Feelied: Tales of Imperica

By Jeffrey Arrington

A collection of tales about the imps, who are like fairies, but have golden skin and orange wings. This collection includes five stories and spans across hundreds of years.

Jasper Island: the story of a miner foreman's encounter with a loud-mouth naturist.

The Offender: an account, as recorded by a bard with a flair for the experimental, of one imp's crime, which was not crime, and the punishment that followed.

The Agent: a story emphasizing the importance of language as a conceptual devise and thought-aid, as explored through the story of an agent of the totalitarian Emperor as he deals with a band of nomads who "resist the aid of State".

The Voice of The Shogun: Penult, a loyal samurai imp, is faced with an impossible choice.

The Tax-collector: a story taking place in an anarcho-capitalist society, emphasizing the dangers of such extreme, runaway capitalism, corporatism.

Word-count:12,300

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312772366

Book preview

Feelied: Tales of Imperica

Tales of Imperica

Jasper Island

On an island, a small island off the coast of a larger one, in the imperial era, a hundred years before

the reformation that turned the empire into a business, the archipelago into its facility, and its

inhabitants into its employees; indeed, on that island, that peculiar one, the one where the rich and well-to-do vacation and the artists retire, and yet at the same time the dregs, the least well-paid of society work their backs out of line in order to mine jasper -marble of the imps- for the artisans to

make for the rich their tiles, bricks, blocks, statues, and whatever else; it is there on that island where we shall examine a most peculiar occurrence.

It was a hot, humid day, and the square where our story takes place had a perfect view of the sea to

the northeast. If you looked to the sea on that day, you would see the rolling waves far off in the

distance, kicking up the smell of salt into the air, and your peripherals would be filled with the trees of the forested island, those tall cypress trees, and likely you would hear the waves that came rolling in from the sea, crashing upon the steep bank not too far to the northeast of you. The imps did.

Some, on that very day, even went up to the edge of the cliff itself and out-looked over a vast,

churning sea, then they looked back to the northwest, where they saw, some ways off, the main island of the archipelago, where resided, in a massive palace, the Emperor of that land.

The imps had no fear of falling from heights -why would they? They had wings and could fly.

It was a noisy day, yes it was. People talked together in the square that day, and of what? Everything.

Philosophy. Politics. Myth. Legend. History. All of it at once, even, for sometimes it's all five the

same thing. And not a few imps that day were front-porching, sitting out in front of saloons, as well as the tea-houses that resembled huts, as they drank their wine, their tea, their wine in their tea, and what have you, discussing all the things that only the wealthy can afford to discuss.

One artist, well, someone who thought he was an artist anyway, set up his easel and paint-set and

began painting his view of the square and the sea beyond, minimalisticly coloring in the white jasper bricks that paved the square, and getting the shadow's trajectory totally out of synch with the angle of the sun. And those were just a few of his offenses to art. Never-the-less, somehow, beyond all logic

and reason, and despite there being better paintings and better painters, this particular painting became, in later days, one of the most respected and valuable pieces ever painted in the imp's empire.

The one thing that hack should have painted, but somehow didn't, was a lone cloud -I mean it was the only one in the whole sky, so lonely, so miniscule, off hovering over the sea.

It happened about four hours after noon, quitting time for the miners; that's when he came to the square. He was wearing a faded, dirty green robe. The sleeves were torn off, exposing his bony shoulders. The robe was draped over his emaciated, void like form. He was skinny. Not the result of diet, but naturally so. Genetics. Actually, his cadaverous body was the result of diet, but not a healthy one.

I mean now to say that there was a