The sorcerer-engineer works in fractions, one of twenty-eight, one of five, one of thirty-three. Each day dawns with a three-percent solution until his magic reaches effulgence. He watches through his crystal ball as shaft of lights whittle at the grendel like wood from a carving or clay upon the wheel until nothing is left but a pile of dross to be buried beyond the wall.
No monument will mark the grendel's standing save the scars across her side. She will never see its body, never touch it, never know it is well and truly dead. Though its arm was nailed to the central pillar of her hall, she will always wonder how the monster could survive such a grievous wound and still drag itself toward home. She remains uncertain whether scattered kin will rise to demand a wergeld, whether its mother will swear vengeance before raising a retributive army of her own.
High in his tower, the sorcerer-engineer drops clear, cold marbles into a boiling cauldron to reflect on the patterns that emerge. Most shatter internally with a resounding crack but do not come apart. The sudden change brings beauty in the imperfections, a spiderweb of fractures refracted through the glass. He reads the sparkling veins like the lines of love and life etched into her palm.
She relies on his assessment. Like the captain-general, she works with her hands and does not practice magic, unless in the way that farmers do as they encourage the earth to grow. Or the Buddhist mage who transplants rather than terminates life, whether newly sprouted, green and out of place or many-legged and wandering astray. Perhaps in these simple actions, she has been buying back her own life one fraction at a time.
Fractions descend like fragments from a shattered ornament. Broken shards tumble from our eyes like the scales of a translucent dragon. Alternating days of war and peace, of mirth and woe, gift and loss flash and circle in the falling light. One by one, they trickle into our hands where we piece them back together to create a whole, a new beginning.
© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III
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Radiation treatment is divided into fractions. Before treatment begins, the radiation oncologist calculates the doses necessary. There are 33 fractions, divided into 28 broad doses with protons, then a boost of 5 finely targeted doses with electrons.
One of the worst things about cancer treatment is that you never really know whether it’s been completely successful or not. Unlike, say, wiring a knee back together where you know it worked when you can walk, in cancer treatment you are looking for a negative result, of the disease not coming back. That uncertainty of whether treatment has succeeded or failed can be the hardest to live with day to day.
When I was a kid, my sister did a craft project that involved dropping clear, glass marbles into boiling water to get them to fracture but not come apart. She then glued them together to form little animals. I remember being fascinated by the patterns of fractures in the marbles as she did this. Like snowflakes, no two ever seemed to come out the same. Somewhere in my mind, fractions and fractures mixed and this is what came out.
Picture notes: This is a quartz crystal globe we picked up some years ago that sits in the corner cabinet of the library. Karen loves anything made from glass or minerals. I am still fascinated by the fractures and the way they shine in sunlight.
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