A few years ago, I invented a new genre. Farmpunk.
I wrote two short stories. Shared them both here on Hive. Then nothing else.
Now, I’m reimagining something new. Something old. Something better. Farmpunk with a new face.
What is it? Rural stories told with attitude. Where high technology meets low culture. Today, I bring you a taste. A flash fiction story featuring an unexpected farm denizen. Hope you like it.
Ember and the Burning Barn
by Allen Taylor
They thought she was feeding the horses.
“Don’t forget the hay, Ellie.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Brush ‘em down nice, baby girl.”
“Sure thing, Mama.”
But the horses were gone.
And in their place, something older than the dirt her father plowed and the software he coded to do it. Something curled in shadow and smoke and heat. Something amidst her big brother’s pot fumes.
The dragon wasn’t that big. Not yet. It fit in the south stall where Buttons the draft mare once slept. Fit under the bent solar fans and the busted VR headset Ellie hung above the stall gate like a holy relic. It was growing fast, though. Soon, it would crack the crossbeams and melt the walls. But for now, it curled around a glowing nest of filament wire and rusted tractor chains like a kitten made of gunpowder.
She called him Ember.
Ellie found him in the hayfield three months back, buried under a tangle of lightning glass and melted satellite dishes. He was small then. Hungry. And beautiful.
The first horse vanished the day after. Ellie told her parents it escaped through the back gate. Her dad blamed a glitch in the smart lock. Her mom cried, and prayed.
The second horse went a week later. By then, Ember could talk.
Not with words. With pulses in the back of his skull, like dreams stitched in code. He called her kin. Crowned her Queen.
“You’ve been out here a long time tonight,” her dad said, appearing beside her in the moonlight with a drone bucket in one hand. “You feeding ghosts?”
Ellie turned slowly. Ember, quiet, lay buried in shadow. The stink of ozone and cooked hay hovered like a cloud.
“Just brushing the stalls,” she said. “They get antsy if I skip.”
Her dad nodded absently, glancing at the empty stalls. “We’ll get more horses soon. Maybe even a gene-spliced stud from Derringer’s.”
“Sure,” she said. “That’d be nice.”
He turned and walked back to the house. The drone bucket hovered behind him, blinking red as it scanned the fence line for breaches.
Ellie waited until the door clicked shut behind him. Then she slipped into the stall.
Ember opened one glowing eye.
“Not tonight,” she whispered. “No more horses. No more lies.”
The dragon blinked. Snorted smoke.
“You promised,” Ellie said, louder now. “We made a deal. I bring you food. You bring me power.” He coiled around her feet like a living wire. “I want to fly,” she whispered.
Ember blinked again—and showed her.
Visions flared in her head. Wings stitched with carbon fiber, claws that split steel, flight through stars and smog. She saw herself crowned in fire, riding high over fields where tractors bowed and satellites sang her name.
And beneath it all… ashes.
Her barn. Her father. Her mother’s screams. Everything gone but flame and sky.
Ellie reeled, eyes watering. “No.”
Ember hissed.
“You don’t get to choose,” she snapped. “I do. I’m not your host. I’m your rider.”
For a long breath, nothing moved.
Then the dragon growled—low and deep. Heat pulsed through the stall. The VR headset above her burst into sparks.
Ellie ran.
Behind her, the barn shuddered. Wood groaned. A beam snapped. Fire spilled through the cracks like blood from a wound.
The first explosion blew out the south wall.
Her parents were on the porch. Her mom screamed. Her dad grabbed a hose that had no chance in hell. The barn burned hot and blue.
Ellie watched, standing helplessly in the field.
Ember rose through the flames like a phoenix made of molten code. Twice as big as he was an hour ago. Wings crackling, eyes blazing with something ancient.
Ellie should’ve felt terror. Not freedom.
The dragon circled once overhead. Roared. Then he flew—up, up, out—vanishing like a data packet in a storm.
Ash drifted down onto the wheat fields. Her father fell to his knees. Her mother clutched as if trying to hold the world together through sheer force of arms.
But Ellie wasn’t there.
She was gone. In flame and fume.
And rising.
Want more farmpunk? Comment below. Tell me what you think … what you like … what you don’t.
First published at Substack. Image by Whisk.