{"id":6178,"date":"2023-01-18T16:43:39","date_gmt":"2023-01-18T16:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=6178"},"modified":"2023-01-20T20:35:54","modified_gmt":"2023-01-20T20:35:54","slug":"the-past-like-a-river-in-flood-by-marissa-lingen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=6178","title":{"rendered":"The Past, Like a River in Flood<\/em><\/strong> by Marissa Lingen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Past, Like a River in Flood<\/em><\/strong> by Marissa Lingen (Beneath Ceaseless Skies<\/em> #311, 27th<\/sup> August 2020) sees a geomancer returning to the magical university where she studied twenty years after a disaster that occurred there. She meets her former tutor\/advisor, and they go to the walled up \u201cVault of Potions\u201d\u2014the site of two recent deaths\u2014with the with the aim of opening it and forcing the university to deal with the contamination that has been festering inside ever since:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

I\u2019d handed those very stones to the professors who were standing in the entrance walling up the Vault, me and Ev Minor, shin-deep in the floodwaters with that eerie pink glow from the spilled potions\u2019 ill-fated summonings getting brighter every second. That was the night everything I owned washed away and it was the least of my troubles. That was the night we lost Alden Glasshand, my first-year Incantations professor, and two students whose names I\u2019ll never forget but whose faces I can never remember, pulled under the waters by the vortices that had suddenly surged beneath their feet when the powerful magics in the potions were accidentally combined. That was the night we slept on the top floor of the Library and didn\u2019t know if we\u2019d get down in the morning.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The only complication in this otherwise straightforward account is (spoiler) an alchemy professor who intervenes and stabs the narrator\u2019s tutor as they are in the process of opening the vault (the alchemist wants them to leave it alone so the university can continue on as before). The narrator subdues her, and then makes what I presume in the story\u2019s point:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cPutting something behind you doesn\u2019t mean ignoring it. It means making sure it can\u2019t hurt you anymore. It means making sure it can\u2019t hurt anybody anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The setup\/resolution structure of this piece is too simple,1<\/sup> and seems constructed with the sole purpose of delivering the story\u2019s message. That said, the setting and events are evocatively described.
** (Average). 4,450 words. Story link<\/a>.

1. I\u2019ve found that a lot of BCS<\/em> stories feel rather fragmentary.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Past, Like a River in Flood by Marissa Lingen (Beneath Ceaseless Skies #311, 27th August 2020) sees a geomancer returning to the magical university where she studied twenty years after a disaster that occurred there. She meets her former tutor\/advisor, and they go to the walled up \u201cVault of Potions\u201d\u2014the site of two recent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1422],"tags":[17,296,408,1426,1425,1423,12],"class_list":["post-6178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marissa-lingen","tag-17","tag-296","tag-beneath-ceaseless-skies","tag-historical-accountability","tag-magical-universities","tag-marissa-lingen","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6178"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6190,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6178\/revisions\/6190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}