Nestled between vast mountain ranges, there is a farmstead that runs itself. Floating scythes bring in the harvest. Brass machines drop grain into the water-turned mill. At its centre, in his study, the Dominus Arcani, possibly the most powerful of all the living magi, sits at his desk, leaning on one hand.
Before him is a piglyn, an invention of his own making, from just that morning in fact. It’s a potato with some cocktail sticks stuck in it, with a second, smaller potato stuck on one end for a snout. It waddles about on its stick legs, snuffling and grunting between the folds of ancient scrolls. The Dominus Arcani is faintly amused.
The kingdom to his south eagerly awaits his next great achievement; the construction of a portal that will allow for safe, instant passage across the wide ocean for thousands of people. They have been eagerly awaiting for almost ten years. The Dominus Arcani has yet to place a single component of the monstrously complex machine.
He has it mostly figured out. In theory. It’s all written down on bits of paper, scattered around his home. Over time, many of his ideas have changed and now his current thoughts don’t match with his old ones, so often the clear vision of what the portal is to be and how it is to function gets muddled in his mind. Often he feels so overwhelmed that he gives up for the day and makes little wonders like the piglyn, which leaves him feeling unaccomplished and adds to the mounting pressure he imagines. Then, the next day he feels even more overwhelmed.
He thinks now, watching the piglyn spill over a pot of ink and jump back, startled, that perhaps there’s more value in these little wonders he makes. At least for him. They make him happy, in a way. Reminds him he can still make things. Then he thinks, dimly, that no one in the kingdom will have much use for little potato pigs, and that the portal will be much more useful, so he should probably get to doing that.
But it's just so much work. So much expectation, most of all from himself. He stretches, leans back, and looks at the grains of sand ticking upwards in the hourglass on his desk. Noon. Better call this day a write-off and go bake some banana bread instead. He gives the piglyn a pat and rises from the desk.
Paddy Dobson
11th December 2020