The Grass is Always Greener
Flash fiction, 900 words. For IAM's Jan. 17 prompt. After a week's hiatus, I'm back!
The dwarf sat on a joist overlooking Snoweisse and tried to remember his name. Smoky? Wheezy? Grimy? No, it had been something joyous. Incompatible with this place.
Snoweisse stretched before him like a jagged mountain range of dark metal and sputtering lights. Mining this planet benefited from economies of scale. Not much room for a boutique dwarvish operation these days. The other six – what were their names? – had seen the iron in the wall early on and joined Charming, Inc., when there were still partners needed.
This planet had been a great opportunity – just not for him.
No matter. Today, he was going home. He’d eke out a living in the dinky little silver mine and be content to live in that meadow cottage. Most of the lady dwarves had found gainful employment on Snoweisse, but he was certain there were some like him who preferred the Old Country. He’d find one, and together they’d fill that sprawling home.
He stood carefully on the joist and sidled his way back to the scaffolding. It wasn’t that he resented or envied the others their success. Their old friend, formerly a princess, now a queen, and her royal husband had done good things for the dwarves.
Who’d known, back then, that the Mirror was a portal to a different planet, full of every kind of gem, mineral, stone, and metal? Who’d known that the more they mined, the less valuable it all became, requiring ever-more work to make the same profit? Who could have foreseen that the royals would’ve needed to carefully control output and commodity quantities, to ensure wages stayed high and continuous capital investment was possible?
The king and queen worked hard to make Snoweisse a place of opportunity for all. Why, in just twenty years, they’d managed to build mines all over the planet. Everything was efficient, profitable, safe, and logistical.
It was also, dirty, polluted, and sunless. Though the mines and caverns of Snoweisse were bounteous, the surface was inhabitable. Therefore, for the workers there was no dawn, no sunset, no day. They worked in eight-hour shifts in eternal night.
Better to go to the mine at sunrise, take a nice walk back home around four when the day was at its warmest, and tuck into a nice meal and a pint of ale as the sun sank beneath the forest hills. That was the life, that was. He hadn’t known it then, but he knew it now.
He made his way across the worksite and into the residential towers nearby. Dwarves were being born there who had never seen the sun. Some held that this was good. Oral histories, as well as records the queen had unearthed, suggested that their kind were once entirely subterranean, and this was simply a return to form.
Maybe, maybe. Maybe for his kind generally, but not for him.
He crossed a bleak stone arcade to the Hall of the Mirror. The eponymous apparatus was heavily guarded by armored men with gleaming poleaxes. This was, after all, the only way in or out of Snoweisse. An iron track had been laid across the arcade and into the portal. Dwarves led railcarts full of goods to the entrance of the hall, where men would accept it and bring it inside, and, he presumed, push it through the portal to the other side.
Dwarves weren’t allowed into the hall itself, for their protection, since the Mirror’s radiance burned their skin, but he was one of seven exceptions. Under the watchful eyes of the guards, he bundled himself in an old blanket and entered.
“Are you sure?” asked a guard kindly when he approached the Mirror. “By order of the queen, if you leave, you can’t come back. To avoid communicating diseases, etc.”
The dwarf was certain that was only one of many reasons. A constant flux of dwarves coming and going would throw production into chaos. And if there was one thing dwarves loathed, it was chaos. He understood. He did.
“It’s all been arranged,” he assured the guard. He showed him the paperwork imprinted with the royal seal. The contract clearly defined the constraints.
“This seems to be in order,” said the guard with a cursory glance. “Best of luck to you!”
The contract had specified the words the dwarf needed.
“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, time to cross with another haul!”
Anticipation flashing hot in his breast, the dwarf stepped through the portal.
What greeted him on the other side he didn’t recognize. Or rather, he did. For it was indistinguishable from Snoweisse.
He turned to an Earth-side guard, who wore silken robes and looked for all the world like a lady’s maid.
“Where’s the castle? Where’s the meadow and the forest?”
“Oh.” The maid waved her hand dismissively. “We had to do something with all that excess stone and iron, to keep trade prices up. Welcome back to Earth!”
The dwarf trudged toward the place where once the cottage had slouched, surrounded by apple trees, kitchen garden, and fields of flowers. Now, a sooty, windowless, featureless residential block loomed on its foundations.
He found a vacant cell and took a seat on a mass-produced stone bench. He closed his eyes and whistled in the dark for a long while.
Then he stood up, unhooked the pickaxe from his belt, and returned to the hall. After twenty years of hard luck, he was willing to risk seven years’ more.
Because he had a Mirror to smash.
"The other six – what were their names? – had seen the iron in the wall early on and joined Charming, Inc., when there were still partners needed." - great line, made me smile. You captured the melancholy/wistfulness of the prompt image with this story. I liked the contrasting remembrances of the old country with the new one. Great pidce.