennel envisions Mawlee, Chervil, and herself laughing until tears stream down their faces. Mawlee squeezes both of them tight and with a warmth Fennel’s never known. The cottage smells like roasted coffee from the Thimblerook Realm, and there’s actual, real bread and butter from the Sampeah Realm.

Yet, in reality, silence falls over the cottage. Chervil shifts in his seat and dons a faux smile. He looks down at his bowl of gruellow and stabs a piece of meat.

“What is it?” Mah’ says. “It’s the food. I know. Doesn’t compare to when you were little, but your sister, she doesn’t–”

“That’s not the problem—the food’s great. Fennel cooked wonderfully,” Chervil says, looking at Fennel, who stops cleaning enough to watch the spectacle. “Thank you for everything you do, sister.”

Chervil takes the meat-soaked rag from Fennel’s sore hands and starts to scrub the wall. Tears crest in her eyes, but she has so much anger that she can hardly see straight. 

“Oh, of course!” Mah’ says. “I’d die without her. All I have, you know? It’s just her out here. No one else. She does so much for me.”

And with that, Fennel can’t take another second in her presence. It’s all just too much. She escapes the cottage and runs into the torrid night.

“Dammit to hell, Mah’,” she hears Chervil say before the wooden door slams.

She sprints away, screaming profanities. 

She’s finally done it, she thinks. She broke me.

Fennel reaches the gruellow pen. Red dirt covers the horse-sized beasts’ boarish bodies, and they hardly notice her pounding a fence post with her bare fists, screaming into the night. They’re too busy enjoying a salt-lick with their six-foot tongues.

Out in the distance, she hears her mother and brother.

“She doesn’t listen. She’s terrible to me,” Mah’ says.

“That’s not true. Fennel’s a wonderful daughter. You’ve always treated her like garbage!”

“Why can’t you just stay here with us? Why did you have to go off and do the damn Coalition’s grunt work? Your father’s rolling in his grave seeing you wearing that uniform.”

“I’m not staying on this dead farm. Fennel shouldn’t haven’t to, either.”

“And what about me? What do you plan to do with me? Feed me to the gruellows? At least then I’d be with your father again.”

Fennel runs into the empty field, trying to flee from the sound, maybe even the whole entity, of Mah’. Then, she sees Chervil’s cruiser, sitting dark in the dead field. 

Stars bleed through the night. Passing cruisers create lines of light in the heavens  as if that’s the only place life should be. It was no wonder to Fennel that Chervil was willing to do anything, anything, to get out there. Even join the Coalition. Despite trying, she can’t blame him.

The cruiser reminds her of a fifteen-foot chrome cocoa pod. It hangs open, and Fennel wonders how many violations Chervil committed by leaving it unlocked. The interior emits a sterile light, revealing a cockpit, cargo section, and a station of transparent compartments containing various meir.

Fennel gasps as she brushes her hand across the different meir containers, each one’s name etched in bronze plaques. 

Ghr’Azzek-Mari, Origin: Traiis Realm. Function: Water purification. 

Juthe’Bli Finn, Origin: Febris Realm. Function: Accelerated fauna growth.

Ghr’Eza, Origin: Thimblerook Realm. Function: Flora control. 

Fennel’s hand stops at one, whose container wasn’t glass, but metal. 

Ghr’ Azellis, Origin: Ulcenick Realm. Function: Thought materialization. Discretion advised.

Her mind flashes a real memory this time, back to Pah’, before the Coalition takeover. Extractor machines hummed in the churning fields behind him, the sun barely risen. He knelt in the dirt with Chervil. Fennel sat on the side and watched. Pah’ grabbed a geode from the soil, cracked it against a jagged stone, and revealed an aquamarine meir.

“Which one’s this?” he said.

Chervil doesn’t respond.

“Ghr’ Salbe. The healer,” a young Fennel said, chiming in.

“Good, Fennel,” Pah’ said.

He cracked another. An orange powder poured onto his calloused palm.

“Chervil? We’ve been through this.”

Chervil pursed his lips, avoiding Pah’s gaze as if he was the unfiltered sun. Pah’ sighed and rubbed his face.

“Fennel?”

“It’s Ghr’ Sathe. The cultivator,” she said.

“Get out of here. It’s not your lesson. Go play with your imaginary friend,” Chervil hisses.

Pah’ cracked another.

“You get a wallop on the ear if you don’t get this one,” Pah’ said before opening the rock. Yet then he gasped when a dark purple powder poured out. He jolted up, and the children followed.

“Well,” Pah’ said in amazement. “This is a rare one. Kids, meet Ghr’ Azellis. The thought materializer.”

Pah’ straightened himself out, gripped the meir, and closed his eyes.

“I’m thinking of a lula-lily,” he said.

His face twisted with focus. The two children looked at each other with uncertainty. Soon, the powder trembled and sparked. A light ignited from the powder, and a fully bloomed, blue lily arose. Pah’ became winded and plopped to the ground.

“Boy, does that trick drain yah. It takes someone with real meir-worker promise to master materialization,” he said, winking at Fennel, cruelly sowing a dream into a fresh mind that didn’t consider the world’s barriers.

Fennel pulls the metal drawer out and grabs a handful of meir. There are consequences to this, she can feel it, but her desperation for things to get better has created an unbridled indifference. She feels the powder is already warming. Somehow, it doesn’t drive fear. It feels right. 

She stands outside the cruiser in the once-bustling fields, holding a magic that had long ago left. She closes her eyes and concentrates on Mawlee and all the scenarios created over the years. The imaginary love, the imaginary caring, the imaginary heart. It had to be better than this malnourished life. 

The powder sparks and flares. Fennel recalls how focused Pah’ was when he summoned a single flower. To create an actual person, she’ll have to burn every inkling of energy she has. She envisions Mawlee’s physicality, her voice, her warm touch. The light expands and swirling ribbons form a figure, still and solitary. Fennel feels hope. Finally, hope for a better life.

 Then, she hears Mah’ scream at the top of her lungs from the cottage, “You owe me everything, you both do. You have no right to talk to me like that, boy!” 

Fennel’s thoughts sour so quickly that she screams in anger. She tries with panic to reroute her corroding focus. Yet dabs of spiraling red taint the light.

“Mawlee, it’s me,” Fennel yells at the figure.

The figure steps forward, and there she is—a loving, energetic version of Mah’ with a soft smile.

“My girl,” Mawlee says, embracing Fennel. “My lula-lilly.”

Tears flow from Fennel’s eyes. Her lip quivers with never-formed sentiments. Her knees nearly buckle.

Then, Mah’ screams again in the distance. Crimson light washes over Mawlee’s body.

“I don’t understand,” Mawlee says. “Sweetheart, what’s happening?”

Fennel tries to erase the whole world from existence and only focuses on this new being she conjured. Yet soon, Mawlee keels over and groans in pain. Her cries become distorted growls.

“Mawlee!” Fennel says, bending down to see if she’s hurt.

Yet she backs away when Mawlee hisses and doubles in size. Her shoulders heave. She growls the bestial, boar-like cry of a gruellow.

“Fennel!” a twisted voice says behind the mutating, crimson light. “What’s happening? She did this, didn’t she?”

Finally, Mawlee rises, and Fennel screams so loud that her throat seems to crack. Large, barbed tusks protrude from the thing’s face. Its eyes, black and feral. Skin, raw and red. Its arms and legs crack in half and form spider-like appendages. The monstrosity keeps morphing. It runs right by Fennel and rushes toward the cottage. 

When Fennel catches up to Mawlee, the thing is already at the gruellow pen. The animals screech as the thing rips chunks of fencing from the ground. Some gruellow manage to escape, but Mawlee’s arachnid appendages spear most and deliver them to the beast’s fanged maw. With each thing it eats, Mawlee grows. Spirals of scorpion tails exude from the shifting mass. Bird wings sprout and flap. Chunks of human anatomy intertwine themselves into the mass.

“Please, listen,” Fennel says, gasping for breath. “There’s more meir. I can fix you.”

Mawlee laughs, deep and guttural. 

“No worries, baby,” a monstrous voice says. “I’m just building myself up. Once I’m finished, I’ll take care of our pest.”

“Pest?” Fennel says.

“Mah’, of course,” it says.

“You can’t eat her!” Fennel says.

“I’m saving you from that monster!” Mawlee says as it swallows another gruellow. It’s nearly double the height of the cottage now.

Finally, Chervil runs out of the cottage. He nearly falls over when he sees Mawlee.

“Holy hell,” he screeches. “What did you do?”

“I, I,” she says. Fear and shame washing over her.” “I used Ghr’ Azellis to materialize Mawlee.”

“Mawlee?” he says in confusion, but the memory of his sister’s imaginary mother must’ve come back because a sad, guilty look falls over him.

“Well, clearly, we’re not in the right mindset for that, are we?” he says, as the screeching of the beast gets louder.

“Chervil, it’s coming for Mah’,” Fennel says.

He nods, almost as if he isn’t entirely against the idea.

“Here’s the deal,” he finally says. “You created it, and only you can stop it. I’ll get Mah’ out of here. You head back to my cruiser and get Fri’ Neddis Dra, the dissolver. It’s a yellow, muddy meir. All you have to do is throw it on the thing, and its integrity will collapse.”

“I’m so sorry, Chervil,” Fennel says, turning for the ship.

“Fennel,” Chervil says, looking at his heartbroken sister. “I’m the one who’s sorry.”

It’s enough to be said.

Fennel sprints to the cruiser and scans the meir compartments. She finds the container for the dissolver meir and grabs the whole clump. Yet before she leaves, she can’t stop herself from pocketing just a bit more of the materializer meir.

Half a moon illuminates the hot night. She sprints back toward the gruellow pen and cottage, where squeals and twisted howling echo. She can’t fathom life after this. Mah’ will never stop her barrage of vile verbal bile now. Her insults and demands and bashing will go on forever. Still, though, she can’t let her just be eaten by her creation.

She finally sees Mawlee now, and the massive, shifting beast is over forty feet tall. All the gruellows are gone, and it had reached the cottage. Mole-like claws grind off chunks of the roof and walls. Feral sounds emit from the beast as a variety of creature-like heads form.

“Mawlee!” Fennel yells. “You can’t do this.”

Without turning, a head and shoulders rise above the mass. It looks like Mawlee from dreams but bloated like a corpse, just mutated enough to nauseate Fennell.

“Hello, dear,” it says in a hundred unified, scraping voices.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Fennel says, tears streaming down her bright red face. She’s not crying out of fear. She knows Mawlee isn’t going to hurt her. She supposes it’s because her creation, her attempt at happiness, is failing in such a profound way. Because, despite everything she’s been through, she still won’t get the mother she’s always hoped to have.

“All I want is to make you happy,” Mawlee says. “You should be happy.”

It makes Fennel’s lip tremble. 

She thinks back to the very beginning, a memory somehow she’s held onto longer than she should’ve. Still trying to form words, she waddled up to Mah’ and bubbled out “Mawlee” in a failed attempt to say “Mommy.” Mah’ bent down, overheated from kitchen heat, and slapped Fennel’s face so hard that a deep purple mark lingered for days.

“I ain’t Mawlee. Or Mommy. You call me Mah’ in Ulcenick fashion,” Mah’ said, turning away, with her child screaming on the floor. 

Fennel remembered that pain and would hold onto it when she created her own mother, one that she’d be able to call whatever she wanted. One she could go to when her real one failed her.

In the distance beyond the cottage, Fennel sees Chervil carrying a squirming, screaming Mah’ out of her house.

“Where’s Fennel? What did that thing do to her?” Mah’ screams.

Mawlee whips around, snarling, at the sight of Mah’ and charges.

“Please, just leave her alone. I don’t want to use this dissolver,” Fennel yells.

The beast bellows, its face morphing from an older woman to a flaming, skeletal dragon, eyes flaming like the sun.

As if the only sound left in the world, Mawlee screams to penetrate Mah’s core, “You hurt Fennel!”

It’s the last thing Mawlee can say before Fennel throws the clump of dissolver meir. It dissipates into a massive billow of gray ash that blankets everything. It scalds Fennels’ skin, and at first, she cringes, but she then feels the underlying dying magic, like embers in drowned ash. She still hears an echo of Mawlee’s cooing voice calling her lula-lilly. She feels all the energy she poured into Mawlee, all the hurt and repression that led her to create such a thing, and, just as the ash settles enough to see the shimmering starlight above, she can finally see what’s next.

Fennel walks without waver toward Chervil and Mah’, who murmurs nonsense. She raises her left hand, and the ash starts to fly off the three of them. Chervil looks at her in shock. 

Chervil tries to say, “How can you control the ash? It shouldn’t have enough energy for an untrained–”

“Look at me, Mah’.” Fennel’s voice now resembles the thunder of the clouds that no longer come to Ulcenick. It’s enough to shock Mah’ out of her rambling. 

Fennel hunches down and looks Mah’ square in the eye. 

“Do you know what this is?” Fennel says, revealing a fistful of materializer meir.

“Meir,” Mah’ says in a scolded child’s low, submissive tone.

“What kind of meir?” Fennel asks.

“I don’t know, Fennel,” Mah’ says.

“You wouldn’t,” Fennel says. “This is Ghr’ Azellis, the materializer meir. It’s native to the Realm where you wasted your whole life. It’s what created that thing of which I just saved you.”

The ash that’s remained of Mawlee hovers above them now, and with a thought, Fennel turns it into rain. 

“My God, Fennel,” Chervil says with a quiver in his voice as the sizzle of the rain bashing the hard soil takes over. 

Fennel ignites the purple materializer.

“Mah’,” Fennel says. Her mother looks up, tears beading at the corner of her wizened eyes.

“I will create a cruiser. I will sit in that cruiser, leave the Ulcenick Realm, and never, ever return. You can stay in whatever’s left of that house behind us, or you can come with me.”

“Now, listen,” Mah’ tries to say.

“But here’s the thing,” Fennel says, locking eyes with her mother, holding her gaze captive, letting just an inkling of the rage that Mah’ has cultivated and bred over years and years leak out just enough to make the abuser tremble. “You can come. But you will never have a say in where I go.”

The materializer meir blazes with a brilliant light and begins to form the shape of a cruiser. Fennel looks up at the pouring rain that now fills the gashes of the fields. She can still feel the energy and mouths, “Thank you, Mawlee,” to the figment one last time.

About the Author