Foundation

Her scarlet hair whipped around in the wind. She bit her lip slightly as she concentrated. She waved her hands delicately as the water broke the banks of the river. A great torrent of water gushed toward me. I wanted to run.

Thud, thud, thud.

My heart beat suddenly in my chest. Was this going to be how I died? Again. At the last moment, the water curved away from me and deposited itself inside the metallic tank next to me.

Not this time eh? I breathed a sigh of relief. Job done, she bounded toward me. My heart gave another lurch. Quite a different one this time. I must look like such a wreck. She grabbed my shoulder. She squeezed it. But I barely felt it. I was dazzled by her radiant smile. She leaned close and spoke.

“ You didn’t budge at all, cool as always.”

Now at this point, I felt my heart was about to explode. What was she trying to do soak me?

“ Ah there it is, Mr Iceman cracks.”

I turned away from her and withdrew the firestone from my pocket. Inserted it into the notch below the tank. The stone glowed read and…

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Steam rose out of the tank and it shot forwards. Applause rang out. Layla’s display of water magic inspired barely a nod of the head. My glowing stone, ordinary. But a steam engine? To the people of this place, it was something incredible. It was..a little too good. The engine hurtled across the end of the makeshift track and toward the crowd. Before I could think about it my body moved. The crowd scattered. I stood in front of it, my hands held out. My whole body, chilled. Now I was an iceman, but Layla wasn’t laughing this time. The engine smacked into me. A familiar sensation of hot metal. Of blinding speed. But it was the engine that moved and not me. I lifted it like a toy. The engine screeched pathetically as I held it aloft. There was quiet and then…

SPLASH.

“ I finally got you,”

 

Layla said. A smile played across her lips as I set the smouldering engine down. What had I gotten wrong with the calculations? I started to run through all the possible problems when a warm hand grabbed mine.

“ We’ll try again tomorrow,” 

.It hadn’t worked, I was sure it would. It could have hurt a lot of people.“ Listen Louis we’ll make them stand a bit further back, but we’re so close I can feel it. Now let’s take a break and get some lunch.”I wasn’t sure how she knew we were close. She hadn’t even known what a steam engine was a few months ago. But then, a few months ago I wouldn’t have been able to lift a steam engine with my bare hands. I hadn’t even been in this body at all.

***

I lived with my parents in a copy-paste apartment in the cheap part of town. No one would have been surprised to see a train. Though steam had long given way to electricity. Taken for granted by the people who used it.

I was somewhat of an enthusiast. I could barely lift my schoolbag, let alone an engine. But what I did have was deft hands, plenty of free time and a love of model making. It hardly endeared me to my schoolmates though. They had long since stopped trying to engage me as I worked on diorama after diorama. It was the only time I felt comfortable. In my small, mousy former body. My silence was taken as arrogance, or else my lack of response made people uncomfortable.I can easily spiral into self-doubt, but I know for a fact that I can get a little carried away and that’s when I get careless. My deft hands, overshoot and all my hard work go to pieces. I think that’s why I died.

There was this little model village I had been building. My most ambitious project yet. I was making everything bespoke. The tumbledown tavern. A temple topped with a stone dragon. I normally made scale replicas. But something had called to me. I had been dreaming of it off and on for months now.I should have waited until morning. But I just couldn’t wait. My mother had been into my room to tidy and must have knocked the lid off my glue. It had dried out while I had been at school. If I hurried I could get to the shop before closing…

I didn’t see what killed me, but you can guess. Hot metal, a flash of pain and then…I had awoken.

 My body felt strange. An appalling smell filled my nostrils. I sat bolt upright. My hands moved to wipe my eyes and I realized they weren’t my own. I felt a jolt of panic. A nightmare? Or something else.

“ Hey! Are you awake?”

I opened my eyes. I was in a barn of some sort. I moved forward and looked down to the ground floor. A boy with raven black hair and pointed ears looked back at me. Next to him a gigantic red bird, let out a furious caw.

I knew two things at that point. That I wasn’t in my world any more, and where that appalling smell had come from.