{"id":1241,"date":"2026-08-06T12:06:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T12:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1241"},"modified":"2026-08-06T12:06:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T12:06:13","slug":"tributaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1241","title":{"rendered":"Tributaries"},"content":{"rendered":"
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You\u2019re reading our\u00a0Flash Fiction<\/strong> series, very short stories posted weekly during the summer.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cJust pretend,\u201d his mother said, \u201cthat you\u2019re under Lake Agassiz\u2014that big-ass ancient lake that doesn\u2019t exist no more but used to be huge, bigger than all the Great Lakes combined.\u201d She said shit like this all the time, before heading into the woods for the night, bound probably for the town and the bars, and he never knew how to take it. \u201cPretend,\u201d she\u2019d say, squeezing his cheeks and making hers big like a blowfish, \u201cthat you can breathe underwater.\u201d \u201cPretend, for just a little bit, that you don\u2019t exist,\u201d she\u2019d whisper, promising to be back soon. But this time she didn\u2019t say when she\u2019d be back.<\/p>\n

Read more Hiroshima<\/a><\/p>\n

The boy was a Freedom Baby. He had no citizenship, no government name. He was, as his mother explained to him many times, a conscript of statelessness. He was like a ghost, a drifting spirit brought up on the land, off the land. He never knew exactly why they lived out there in the middle of nowhere. He knew nobody but his mother, knew nothing of cousins or grandparents or friendship. His mom had told him once that they were defending the land, defending the silica sand, the finest there was in the world. It was like powder. It was all over the place, on the ground and in the grass. He liked to scoop it up in his hands and blow it into the air like dust. They never stayed in the same place for too long. Some nights he\u2019d be shaken awake in their little tent. \u201cThey\u2019re coming for us,\u201d his mother would say. \u201cThe miners and their police. They want this sand, and they\u2019ll kill us for it.\u201d And then they\u2019d gather their things and move to the next spot under a starry sky.<\/p>\n

She taught him that the sand was valuable. It was used to extract oil because it could penetrate the smallest of cracks. \u201cAgassiz,\u201d she\u2019d say, \u201cis still under us, giving us life, and if you dig far enough you\u2019ll hit fresh water. When these mining companies dig for the sand they corrupt the waters beneath us.\u201d He believed her, believed everything she told him. But, on nights when he couldn\u2019t sleep, he often saw her wander off into the damp woods with strange men. For some reason, these men glowed red as he looked at them, and he thought of the stories she\u2019d told him about vampires and wondered if they could see themselves in a mirror.<\/p>\n

Read more G.P.S. and the Lost Art of Getting Lost<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Recently, she\u2019d been going away for longer. She\u2019d started taking these pills, you see, pills in a bright orange bottle. He\u2019d seen pills before and knew that they were medicine, because there had been a time when he\u2019d had a fever, and his mother, with him in her arms, had raced into town to procure something that could cure him. The land couldn\u2019t do it. That one trip had taught him the way to other people, and he knew that if he ever needed medicine again he could go there, but it would take a whole day, or a whole night, of walking and fighting the bogs. He\u2019d asked her once why she needed medicine and if she\u2019d be O.K., and she\u2019d said only, \u201cHelps me breathe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo just pretend,\u201d she said, tucking him in to sleep, \u201cpretend that you\u2019re swimming and nothing else matters but swimming.\u201d But the boy waited, waited until she\u2019d left the small clearing of their camp and then followed her. He stepped quietly along a narrow path that he knew would split in two: one way leading to the town and the other to nowhere. It was this way that she went, not toward bars or medicine. It was dark, so he had to follow her sound, her shaky steps, and the eclipse her body made against the moonlit sky. He heard the wild cries and claws of lynx somewhere in the trees. As he walked, the ground became wet and his socks heavy with water. He knew that there were no bogs in these parts. He reached down and felt the water and it was coarse. He kept going, and it got deeper, until it opened up into a lake\u2014the whole of Agassiz, rising and crashing into rocks and trees, snapping off their branches. Ahead of him, his mother stopped, pressed the orange bottle to her lips, and drained whatever was in there. He could see the moon flickering on the water. He heard her crying out in the dark. He couldn\u2019t be sure if it was in sadness or joy or both. And then, in one motion, she dove into the lake, leaving small ripples on the surface. He waited a moment, holding his breath the way she\u2019d told him to, until Agassiz rose and covered his chest, and then he let it take all of him. The water was smoky with sand, silica, and in the distance he could see her drifting gently, her body at the mercy of Agassiz. He watched her, watched her limbs dancing in the hollowness of it. He kept his lips tight and his cheeks big, and eventually, like her, he stopped trying to swim and just floated.\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more The Godmother of the \u201cConspiracy Mom\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flash Fiction by Kyle Edwards: He heard her crying out in the dark. He couldn\u2019t be sure if it was in sadness or joy or both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\nTributaries - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1241\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tributaries - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Flash Fiction by Kyle Edwards: He heard her crying out in the dark. 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