Marius of the Rosebushes

Marius of the Rosebushes was a man who lived in the southernmost parts of the Northern Kingdom. It was a smaller kingdom than most, yet larger than some. You might have pointed to the area on a map and said "England" but you would've been wrong: things were different in these days, far in the future from now, long after the world had collapsed and again divided into many kingdoms. Marius of the Rosebushes was better known around these parts as Builder Mark, as folk were much fewer, and there was much more time to get to know one another. And he had a big beard.

Rosebushes was only a village. Covered in green grass and shaded by unkempt rosebushes, it had once been someone's garden. A certain "Peter O'Donnell" actually, if you could read the letters on the weathered letterbox out front. Which Builder Mark could not. Yet, the days of Mr Peter O'Donnell were long past, and now there lived a whole hamlet in the tall grass of his backyard, scattered around in colourful wooden houses they'd carved out of old boccia balls (O'Donnell seemed to have been rather fond of the game) and living off the fruits of his faithful pear tree.

The King did not bother Rosebushes much, other than during the yearly yield in which you were forced to send off your first-born child to fight in the Colosseum (a dried out birdbath across the street) if you failed to hand over most of your earnings. It was a nasty affair but that was none of Builder Mark's business. He was a down-to-Earth sort of man, who kept his head low and always made sure to deliver his furniture on time and to the court's delight; for he was a very skilled carpenter.

There were many other kingdoms out there, of course, and Rosebushes was by no means the worst of them. Builder Mark knew of one kingdom over by the western shores where everyone spent their lives entirely on a certain "Business and Zoink" network staring into their BAZ-glasses all day. And there was another, way up north over the gloomy marshes, that had completely rid themselves of men. They would come out to pillage every fullmoon or so, and violently "harvest" young men for heavily classified experiments on their space colonisation-ships. But that all seemed far away from the village of Rosebushes, Builder Mark thought, any time he sat out on his porch, smoking his pipe, and listening to the distant booms and screams of this world.

And indeed it was. There was much more space in those days, much thanks to a heavily debated policy decision of the past. You see, Builder Mark Rose was what they call a "Mayman", which is to say, he was the descendant of the selected group of humans that were shrunk to the size of your foot. That all happened many days past, way back when the Earth was still covered in dust and death and the government at the time decided there simply wasn’t enough space for humans to stay the same size if the planet was to survive. It is not known who thought of it exactly, but what happened was, an advertisement started circulating on the most popular online media at the time, promising a free heartshaped locket (nine karats) to anyone who voted in the next election. Which was not a lot of people of course. And so it came to be, come election day, all who kept such a locket in their house were shrunk overnight by science I have no time to explain. The rest of society fell apart shortly thereafter, and humans were soon classified by the Maymen’s Association for World Species as “Critically Endangered”. The name Maymen came about for no other reason than that they shrunk on a fine May morning.

No, Builder Mark did not care much for the hustle and bustle of the world. Give him a day of carving wood, and a night on the porch with his wife Astrid, and the wide world out there could go to the pits for all he cared. He was an agreeable man in that way. But the wide world was still there, and one fine summer morning it came to Rosebushes.

A long way away, past the forest river and up beyond the mountains, wild things still roamed. Among them there were humans: a rude and greedy folk. But a rare sight in these parts. They tended to keep to themselves mostly, often hiding in tunnels underground or walking around aimlessly moaning about "the empire" or "the resistance". Which none of them seemed all too confident where were (or even of their actual existence). But they were harmless creatures overall and could be easily be scared off by yelling "Hey" at them from the darkness. But their size did pose a problem when they did wander off into Mayman land. They'd never pay attention to where their feet were stomping (and only turn to look after they'd feel something crack); they'd flatten villages, be the undoing of farmland, and the desolation of castles.

And one such human was out wandering on this fine summer morning. He was more greedy and rude than the rest of them, and had been kicked out of several underground tunnels so far. He was wearing a suit handed down from his forefathers, and was presently out looking for that infamous "office" he had heard so much about. Builder Mark was just about to walk over the hill of his village to cut out some new splinter of wood out of the old elm tree, when he hear the thump-thump of the human, and gasped as he turned to see him standing right over there in the far-away front yard, inspecting Old O'Donnells mailbox.

To be continued.