Arynne
Salmon of Doubt
The last thing Mitty saw was the ceiling crashing down on her.
She had gone back into the blazing building to look for two of her young students, but only succeeded in finding one. As she sprinted for the door with the half-conscious child in her arms, she heard the screeching, groaning, snapping sound above and realized instinctively what it meant. Bracing herself, she hurled the little boy with all her might and saw him fly out the doorway and tumble to the ground amidst the frightened crowd of students and teachers who had already made it outside. Then she looked up.
Briefly, Mitty’s life flashed before her eyes -- a short but wearying existence struggling to “make a difference”, to inspire a love of learning in restless children in the hopes that the lesson might actually sink in for a few of them. The hard work, the loneliness, the feeling that there must be something more that she was missing. She thought, Well, I made a difference for one boy. At least that’s something. Then, the ceiling came down.
What followed after was too strange for her ever to relate to another person, even the ones like herself, who might have understood. She died while sitting peacefully in a children’s playground. She died standing between her younger sister and a group of thugs. She died on the stage of a great auditorium, as the blood from her ruined lungs stained her costume. She died and she died and she died.
And she lived.
A long life of apathetic service as a clerk, followed by a sudden burst of passionate dedication that led her to help build a playground for local children when diagnosed with cancer. A brief existence as a rebellious daughter and bullying older sibling, ending when the sight of her sister’s danger led her to realize how much she loved her. Years as a second-rate performer in the city theatre, until she accepted a chance to sing at a gala for the war effort, despite the physicians’ warnings that it would kill her.
Every life was one of quiet desperation, because of that something different deep within her. She never fully understood what it was, or what to do with it, but she had always known it was there, like a splinter of glass buried deep in her hand. The unused gift waited, somewhere deep down inside, and she could never be fully happy or at peace, for her full talents were not being tested.
And yet, with each life there also came a moment when she was given a chance to be more than she had been, to soar on wings of glory, however briefly. It always meant that her life was cut short -- but oh, how brightly she burned before the dark!
At last she understood: her many lives of struggle and sacrifice had finally been noticed, and were being rewarded in the greatest way possible for one of her people. When the newly awakened Exalt broke the surface of the vat, it was to begin a rich, rewarding existence full of the wonder, glory and adventure that had always been so sorely lacking. Gifted with an imperishable body and divine powers, Unexpected Flowering of Heroic Fortitude looked forward to a sublime immortality.
Currently, Flowering works with the Lectors, writing and telling two-fisted tales of brave Autochthonian heroes, and of exploration, derring-do and battling vile villains in the name of the Machine God. Her evening audio broadcasts delight children and adults alike. She is the beloved Voice of the Populat, the guardian of morale...and to the dismay of her managers, she has applied to join Project Razor six times, hoping that her hazy memories of wide-open spaces and an infinity of blue overhead are true.
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