Dispatches from the Splinters of My Mind

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In the shadowed sprawl of the junkyard, she stirred—wings of flayed brass and splintered steel rattling against the wind. Once, a brilliant engineer had built her to fly, not for war but for wonder. That was a long time ago. The world had since taught her sharper lessons.

Years had stripped her down to bone-metal. Rust ate her joints. Rain chewed the wires in her spine. Scavengers tore away the delicate things first—the fingers, the fine clockwork at her heart’s center—until she patched herself with jagged plates and stolen screws. She carried the smell of oil and ozone, the hum of barely-contained voltage.

The night was still until it wasn’t. A sound—thin, panicked—threaded through the skeletal heaps. She tilted her head, antennae twitching to catch the echo. There, between the carcass of a burned-out truck and a tower of split engines, a child huddled in the metal rot.

Her eyes flared—twin disks of molten gold. The child froze, unsure if the thing before them was a savior or a trap.
Do not fear, she said, though her voice came as a tremor in the air, the hiss of electricity through frayed coils.

She took the child’s hand in her cold, jagged grip. Together they moved toward the fence line, her battered wings shivering sparks into the dark.

At the edge, the child looked back. In the flicker of failing light, they saw her for what she truly was—patchwork predator, guardian by choice or by compulsion, hard to tell which.

Tomorrow, the child would go home. Tonight, the fairy lingered in the junkyard’s breath, eyes still burning, waiting for the next cry to find her.

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Author’s Note:
First splinter on the wire. Dispatches from the Splinters of My Mind will drop in from time to time—standalone flashes sparked by a single image, no two alike. You’ll know them when you see them.