First posted September 2023.

Author's Note

This month's Author Avengers prompt is:

"You, a meteorologist, have been abducted by aliens who believe you can save their planet from an incoming meteor."

I swung pretty wide on this one, not gonna lie! But prompts are for taking in whichever direction you fancy, so my whims have, as per usual, led me to a fairytale. 'Henny Penny' is a common European folktale you may know better as 'Chicken Little.' I took inspiration from the Norwegian variant, 'The Cock and the Hen Who Went to the Dovrefell,' and from the ending of the American variant.

You know my favourite pointless tangent to go on is Translation Weirdness, so if you're wondering why the title of this piece is 'Dovrefjell,' good news! Dovrefjell is the name of the mountain range in Norwegian - when this story was translated, it became the 'Dovre mountain' or 'Dovre fell' in English, but stayed mushed together like in Norwegian. So 'Dovrefell' is a kind of English nonsense word and 'Dovrefjell' is the actual name of the place. There's a common saying in Norwegian - 'til Dovre faller' (until the Dovre mountains fall) - which I thought was a perfect invocation for this story.

The sky is falling.

It has been falling for some time: all of my life, and perhaps longer. In small, twinkling pebbles and in misshapen, fiery shards, piece by piece, the sky falls and falls and falls. Branching networks of cracks lead to holes from which shines light from another world, searing and sharp.

When I was a child, I was afraid, but trusted — subconsciously, naively — that the adults would fix it. Those hands I ran to for plasters on my cuts and scrapes, those warm bodies I sought for comfort after nightmares, those minds who could supply the answer to any question about the world I had: innately, beyond my capability of understanding, I just knew they would save the world for me.

Years went by. The summers grew longer, the days grew hotter, and the sky grew redder. I felt silly telling them over and over that the sky was falling, when they could simply look up and watch the blue crumble away in jagged-edged bits. But they would not look, or if they did, they would not see. Fire streaked what was left of the sky as they insisted nothing was wrong. One night would pass without a falling piece and they would crow that I was simply spreading panic in my cowardice. I was never frightened of the world, of making a life in it; I was frightened that the world would not wait for me to live.

There might have been a way, once, to stop the sky from falling, but we are long past it, even so. The falling sky is no longer a question, but a promise. It is too late. Perhaps that is why now, when they cannot be held responsible for failing, they finally try.

Were we still at the beginning of this story, I might have hope for the mysterious hero they’ve brought from another planet. Were the ending yet unwritten, I might still believe we can be saved. I feel my skin crisp and crackle in the flames licking through the holes in our sky, and hope that, for the first time in my life, I am wrong.