Kingdom Inventions - The Wire

There was, and there was not, a time when the Kingdom feared its own expansion.

As the walls pushed outward and the forests thinned, the Council of Design approved a new invention, twisted, glinting strands of metal, designed to mark the edge between “within” and “without.”

They called it wire.

It was strong. Cheap. Quick to install.
And sharp, sharper than a hawk’s claw, sharper than the tongue of a councilor pressed for time.

Wherever the Kingdom laid it, animals adjusted their paths. Borders once walked through became warnings. Where there had been conversation, there was now a barrier.

The Raven found it years later, sagging in rusted loops along the edge of a forgotten orchard. Wildflowers had grown through it. A songbird had built its nest beside a knot of thorns that had once been called protection.

She perched on a low branch and watched the wind tug at the wire. It made no sound. Just the quiet memory of division.

She remembered when the wire first arrived. Creatures praised it: how tidy, how efficient, how practical. It marked what belonged to whom. It protected what needed to be prioritized. It made decisions easy.

But Raven had watched closely.

She had seen who got to define what belonged, and who didn’t.
She had watched those who stood at the top of the fences, shouting instructions down with confidence. They were called decisive. Visionary. Unquestioned.

The ones who lived near the bottom, those who moved slower, who asked too many questions, were labeled unclear. Resistant. Obsolete.

And yet, it was often those quiet ones who knew what lay beyond the fences. Who understood what was being cut off.

The Kingdom celebrated those who delivered results, tangibles that could be measured, charted, repeated. The wire had delivered exactly that: clear lines. Clear ownership. Clear control.

But clarity, Raven had learned, was not the same as wisdom.

She hopped down and examined a loose coil. The metal still held its bite, though time had dulled its shine.

She didn’t remove it. She didn’t glorify it, either.

She simply marked the place in memory, where hierarchy once carved the world into segments, and called it structure. Where the loudest voices drew the map, and told the rest to fall in line.

She looked up.

Above the wire, the sky was still open.
No system could fence in the wind.

And so she flew on, toward the places still messy, still alive.

© 2025 Sarah Dooley. Story and images by the author. All rights reserved.