Trilogy of Shorts: Gnome Stories

By Ashley Parker Owens

Welcome to a land of mystery and magic. A world filled with the impossible yet perilously close to our own pasts.

For centuries, the hardworking gnomes have toiled under their obtuse ogre masters. Those in power grow stronger, while the weaker become dependent on the system draining them. Yet, despite their oppression, the

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ashley Parker Owens
• Release date: Nov 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781792381454

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Trilogy of Shorts:

Gnome Stories

Copyright © 2021

Ashley Parker Owens

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-1-7923-8145-4

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

Names, characters, places, incidents, and other details have been changed, altered, or fictionalized to protect the privacy of those involved or to ensure the author’s anonymity. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places of business, events, or locales is coincidental.

NOTICE OF RIGHTS

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author and publisher. For information permissions for reprints and excerpts, contact [e-mail].

Ceile

Ceile remembered every sensory impression she ever had, even from before her birth. Dark and silent inside her mother, her brain popped colors and language. Her body throbbed with her mother’s slow heartbeats, and her developing ears detected every giggle, chew, and slurp. Beyond the warm dark were hints of murmurs beyond.

The baby elephant squeezed out into the world amidst noise—her aunts trumpeting Ceileeee! Ceileeee!—and plopped to the ground. The tip of her tongue sought mammaries warm and slightly sour, and they encouraged her to stand to suckle sweet milk with her mouth. After her birth, her senses dulled but didn’t disappear. She noticed temperature changes. It was warm touching her mother, cold on the floor. The blotches of gold and cerulean hues still swirled about her vision as they did inside the womb. At night, the colors became murky and indistinct. In the sun, they washed out to a white void. She couldn’t recognize objects unless she could wander near them to caress and smell with her tongue. Chained in one location, her discoveries were limited.

Under the tent were many of her kind, and during the years of her childhood, they surrounded her, ashen wrinkly skin touching same, the smaller ones in the center safe. Inside her mother, she had felt protected. Enveloped within a circle of the herd was a different kind of sanctuary. Beyond her eyes, the gray of her family floated in musk. To conjure color, all she had to do was close her eyes, and it was as if she was back in her mother. Ceile always knew her mother’s location by her giggle.

During the day, life awed her. Ceile practiced for the big show in a silence punctuated with whistles and slaps and whip cracks. Colors swirled and danced, and her long nose captured odors of rotting meat, cat urine, and popcorn. They dressed her in long, pink foil strands at night, and the reflection of light shimmered with her movement. The crowd’s chaotic energy fed her need for appreciation, and watermelons satisfied her thirst for a job well done.

Ceile’s early life was the same length of time as she spent inside her mother. Once she stopped nursing, they trained her to stand on two feet. The practice frustrated her until she learned their voice commands. After that, she performed well and received cantaloupes as her reward. She loved her time in the training tent.

The day Ceile separated from the herd was fragmented. She awoke mid-sleep, the elephants restless. Nestled in the center, less smoke and fire came her way. Men led the elephants, trunk grasping tail, out of the tent and to a farm. Not all of them were there, and some were taken to another field. When they came for her, she had a feeling she wouldn’t return.

After a few days, she walked across a field. They coaxed her up a cracking, unstable ramp into a train. For weeks afterward, her mind stayed cloudy through stuffy, jiggling train rides. She walked painful distances alone with no others of her kind, led by workers. They traveled down paved roads with rigid structures, men and women staring, children shrieking. The paved roads hurt her feet. The chain remaining around her ankle clinked and rattled as she walked, and they attached her to poles or the ground when they stopped. Her mouth stayed dry, and her bulk slowly thinned. There wasn’t enough food or water to satisfy, and the isolation from her family of beasts exhausted her ability to concentrate. Her eyes itched and watered—a leftover sting from the smoke. Despite the offers of apples and bananas from the people lining the village streets, she ached for something other than sweets