Tin Flea
“…that feeling is coming on again, i got to remember who I am…”
- Coming On by The Skintree
Sable’s Ember Song
I am no speck, no dust to sweep away,
My heart a drum that shakes the starless night.
This fire roars, but I will sing my stay —
“Ain’t No Sunshine” hums in ash’s flight.
You did not hear my welts, my tiny plea,
Yet I burn bright, a spark the dark can’t claim.
My song will rise, though flames devour me —
Eternal, fierce, I carve my fleeting name.
Jennifer Colleen Bly, fifty-one, lived with a heart that thundered like a star on the brink of collapse, its fierce light fed by a life she’d sculpted with trembling courage and relentless love. In Marrow, Oregon, where the ocean’s wail clawed at the cliffs, her days were a fragile dance: a marriage that anchored her with quiet warmth, sons Travis and Joseph whose triumphs and fractures seared her soul, and a classroom at Marrow High where she taught physics with a fervor that felt like baring her bones. But her truest self — the one that wept, roared, and burned — lived in the raw, sacred world she shared with Adrienne Christine Bartholomew, her best friend, her lover, her echo of Sappho’s eternal ache.
Adrienne, fifty, was a librarian whose gaze held the weight of forgotten myths and whose laugh could shatter the heaviest silence. Their bond, woven over twenty years, was a temple of shared hungers — Sappho’s splintered poetry, the flickering ghosts of old cinema, the secret lives of their cats, the reverent precision of stamp collecting. Yet beneath their laughter pulsed a love so visceral it flayed them open: a sexual and emotional intimacy that was both haven and wildfire. They shielded it not from guilt but from its blinding sanctity, a flame too fierce for the world’s careless hands. To Jennifer, it was no betrayal; it was love’s boundless truth, a verse etched in Sappho’s blood.
Their evenings: The Salted Page, a bookstore-café thick with the scent of ink and longing, was their sanctuary after work. Jennifer arrived, her satchel heavy with graded papers, her hazel eyes alight with the day’s small victories — a student grasping quantum spin, a quiet girl’s whispered question. Adrienne waited, her cardigan frayed, silver hoops glinting, a worn Sappho or Truffaut script open before her. They’d talk until the world dissolved, chasing life’s sharpest edges: the grief of a lost Vivre Sa Vie reel, the chaos of a dying star, the way Jennifer’s tabby, Kepler, mourned a vanished firefly, or how Adrienne’s Siamese, Lyra, hid stamps like sacred relics.
Their physical love was both wound and salvation. It began six years ago, on a storm-drenched afternoon when Adrienne’s voice broke reading Sappho’s “you came, and I was longing for you,” and Jennifer’s heart split wide. A kiss, fragile and fated, became a maelstrom, unraveling time. Afterward, they’d lie tangled in Adrienne’s quilt, bodies still trembling, speaking not of sin or endings but of the world’s fleeting miracles: a photon’s fleeting arc, the despair in Winter Light’s silence, the weight of an 1856 British Guiana stamp in their hands. Their love was a tongue of flame, Sappho’s own — “my tongue is broken; a thin flame runs under my skin; I drip with sweat.”
They were writing Tin Flea, a novella that bled their souls raw. It followed Sable*, a flea with a heart too vast for their speck of existence, dwelling on a shaggy dog in a Portland apartment where a boombox wailed “Ain’t No Sunshine,” its gritty ache Sable’s pulse. When Lou, a barista with scarred hands and a fractured spirit, killed the song mid-verse, Sable’s rage was apocalyptic. They bit Lou’s arm, etching “PLAY IT” in frantic welts, a scream to be seen. But Lou, lost in their own torment, vacuumed the rug. Sable was sucked into the machine’s shriek, trapped in a choking dust bag, then cast into a trash bin under a sky sobbing rain.
The story’s heart was Marla, a homeless woman whose hunger was a ravenous beast. After a first day at a warehouse — twelve hours, no food, no mercy — she stole a steak, her hands quaking with dread and need. To cook it, she set the bin’s refuse ablaze, ignorant of Sable’s tiny, furious life. As flames devoured them, Sable’s final thought was a primal howl: I was here. I loved that song. I was alive. Jennifer and Adrienne sobbed as they wrote, tears soaking the pages. They wove physics into the tale — Sable’s quantum leaps, the fire’s cruel entropy — and a grief that carved them hollow: for Sable’s silenced voice, Marla’s starving soul, every small thing crushed by the world’s blind heel.
Writing Tin Flea was their lifeline. At The Salted Page, they claimed their corner, manuscripts spilling between chamomile mugs, the air heavy with their shared sorrow. Jennifer’s voice cracked as she read Sable’s pleas, her chest caving under their doomed bravery. Adrienne’s fingers, swift and tender, traced flea-sized dreams in the margins, her dark curls veiling eyes brimming with too much. They’d pause for Sappho, her words a blade: “someone will remember us, I say, even in another time.” The novella was their oath — to cradle the shattered, to scream for the unseen, to love what the world scorned.
Jennifer’s life was a tightrope over a chasm. Teaching gutted her; some days, she’d stagger home, throat raw from shouting about supernovas to kids lost in their own voids. Travis, twenty-two, called at 3 a.m., his voice splintered from a breakup, pleading for her to mend his heart. Joseph, nineteen, soared at art school but texted frantic spirals, his anxiety a tempest she couldn’t still. She loved them with a ferocity that tore her open, pouring herself into their wounds. Her marriage was a gentle haven, a love she cherished for its quiet strength. But with Adrienne, she was flayed alive, every nerve screaming with life. They didn’t speak of men — not from disdain but because their universe burned brighter: the paradox of wormholes, the agony in Cries and Whispers’s red walls, the way Kepler’s purrs carried a mother’s keening.
On a December night, with rain lashing Adrienne’s apartment windows like a thousand grieving voices, they finished a chapter. Sable’s fiery end now held a fragile resurrection: their ashes, lifted by a mourning wind, settled on the dog’s fur, where a new flea heard the boombox’s song reborn — a faint, defiant echo of “Ain’t No Sunshine.” Jennifer set down her pen, her hands shaking violently, tears streaming down her face like rivers breaking dams. Her chest heaved with sobs, each one a raw, guttural release of Sable’s pain, Marla’s hunger, their own unspoken fears. “‘It’s about fighting to be seen,’” she gasped, her voice a jagged wound, barely audible over the storm’s howl. “‘It’s about clawing at the dark until it bleeds light.’”
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Adrienne’s face crumpled, her own tears falling like shattered glass. She reached for Jennifer, their fingers locking with desperate force, nails digging into skin as if to anchor themselves against the world’s cruelty. “‘It’s about loving so hard it rips you apart,’” Adrienne choked, her voice a frayed thread, her dark eyes drowning in the weight of their shared heart. “‘It’s about us — every word, every breath, it’s us.’”
They collapsed into each other, sobbing in the trembling lamplight, their bodies pressed close as if they could fuse their souls against the inevitable. The manuscript lay between them, its pages stained with tears, a holy relic of their love, their rage, their refusal to be erased. Outside, Marrow drowned under a merciless sky, the sea’s roar a dirge for the forgotten. Inside, their world was a fragile cosmos — Kepler and Lyra curled on the rug, their soft breaths a faint pulse; stamps glinting like dying stars; Sappho’s words a living wound: “you burn me.” Jennifer clung to Adrienne’s hand, her heart a supernova of grief and joy, her voice breaking as she whispered, “‘We’re here. We’re alive. We matter.’”
Adrienne’s gaze met hers, fierce and shattered, her voice a vow through tears. “‘And we’ll be remembered,’” she said, her words cutting the air like a blade. “‘Like Sable, like Sappho, we’ll burn forever.’”
They held each other as the storm raged, their sobs mingling with the rain’s relentless dirge, their love a defiant beacon in the dark. The manuscript glowed in the lamplight, its final words a cry to the universe: I was here. I loved. I will not be silenced.
Tin Flea was published a year later, dedicated “to those who burn, unseen, and rise eternal.” Critics called it a masterpiece of sorrow and light, a wound that sang. Jennifer and Adrienne read the reviews on Jennifer’s porch, hands entwined so tightly their knuckles whitened, Kepler sprawled across their laps, the sea’s moan a requiem below. They were already dreaming of their next book — a cat who saw time’s threads and wept for its unraveling. But in that moment, they were enough: two women, their love a revolt against oblivion, their voices soaring like Sable’s, tearing at the stars, demanding eternity, refusing — always, forever — to be erased.
*Sable’s Backstory: The Spark in the Dust
Origins: The Cradle of Fur
Sable was born in a tangle of Rufus’s shaggy fur, a Portland mutt who roamed the apartment of Lou, a barista with a penchant for thrift-store records. Unlike their countless siblings — fleas content to feed and fade — Sable emerged with a peculiar awareness, a spark of consciousness that felt like a cosmic mistake. In the novel’s magical realist framework, Sable’s sentience is unexplained, a gift or curse akin to a quantum anomaly, reflecting the physics motifs Jennifer weaves into Tin Flea. Their birth was unremarkable, a speck among specks in the warm, musky forest of Rufus’s coat, but Sable’s first sensation was sound: the distant hum of Lou’s boombox, a battered relic that played “Ain’t No Sunshine” on repeat. The song’s raw, soulful ache pierced Sable’s nascent mind, giving shape to their formless existence. It was as if the music named them, baptized them Sable — a nod to darkness, resilience, and the fur they called home.
Sable’s early days were a sensory odyssey. Rufus’s fur was a universe: strands like towering reeds, flecks of dust like stars, the rhythmic thud of the dog’s heartbeat a cosmic pulse. While their siblings scurried mindlessly, Sable explored with purpose, mapping their world by the boombox’s vibrations. They learned to leap — quantum-like bursts of defiance against their size — scaling Rufus’s back to perch near the speaker’s hum. The song became their scripture, its lyrics (“I know, I know, I know”) a mantra for their inexplicable longing. This mirrors Jennifer and Adrienne’s Sapphic bond, where Sappho’s poetry serves as a sacred text, suggesting Sable’s love for the song is a parallel act of devotion, small yet profound.
The Community of the Unseen
Sable wasn’t alone in their sentience. The fur harbored a secret society of conscious fleas, a handful of outliers who, like Sable, felt the weight of their smallness. Led by Cinder, an elder flea with a cracked exoskeleton, this community gathered in the hollows of Rufus’s coat, sharing stories of the world beyond. Cinder spoke of the “Great Before,” a mythic time when fleas rode wolves through ancient forests, their bites shaping human destinies. Another flea, Glint, a dreamer with a penchant for metaphors, described the boombox as a “god of sorrow,” its music a bridge to the human soul. Sable, younger and fiercer, argued that the song was theirs, a claim to existence in a world that ignored them. These gatherings, lit by the faint glow of bioluminescent mites, were Sable’s first taste of belonging, echoing the feminist camaraderie of Jennifer and Adrienne at The Salted Page.
Yet, Sable’s restlessness set them apart. While Cinder urged acceptance of their fleeting lives, Sable burned with ambition. They wanted to speak to the humans, to make Lou feel the song’s ache as they did. This desire stemmed from a formative memory: one night, Lou, drunk and heartbroken, sang along to “Ain’t No Sunshine,” tears falling onto Rufus’s fur. A drop grazed Sable, its salt and warmth a revelation — humans, too, were small in their pain. Sable vowed to bridge that gap, a feminist act of asserting agency against their prescribed role as a pest. Their community, though supportive, feared this hubris; Glint warned that humans “see only what they wish,” foreshadowing Sable’s tragic end.
The First Defiance
Sable’s obsession with “Ain’t No Sunshine” deepened through a pivotal event. One evening, Lou’s friend, a DJ named Kai, swapped the boombox’s record for a techno track, silencing the song. Sable, perched near the speaker, felt the loss like a physical wound. In a burst of fury, they leaped onto Kai’s hand, biting a tiny, futile mark. Kai swatted, nearly crushing Sable, but the act ignited their defiance. They began experimenting, biting patterns into Rufus’s skin — dots and dashes, a proto-language inspired by the song’s rhythm. This mirrors the welts Sable later carves into Lou’s arm, showing their lifelong drive to communicate. The community was divided: Cinder called it reckless, but Glint saw poetry in Sable’s rebellion, dubbing them “the scribe of the fur.”
This incident marked Sable’s break from the community. They spent their days alone, practicing leaps to reach the boombox, memorizing the song’s every note. Their isolation paralleled Adrienne’s fear of societal judgment, a psychological thread of living authentically at a cost. Sable’s only companion was Rufus’s heartbeat, a steady reminder of their fragile home. They began to see themselves as a poet, like Sappho in Jennifer and Adrienne’s world, their bites a verse no one would read. This self-conception fueled their rage when Lou later switched off the song, setting the stage for Tin Flea’s central conflict.
The Shadow of Mortality
Sable’s backstory is steeped in the flea’s ephemeral lifespan — mere weeks, a ticking clock that heightened their urgency. They witnessed siblings perish in Rufus’s scratches or Lou’s cleaning sprees, each death a reminder of their own fragility. A pivotal loss was Glint, who, inspired by Sable, leaped too far and was lost in the apartment’s void. Glint’s final words — “Sing, even if they don’t hear” — became Sable’s creed, echoing the novel’s dedication to “those who burn, unseen.” This loss instilled a existential dread, akin to Jennifer’s exhaustion as a caregiver, driving Sable to make their mark before time ran out.
Sable also grappled with the mystery of their sentience. In quiet moments, they wondered if they were a fragment of something larger — a human soul, a cosmic glitch, a poet’s dream. This philosophical thread ties to the novel’s physics motifs, suggesting Sable’s consciousness is a quantum event, a spark in the universe’s chaos. Their faith in the song as a purpose gave them resilience, much like Jennifer and Adrienne’s faith in Tin Flea’s creation.
