The door wouldn’t open. Ashken Liebowitz couldn’t get over the irony of the situation. Here he was, the son of the fearless leader of Washen’s Enclave, the same leader who could not go five minutes without expounding upon the greatness of the Moderns’ machines, trapped in his room by those very machines. Ashken hoped his father recognized the irony in the situation. After yelling for help into the Moderns’ green box, Ashken lay on his back in bed and stared at the sky. It was certainly a beautiful day. Winter brought a certain clarity to his world. It seemed like you could see forever in a winter’s sky. Staring at the sky calmed him. He almost forgot that he was trapped in his room with no way to escape.

Ashken heard some knockings on the door and he rose and made his way over to the door. He banged on the door and put his ear to the door to listen for a response. He did not get the response he expected. In the time it took him to hear the ripping sound, a tip of a sword blade appeared next to his head. “Religious!” Ashken cursed as he fell backwards to the floor as the sword worked its way downward, tearing open a large slit in the door. The edge of the sword curved upward. The blade was made of a blue metallic material, nothing like the metals that the townspeople used in Washen’s Enclave.

“Ashken, are you in there?” he heard Moses ask in a muffled voice. He sounded strangely worried. Ashken rarely heard emotion in Moses’ voice, and almost never worry. If anything, he was the calmest person Ashken had ever met. Moses told him frequently that the surest way to lose a fight was to worry about winning it. Moses seemed to live this way, never worrying about the outcome of anything.

“That was almost my head you sliced through,” Ashken said, not sure if he should feel relieved or angry at Moses sword thrust.

“A potentially vast improvement, the sword would have made,” Moses said before he pulled the sword from the wall.

“It was the stupid door, it wouldn’t open,” Ashken said. “So much for father’s living house, the marvel of the Moderns’ era.”

“Yes, the entire Washen’s Enclave heard your cry for help. Your father is not happy.” A second slash appeared on the far side of the door. Watching from the floor, Ashken saw a huge flash of light when the sword cut through the door. It was not a spark like from the flash stick, but instead looked like an intense white light. The gashes were clean and wider than the sword’s blade. The sword sliced easily through the material. No matter what Ashken had thrown at the door, he had been unable to dent it, let alone cut it. His dinner knife had not even left a scratch in the door’s material. Ashken watched Moses’ sword slice through the door like a bread knife through cheese. Not for the first time, Ashken wondered what type of magical material that sword was made from.

Moses made the final cut across the top of the door connecting the first two vertical slashes. Ashken moved away from the door as it fell forward. The door fell to the ground with barely a sound and a cloud of white fine smoke rose around the remnants of the door. The walls of the house began to hum and the smoke accelerated toward the ceiling. When the smoke cleared, the walls quieted, and the door was no longer on the ground. In its place was a pile of what looked like fine saw dust. Ashken clapped his hands together three times and waved each hand away from his face. The door had been impenetrable only moments before, and what was left of it could fit in a small bag.

Only Moses’ body from the neck down was visible in the doorway. He wore his usual gray robes. The robes robbed his body of any form. Only his face and sword arm were visible outside the gray mass of clothing. Moses stepped into the mess of powder that had been the door only moments before. The powder rose from the ground as he stepped in it, avoiding the robes and floating halfway between the ground and the ceiling. The house began to rumble again and the powder moved upward, vanishing into the ceiling.

Moses smiled down at Ashken. Moses rested his sword over his shoulder and reached out his arm. His arm was hidden within deep folds of his robe, and Ashken grabbed where he thought his hand would have met his arm. Moses pulled him up, yanking him from the ground and seemingly using only his wrist and elbow to lift Ashken clear off the floor. It was easy to forget how strong Moses was. Ashken figured that working with a sword all day would strengthen anyway. He just wished Moses would teach Ashken to use a sword. He did not like having to rely on Moses for protection. But at the same time, he could not help but be thankful that anytime he had gotten in trouble, Moses was there.

Moses was different from the other people in town. He had a presence about him that went beyond the sword he carried. He held himself differently, had an almost knowing look to his face, as if when he looked at you he was doing more than seeing you, he was studying you, evaluating you and learning whether you were worthy of his time. He was older, older than Ashken and his father. He had aged well, much better than most people in Washen’s Enclave. But Ashken had accepted long before that Moses would not be around to protect him after his father. His father claimed that Moses had protected Ashken’s grandfather as well. Ashken was not sure he believed his father. He knew that Moses’ family had always been tied to the Liebowitz family, always providing someone to protect the family when it lived in Washen’s Enclave. But he doubted that that person had been Moses for the past two generations. Ashken knew it unlikely that Moses had a family or children to pass on his skills. It was a question he had never found the right approach to broach.

“How did your sword do that?” Ashken asked, not for the first time amazed at Moses’ skill and the sharpness of his blade.

“You should know that better than me. The Moderns forged this sword. We’ve been using it for centuries to protect your family. Why are you surprised that this sword can cut through the door when the Moderns created both? Do you honestly think they could create an immovable object that my irresistible force could not cut?”

Sometimes Ashken did not even know where to start with Moses. He spoke the same language as Ashken, but the words and concepts seemed different. He must have been raised outside of Washen’s Enclave, Ashken decided. Perhaps that’s where his son was now, learning swordsmanship in the world, the real world, the world outside Washen’s Enclave; the world that Ashken Liebowitz wanted to join.

“Is father really mad? I got nervous when the doors wouldn’t open. There were no windows, and I wasn’t sure if that door would ever open—and you know how those walls are. It’s almost possible to hear through them, not to mention to cut them open. Except with your blade, I guess. I never thought of it until I saw your sword in the wall.”

“He’ll survive. And you should calm down before you see him. You know how he gets when he feels your anxiety. He’s under a lot of pressure in the enclave. The people are complaining louder and louder, and now that Deidre has started in, well, you’ve heard her speak. She’s very persuasive. She almost makes me think twice about keeping my sword.” Moses patted the sword hilt over his shoulder. Ashken would have been very surprised if he ever parted with his sword. Ashken could not remember a time when Moses did not have his sword. As far as Ashken knew, he slept with the blade. Of course, Ashken had never seen Moses sleep so it was just conjecture on his part. But he would have been surprised if it wasn’t true all the same.

“We were very surprised to hear you where we did,” Moses continued. “Your voice came in not at the best time. Your father was giving a presentation at the Friar’s house.”

“The one they just built?”

“Yes, they moved out of the Moderns’ house last week. Your father was appealing to them for their support. They’re crumbling, the Moderns’ buildings. The Friar’s house was one of the last stable houses. Even this house, one of their finest works in this part, is becoming difficult to live in.”

Moses was quiet for a bit, seemingly lost in thought. “How long do you think before all of their creations are gone?” Moses’ question was almost too quiet for Ashken to hear. He knew it was not meant for Ashken to overhear. Moses always talked about the Moderns as if he had personally known them, and that when they deserted the world, they deserted Moses personally. Moses kept many secrets, and Ashken watched him closely hoping for an illumination about some of those secrets. He was not surprised when he never heard any.

“We always have their smaller machines,” Ashken offered. “Father collected all the ones here.” Ashken pointed out the piles of Moderns’ machines scattered throughout the room. “Most seem to work—although we still have no idea what most of them do. Relics for the most part.”

Moses wandered around the room and picked up some of the machines to examine them. “No, we don’t know what most of these machines do anymore.” Moses sheathed his sword to lift up a particularly large gray box. It hummed continuously. It had been in Ashken’s room for almost a week and he had stopped hearing the humming. By now that Moses lifted it, the sound was audible. He wondered if perhaps the house did something to silence the humming.

“That makes the strangest noises,” Ashken said. “They seem to go away when you leave it in one place for a long enough time.”

Moses shook it and Ashken resisted jumping behind something. The Moderns’ machines behaved strangely at times, and after escaping being trapped in the room, the last thing Ashken wanted to do was to get hit by an exploding box.

Moses shrugged and put the box back on the ground. “We should go find your father,” he said. He walked through the hole he had created with his sword and led Ashken outside of his room. Ashken paused at the door’s entrance. He examined the area around where the door used to be looking for something that would indicate how the door worked. The white powder formed along the edges where the sword had ripped the door open. Ashken moved his hand against the powder and the remaining parts of the door fell apart. The powder lifted toward the ceiling where it disappeared into a graying sky. Clouds had rolled in during his talk with Moses. It would not be too long before the weather changed and the snows came in.

“Are you coming,” Moses asked, poking his head around the corner that led to the living room. “Your father grows impatient. He wants to return to the Friar’s house and finish his conversation.”

Ashken continued to run his hand around where the door used to be. Everywhere he moved his hand, the remaining door fell away like ash in a fire. When he was finished working around the frame, only the wall remained. There was no opening where the door could have slide. After he wiped away the powder, it did not look like a door had ever stood in the frame. Like everything the Moderns’ created, the doorframe repaired itself. What it could not do, however, and what none of the Moderns’ machines could do was create itself anew. Ashken realized that there were limits to the Moderns’ powers. He never thought of the Moderns having limits before. He resisted the urge to clap and wave. Maybe there was less to the Moderns’ spirits than the townspeople thought.

Word count: 2,078

Words remaining: 45,892

Thoughts: I realized I wasn’t enjoying myself with yesterday’s writing. I tried to change that today. The name “Ashken” reminded Doolies of Ashton Kutcher. While this pained me greatly, I did like the name “Ashken” when I thought it up, and since I like to pretend Ashton Kutcher does not exist, Ashken stays. Sorry, Doolies! (Although, now that Doolies told me this, every time I type Ashken, I think of Ashton. It hurts me physically to admit this.) I have nothing. I thought today I would enjoy this, that the story would begin to flow and characters would reveal themselves. Instead, I brought in uninteresting characters to do uninteresting things. Isn’t it nice to have a place to waste words? Too bad these words don’t go toward my count. I could write thousands of these. Now, if I can only write a few hundred more of the other words, I can call this a day. Two days and my anxiety levels are increasing. I can’t wait to see how I am tomorrow. Things improved when I wrote past the thousand mark. I went back and filled in all the holes I left in my earlier writings. Sometimes it’s easier and more efficient to flesh out a scene than to write a new one. Now, if I only knew what the next scene entailed.