Okay,
the other story that I've been working on lately (I believe I mentioned it last week) is taking a little longer than I expected. The plot is there, drafted out, and there are three or four different variations on the beginning sitting on my desktop... what I'm having with trouble with is deciding which one works best - the idea was to retell the story of an illegal immigrant (a child with his family - mother & brother) coming into Australia. Just having trouble combining the innocent/ignorant experience of the child with the seriousness of the topic. I am muddling through, but I want it to be good so I'm going to wait until it clicks.
Other than that things are pretty much the same where I am - though I am getting more writing in. The PDQ that I talked about last post is up and running properly and my character got in. So far the writing and the story are a little all over the place, both in terms of quality and coherency (we have yet to establish a pecking order and so for the moment everyone is doing everything at once - which, coupled with the differing levels of writing ability makes the whole thing a bit messy). I finding it stimulating however and it has been a good way to ease my way back into writing stuff semi-regularly and hopefully it will get better as it goes along.
On top of that I have managed to get another short story done which I will put up at the end of this post. Bear with me though. Have gone back to SF for a bit - but it is part of something that I have been thinking of doing for a while - one of several stories that show different interpretations of a single event.
Obviously this is the first. There will be more. As well as my immigrant story once it is ready/done and the stock broker when I get back to that. Have a pretty peaceful - stay at home/be on call - week ahead of me so looking to get plenty of reading and writing in.
Anywho, story:
Escape Velocity I
Trapped. Hurt. Alone.
The floor is littered with empty syrettes, stained red... used up. A hand (mine?) reaches for the box. It is heavier now, there is less in it. Only three now. Not enough. The splinter of pain returns, somewhere in my arm. Leaking red (why won't it stop?). The third last slides in easy. Brings warmth.
Two left.
I pop a stim (pill. Plenty of those left) and the world sharpens somewhat; grows bigger. Five feet by five by eight. Standard ceramic white, smeared in blood. Mine. Every now and then the lights flicker. Running out of power? Damaged? Don't know. Red fingers too slick on display to find out; wont dry, even on glass.
Pod gives a low hum. Cold air rushes in; took longer this time, lasts for less. Running out of air. Red splattered everywhere. Seeping out. Wont clot. Running out of blood. Running out of time.
Time passes. Pain returns (shit. Fuck. Getting worse. Syrettes supposed to last hours. Supposed to help clot. Help heal. Doing none of those things). Push in another; nothing else to do. Hardly feel it. I eye the last one anyway and ask the question: Would it be enough if I took it now? Enough to bump me over the edge? Military syrettes. Supposed to be strong... Should be dead already.
One left.
Good hand pulls back slide on pistol. Hundredth time. Still empty. Still useless. Still cant throw it away. Thinking is getting harder, like sifting through sand, or thick mud. Slips through fingers. Hard to keep track. The lights dim. It gets darker and the blood seeps out of the hole in my arm. Still wont clot.
Pain again. Syrette number three goes in. Fingers clumsy. Numb. Pins and needles everywhere. Feel sleepy but don't seem to die. Damn... have to think. Start to panic. Syrettes all gone. Same with bullets. Never had any to begin with. Can't overdose on stims... Crack the door?
A red lever sits behind a panel of glass designed to be shattered. Yellow and black stripes signal a warning, further explained by blurry scrawl of letters too small to see. Can only read those above, big and bold:
E.V. 19. Jötunn. New Helsinki.
Empty words, meaningless now. The Jötunn is dead, others scattered. Probably also dead.
Might be all that's left. Little me in a little box, trying to find the easiest way out.
Take more stims. Take most of them. Try to pull myself up. Bad arm fights like dead weight. Unmoving. Still bleeding dark red. I drag it with me. It hurts... God it hurts.
Fall twice in five feet. Pull my self back up, leave more red smears on stainless white. Good arm shoulders the glass. Once. Nothing. Twice. Cracks. Three... It shatters in a puff of safety glass. The pod beeps again. One last breathe. I pull the lever.
The bolts inside the door 'pop' and then cold nothing rushes in as the air rushes out.
I breathe the nothing in. Remember the old warnings.
9 Seconds left.
9 seconds. That's how long it's supposed to take.
8.
Pressure equalises. More 'pops'. The door falls away.
7.
The drive fails, the lights go dark. Blood shines in the darkness. Snap frozen. Floating.
6.
I push out, craving... space. The cold is shocking. Wakes me up more than the stims.
5.
Outside is endlessly dark and empty but all of me is bright. My hands. All that I can see glows.
4.
Down below (up?) I can see the Jötunn burn. Still alive but venting gasses, atmosphere. Burning.
3.
The other ship spits fire across her bow, breaking her back. Still she hurtles towards the gate. Towards home.
2.
Jötunn impacts. The gate spins down. Shatters. Implodes.
The light is blinding. Pure. White.
1.
Darkness.
Obviously falling back on the whole short sharp sentences things here, though I was hoping it would reflect the characters state of mind.
Have ideas planned out at least three other perspectives though so will try and alter style for each.
Other than that, can only build back up slowly.
Until the next one,
M.
Showing posts with label New. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New. Show all posts
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Revenant
I've always found it fascinating on how attached people get to inanimate objects. For example: my old laptop, which is currently sitting next to on my bed, refuses to display any colours other than fluro pink and green and it will usually lock me out or freeze after about half an hour of use. In other words: It no longer works as it is supposed to. Yet even though I now have a perfectly good new laptop and it now has everything that was on my old laptop on it I know that it will be a while before I can bring myself to get rid of it.
Pretty much every post that has been written for this blog so far was written on it. Pretty much every story. I watched the little 'writing' folder on my desktop go from a small smattering of stuff to a collection several hundred documents that contain completed stories, attempted stories, edits, ideas, outlines, ideas, words I liked the sound of, sentences I liked the look of and even a few attempts at drawing up physical quasi-geographical maps for some of my earliest story ideas.
Ultimately, it's not all that much compared to what it might become if I want to take this seriously, but its a start and its a hell of a lot more than what I started off with - and browsing through it, even if a lot of it isn't very good, makes me feel something that borders on pride. As I associated all that work with my old laptop I get that feeling when I look at it now, even though it is broken, so I very well might keep it.
Weird.
Anyway, as you may have noticed, OBLOGOTORY, is back and I am happy to say that I have several stories on the go at the moment (not to mention a decent amount of free time on my hands) so updates should be both varied and plentiful (Also there will be no more poetry for the foreseeable future as I feel as if I've subjected you to enough).
To start us of I thought I might trot out the first bit of something new, which I am going to tell you nothing about until the plot reaches a certain point for reasons that will hopefully become clear.
The Life and death of Alistair Grout
The sun rises. The sun sets.
For Alistair Grout it is all the same and each day the whole world passes him by in a haze.
He doesn't care.
He doesn't even notice.
But sometimes things change.
For the third time in a week he finds himself in a bar: one that he has been to many times before. He sits. He drinks. He ignores the people around him and those that pass him by and for the most part they ignore him right back.
He likes it that way. It lets him wallow without having to remember exactly what it is that he is wallowing about. Lets him feel like he is surrounded by people when he really feels alone.
Light pulses and people dance. The heavy roll of the bass washes over him and dulls his already drunken mind. It keeps him distracted, keeps him occupied. Helps him forget. Each night it is the same, and each night it is just enough: The world becomes a dizzy smear as he drinks until he no longer has any idea where he is, who he is, and what he has done.
Each night is an escape, and each he prays that the next one will see one of the more wretched parts of the city swallow him up and then never spit him out and that will be the end of everything.
He knows that he does not have the courage to do it himself.
But each night it is the same. He he sits, he drinks, he forgets and then in the morning he wakes, in the gutter, or his hotel room, but still here, exhausted and feeling worse than he did before. Eventually he will sober up completely and the whole world will come rushing back in.
He knows that it can't go on forever: Sooner or later his money will run and and he will have to stop. He wonders how much damaged he will be able to do to himself before that happens. Wonders if he can numb himself completely to everyone and everything before he has to go home to face up to what he has done.
He shudders at the thought each time and then quickly downs another drink.
Things normally have a habit of progressing from there.
Normally.
Tonight something is different.
He sits at the bar. He drinks. All around him people writhe to the pounding music. He finds it hard to dislocate from it all and the drink sits heavy in his belly and does nothing.
He can feel someone watching him. A cold fire slithers down his fire and then tweaks at his ribs as he slowly shifts so that he is facing the other way.
Gradually he begins to feel warm again and the drink hits him all at once. After a while he finds himself chuckling to no-one in particular. The bartender gives him an odd look – pours another, takes his money – and then moves on, his face returning to his earlier look of quiet despair. Probably just another young person drawn to all the glitz and glamour. Thinking to try their hand at acting, hoping that they can break into fame and fortune. Ending up tending bar, for others like him, just so he can pay the bills. He snorts – more odd looks – he wonders drunkenly if he should give the whole acting thing ago? After all, he doesn't really need to go home. Not really. Maybe he could see the world, just like he had wanted to when he was young. He wonders and twists the wedding band around his finger as he wonders. He could just disappear. Take a different name. Find something new. He would miss the girls of course – but, he realised, not enough to justify going back home. Not that he would get to see them much once what he had done got out. Their mother would see to that.
From somewhere within him something seems to come loose and starts to rattle around around, the sound erupts from his mouth as another strained laugh that, louder this time, draws still more looks from the people around him, looks that largely spoke of disgust and disdain – a curl to the lip and a slanted brow that seem to say: “What the fuck is a guy like this doing here”.
He motions for another drink, swaying in his stool. The bartender looks at him as if he has just crawled out from one of the bar stools and tells him what Alistair can only assume is something along the lines of “You've had enough. You're disturbing the other customers. Fuck off.”
He grins at the barman and holds what is left of his drink up to the light - he isn't even sure what it is – he throws it back and then tosses the empty glass casually over his shoulder. The bartender roars at him noiselessly, his words lost amongst the music and making his movements seem exaggerated and almost comical. Alistair laughs, it's like a pantomime show. Obviously the bartenders gestures attract some attention however as seconds later a hand clamps down on his shoulder and he is unceremoniously dragged from the bar by one of the more ugly bouncers he has ever seen and then thrown out onto the street, where the bouncer delivers a sharp blow to Alistair's stomach that leaves him him on his knees, coughing and retching.
The bouncer pulls him to his feet and looks him over hard eyes, only slightly dulled by boredom, his voice rolls grates like gravel being rubbed together, “Be smart mate. Don't come back here again”, he punches Alistair again for good measure, his stomach heaves. The bouncer spits and turns to go.
It takes him a while to catch his breath and for the cloud of alcohol to seep back over his mind. Eventually he stumbles down the street and into a looks ridiculously similar to the one in which he had just been. He slips into a booth near the door and orders another drink.
The night wears on.
Much later he finds himself staring blankly at his watch as he slowly begins to sober up, then again and again. Each time he finds himself unsure if he has progressed from being curious about the time, to actually reading the thing, or if he has and just keeps forgetting what it said after he looked away. Around him things are beginning to wind down. The crowd has grown sparser and the dancing more awkward as people slowly begin to sober up and realise either that they can't dance in the first place, or that they are absolutely exhausted. Mostly of the time it is both.
Someone laughs in the booth behind him. A woman. He almost finds himself laughing with her, before he catches himself. Someone else says something to her and she laughs again. He suddenly is struck by something in her voice. Something familiar. He swaps from one side of the booth to the other and surreptitiously glances over the seat in which he had been sitting . The woman, talking with one of the bar staff as he refills her drink, laughs again. He looks at her puzzled, he has never seen her before. She looks up at him, as he shrugs and switches back to his original seat. He waves for another drink as another staff member moves away from the bar.
Behind him the woman is talking now and unconsciously he finds himself trying to hear what she is saying. Maybe she was just in bars all the time? Maybe she had been in the one he had been thrown out of? He snorts and tries to push her voice out of his mind. He doesn't want to think about women. He was done thinking about women. He grimaces at that and then a wave of self disgust rises in his throat like bile. He must be sobering up. He looks at his glass, empty – he doesn't even remember drinking it. He moves to order another only to find someone holding one out to him.
“Here”
He looks up. The woman has moved from her table and is now standing in front of him with a glass in each hand. Again she offers one to him. He looks at her, slightly confused, and is taken aback by how young she is. Gorgeous, but very young. He feels old just looking at her.
“You're supposed to take one.” Her grin touches her eyes, the light from the bar makes them look much paler than they should be. He apologises and takes the glass with a sweaty hand, all the while wondering to himself how long it had been since a woman bought him a drink. He honestly couldn't remember.
She smiles again and motions towards the drink. Lost in thought he has not touched it yet.
“Try it” she says, and takes a sip of her own “see if you like it”. He raises the glass to his mouth and she place her hand on his leg and whispers in his ear, “it's my favourite. I get it all the time.”
He nods dumbly and drinks and then world disappears into darkness with a dull roar.
He tries to pull his mind back together. There is touch and sound but they are somehow muffled and distant. He tastes something in the back of his throat and a hammer of ecstasy beats down upon him and turns him inside out. He feels as if a fire has been kindled in his mouth. It burns at him, hollows him out. The fog of the earlier alcohol is slowly leached out of him and he feels shockingly alive but somehow ill at the same time. A hot weight presses down upon his chest and he struggles to breathe as the feeling suddenly quickens and becomes even more profound. It spreads through out his body. Burning hotter and faster. Each second seems to drag by both pleasure and pain in equal measure until he feels as if he cannot take it for a second longer.
He feels her hand on his arm and he comes crashing back to reality. She looks at him coolly, as if studying him. He finds himself suddenly afraid, “what did you put in this?” His voice stumbles over each word. He tries to stand, fails and looks at her confused.
In response she sits down opposite him and leans towards him.
Her voice purrs and she gives him a wicked smile, “Why? Did you like it?”
Alistair swallows and looks back down at the glass, he feels a need growing deep down inside him, stronger than anything he was ever felt in his life. She moves closer. As if hypnotised he moves closer to her as well. Her lips press against his ear again,
“You looked sad.” She croons, “I thought it would cheer you up.” He can feel her smile again. “Have another taste.”
He tries to move away, but again nothing happens. His hand moves toward the glass of its own accord. Picks it up. She whispers something he cannot understand and his brain feels like it has begun to boil. His hand shakes and then in an instant he downs the entire glass and then the whole world seems to fall away again, bit by bit, piece by piece, until only her face and a searing emptiness is his veins remained.
Too be continued.
All right, that's it for the moment, feedback and stuff are appreciated as per usual. The next part should be up within a few days as it's mostly done, but just needs some tweaking and maybe some additions.
Until then.
M
Pretty much every post that has been written for this blog so far was written on it. Pretty much every story. I watched the little 'writing' folder on my desktop go from a small smattering of stuff to a collection several hundred documents that contain completed stories, attempted stories, edits, ideas, outlines, ideas, words I liked the sound of, sentences I liked the look of and even a few attempts at drawing up physical quasi-geographical maps for some of my earliest story ideas.
Ultimately, it's not all that much compared to what it might become if I want to take this seriously, but its a start and its a hell of a lot more than what I started off with - and browsing through it, even if a lot of it isn't very good, makes me feel something that borders on pride. As I associated all that work with my old laptop I get that feeling when I look at it now, even though it is broken, so I very well might keep it.
Weird.
Anyway, as you may have noticed, OBLOGOTORY, is back and I am happy to say that I have several stories on the go at the moment (not to mention a decent amount of free time on my hands) so updates should be both varied and plentiful (Also there will be no more poetry for the foreseeable future as I feel as if I've subjected you to enough).
To start us of I thought I might trot out the first bit of something new, which I am going to tell you nothing about until the plot reaches a certain point for reasons that will hopefully become clear.
The Life and death of Alistair Grout
The sun rises. The sun sets.
For Alistair Grout it is all the same and each day the whole world passes him by in a haze.
He doesn't care.
He doesn't even notice.
But sometimes things change.
For the third time in a week he finds himself in a bar: one that he has been to many times before. He sits. He drinks. He ignores the people around him and those that pass him by and for the most part they ignore him right back.
He likes it that way. It lets him wallow without having to remember exactly what it is that he is wallowing about. Lets him feel like he is surrounded by people when he really feels alone.
Light pulses and people dance. The heavy roll of the bass washes over him and dulls his already drunken mind. It keeps him distracted, keeps him occupied. Helps him forget. Each night it is the same, and each night it is just enough: The world becomes a dizzy smear as he drinks until he no longer has any idea where he is, who he is, and what he has done.
Each night is an escape, and each he prays that the next one will see one of the more wretched parts of the city swallow him up and then never spit him out and that will be the end of everything.
He knows that he does not have the courage to do it himself.
But each night it is the same. He he sits, he drinks, he forgets and then in the morning he wakes, in the gutter, or his hotel room, but still here, exhausted and feeling worse than he did before. Eventually he will sober up completely and the whole world will come rushing back in.
He knows that it can't go on forever: Sooner or later his money will run and and he will have to stop. He wonders how much damaged he will be able to do to himself before that happens. Wonders if he can numb himself completely to everyone and everything before he has to go home to face up to what he has done.
He shudders at the thought each time and then quickly downs another drink.
Things normally have a habit of progressing from there.
Normally.
Tonight something is different.
He sits at the bar. He drinks. All around him people writhe to the pounding music. He finds it hard to dislocate from it all and the drink sits heavy in his belly and does nothing.
He can feel someone watching him. A cold fire slithers down his fire and then tweaks at his ribs as he slowly shifts so that he is facing the other way.
Gradually he begins to feel warm again and the drink hits him all at once. After a while he finds himself chuckling to no-one in particular. The bartender gives him an odd look – pours another, takes his money – and then moves on, his face returning to his earlier look of quiet despair. Probably just another young person drawn to all the glitz and glamour. Thinking to try their hand at acting, hoping that they can break into fame and fortune. Ending up tending bar, for others like him, just so he can pay the bills. He snorts – more odd looks – he wonders drunkenly if he should give the whole acting thing ago? After all, he doesn't really need to go home. Not really. Maybe he could see the world, just like he had wanted to when he was young. He wonders and twists the wedding band around his finger as he wonders. He could just disappear. Take a different name. Find something new. He would miss the girls of course – but, he realised, not enough to justify going back home. Not that he would get to see them much once what he had done got out. Their mother would see to that.
From somewhere within him something seems to come loose and starts to rattle around around, the sound erupts from his mouth as another strained laugh that, louder this time, draws still more looks from the people around him, looks that largely spoke of disgust and disdain – a curl to the lip and a slanted brow that seem to say: “What the fuck is a guy like this doing here”.
He motions for another drink, swaying in his stool. The bartender looks at him as if he has just crawled out from one of the bar stools and tells him what Alistair can only assume is something along the lines of “You've had enough. You're disturbing the other customers. Fuck off.”
He grins at the barman and holds what is left of his drink up to the light - he isn't even sure what it is – he throws it back and then tosses the empty glass casually over his shoulder. The bartender roars at him noiselessly, his words lost amongst the music and making his movements seem exaggerated and almost comical. Alistair laughs, it's like a pantomime show. Obviously the bartenders gestures attract some attention however as seconds later a hand clamps down on his shoulder and he is unceremoniously dragged from the bar by one of the more ugly bouncers he has ever seen and then thrown out onto the street, where the bouncer delivers a sharp blow to Alistair's stomach that leaves him him on his knees, coughing and retching.
The bouncer pulls him to his feet and looks him over hard eyes, only slightly dulled by boredom, his voice rolls grates like gravel being rubbed together, “Be smart mate. Don't come back here again”, he punches Alistair again for good measure, his stomach heaves. The bouncer spits and turns to go.
It takes him a while to catch his breath and for the cloud of alcohol to seep back over his mind. Eventually he stumbles down the street and into a looks ridiculously similar to the one in which he had just been. He slips into a booth near the door and orders another drink.
The night wears on.
Much later he finds himself staring blankly at his watch as he slowly begins to sober up, then again and again. Each time he finds himself unsure if he has progressed from being curious about the time, to actually reading the thing, or if he has and just keeps forgetting what it said after he looked away. Around him things are beginning to wind down. The crowd has grown sparser and the dancing more awkward as people slowly begin to sober up and realise either that they can't dance in the first place, or that they are absolutely exhausted. Mostly of the time it is both.
Someone laughs in the booth behind him. A woman. He almost finds himself laughing with her, before he catches himself. Someone else says something to her and she laughs again. He suddenly is struck by something in her voice. Something familiar. He swaps from one side of the booth to the other and surreptitiously glances over the seat in which he had been sitting . The woman, talking with one of the bar staff as he refills her drink, laughs again. He looks at her puzzled, he has never seen her before. She looks up at him, as he shrugs and switches back to his original seat. He waves for another drink as another staff member moves away from the bar.
Behind him the woman is talking now and unconsciously he finds himself trying to hear what she is saying. Maybe she was just in bars all the time? Maybe she had been in the one he had been thrown out of? He snorts and tries to push her voice out of his mind. He doesn't want to think about women. He was done thinking about women. He grimaces at that and then a wave of self disgust rises in his throat like bile. He must be sobering up. He looks at his glass, empty – he doesn't even remember drinking it. He moves to order another only to find someone holding one out to him.
“Here”
He looks up. The woman has moved from her table and is now standing in front of him with a glass in each hand. Again she offers one to him. He looks at her, slightly confused, and is taken aback by how young she is. Gorgeous, but very young. He feels old just looking at her.
“You're supposed to take one.” Her grin touches her eyes, the light from the bar makes them look much paler than they should be. He apologises and takes the glass with a sweaty hand, all the while wondering to himself how long it had been since a woman bought him a drink. He honestly couldn't remember.
She smiles again and motions towards the drink. Lost in thought he has not touched it yet.
“Try it” she says, and takes a sip of her own “see if you like it”. He raises the glass to his mouth and she place her hand on his leg and whispers in his ear, “it's my favourite. I get it all the time.”
He nods dumbly and drinks and then world disappears into darkness with a dull roar.
He tries to pull his mind back together. There is touch and sound but they are somehow muffled and distant. He tastes something in the back of his throat and a hammer of ecstasy beats down upon him and turns him inside out. He feels as if a fire has been kindled in his mouth. It burns at him, hollows him out. The fog of the earlier alcohol is slowly leached out of him and he feels shockingly alive but somehow ill at the same time. A hot weight presses down upon his chest and he struggles to breathe as the feeling suddenly quickens and becomes even more profound. It spreads through out his body. Burning hotter and faster. Each second seems to drag by both pleasure and pain in equal measure until he feels as if he cannot take it for a second longer.
He feels her hand on his arm and he comes crashing back to reality. She looks at him coolly, as if studying him. He finds himself suddenly afraid, “what did you put in this?” His voice stumbles over each word. He tries to stand, fails and looks at her confused.
In response she sits down opposite him and leans towards him.
Her voice purrs and she gives him a wicked smile, “Why? Did you like it?”
Alistair swallows and looks back down at the glass, he feels a need growing deep down inside him, stronger than anything he was ever felt in his life. She moves closer. As if hypnotised he moves closer to her as well. Her lips press against his ear again,
“You looked sad.” She croons, “I thought it would cheer you up.” He can feel her smile again. “Have another taste.”
He tries to move away, but again nothing happens. His hand moves toward the glass of its own accord. Picks it up. She whispers something he cannot understand and his brain feels like it has begun to boil. His hand shakes and then in an instant he downs the entire glass and then the whole world seems to fall away again, bit by bit, piece by piece, until only her face and a searing emptiness is his veins remained.
Too be continued.
All right, that's it for the moment, feedback and stuff are appreciated as per usual. The next part should be up within a few days as it's mostly done, but just needs some tweaking and maybe some additions.
Until then.
M
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Up against the wall
Damn I hate writers block.
I've been trying to ease myself back into writing non-poetic stuff over the last little bit and it's taken a little while for things to jell properly so I'm afraid you will have to wait a little bit for a new short story. For the moment however I still have some unused poetry sitting around so you can have a read of that while you're waiting.
Freyja
Dear Freyja,
old Edda told of thee
of withered hand
and feathered cloak
long moulted
and throne away.
Do you shiver,
dear Freyja?
With shoulders bare
and alters empty?
With hair cast off,
to wither in the soil?
Do you hate,
dear Freyja?
at the lovely maid,
or the virgin thief?
Who took from you,
all once you had?
Or are you proud,
dear Freyja?
A queen amongst
a special few?
Who still holds court,
clipped wings or no?
My dear Freya,
old Edda told of thee.
Of healing touch,
of red and gold.
a midnight queen,
a pretty lass.
A missing god,
long gone,
made new,
and people ask,
with open arms:
who now holds you?
Not really sure what I think of this one now that I'm reading it a bit after writing. The original idea came about while I was poking through an old essay I wrote on the archetype of the trickster in ancient mythology (one of the examples I used was Loki, which led to reading up on some mythological Norse poetry, which somehow lead to Freyja) and I seem to have got the idea I was aiming at across, but I think it still needs one or two alterations.
Anywho, have a read and comment etc etc.
Will have a short story up in a bit. Maybe even a nice little picture to go with it.
M.
I've been trying to ease myself back into writing non-poetic stuff over the last little bit and it's taken a little while for things to jell properly so I'm afraid you will have to wait a little bit for a new short story. For the moment however I still have some unused poetry sitting around so you can have a read of that while you're waiting.
Freyja
Dear Freyja,
old Edda told of thee
of withered hand
and feathered cloak
long moulted
and throne away.
Do you shiver,
dear Freyja?
With shoulders bare
and alters empty?
With hair cast off,
to wither in the soil?
Do you hate,
dear Freyja?
at the lovely maid,
or the virgin thief?
Who took from you,
all once you had?
Or are you proud,
dear Freyja?
A queen amongst
a special few?
Who still holds court,
clipped wings or no?
My dear Freya,
old Edda told of thee.
Of healing touch,
of red and gold.
a midnight queen,
a pretty lass.
A missing god,
long gone,
made new,
and people ask,
with open arms:
who now holds you?
Not really sure what I think of this one now that I'm reading it a bit after writing. The original idea came about while I was poking through an old essay I wrote on the archetype of the trickster in ancient mythology (one of the examples I used was Loki, which led to reading up on some mythological Norse poetry, which somehow lead to Freyja) and I seem to have got the idea I was aiming at across, but I think it still needs one or two alterations.
Anywho, have a read and comment etc etc.
Will have a short story up in a bit. Maybe even a nice little picture to go with it.
M.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
I could see the sky, but for the trees.
Damn time goes by quickly when you're busy (busy mostly equalling: study, assignments and/or being sick - not necessarily in that order).
Still I feel bad for neglecting the blog, especially after my last spiel (I have been writing, I just like to get stories to a partially rounded off state before uploading - so that I don't cut them off right in the middle of a particular segment of plot) so I thought that I would give you something new (and comparatively longer than my last few updates) to chew over.
Just a few things before I get to it though:
- No it's not a continuation of the pirate story or an attempt at a play/play like dialogue - both those are coming along, but I started this up on a whim the other day and sort of got stuck in it.
- Yes it is fantasy - though is hopefully not terribly cliché (though undoubtedly I will have the clichés pointed to me).
- yes it is in a way part of the series that I have been working on/talking about for forever and ever - though it is not a main part, but is instead me playing with a new character (who may or may not be important) and their role (or lack there-of) in major events within the world/universe.
(As I think I have mentioned to people in the past - If I do at some point write this series I don't really want it to be a big unwieldy series, ala The Wheel of Time, but would instead be aiming for maybe a few smaller series of stories and stand alone novels set within the same universe (think Larry Niven's 'Known Space' series or Iain M. Banks 'Culture' novels if you are in anyway familiar with them - which is a probably not given my current readership/me not really knowing anyone else who has read them).
Anyway without further nonsense, here is a story which I would like you to read, rip apart and generally criticise in a (possibly/hopefully) helpful way (also comments on last post would be cool too).
Wildwood
“Rowe!”
The boy froze, halfway over the fence.
“Where do you think you’re going!?”
Under his breath he cursed his bad luck. He was so close; he could almost touch the trees. He’d been so sure that he would be able to get away this time. So sure that she was too busy to pay attention to what he was doing, but now somehow he knew that she had been watching the whole time. She was always watching. He thought of the punishment to come and a hot and prickly sensation trickled down the back of his neck. There was no way that he was going to avoid the switch this time, not after being caught for the third time in almost as many weeks. He could hear her moving closer.
“What have a told you about going in there!” She was genuinely angry now. He swallowed, and then sighed under his breath. So it was going to be the usual lecture. He had heard it so many times now that he could almost quote her word for word: She would go on about how that now he was older he had to take on some responsibility. She would mention how sick his mother was. How he was causing her to worry. How that worry only made her condition worse. He hated her for saying that, knowing full well that he was not allowed to visit her had no way of knowing if it was true.
Normally he tried his best to ignore her, only coming back to attention when she came to mention his father and ‘what he would think’ or ‘what would he say’. It always came down to that and normally enough to drag him back in to line, normally. His father always knew when he was paying attention or not and a look of disapproval from him was always a hundred times worse than the switch his aunt seemed to prefer. He kept his back to her, hiding a grin.
His aunt had a fearsome temper when angered, which seemed to be most of the time as of late, but she had never been known for her originality. Always it was the same routine. He would have listened if the threat had any weight, if his father was here. But he wasn’t, he had left weeks earlier on business and would be away for weeks more; the fear of angering him was a distant one.
So, he thought, he may as well have some fun now, while he could get away with it. The old wood flexed as he completed his vault over the fence and then in an instant he was in amongst the trees. He could hear his aunt shrieking profanities; rushing towards the fence. She must be really angry now. Even more reason to disappear. He was running as soon as his feet hit the ground.
It didn’t take long for her voice to fade off into the distance; although this close to the village the trees were still relatively thin they had a way of muffling voices and making it sound as if people were in places that they were not. It was supposed to be like that all through-out the Wildwood, though the trees only began to thicken if you made it over the Northern Hedge and into the forest proper, something he had only done once before. In the outlying forest the distance between the trees meant that even from far away it was still easy to find the fingers of chimney smoke from the village drifting up lazily to clutch at the sky overhead; In the Wildwood proper you were lucky if you could see anything overhead besides the drapery of branch and leaf.
He knew no one would bother him for the rest of the afternoon. For reasons he had never understood the people from the village always avoided the Wildwood. The other children tried to explain it away with the usual ghost stories: sometimes the wood was a hiding place for murderers or madmen; sometimes it was home some sort of monster, or if they were feeling particularly imaginative, it was the forest itself that was out to get you, because it was haunted or old magicked or ensorcelled or whatever. The only thing the stories ever agreed on was that if you went too far in, it wasn’t too likely that you would ever be coming. For the most part Rowe ignored these stories. It doesn’t take much to scare children. What interested him more was the way the adults behaved: They simply ignored it. Never went in, never talked about it (unless they were telling their children to keep away from it). They even avoided looking at it; instead they seem to look through it or just at the fence that marked the border between forest and village. They went to a lot of effort to try and hide it, but Rowe knew that they too were afraid of the forest and that they had been afraid of it for so long that it had become habit forming. Firewood and lumber were brought all the way from the part of the wood that curled around the eastern side of the village, never from the Wildwood itself, even though it was right there in front of them. As far as Rowe knew, the only time an axe had ever touched Wildwood trees was when the fence had been built and that had been before his father had been born, when the trees near the village had been as thick as those further in. Before the villagers had cut and burnt the forest back. Making his way down one of the innumerable animal trails that wended their way through the young growth he could still see some of the left over traces of the fires; black scars on the trees which had by chance survived, and the desiccated remains of those that had not. Many of the more brittle ones had since collapsed into little more than piles of ash, either under their own weight and the simple passage of time or because they had been taken to with stone or branch and a youthful desire to break things when angry. But today was not one of those days. Instead he had just wanted to get away, away from the crowding and the heat of home and out the open, where the crisp air carried the hint of coming of cold and winter.
Eventually he came to his favourite place in the forest, a copse of elder trees which, huddled together, had somehow managed to make it through fires largely unscathed. With a sigh of relief he pushed his way through the thick knotting of branches and into the small glade hidden within. In a way it was like coming home, he had been coming here for years and the clearing was littered with things that he had found, made, or had simply wanted to keep hidden. Various attempted fishing poles were sat haphazardly by the small pond that bubbled up from somewhere underground - a few discarded fish bones lying in a rough fire-pit suggesting that at least one had at some point been successful. Out of habit more than hope he went down on hands and knees by the water’s edge, trying to see below the surface; it had been several weeks since he had seen, let alone caught, a fish. The water was cold and clear, but as usual it was empty. He wondered what had happened to them and hoped that he had not scared them all away. Though he had been much more likely bring them food than to catch one of them to feed himself, having only done so if he stayed the night and so missed dinner, something that had become increasingly common over the last few weeks. More often than not he would simply gather up some leaves and a cloak and sleep out in the open, but as it had grown colder that was becoming less and less comfortable and so instead he had put together a slightly more permanent area to bed down below the overhang of a large boulder that sat on the edge of the clearing. It was dry place to sleep but was not very comfortable, so he had ‘borrowed’ a sheepskin blanket from an old chest he had found in the attic. He sat down on the blanket and closed his eyes, wondering if it would be a good idea to stay the night again and wait until tempers had cooled off. Out of habit his hand moved to a small hollow in the rock face where he kept his more prized possessions. There were a few stones and odds and ends, pebbles with odd patterns and hard chucks of what looked like stone but let the light through when held up to the sun. The silver coin he had found one day when his father took him into town. Some feathers and some scavenged fish-hooks. Instinctively he grasped the handle of the heaviest weight he could find, bringing out the dagger that had been a gift from his Uncle he last time he had come down from one of the great cities in the North. Taking it from its sheath he tested the blade against his thumb, though not with enough force as to cut the skin (he had learnt that lesson within the first hour of owning the knife and it was for that reason that his aunt had decided that it was best that he not keep it – which was exactly why he had hidden it).
He slashed the short blade through the air experimentally, before sheathing it and tying it to his belt. The day was still young and he was starting to feel adventurous.
From the glade it was only a small trip to the Northern Hedge and he found himself wandering toward it before he knew where he was going. He found himself tingling with apprehension - If he was going to face another switching for going into the Wildwood he may as well actually go into the REAL Wildwood. Through the trees he could just make out The Midmost Mountains. He wondered if Wildwood stretched up all the way to meet them and, if they did, how long it would take him to walk there. Not for the first time he thought of running away. Maybe he could climb the mountain, or at least go and see if anyone lived there. His Uncle had told him of people in the far north, beyond the great inland sea, who lived in mountains. Though now, looking up at the snow-capped peaks, he was sure that it must be too cold to stay there for more than just a little while.
Slowly the trees began to thicken and grow taller. Gone entirely were the young saplings that made up the forest close to the village, here almost everything was old growth with no sign that the fires had ever touched them. Rowe found himself on edge, scared and excited at the same time. It was said that the animals grew strangely vicious this close in to the Wildwood proper and unlike all the other stories this was something he was inclined to believe. The last time he had crossed over The Hedge he was sure that he had seen a wolf, though he had been too taken by panic to really be sure. But, he told himself, he had been younger then and smaller and he had not had the dagger.
Then, all of a sudden the trees gave way and the Northern Hedge lay before him. If the other trees had been old, then these were truly ancient, but where their younger siblings had had room to spread out and grow in all directions the trees of the hedge instead sat shoulder to shoulder, with limbs that so closely intertwined that it was impossible to see what lay on the other side. He took a deep breath and pushed his way through.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust; everything was darker, with only brief slivers shining through the cracks in the leafy ceiling. The air was still, almost heavy, but still the trees seemed to sway to some unfelt breeze. Almost imitating them he began to shiver, though he was not sure whether he did so out of coldness or exhilaration.
He tried to move in a straight line, knowing that if he lost his sense of direction that he would most likely end up getting lost entirely, but that was easier said than done. Like the outer woods there were trails left by animals, but here they seemed much more chaotic and indecisive, crisscrossing over each other and often looping back upon themselves. The birds too acted oddly, as he heard no calls or cries of warning as approached, only the soft fluttering of wings and the moving of shadows.
Very slowly he got the impression that something was watching him. It started as a tingle on the back of his knew, a vague concern about what could be behind him and then gradually began to develop into something more. He had stopped to investigate a small stream that slipped almost silently between the trees when the feeling surged so strongly that he went into an instant panic; turning this way and that, clutching the knife and trying to see everywhere and everything at once.
He felt hot and clumsy and sick all at the same time. His eyes flickered from tree to tree and he began to wonder if this had been such a good idea. Something moved behind him; brushed against his shoulder. He bolted.
He ran and ran and ran. Absolute terror ripping each breath from his lungs. Branches whipped at his arms, at his face, he felt one or two cut the skin but was too pre-occupied to care. Not once did it occur to him that he was running in the wrong direction. He stumbled up and over a hill and into light and open air. He fell.
Something poked at him, rolling him the right way up. People were talking. He groaned, trying to push the needles of light back from his eyes. He blinked. He was on a road and there were people everywhere. A voice in the back of his head began to laugh. There are no roads in the Wildwood. It’s supposed to be secret. Full of dark things. Not full of people.
One of the men, and he realised that most of them were men, jabbed at him with his boot and said something. He looked up at him, at his dark green livery and the plate of burnished steel that was wrapped around his chest. Soldiers. Soldiers on a road in the Wildwood.
“Hey kid! I said ‘where the hell did you come from?’”
Rowe began to mumble dumbly in response when the soldier looked away and snapped rigidly to attention as a man in a dark blue tunic moved through the other men, likewise at attention, to come and see what was going on. He looked from the soldier to Rowe, crossed his arms and made a surprised but yet unworried exclamation.
“Huh.”
He turned back to the soldier and asked, “Where did he come from?” The soldier seemed to somehow go more rigid. The man in blue had bolts of lightning stitched into his sleeves.
“I was just asking him sir. Doesn’t seem to talk.”
The man looked back at him.
“From one of the nearby villages by the looks of it, though I thought they were all supposed to be terrified of coming in here.”
Rowe tried to say something, but the patted him oddly on the head and then turned to move away.
“Not that it really matters though. Seeing as what we’re doing here isn’t exactly on the books and we’re running short of time, we can’t really have him running back to whatever hovel he crawled out of and telling everyone he can that he saw a Magister and some of the imperial watch traipsing around deep in the Wildwood.”
The man’s voice seemed to echo and repeat itself. Rowe, found himself yawning deeply and then in an instant his eyes rolled back into his head and he went limp from head to toe.
“Just tie him up or something so that he doesn’t try and run when he wakes up.”
One of the soldiers nodded and the Magister smiled sadly.
“Looks like we’ve got another volunteer for our little trip. Poor kid.”
TBC
Next post should be up sometime next week - either pirate or play, I promise - though I do have a weekend away and essay proposals and a presentation to get through first so we'll see how we go...
Still I feel bad for neglecting the blog, especially after my last spiel (I have been writing, I just like to get stories to a partially rounded off state before uploading - so that I don't cut them off right in the middle of a particular segment of plot) so I thought that I would give you something new (and comparatively longer than my last few updates) to chew over.
Just a few things before I get to it though:
- No it's not a continuation of the pirate story or an attempt at a play/play like dialogue - both those are coming along, but I started this up on a whim the other day and sort of got stuck in it.
- Yes it is fantasy - though is hopefully not terribly cliché (though undoubtedly I will have the clichés pointed to me).
- yes it is in a way part of the series that I have been working on/talking about for forever and ever - though it is not a main part, but is instead me playing with a new character (who may or may not be important) and their role (or lack there-of) in major events within the world/universe.
(As I think I have mentioned to people in the past - If I do at some point write this series I don't really want it to be a big unwieldy series, ala The Wheel of Time, but would instead be aiming for maybe a few smaller series of stories and stand alone novels set within the same universe (think Larry Niven's 'Known Space' series or Iain M. Banks 'Culture' novels if you are in anyway familiar with them - which is a probably not given my current readership/me not really knowing anyone else who has read them).
Anyway without further nonsense, here is a story which I would like you to read, rip apart and generally criticise in a (possibly/hopefully) helpful way (also comments on last post would be cool too).
Wildwood
“Rowe!”
The boy froze, halfway over the fence.
“Where do you think you’re going!?”
Under his breath he cursed his bad luck. He was so close; he could almost touch the trees. He’d been so sure that he would be able to get away this time. So sure that she was too busy to pay attention to what he was doing, but now somehow he knew that she had been watching the whole time. She was always watching. He thought of the punishment to come and a hot and prickly sensation trickled down the back of his neck. There was no way that he was going to avoid the switch this time, not after being caught for the third time in almost as many weeks. He could hear her moving closer.
“What have a told you about going in there!” She was genuinely angry now. He swallowed, and then sighed under his breath. So it was going to be the usual lecture. He had heard it so many times now that he could almost quote her word for word: She would go on about how that now he was older he had to take on some responsibility. She would mention how sick his mother was. How he was causing her to worry. How that worry only made her condition worse. He hated her for saying that, knowing full well that he was not allowed to visit her had no way of knowing if it was true.
Normally he tried his best to ignore her, only coming back to attention when she came to mention his father and ‘what he would think’ or ‘what would he say’. It always came down to that and normally enough to drag him back in to line, normally. His father always knew when he was paying attention or not and a look of disapproval from him was always a hundred times worse than the switch his aunt seemed to prefer. He kept his back to her, hiding a grin.
His aunt had a fearsome temper when angered, which seemed to be most of the time as of late, but she had never been known for her originality. Always it was the same routine. He would have listened if the threat had any weight, if his father was here. But he wasn’t, he had left weeks earlier on business and would be away for weeks more; the fear of angering him was a distant one.
So, he thought, he may as well have some fun now, while he could get away with it. The old wood flexed as he completed his vault over the fence and then in an instant he was in amongst the trees. He could hear his aunt shrieking profanities; rushing towards the fence. She must be really angry now. Even more reason to disappear. He was running as soon as his feet hit the ground.
It didn’t take long for her voice to fade off into the distance; although this close to the village the trees were still relatively thin they had a way of muffling voices and making it sound as if people were in places that they were not. It was supposed to be like that all through-out the Wildwood, though the trees only began to thicken if you made it over the Northern Hedge and into the forest proper, something he had only done once before. In the outlying forest the distance between the trees meant that even from far away it was still easy to find the fingers of chimney smoke from the village drifting up lazily to clutch at the sky overhead; In the Wildwood proper you were lucky if you could see anything overhead besides the drapery of branch and leaf.
He knew no one would bother him for the rest of the afternoon. For reasons he had never understood the people from the village always avoided the Wildwood. The other children tried to explain it away with the usual ghost stories: sometimes the wood was a hiding place for murderers or madmen; sometimes it was home some sort of monster, or if they were feeling particularly imaginative, it was the forest itself that was out to get you, because it was haunted or old magicked or ensorcelled or whatever. The only thing the stories ever agreed on was that if you went too far in, it wasn’t too likely that you would ever be coming. For the most part Rowe ignored these stories. It doesn’t take much to scare children. What interested him more was the way the adults behaved: They simply ignored it. Never went in, never talked about it (unless they were telling their children to keep away from it). They even avoided looking at it; instead they seem to look through it or just at the fence that marked the border between forest and village. They went to a lot of effort to try and hide it, but Rowe knew that they too were afraid of the forest and that they had been afraid of it for so long that it had become habit forming. Firewood and lumber were brought all the way from the part of the wood that curled around the eastern side of the village, never from the Wildwood itself, even though it was right there in front of them. As far as Rowe knew, the only time an axe had ever touched Wildwood trees was when the fence had been built and that had been before his father had been born, when the trees near the village had been as thick as those further in. Before the villagers had cut and burnt the forest back. Making his way down one of the innumerable animal trails that wended their way through the young growth he could still see some of the left over traces of the fires; black scars on the trees which had by chance survived, and the desiccated remains of those that had not. Many of the more brittle ones had since collapsed into little more than piles of ash, either under their own weight and the simple passage of time or because they had been taken to with stone or branch and a youthful desire to break things when angry. But today was not one of those days. Instead he had just wanted to get away, away from the crowding and the heat of home and out the open, where the crisp air carried the hint of coming of cold and winter.
Eventually he came to his favourite place in the forest, a copse of elder trees which, huddled together, had somehow managed to make it through fires largely unscathed. With a sigh of relief he pushed his way through the thick knotting of branches and into the small glade hidden within. In a way it was like coming home, he had been coming here for years and the clearing was littered with things that he had found, made, or had simply wanted to keep hidden. Various attempted fishing poles were sat haphazardly by the small pond that bubbled up from somewhere underground - a few discarded fish bones lying in a rough fire-pit suggesting that at least one had at some point been successful. Out of habit more than hope he went down on hands and knees by the water’s edge, trying to see below the surface; it had been several weeks since he had seen, let alone caught, a fish. The water was cold and clear, but as usual it was empty. He wondered what had happened to them and hoped that he had not scared them all away. Though he had been much more likely bring them food than to catch one of them to feed himself, having only done so if he stayed the night and so missed dinner, something that had become increasingly common over the last few weeks. More often than not he would simply gather up some leaves and a cloak and sleep out in the open, but as it had grown colder that was becoming less and less comfortable and so instead he had put together a slightly more permanent area to bed down below the overhang of a large boulder that sat on the edge of the clearing. It was dry place to sleep but was not very comfortable, so he had ‘borrowed’ a sheepskin blanket from an old chest he had found in the attic. He sat down on the blanket and closed his eyes, wondering if it would be a good idea to stay the night again and wait until tempers had cooled off. Out of habit his hand moved to a small hollow in the rock face where he kept his more prized possessions. There were a few stones and odds and ends, pebbles with odd patterns and hard chucks of what looked like stone but let the light through when held up to the sun. The silver coin he had found one day when his father took him into town. Some feathers and some scavenged fish-hooks. Instinctively he grasped the handle of the heaviest weight he could find, bringing out the dagger that had been a gift from his Uncle he last time he had come down from one of the great cities in the North. Taking it from its sheath he tested the blade against his thumb, though not with enough force as to cut the skin (he had learnt that lesson within the first hour of owning the knife and it was for that reason that his aunt had decided that it was best that he not keep it – which was exactly why he had hidden it).
He slashed the short blade through the air experimentally, before sheathing it and tying it to his belt. The day was still young and he was starting to feel adventurous.
From the glade it was only a small trip to the Northern Hedge and he found himself wandering toward it before he knew where he was going. He found himself tingling with apprehension - If he was going to face another switching for going into the Wildwood he may as well actually go into the REAL Wildwood. Through the trees he could just make out The Midmost Mountains. He wondered if Wildwood stretched up all the way to meet them and, if they did, how long it would take him to walk there. Not for the first time he thought of running away. Maybe he could climb the mountain, or at least go and see if anyone lived there. His Uncle had told him of people in the far north, beyond the great inland sea, who lived in mountains. Though now, looking up at the snow-capped peaks, he was sure that it must be too cold to stay there for more than just a little while.
Slowly the trees began to thicken and grow taller. Gone entirely were the young saplings that made up the forest close to the village, here almost everything was old growth with no sign that the fires had ever touched them. Rowe found himself on edge, scared and excited at the same time. It was said that the animals grew strangely vicious this close in to the Wildwood proper and unlike all the other stories this was something he was inclined to believe. The last time he had crossed over The Hedge he was sure that he had seen a wolf, though he had been too taken by panic to really be sure. But, he told himself, he had been younger then and smaller and he had not had the dagger.
Then, all of a sudden the trees gave way and the Northern Hedge lay before him. If the other trees had been old, then these were truly ancient, but where their younger siblings had had room to spread out and grow in all directions the trees of the hedge instead sat shoulder to shoulder, with limbs that so closely intertwined that it was impossible to see what lay on the other side. He took a deep breath and pushed his way through.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust; everything was darker, with only brief slivers shining through the cracks in the leafy ceiling. The air was still, almost heavy, but still the trees seemed to sway to some unfelt breeze. Almost imitating them he began to shiver, though he was not sure whether he did so out of coldness or exhilaration.
He tried to move in a straight line, knowing that if he lost his sense of direction that he would most likely end up getting lost entirely, but that was easier said than done. Like the outer woods there were trails left by animals, but here they seemed much more chaotic and indecisive, crisscrossing over each other and often looping back upon themselves. The birds too acted oddly, as he heard no calls or cries of warning as approached, only the soft fluttering of wings and the moving of shadows.
Very slowly he got the impression that something was watching him. It started as a tingle on the back of his knew, a vague concern about what could be behind him and then gradually began to develop into something more. He had stopped to investigate a small stream that slipped almost silently between the trees when the feeling surged so strongly that he went into an instant panic; turning this way and that, clutching the knife and trying to see everywhere and everything at once.
He felt hot and clumsy and sick all at the same time. His eyes flickered from tree to tree and he began to wonder if this had been such a good idea. Something moved behind him; brushed against his shoulder. He bolted.
He ran and ran and ran. Absolute terror ripping each breath from his lungs. Branches whipped at his arms, at his face, he felt one or two cut the skin but was too pre-occupied to care. Not once did it occur to him that he was running in the wrong direction. He stumbled up and over a hill and into light and open air. He fell.
Something poked at him, rolling him the right way up. People were talking. He groaned, trying to push the needles of light back from his eyes. He blinked. He was on a road and there were people everywhere. A voice in the back of his head began to laugh. There are no roads in the Wildwood. It’s supposed to be secret. Full of dark things. Not full of people.
One of the men, and he realised that most of them were men, jabbed at him with his boot and said something. He looked up at him, at his dark green livery and the plate of burnished steel that was wrapped around his chest. Soldiers. Soldiers on a road in the Wildwood.
“Hey kid! I said ‘where the hell did you come from?’”
Rowe began to mumble dumbly in response when the soldier looked away and snapped rigidly to attention as a man in a dark blue tunic moved through the other men, likewise at attention, to come and see what was going on. He looked from the soldier to Rowe, crossed his arms and made a surprised but yet unworried exclamation.
“Huh.”
He turned back to the soldier and asked, “Where did he come from?” The soldier seemed to somehow go more rigid. The man in blue had bolts of lightning stitched into his sleeves.
“I was just asking him sir. Doesn’t seem to talk.”
The man looked back at him.
“From one of the nearby villages by the looks of it, though I thought they were all supposed to be terrified of coming in here.”
Rowe tried to say something, but the patted him oddly on the head and then turned to move away.
“Not that it really matters though. Seeing as what we’re doing here isn’t exactly on the books and we’re running short of time, we can’t really have him running back to whatever hovel he crawled out of and telling everyone he can that he saw a Magister and some of the imperial watch traipsing around deep in the Wildwood.”
The man’s voice seemed to echo and repeat itself. Rowe, found himself yawning deeply and then in an instant his eyes rolled back into his head and he went limp from head to toe.
“Just tie him up or something so that he doesn’t try and run when he wakes up.”
One of the soldiers nodded and the Magister smiled sadly.
“Looks like we’ve got another volunteer for our little trip. Poor kid.”
TBC
Next post should be up sometime next week - either pirate or play, I promise - though I do have a weekend away and essay proposals and a presentation to get through first so we'll see how we go...
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