prompt: space, title: light in a vacuum in "the next big thing" flash fiction

When Frank was the yeti equivalent of boy-hood and early teens, safely ensconced in the enclave of dense trees and subtle glamours he called home from birth, the fact he had anger issues wasn’t considered much of a problem. He’d “grow out of it” eventually, his mother assured others those rare times there were any concerns, but there hardly ever were. Even if Frank got into scraps, the only one that was going to get hurt was himself and hell, maybe that would be the lesson learned.

The doctors and the diviners knew that even in the ripeness of adulthood, Frank would always be the shortest of that generation in their tribe. If he ever pushed the other children, they would have ample opportunities to push back harder. Even with younger kids or the girls (female yeti tended to be shorter, but with smaller ratios of dimorphic differences than humans) Frank’s rages simply weren’t that much of a threat. The mystics and statistics had him pegged after all: not even seven human feet tall at full maturity. Pip-squeak of a sasquatch like Frank, what’s the worst that could happen? He stubs his toe trying to kick at you? Don’t worry. Just let the weird kid grow out of it.

It was only while on his field research amongst the human race, posing as a rock-and-roll roadie to study our strange traditions of musical expression that weren’t strictly religious in their intent, that he learned how terrifying that anger could be to those smaller than him. If you’ll excuse me my half-clever punnery, it was a whole different story when that shoe was on the other big foot.

He could frighten humans with even a mild irritation, towering over us as he did. Even when he wasn’t trying to do so at all. Even though the magic clinging to his bones made them see simply some quite tall, particularly hairy biker instead of a mythical cryptozoological specimen, it was still terrifying to consider what he could do to us if he let loose, even for the slightest moment.

Frank discovered that he hated that feeling. Much as he may have wanted it, when he was young, the reality of it just turned his stomach. He was at his core a nerdy academic studying an obscure field, not a frightening force of nature. He just wanted to learn things, then prattle on about them.

Relativity, after all, is not just a function of leptons and quarks and the speed at which a world is revealed. Relativity is everything. Every context changes what every object means. Every object changes a new context it enters. Everything’s relational to everything else. Perspectives combine and recombine with every new collision of atoms or people. Like genes or beams of light, we’re all just smashing around, making new stuff as we do. Frank learned that, finally. He grew up just as Mother insisted he would. It just took Frank an extraordinary amount of time. And also space.