Twin Towers

Posted on by under fantasy, fiction, flash fiction

Taslicay Turkey

Taşlıçay, Ağrı, Turkey © Google Maps

Once there lived a beloved taen who ruled well.  When she gave birth to twin daughters, everyone rejoiced at the good omen.  The taenasses grew to be as wise as their mother and as kind as their father.

Then their father died.  Debilitated by grief, the taen succumbed to the deceitful charms of Haenan, and married him.

Haenan could not fool the taen for long. Soon, she fell into a mysterious coma. Blaming the taenasses, Haenan locked them in two towers–separated, for everyone knows the great magic twins can do, that none can do alone.

The sisters communicated with secret hand-signs across the great distance until one day, they were ready.  Casting in unison, they bent the towers closer until they touched hands, and floated down to the courtyard.

The crowd, hearing the clear truth of their testimony, banished Haenan.

The taenasses resuscitated their mother, and peace reigned again.

Word count: 150.  Written for this week’s What Pegman Saw challenge.  This is a great photo challenge, because you can scroll around the Google Maps image of the featured location and find any number of inspiring sights!  I would encourage any writers reading this to join in.  Click on the link to read other stories inspired by this location, and to write your own.

This story originally had a much darker ending, but it turned out that the happy ending helped me cut more words…  Also, you’ll just have to imagine that the towers were too far apart for them to shout, because I couldn’t squeeze in the bit about the silence spell that Haenan used to try to keep them from telling anyone the truth.

World-building note: In Pyann, women and men rule equally. A taen is roughly equivalent to a (gender-neutral) king, and a taenass is any child of the taen.  Twins, especially identical twins, are considered very special and blessed in Pyanni culture, and feature as heroes in many legends.  Twin taenasses would be expected to rule jointly and equally when the time came.

 

23 thoughts on “Twin Towers”

    • LOL, I loved the Wonder Twins. And I’ve long since accepted that I can’t possibly write anything that won’t remind someone of something else: there just aren’t any unique images left. I went back and forth between titling this one Twin Towers and Two Towers, knowing that either would remind readers of totally unrelated references.

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    • That’s exactly what I was thinking! In the longer version I’d imagined, it took them a while to work out the sign language, because they only started with a few of those secret signs. But for space reasons, I ended up zipping over that. Thanks for your comment, Crispina!

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    • Thanks Karen, glad it came across so well! Sometimes the photo prompts inspire a story for which I have to create something new — a new tradition or holiday, say — which is great for world-building. The Pyanni fascination with twins is something that arose early on, but I don’t think it’s come up in any of these flash fiction pieces, so it’s great to be able to showcase it.

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  5. Dear Joy,

    This is one of my favorites of yours. And who doesn’t like a happy ending from time to time? My daughter in law is an identical twin and they definitely have a special love language. I love the way you’ve built this fantasy world and have kept it consistent in its unique “reality.” Just curious. How do you function in every day mundane life? 😉

    Shalom,

    Rochelle

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    • Thanks, Rochelle, it’s so nice to hear this one really resonated with you! The consistency of the world building is hard to keep track of at times. I have a system, but it can get fragmented, and I just *hope* I haven’t messed anything up yet. In my every day mundane life, I’d like to think I function pretty well — I just do my best impression of a “normal, adult-type person” until I can escape back to Eneana. 🙂

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    • Just notes, although at this point, I hesitate to call them “good” because they desperately need to be reorganized and updated! I have several documents, e.g., one for religions and deities, one for races and monsters, one to keep track of all the names I use in my stories and which culture they belong to, but it’s the big “World” document that desperately needs overhauling. I like using Open Office Writer because the Navigating pane is so great for finding and moving headings and subheadings, but Word is finally starting to catch up on that.

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    • Thanks Kelvin! With so few words, it’s hard to show anything; I always feel like I’m tell-tell-telling. But then, that usually works well with a classic fairy tale / legend style. And oh, the pruning! The first draft of this one came out just over 190 words, and that was already skipping half the stuff I’d imagined.

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