Summary - Aryel, a girl living a miserable life finds some interesting tracks. Blah blah blah
Questions
1 Does it still sound like a 19th century setting?
2 Does it feel slightly suspenseful?
3 How is the imagery?
4. How about show versus tell?
Still, cautiousness would not go amiss here. She increased the pace once she was satisfied that her footsteps were making barely any noise. On the other hand… If it was a keyl, then she should be moving loudly and make as much noise as she could rather than silently sneaking into the area. No! There isn’t anything here! She wanted to believe that but part of her doubted it.
She had heard the big predators did not take too kindly to being startled, and were just as prone to attack and defend themselves when startled as they would run away when startled. And that was one reason keyls were dangerous. Aside from being easily half again as large as a cow, they had massive crescent shaped heads, the sides of which were razor sharp, and used when the animal was hunting. A single swipe of that head could rip through the flesh of most creatures out there and put the animal down permanently. Then the beast would just insert its trunk like mouth into the massive slash, and start secreting acids into the wound and drink the liquefied remains.
At least that was what Wyllyam said. He claimed he had heard it from a CEC official all the way in Kyl’s Wells. She partially doubted that he had even met anyone from the mythical CEC, the so called human government all the way from Earth that were trying to reconstruct their human alliance that was long since shattered. Shattered since the time of the Martyr some four or five hundred years back. Her father remained quite tight lipped about it, but she could tell he thought CEC was laughable. Not that they didn’t exist of course, just that their mission and purpose was ridiculous.
Still, the explanation for the way a keyl fed seemed likely similar to what Wyllyam said as she had seen the kills of makys before, and much of their kills had been turned into some disgusting ooze that seeped out of the gashes left by the animals.
Relieved that she was alone, she took several steps forward into the trees, scanning the ground for any sort of footprints that might reveal the identity of the maky’s unknown stalker. It only took a few moments until she saw a place where the brush and leaves had been obviously disturbed.
She puzzled over the displaced brush until its purpose became obvious. It was a bed. Something had lay here for several moments but probably not too long. Maybe an hour or three and then it had gotten up and headed off elsewhere. Where exactly it had headed to eluded her. The ground here even with all the leaves didn’t seem to hold the tracks very well. Leaves had already started falling and had covered much of the existing trackway even given the few hours between her arrival here and the beast’s presence here.
Still she was curious. Now she knew it hadn’t been hunters, it must have been a keyl. At least, she figured it couldn’t be hunters. Why would anyone just randomly lie down on a bed of leaves? No, given the time frame, the keyl had probably hidden during the hotter sun of the day and moved on since then. That had probably been at noon or so. It wasn’t incredibly hot in the afternoon, but it was still warm enough that the animal would seek shelter for the moment.
She looked around the area, watching for any sort of telltale sign of the animal that hadn’t been obliterated by the falling vegetation. She remembered in the back of her mind that she still had chores to do, so she occasionally grabbed a large stick or two that they could use, but for the most part, she continued looking for the trackway the animal had made when it had left.
A male keyl this close to her house could be a problem. Wyllyam Korgan had said they sometimes preyed on cattle, and she didn’t want to risk thinking of that as being one of his many falsehoods. If there was one in the area, pa’s herd might not be safe. He would probably find some way of blaming the death of a cow by the hands of this keyl on her as well. Everything that went wrong seemed to have been caused by her.
But first she wanted to see where the keyl was head to. Had the maky and the keyl come across each other coming from different directions? Or had they both been heading in the same direction? Finding where the tracks became visible took probably an hour or two and the sun was starting to head down the horizon. Aryel hadn’t even noticed a glow of its fall as she continued through the area with her gaze locked on the ground.
She let out a squeal of excitement when she finally saw the large pugmarks of the animal further into the forest. The vegetation was less dense here which mean better conditions for finding pugmarks, and she had found several. These were similar to the maky pug-marks, but were even larger and broader. Each mark from the two feet on each leg was probably about the size of her hand fully spread open.
This was a big animal unless she missed her guess gauging by the size of the marks. And the marks indicated that the keyl was heading in the same direction the maky patrol had. Most likely the maky patrol had seen the keyl and skirted around the bigger animal before heading off as fast as they could. The keyl had probably left a bit after that, heading off in search of food somewhere else.
Aryel started following the trail for almost a mile or so. From the way that its pug-marks were spread out she determined it was moving at a slow pace, the movement of an animal that wasn’t in any sort of hurry. The marks gave her goose bumps all over, as she had never been so close to any sort of large predator. It was exciting and exhilarating.
A sudden thought came into her mind. The tracks were heading in the general direction of her families cabin. She paused. The sticks! She looked up towards the sky and realized that the sun was almost down. There wasn’t anything out in these woods at night that she needed to fear, but that didn’t mean the darkness still didn’t set her nerves on edge. And she had left all those sticks behind on the ground and had wandered off after animal tracks.
She would have needed to start hauling her finds back to the house hours ago if she had planned on finishing in a reasonable time. As it was, it would take probably well into the night to get them all. She cursed to herself and turned and ran towards the valley where she had left her pile behind.
It took maybe twenty minutes to reach her pile and she began scrambling to grab as many as she could before setting off towards the cabin as fast as she could. Aryel stumbled more than once in the failing light, but she stopped and managed to retrieve every fallen stick and branch that lay on the ground. She wasn’t going to mess up now.
As she ran, she wondered if the keyl would come close to their cabin. That would certainly give the cattle a fright. Maybe the animal would even go in after them for an easy meal. She partially wished the animal would maul some of the cattle just to cause her father grief. She didn’t care if he took it out on her. He would take it out on her. The maiming of the cattle would be her fault somehow and if he didn’t find some way to punish her for that, he’d find some other excuse. That was just the way he was. He was just a mean old man who had never shown her much of a shred of love in her life.
Sometimes she dreamed what life would be like if she just ran away and lived off the land. She had heard tales of people doing that but she had never actually met one. Another of Wyllyam’s tales. I could do it. And she really knew she could. But always her thoughts returned to home. She really couldn’t leave there. Even though her father seemed to not give a shred of care for her, he hadn’t thrown her out like he had often said he would. Maybe he did love her. He just had an odd way of showing it. Yeah… that must be it, she thought.
She knew she had to be close now, but it was becoming rather dark and she had to watch her steps. She knew the direction back to the cabin even in darkness, but the terrain could always hide deadfalls or rocks that one could trip over. Up until now she had not tripped and injured herself and she had no intention of that happening now
The trees of lion’s manes and copper barks covered the hillside behind their cabin that was located maybe ten or twenty yards from the tree line. The cabin was in a wide meadow with plenty of room for them to have set up a fence that contained their livestock, as well as space for their vegetable gardens. Some of the vegetables were native plants; others like the cattle as well as herself were descendants from the original settlers.
A few more steps and the view of the cabin came into sight. And just in time as well. The sun had almost completely passed over the horizon off in the direction that the ocean laid. She had never traveled that far but one day she wanted to. Her gaze lingered there for a moment and she continued on to the cabin. She would have to make several more trips to get all of the branches back and she was only wasting time by watching things off in the distance.
That was something she had always wanted to do. Go to the ocean. Go to Wyldnys, the major continent on Ryzel. To be able to wander the world and see the sights. Travel to the ancient ruins of Robyn and see the monument to the Martyr. See the large port cities of Korwood and Tel Ryo. But part of her knew she never would.
She had been resigned to her fate for a long time since. Her dreams still spurned her on as she looked for a better life than what she was, but it would never come. Her father had promised that as soon as she became eighteen, he would find some man gullible enough to marry her and get rid of her. “Gullible” had actually been the word he used. She supposed the only thing she could hope for was that her husband would be a decent and kind man. Someone not like her father.
As she took several steps forward towards the cabin, another primal sense of unease gripped over her and she felt the hairs stand on the back of her neck. But when she craned her neck around, she saw nothing out of the ordinary that might give rise to such a sense of caution.
But still, she knew something was wrong here, and she paused in her steps about a hundred or so yards from the house. Something is wrong… she thought. A moment later she realized what it was. The sun had faded beyond the horizon and shrouded the entire meadow where her house lay in twilight. Barely enough light lingered that she could see the house, but darkness was closing in quickly and in fifteen or so minutes, she wouldn’t be able to see beyond what the starlight showed.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
A note for Colton
So, I was reading Illusions of Control on google docs, and I had a comment. I was reading the part that is from the Game Master Pulram's POV, right after the invasion of Earth has begun. The Game Master is kind of mentally reviewing the troops he has at his disposal: Morarchs, Zarma, the psionic guys, etc. Anyways, I found myself wishing that instead of eloquantly describing each of the troop types like does, I wish he would have acted more like a true gamer, and just listed out their stats. You know, Power 12, Agility 15, Speed 7, etc. To me, this would be both humorous, and also more true to the nature of the Game Masters.
Just a thought.
Just a thought.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
The Specters of Night
There, I got a title. Rejoice.
Recap: We got some insight into a monster's mind in the last post as it slowly was hunting someone or something. The animal was wounded, which prevented it from hunting its normal game. Then it killed someone. OoooOOooo
Questions for discussion
1. How is Aryel as a character? What are her qualities from what you saw so far?
2. What about your perspective of her father? Abusive, strict, or what?
3. What are your views on the setting? Does it need to be described more?
4. How does it read? Are there any confusing parts in the story? Specify where they are if you would be so kind
5. Anything else you saw? Contradictions, telling versus showing, etc.
6. How are the descriptions of the animals?
Little bit longer post this time
Aryel Korbat glumly stared down from the mountain side towards the small area where her family’s cabin lay. It wasn’t my fault! It really hadn’t been. She had only been doing what she needed to earlier this morning and she certainly couldn’t be blamed for every little mishap. Her morning chores for the day had consisted of going out and gathering newly fallen sticks off the surrounding trees in the nearby valley that was maybe two or three miles from her family’s cabin.
On her way out, she had jumped over her father’s fence that kept the cows tethered up near the barn. Evidently in her haste to get over the fence she had somehow knocked the padlock open and several of the cows had managed to escape. Maybe if Pa secured the locks better, she glowered.
The animals were nothing special, but they were descendants from the cattle of the first settlers to Ryzel, much like Aryel herself was. She had hear Pa mention once how lucky they were that the cattle could eat the vegetation on this world, and that Serenity had to import all of its foodstuffs from offworld. She couldn’t imagine why that planet should be any different from this one.
Kyl alone knows why they would be different, she thought, uttering the name of the Martyr of Ryzel in wordless prayer. The Martyr had long been dead for many centuries, but her parents had taught her, just like the Lord would answer her prayers, Kyl Barlowe, the Martyr of Ryzel would as well. Certainly he at least would have seen the harmless mishap that had occurred with the cows.
But her father had seen it as nothing more than carelessness. He claimed that at fifteen years of age, she should be more aware and less flowerheaded about her chores. Then he had grabbed her younger brother and stormed off out into the fields to gather up the cattle that had gotten out. Martyn was her father’s light and joy, the son he had always wanted, and whom he kept close constantly, grooming his “heir” as it were. Pa held a much different attitude about his “unneeded” and “unwanted” daughter, two descriptions she had heard him callously throw out even when he knew she could hear him.
Pa had only needed an hour to venture out and gather the wayward cattle and during that time she had busied herself with feeding the chickens. Evidently the cows had given him more trouble than she had thought they might, for he was certainly in a terrible rage when he arrived back. Without breaking stride, he had grabbed her and paddled her bottom until she screamed and howled for the entire valley to hear.
Afterwards he had told her to go out and gather as many sticks as she could find for the fires and that if he wasn’t satisfied with the end result, he’d give her more of the same. The only relief was that he didn’t act that way to just her. “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” her father had said more than once. If her brother messed up, pa would be sure to exact the same punishments on him as well. But he always seemed to find more excuses to get mad at her as opposed to Martyn. It was almost as if punishing her was almost akin to not having her around.
Winter was coming fast, and the nights around here during fall weren’t the hottest to begin with. Gathering the plentiful vegetation that fell off of the copper-bark trees would at least manage to help them with fires. As much as she disliked her father and the attitude he had towards her, she didn’t much like being cold either, so she continued to gather the sticks in a large pile down in the middle of a valley.
Her appointed gathering spot for the fallen timber was right near the banks of a small stream which had no name she was aware of. The valley and the stream had been her place to come when she needed time alone from dealing with her family. From her mean father, her apathetic mother, and her snobbish brother, this was one of the few areas that when her chores were done, she could escape out into.
Many a spring and summer afternoon had been spent out in this valley, as she sat underneath the copper barks trees and basking foliage in the warm sun. The flocks of prysmaflies darted overhead as both predator and prey pursued their own interests in glittering aerial dogfights. The dazzling four winged creatures darted here and there with an unnatural agility and grace.
As Aryel looked up, a blue chromatic falcon zipped overhead, in hot pursuit of some smaller creature that raced along on its rapidly four beating wings. The dashed all over the meadow, but the smaller creature evidently made it through the trees, for the falcon banked on its wings and headed up to a higher altitude far up in the sky. She watched for several moments longer and then continued her search.
More than once her boots sank into the mud of the swampy part of this valley. Streams flowed down out of the mountains and hills, feeding into the one that winded through here. She was relieved for what wasn’t the first time that she didn’t have to wear the dresses that many of the other girls she had seen wear around. Her britches and shirt did well enough for her, and a dress would have gotten in the way out here anyway. She had once dreamt of wearing one, but when the chance had finally come, she had found the piece of clothing so unwieldy, she had refused to wear it again. Pa hadn’t been much pleased with that.
She absent mindedly hummed some song she had once heard played at the saloon back at the town. She didn’t know many pieces of music because chance rarely found her in the proximity of Kyl’s Wells, the town that lay closest to her family’s small homestead. The village was too far to walk in a single day, and whenever her father went to trade the crops he grew for other necessities, she was never brought along except on the rare chance that her father was in a charitable mood.
“And that’s not often,” she spoke aloud. There was no one here close enough to hear her speak, and the animals that did hear evidently gave no care. At least she thought they heard. She had never heard any animals native to this area make any sounds. Her father had brushed her comments off that maybe they did make sounds and they just couldn’t hear them as being fool-talk and rubbish.
Walking down one of the hills, she carried a bundle of sticks close to her to keep any of them from falling out. As she moved through the marshy mud an odd mark on the ground caught her eye. She knelt down and saw the obvious pug-mark that lay in the mud near the stream. She mentally stored the location of the mark in her memory and half-ran towards her pile of sticks to drop the bundle off before she could come back and investigate.
She rarely saw animal tracks beyond the smaller shield-backs that roamed occasionally through the valley. The light gangly marks of the prysmaflies could be found when they came down from their flights to stumble about awkwardly on the ground while they sought a drink. She tossed the sticks into the pile and turned to run back to the mark, not even checking to see if she got them all in the general location.
Carefully stumbling through the mud, she pulled her pants up to avoid getting them caught in the swampy parts of the marsh. A lot of drainage came in off the mountains and that made this place both an ideal location for spotting wildlife, as well as a wet swamp for much of the year. She cautiously looked down at the tracks and tried to puzzle them out.
She knew a fair bit of tracking, but most of her knowledge had been picked up from other encounters with pathways of animals rather than any formal training. The majority of that knowledge had been garnered here in this very valley and she was familiar with all the animals that passed through.
Each footmark was actually a double print. The predators that made their homes in the surrounding mountains had elongated toes that branched into two separate feet. Each foot then led into three toes, a central digit and one to the side. To call it a hoof wasn’t completely accurate, but it was the best description that Areyl could think of. The marks were maybe a few inches thick, but at least for or so deep. The feet gave the animal good footing, but made it sink like a stone in mud and snow.
But this animal had not been hunting, judging by the distance from print to print. The entire span of the creature was maybe a little less than she was tall. Had the stride distance been more, she could have seen it was running, and the way that the feet lined up with each other likewise gave clues to the animals movement. No, this animal had simply been strolling.
“If this is what I think…” she muttered to herself as she scanned the nearby muddy area for more prints.
She found the multitude of tracks almost immediately. About ten or so feet away from her current position she found another set of prints from the same sort of animal. These ones were more slimmer and longer while the first group had been bulkier and wider.
“A male and a female,” she said out loud. She wasn’t certainly an expert when it came to pug-marks, but she knew enough to tell the different between an animal’s genders by its tracks. Males were larger and thusly had bigger tracks while the females had slimmer feet. These were the tracks of a patrol of makys. Evidently the patrol that lived around here had come down into the valley, probably three or four hours previously.
She knew if she looked around she could find more of the tracks of the dozen or so individuals that made up the patrol. They would probably be looking for some of the larger animals in the area.
“Probably an aegysback,” she figured. The massive animals were occasionally seen in this area. Each was probably three or four times as tall as she was, and several times as bulky. The massive plant eaters were generally solitary creatures and very often favored prey of the maky patrols. They were a tough kill to be sure unless the maky patrol played smart.
An aegysback had massive tree trunk-like limbs, and a massive saucer shaped head. It didn’t have keen senses, but if it figured out something was there, a slam of its broad head could crush a person’s ribcage, and outright kill a maky. They hadn’t been domesticated for obvious reasons.
The maky was a smaller predator, probably about half the size of a cow. It had a completely featherless and furless skin that from a glance looked more like a hard leathery substance than anything else. The four legs all ended in those double feet and were jointed with a high knee and a long ankle. Their head was slim and arrow like, but two jagged barbs on the side of the head. They had no eyes as far as she could tell, and only two holes punctured right through the end of that head as well as the mouth were the only features the animal had.
Still, she was slightly interested to see that the patrol was down here, and without another glance, she started following the tracks. Once they exited the muddy areas a few hundred feet further, the tracks became harder to find, and several times she had to double back and recheck for the subtle marks that showed the passage of the animals through the dry terrain. Were it not for the presence of so many, she thought she might have been able to follow them at all.
As it was, a stone that had been knocked out of its resting place, a trail through the grass, leaves scattered and branches broken easily pointed in the direction that the patrol was heading. They were obviously making no effort to hide their presence which meant they weren’t on the hunt. She had heard her pa say once that some earth animals made permanent homes and then only left them when they went hunting. Here on Ryzel that wasn’t the case, and the animals were all semi-nomadic.
For what reason she had no clue. She certainly wasn’t smart enough to think why animals did or didn’t do things. She just knew they did. The maky patrol would only stop to settle down when they were laying offspring, and as soon as the offspring were old enough, they’d continue on what seemed like an endless journey through the highlands of Kemland, the Eastern continent of Ryzel.
They would constantly be on the move, looking for game along their migration paths to hunt down. This patrol must have fed long before they came through here, and were now just shifting their area of operation. That was something she was sure of. The animals kept on the move so that they would never overhunt any single area. Animals would become acclimated to their presence and finding food would be much harder on the maky patrol.
She brushed off the concern of actually meeting the maky patrol as nothing of importance or worth worrying about. For starters, she was probably an hour or two behind the animals and it would require her sprinting at full speed to come upon them in any decent amount of time.
Nor did she worry what would happen if she did come upon them. They were often more afraid of people than people were of them. If she came upon the pack, and didn’t do anything obviously aggressive, they would probably give her blank looks and continue on their way.
Even the big kyels were much the same way. Whereas a maky was a small pack hunting animal, the kyel was a much larger predator that needed no pack to hunt. Generally solitary and found farther up in the highlands, kyels were just as shy around people as makys were. She had only ever seen one once in the forests and it had observed her with that big eyeless crescent-shaped head until it got bored and moved on.
She checked up at the passage of the sun overhead, making sure that she still had time to follow the patrol around and then get back to her chores. The sun had barely hit the apex of its height over the sky, so she knew she had several hours yet until she was expected back at her cabin. The tracks from the maky patrol continued through the valley, until they came up against the treeline of the hillside.
She stumbled almost to a start as she saw that the maky patrol suddenly seemed to go all over the area at odd angles here. She had difficulty in keeping the many different tracks straight from one another.
It took several moments for her to finally discern the different tracks from each other. Some thought that one animal track was no different from another, and at first she would have agreed. But a little bit of investigation and one could find the pugmark of an animal was as unique as a face was to another person.
She turned towards the treeline and then back to the tracks. Her first instinct had said that the makys had seen something in the trees and they were stumbling around either trying to get a better look or intimidate whatever they were looking at.
Aryel looked for the tracks that marked the departure of the makys from this area and as she suspected, the tracks showed what had to be the animals moving at a very fast rate away from there. Had something in the trees startled them? The questions popped into her head, and she remained at the edge of the treeline, looking cautiously up towards the hillside.
There was no place in this valley that she hadn’t been to at least once and as she recalled there was nothing special up in that area to draw attention. Few trees sprung up from this hillside, just enough to create a canopy, and the slight twinge of fear that had pierced through her slowly faded away. Very few things could put fear into makys and make them bunch together for protection. Hunters and kyels were about the only things she could imagine. And maybe an enraged aegysback bull could do it as well.
She looked up towards the hill and shifted back and forth in her position until she was satisfied that whatever had made the maky patrol so startled and scared had long since gone. As far as she could see, the hillside was barren, save for a few prysmaflys that flitted about the canopy of the trees and occasionally landed to pick up the golden colored seeds that fell to the ground.
The trees that grew here were the copper-barks and lion’s manes. The former being large trees with a slightly metallic brass colar that was incredibly strong and resilient. Her cabin was made of that material. Lion manes were a darker color, and were topped by long narrow leaves that were supposedly reminiscent of some Earth animal.
The more she watched, the more convinced she became that the coast was clear and her fear was nothing more than her imagination. She started forward at what she thought was a slow pace. Each step that she took, she looked down to check and make sure she didn’t step on any sort of branch or twig. Of the two different things that could scare a patrol of makys, the hunters and poachers were probably the more dangerous to her at least
She had heard of such people, but had never actually seen them. Wild men and women that stalked all through the wilds of the planet, searching for game to hunt and sell to traders were not something she wanted to associate with. The area she was in now constituted one of the more wild areas of the wilderness, where the only law was what you made.
Finding hunters and poachers could end badly if the stories she had heard were to be believed. Wyllyam Korgan, the boy at the next farm over may not be the most trustworthy sort, but if his stories were remotely correct, then she would be right to fear poachers. Part of her told her that her wariness was unwarranted, and what whatever had been here and startled the patrol was long since gone.
Recap: We got some insight into a monster's mind in the last post as it slowly was hunting someone or something. The animal was wounded, which prevented it from hunting its normal game. Then it killed someone. OoooOOooo
Questions for discussion
1. How is Aryel as a character? What are her qualities from what you saw so far?
2. What about your perspective of her father? Abusive, strict, or what?
3. What are your views on the setting? Does it need to be described more?
4. How does it read? Are there any confusing parts in the story? Specify where they are if you would be so kind
5. Anything else you saw? Contradictions, telling versus showing, etc.
6. How are the descriptions of the animals?
Little bit longer post this time
Aryel Korbat glumly stared down from the mountain side towards the small area where her family’s cabin lay. It wasn’t my fault! It really hadn’t been. She had only been doing what she needed to earlier this morning and she certainly couldn’t be blamed for every little mishap. Her morning chores for the day had consisted of going out and gathering newly fallen sticks off the surrounding trees in the nearby valley that was maybe two or three miles from her family’s cabin.
On her way out, she had jumped over her father’s fence that kept the cows tethered up near the barn. Evidently in her haste to get over the fence she had somehow knocked the padlock open and several of the cows had managed to escape. Maybe if Pa secured the locks better, she glowered.
The animals were nothing special, but they were descendants from the cattle of the first settlers to Ryzel, much like Aryel herself was. She had hear Pa mention once how lucky they were that the cattle could eat the vegetation on this world, and that Serenity had to import all of its foodstuffs from offworld. She couldn’t imagine why that planet should be any different from this one.
Kyl alone knows why they would be different, she thought, uttering the name of the Martyr of Ryzel in wordless prayer. The Martyr had long been dead for many centuries, but her parents had taught her, just like the Lord would answer her prayers, Kyl Barlowe, the Martyr of Ryzel would as well. Certainly he at least would have seen the harmless mishap that had occurred with the cows.
But her father had seen it as nothing more than carelessness. He claimed that at fifteen years of age, she should be more aware and less flowerheaded about her chores. Then he had grabbed her younger brother and stormed off out into the fields to gather up the cattle that had gotten out. Martyn was her father’s light and joy, the son he had always wanted, and whom he kept close constantly, grooming his “heir” as it were. Pa held a much different attitude about his “unneeded” and “unwanted” daughter, two descriptions she had heard him callously throw out even when he knew she could hear him.
Pa had only needed an hour to venture out and gather the wayward cattle and during that time she had busied herself with feeding the chickens. Evidently the cows had given him more trouble than she had thought they might, for he was certainly in a terrible rage when he arrived back. Without breaking stride, he had grabbed her and paddled her bottom until she screamed and howled for the entire valley to hear.
Afterwards he had told her to go out and gather as many sticks as she could find for the fires and that if he wasn’t satisfied with the end result, he’d give her more of the same. The only relief was that he didn’t act that way to just her. “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” her father had said more than once. If her brother messed up, pa would be sure to exact the same punishments on him as well. But he always seemed to find more excuses to get mad at her as opposed to Martyn. It was almost as if punishing her was almost akin to not having her around.
Winter was coming fast, and the nights around here during fall weren’t the hottest to begin with. Gathering the plentiful vegetation that fell off of the copper-bark trees would at least manage to help them with fires. As much as she disliked her father and the attitude he had towards her, she didn’t much like being cold either, so she continued to gather the sticks in a large pile down in the middle of a valley.
Her appointed gathering spot for the fallen timber was right near the banks of a small stream which had no name she was aware of. The valley and the stream had been her place to come when she needed time alone from dealing with her family. From her mean father, her apathetic mother, and her snobbish brother, this was one of the few areas that when her chores were done, she could escape out into.
Many a spring and summer afternoon had been spent out in this valley, as she sat underneath the copper barks trees and basking foliage in the warm sun. The flocks of prysmaflies darted overhead as both predator and prey pursued their own interests in glittering aerial dogfights. The dazzling four winged creatures darted here and there with an unnatural agility and grace.
As Aryel looked up, a blue chromatic falcon zipped overhead, in hot pursuit of some smaller creature that raced along on its rapidly four beating wings. The dashed all over the meadow, but the smaller creature evidently made it through the trees, for the falcon banked on its wings and headed up to a higher altitude far up in the sky. She watched for several moments longer and then continued her search.
More than once her boots sank into the mud of the swampy part of this valley. Streams flowed down out of the mountains and hills, feeding into the one that winded through here. She was relieved for what wasn’t the first time that she didn’t have to wear the dresses that many of the other girls she had seen wear around. Her britches and shirt did well enough for her, and a dress would have gotten in the way out here anyway. She had once dreamt of wearing one, but when the chance had finally come, she had found the piece of clothing so unwieldy, she had refused to wear it again. Pa hadn’t been much pleased with that.
She absent mindedly hummed some song she had once heard played at the saloon back at the town. She didn’t know many pieces of music because chance rarely found her in the proximity of Kyl’s Wells, the town that lay closest to her family’s small homestead. The village was too far to walk in a single day, and whenever her father went to trade the crops he grew for other necessities, she was never brought along except on the rare chance that her father was in a charitable mood.
“And that’s not often,” she spoke aloud. There was no one here close enough to hear her speak, and the animals that did hear evidently gave no care. At least she thought they heard. She had never heard any animals native to this area make any sounds. Her father had brushed her comments off that maybe they did make sounds and they just couldn’t hear them as being fool-talk and rubbish.
Walking down one of the hills, she carried a bundle of sticks close to her to keep any of them from falling out. As she moved through the marshy mud an odd mark on the ground caught her eye. She knelt down and saw the obvious pug-mark that lay in the mud near the stream. She mentally stored the location of the mark in her memory and half-ran towards her pile of sticks to drop the bundle off before she could come back and investigate.
She rarely saw animal tracks beyond the smaller shield-backs that roamed occasionally through the valley. The light gangly marks of the prysmaflies could be found when they came down from their flights to stumble about awkwardly on the ground while they sought a drink. She tossed the sticks into the pile and turned to run back to the mark, not even checking to see if she got them all in the general location.
Carefully stumbling through the mud, she pulled her pants up to avoid getting them caught in the swampy parts of the marsh. A lot of drainage came in off the mountains and that made this place both an ideal location for spotting wildlife, as well as a wet swamp for much of the year. She cautiously looked down at the tracks and tried to puzzle them out.
She knew a fair bit of tracking, but most of her knowledge had been picked up from other encounters with pathways of animals rather than any formal training. The majority of that knowledge had been garnered here in this very valley and she was familiar with all the animals that passed through.
Each footmark was actually a double print. The predators that made their homes in the surrounding mountains had elongated toes that branched into two separate feet. Each foot then led into three toes, a central digit and one to the side. To call it a hoof wasn’t completely accurate, but it was the best description that Areyl could think of. The marks were maybe a few inches thick, but at least for or so deep. The feet gave the animal good footing, but made it sink like a stone in mud and snow.
But this animal had not been hunting, judging by the distance from print to print. The entire span of the creature was maybe a little less than she was tall. Had the stride distance been more, she could have seen it was running, and the way that the feet lined up with each other likewise gave clues to the animals movement. No, this animal had simply been strolling.
“If this is what I think…” she muttered to herself as she scanned the nearby muddy area for more prints.
She found the multitude of tracks almost immediately. About ten or so feet away from her current position she found another set of prints from the same sort of animal. These ones were more slimmer and longer while the first group had been bulkier and wider.
“A male and a female,” she said out loud. She wasn’t certainly an expert when it came to pug-marks, but she knew enough to tell the different between an animal’s genders by its tracks. Males were larger and thusly had bigger tracks while the females had slimmer feet. These were the tracks of a patrol of makys. Evidently the patrol that lived around here had come down into the valley, probably three or four hours previously.
She knew if she looked around she could find more of the tracks of the dozen or so individuals that made up the patrol. They would probably be looking for some of the larger animals in the area.
“Probably an aegysback,” she figured. The massive animals were occasionally seen in this area. Each was probably three or four times as tall as she was, and several times as bulky. The massive plant eaters were generally solitary creatures and very often favored prey of the maky patrols. They were a tough kill to be sure unless the maky patrol played smart.
An aegysback had massive tree trunk-like limbs, and a massive saucer shaped head. It didn’t have keen senses, but if it figured out something was there, a slam of its broad head could crush a person’s ribcage, and outright kill a maky. They hadn’t been domesticated for obvious reasons.
The maky was a smaller predator, probably about half the size of a cow. It had a completely featherless and furless skin that from a glance looked more like a hard leathery substance than anything else. The four legs all ended in those double feet and were jointed with a high knee and a long ankle. Their head was slim and arrow like, but two jagged barbs on the side of the head. They had no eyes as far as she could tell, and only two holes punctured right through the end of that head as well as the mouth were the only features the animal had.
Still, she was slightly interested to see that the patrol was down here, and without another glance, she started following the tracks. Once they exited the muddy areas a few hundred feet further, the tracks became harder to find, and several times she had to double back and recheck for the subtle marks that showed the passage of the animals through the dry terrain. Were it not for the presence of so many, she thought she might have been able to follow them at all.
As it was, a stone that had been knocked out of its resting place, a trail through the grass, leaves scattered and branches broken easily pointed in the direction that the patrol was heading. They were obviously making no effort to hide their presence which meant they weren’t on the hunt. She had heard her pa say once that some earth animals made permanent homes and then only left them when they went hunting. Here on Ryzel that wasn’t the case, and the animals were all semi-nomadic.
For what reason she had no clue. She certainly wasn’t smart enough to think why animals did or didn’t do things. She just knew they did. The maky patrol would only stop to settle down when they were laying offspring, and as soon as the offspring were old enough, they’d continue on what seemed like an endless journey through the highlands of Kemland, the Eastern continent of Ryzel.
They would constantly be on the move, looking for game along their migration paths to hunt down. This patrol must have fed long before they came through here, and were now just shifting their area of operation. That was something she was sure of. The animals kept on the move so that they would never overhunt any single area. Animals would become acclimated to their presence and finding food would be much harder on the maky patrol.
She brushed off the concern of actually meeting the maky patrol as nothing of importance or worth worrying about. For starters, she was probably an hour or two behind the animals and it would require her sprinting at full speed to come upon them in any decent amount of time.
Nor did she worry what would happen if she did come upon them. They were often more afraid of people than people were of them. If she came upon the pack, and didn’t do anything obviously aggressive, they would probably give her blank looks and continue on their way.
Even the big kyels were much the same way. Whereas a maky was a small pack hunting animal, the kyel was a much larger predator that needed no pack to hunt. Generally solitary and found farther up in the highlands, kyels were just as shy around people as makys were. She had only ever seen one once in the forests and it had observed her with that big eyeless crescent-shaped head until it got bored and moved on.
She checked up at the passage of the sun overhead, making sure that she still had time to follow the patrol around and then get back to her chores. The sun had barely hit the apex of its height over the sky, so she knew she had several hours yet until she was expected back at her cabin. The tracks from the maky patrol continued through the valley, until they came up against the treeline of the hillside.
She stumbled almost to a start as she saw that the maky patrol suddenly seemed to go all over the area at odd angles here. She had difficulty in keeping the many different tracks straight from one another.
It took several moments for her to finally discern the different tracks from each other. Some thought that one animal track was no different from another, and at first she would have agreed. But a little bit of investigation and one could find the pugmark of an animal was as unique as a face was to another person.
She turned towards the treeline and then back to the tracks. Her first instinct had said that the makys had seen something in the trees and they were stumbling around either trying to get a better look or intimidate whatever they were looking at.
Aryel looked for the tracks that marked the departure of the makys from this area and as she suspected, the tracks showed what had to be the animals moving at a very fast rate away from there. Had something in the trees startled them? The questions popped into her head, and she remained at the edge of the treeline, looking cautiously up towards the hillside.
There was no place in this valley that she hadn’t been to at least once and as she recalled there was nothing special up in that area to draw attention. Few trees sprung up from this hillside, just enough to create a canopy, and the slight twinge of fear that had pierced through her slowly faded away. Very few things could put fear into makys and make them bunch together for protection. Hunters and kyels were about the only things she could imagine. And maybe an enraged aegysback bull could do it as well.
She looked up towards the hill and shifted back and forth in her position until she was satisfied that whatever had made the maky patrol so startled and scared had long since gone. As far as she could see, the hillside was barren, save for a few prysmaflys that flitted about the canopy of the trees and occasionally landed to pick up the golden colored seeds that fell to the ground.
The trees that grew here were the copper-barks and lion’s manes. The former being large trees with a slightly metallic brass colar that was incredibly strong and resilient. Her cabin was made of that material. Lion manes were a darker color, and were topped by long narrow leaves that were supposedly reminiscent of some Earth animal.
The more she watched, the more convinced she became that the coast was clear and her fear was nothing more than her imagination. She started forward at what she thought was a slow pace. Each step that she took, she looked down to check and make sure she didn’t step on any sort of branch or twig. Of the two different things that could scare a patrol of makys, the hunters and poachers were probably the more dangerous to her at least
She had heard of such people, but had never actually seen them. Wild men and women that stalked all through the wilds of the planet, searching for game to hunt and sell to traders were not something she wanted to associate with. The area she was in now constituted one of the more wild areas of the wilderness, where the only law was what you made.
Finding hunters and poachers could end badly if the stories she had heard were to be believed. Wyllyam Korgan, the boy at the next farm over may not be the most trustworthy sort, but if his stories were remotely correct, then she would be right to fear poachers. Part of her told her that her wariness was unwarranted, and what whatever had been here and startled the patrol was long since gone.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Along the lines of inspiration...
Hey kids! I don't have a story to post yet, but I thought I'd try something new. In the same spirit of Landon's "inspiration" thread, I thought it might be good just to swap ideas about the writing process as well.
Where do you get ideas for characters?
As for me, music helps get me in the zone sometimes, and if a song has thoughtful lyrics, I often find myself expanding the songwriter's thought and developing it into a character or a plot point. Generally speaking, the mood means more than the literal words, but I find lyrics stimulate my thoughts better than just music. For example, when I was thinking about a story in which someone decides to leave his society, which doesn't want to leave its generation ship, a couple of songs by Arcade Fire got me into the "disaffected rebel" mood (No Cars Go and Windowsill in particular) to which I still go back when I'm trying to evoke that character.
I also get a lot from philosophical or ethical questions, often from the news. "If I were those guys, what would I think?" The story I'm working on right now, about changing pathological behaviors in violent convicts, was inspired by a neuroscientist who, while being interviewed, stated that his goal was essentially to prove that there is no such thing as a soul by manipulating the brain's moral functioning. "That's an interesting fellow," I thought, and I developed a whole story around a scientist being able to do just that.
What do you do to think of character ideas? What other media influences your writing process?
Where do you get ideas for characters?
As for me, music helps get me in the zone sometimes, and if a song has thoughtful lyrics, I often find myself expanding the songwriter's thought and developing it into a character or a plot point. Generally speaking, the mood means more than the literal words, but I find lyrics stimulate my thoughts better than just music. For example, when I was thinking about a story in which someone decides to leave his society, which doesn't want to leave its generation ship, a couple of songs by Arcade Fire got me into the "disaffected rebel" mood (No Cars Go and Windowsill in particular) to which I still go back when I'm trying to evoke that character.
I also get a lot from philosophical or ethical questions, often from the news. "If I were those guys, what would I think?" The story I'm working on right now, about changing pathological behaviors in violent convicts, was inspired by a neuroscientist who, while being interviewed, stated that his goal was essentially to prove that there is no such thing as a soul by manipulating the brain's moral functioning. "That's an interesting fellow," I thought, and I developed a whole story around a scientist being able to do just that.
What do you do to think of character ideas? What other media influences your writing process?
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Chapter One: Storms from the North (Part 2)
“My name is Danel Terram boy,” he said, taking another step into the smithy, “And I’ve come to save your life.”
The words hung in the air for one long moment, so that Ethyn could almost feel them, like charged air during a thunderstorm, or the faintest odor of smoke after a summer wildfire. His mind kept turning the stranger’s words over and over, like some kind of puzzle that just needed enough working to be made plain. Save his life? From what? The notion was ridiculous—mad, really—and a detatched part of Ethyn felt like chuckling at the thought; no, more like doubling over with laughter.
What he said was, “I’m afraid you’re mistaken, sir.” Everything fell into place then, and he realized the poor ancient was some sort of beggar, likely up from Bartrime and the highroad in the south. He hadn’t a even a half-penny on him, but not wanting to seem rude, he added, “Are you lost? I can point you to village and the inn, if you’d like. Grand Crossing isn’t more than an hour’s walk from here.” He frowned. “But then, you must have passed through the village on your way”—
“I am not lost, Ethyn Hardric.” For all his frail appearance, the stranger’s voice boomed like spring thunder, filling the smithy with its broad sound. Taking another step closer—Ethyn tried to back away, but was stopped short by the hard angle of the anvil pressing against the small of his back—the old man, or Danel Terram, if he could be believed, parted his lips in a broad smile that was as hard and cold as ice. “Though I’ve not seen the light of day for some years now, I walk by a different light. It has guided me here, to you, so that I might save you from the Shadow that is coming.”
They were nose to nose now, Ethyn trying to sink into the anvil and Danel grinning at him like a loon. Were it not for the scum-crusted bandages covering the upper half of the old man’s face, they would have been staring eye-to-eye. Ethyn’s throat had gone so dry that it took two tries to swallow, and even then, he could only manage a scratchy whisper.
“You’re mad.”
He instantly regretted speaking, for his words wiped Danel’s cold smile away so fast that Ethyn almost thought he’d imagined it, replacing it with a face that was a blank slab of angles and deep furrows, harshly lit from one side by the fire. He loomed over Ethyn, though only seconds earlier Ethyn would have sworn he’d had a good hand and a half on the old man. The fire in the forge sputtered, then gained in intensity, peppering Ethyn’s brow with fresh beads of perspiration.
Chest heaving, Danel spoke, and seemed to fight for every word like it was his last. “I . . . I—am—not—m-mad.” Without warning the beggar shrunk back in on himself, trembling, one long-fingered hand reaching up to press at the bandages covering his temples. He was panting like a man who’d just run the length of the township and back, but when he spoke, his voice was as strong—and as empty—as ever. “I am not mad, boy, and you are in very great danger. If you hope to survive the night, you must leave with me. Now. This very instance.”
Ethyn hadn’t even realized his mouth was hanging open until he snapped it shut. “Leave Grand Crossing? Tonight? You really are crazy.” Danel harrumphed loudly, drawing himself up angrily, and Ethyn used the momentary break to slip out from between the anvil and the beggar and put some distance between himself and the old man. “I’m not going anywhere,” he repeated, jabbing a finger at Danel. “And you’d best be on your way. My da will be checking in any time now and he doesn’t take well to strangers poking about.”
For the first time Danel looked nervous, aiming his covered eyes over one shoulder—a habit he must have clung onto—and licking his parchment-dry lips with a bruise colored tongue. When he turned back to Ethyn, his lips were bending in what must have been an attempt at a placating smile.
“Now, now,” he said, patting the air soothingly with both hands, “There’s no need to rouse your family.”
“Then leave.”
“I can’t boy!” the old man hissed, leaning in close again and grasping one of Ethyn’s wrists. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve been saying? You are in danger, more danger than you could possibly imagine. I’ve come to save you, to snatch out of the wolf’s mouth, and not a moment too soon.”
Something in Danel’s voice gave Ethyn pause. However crazed the man sounded, he honestly believed what he was saying. That hesitation was all the old man needed.
“Dark things—creatures more evil than you can imagine—are prowling the bounds of this township; they may already have crossed its borders. They are coming for you, Ethyn, and they will kill anyone who stands in their way.”
“Dark things? What things? Why would they be hunting me?”
Danel snorted through the wirey tails of his mustache and gave his wrappings a sharp tug. “Bah! Don’t play the fool with me boy. Darkspawn have been hunting you and your kin from the beginning. They nearly caught your father and the rest of your pitiful Family”—the sarcasm the old man invested in that single word brought Ethyn’s hackles up and he opened his mouth to give the beggar as good as he gave, but being blind, the man just went on talking—“nearly killed all of them eighteen years ago, the night you were born. Now they’ve returned to finish what they failed to do then: kill you and yours.”
For a moment all Ethyn could do was stare in slack-jawed astonishment at Danel. Then, coming to himself, he shook his head and brushed past Danel, angling for the wide smithy door as fast as he could and holding up one hand to forestall anymore idiocy from the old man.
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, Danel Terram—if thats truly your right name. My da has lived in Grand Crossing from the day he was born, and the only family he has are the four other folk that live in our house—me, my ma and my sisters. Good night and good riddance.”
He was halfway across the yard, hens and chicks scattering around his ankles and the sun’s last light bathing his shoulders, when Danel finally spoke, a whisper so low Ethyn almost didn’t catch it.
“Uthar never told you?”
The question—and the dishonesty it implied on Ethyn’s da’s part—hung in the air for what felt like forever; it felt like it took even longer for Ethyn to gather himself enough to round on Danel, and when he did, he was actually trembling with rage, fingers flexing like the claws on a cat. What gave this old beggar more covered in mud than clothes the right to wander into his family’s yard and slander Ethyn’s da, a man who had never given Ethyn even a penny-weight of cause to doubt him?
When his voice did come, it was a growl so low and . . . and so feral, even Ethyn was taken aback.
“You get out of here. Get out of here right—”
Uthar rounded the west corner of the house, the merry tune he’d been whistling freezing on his lips and a half-dozen logs of firewood tumbling from his suddenly lifeless hands, and the rest of the tirade died in Ethyn’s throat. Across the yard, Danel gathered his cloak more tightly about his frail shoulders and took a single step backwards, further into the smithy and the shadows, almost visibly seeking comfort from the shed’s close walls.
“Da,” Ethyn began, moving towards his father, “I was just—”
Uthar help up a his hand, bringing Ethyn to a jerking halt. “Stay back boy.” The words were cold, harder than Ethyn could ever remember hearing from his da, but they were like sunlight at midsummer next to those Uthar proceeded to direct toward Danel.
“Get out of here, Terram.”
Grand Crossing’s chief blacksmith was a mountain of a man—one of the few features Ethyn and his da did not have in common—twice as wide as most men at the shoulders and after a lifetime of working the forge, half again as strong. Sea-gray eyes, a matching pair to Ethyn’s own, were set deep in a bluff face that was framed above by short-cropped hair the color of brushed steel and below by a flairing beard that only served to accentuate his lantern-jaw and bold, twice-broken nose. There wasn’t a man in the township that Uthar didn’t tower over, but he nearly always compensated for his looming presence with a ready smile and rough laugh that seemed to come to him more easily than breathing.
But not now. Now the man was more a growing thundercloud—lightning fit to spit from his eyes—than a mountain, a great storm that threatened to vent all its fury on the frail man who was now visibly cringing away from Uthar.
Ethyn moved to gather up the fallen timber, but Uthar brought him up short with a second jerk of his hand. The blacksmith took another step towards Danel.
“I thought I’d made myself clear the last time we met,” Uthar said, jabbing a finger at Danel. “You—are—not—welcome—here. Ever.”
Tugging at his cloak in a vain attempt to gather himself, Danel drew himself up and said, “There is no time for this, Uthar Hardric. I remember our last meeting—you saw to that yourself—but my business here now goes beyond any ill will we might bare each other.”
“Ill will?” Uthar repeated Danel’s words slowly,face set like he was chewing on nails. “Ill will?” He took yet another step forward, balled-fists trembling and the veins on his neck standing clear like knotted cords. “You led my father and a dozen men to their deaths, and you call it ill will?”
Uthar was on the point of throwing himself at the old man—who, to his credit, hadn’t turned and fled before the human avalanche staulking towards him—when Ethyn finally managed to unroot himself from the ground and launch himself between the two men, spreading his arms wide and puting his back to Danel.
“You know him?” he demanded, half-shouted really, eyes boring into his da’s face.
Uthar reeled back as if slapped, and immediately began studying the ground between his feet. “Ethyn, I—I’ll”—he stopped and drew in a deep breath and gestured to Danel, “I’ll explain everything once he’s gone. I promise you that.”
Questions:
1) How is the dialogue? Does it feel natural, or are there problems with it?
2) How is the introduction of Uthar? Does it change how your perception about him in any way?
3) Does it move too fast? Too slow?
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Unnamed Novel
Alright, here is the new novel. I haven't decided on a name just yet, so I'll figure that out later. As previously stated, if you want access to the last one, just let me know.
You were already given a bit of an intro into the world in a previous post, so I'll assume you at least looked over it. It may make things clearer for you I hope.
Questions to be answered
1. Can you tell this section is done from the PoV from a predator? What are you feelings on that, as far as a non-"sophant" perspective?
2. How about the way it goes along? Does it seem to sound like coming from the PoV of a predatory animal? If not, what can be improved or changed?
3. How about the animal itself? Can you gather a decent picture in your mind of what it is or what it looks like? What can't you picture about it?
4. Any other observations? This is relatively short for a normal piece (around 1600 words).
Chapter 1
At that time, I wasn’t aware that the creature that had been dubbed the Byzarch Man-eater was anywhere in the proximity of my home. We were living in a very remote cabin at the time, easily ten or so miles away from the nearest large village, a small place called Kyl’s Wells. Pa rarely headed into town, and any news he picked up, he kept to himself. I sometimes wonder if he had known about the presence of the beast at all beforehand.
The animal crept through the dense undergrowth that covered all of this section of the mountainside. Each step that the animal took sent a lance of pain through its body but was strongest in its rear left leg. The animal knew something was wrong with that limb, as if a foreign presence had been introduced to the leg that even now bit and slashed at his limb with determined ferocity. But many inspections on previous occasions had turned up nothing there. The beast recalled a time previous when the pain had first appeared many darknesses ago.
Lying after taking a kill down, the beast had been resting in the shade that provided such a pleasant distraction from the otherwise intense heat of the day. There had been a loud crack off in the distance, like that of when one of the great trees fell to the ground. A lancing pain had shot through that same limb, and he had bolted away from the area in fright.
Now, the pain still lingered, and had become such a problem that the old male could no longer hunt the prey that he once had feasted on. To take down one of the larger beasts, the ones with the great shields on their heads and backs required speed, agility, and strength. He had all but the first, and that was enough to have spelt his doom.
The old male had been around for a long time, and many passages of the great freezes stuck in his mind of the ages that he had wandered this land. He had ran with the packs, and mated and produced many offspring. Now he was well past the prime of his life but for all his many weathered years, he still considered himself top dog and any of his brothers or sisters that encountered him knew that. He was far larger than the others of his kind and age had only given him a grizzled determination. He knew were it not for that pain in his rear left leg, he could still easily take down any beast of the forests that he came across.
He crept forward again through the dense brush of the forest. Each step was cautiously measured so as to not startle his prey, nor give them any warning that he was even in the area. Hundreds of kills over the many long seasons had imbued him with a perfect sense of how to stalk prey, and he rarely if ever missed a kill.
His limbs were lithe and muscular, and each of his legs branched off into a two pronged foot and each foot ended in a softly padded “hoof”. The digits gave him unparreled balance, especially when he was forced into the mountains, or the great sharp bush forests that lay farther up the mountain sides. He levered his long flat tail to the ground, keeping it low to the ground. The tail allowed him incredibly power when he came to the great waters, and it allowed him great balance as well when he moved through the mountains. The females of his kind likewise were attracted to those who had such great plumed tails and he was well aware of the magnificence of his.
His large crescent shaped head kept low to the ground, and he listened for the motions of his prey. Each sonar ping bounced back to the affirmation that his prey had not moved. Their obliviousness was the strange thing about these targets, but was one that he had quickly taken advantage of.
The great hard-shell herds, and their smaller cousins would have noticed the pings that he now boomed out to gain a clearer view of his prey and would have either scattered or formed their great circles around their young, and prevented him from acquiring a kill. But these ones seemed to be completely oblivious to his presence and his calls. Still he watched. Simply because the last few hadn’t noticed him was still not merit to remain unwary.
His prey was dangerous. Far more dangerous than the hard shells were even though the hard shells were much more massive. These two-legs were smaller than him, easily half his size, but they carried sticks around that made loud noises. But if they weren’t aware of his presence then they became the easiest prey he had ever stalked and feasted on. Even given his injured state, he could run them down without difficulty, and once he was close enough, a quick flick of his head would impale them squarely on the great spikes that marked the edges of his crescent shaped head. One sweep and they were down, never to give him trouble again.
But their small size meant they didn’t offer as much nutrition as he preferred in his prey. A single hard-shell would feed him for several darknesses, but each of these lasted maybe a single darkness at most before he needed to hunt again.
His prey still remained motionless out of its large shelter down below him. The shelter was of odd construction, like the trees around the male, but it wasn’t. He had tried his hardest to break into many in darknesses past, but found them semi-impossible to get inside. No, he would have to wait until they were outside like this one and their guard was down.
He had just moved across country during the early morning light, passing through the field that others of his species made their homes. Each kill would sometimes require the long movements across the land, because the others of his prey would inevitably leave their surroundings and flee for safety with others. He may have been strong, but he knew enough not to risk attacking many of them at once. There was too much of a chance of getting injured there. A break in one of the impaling horns on the side of his head would mean his death.
He stalked forward another pace, keeping low to the ground again. The prey looked up, and for a moment, the beast tensed where he lay, thinking his prey had spotted him and his cover was blown. If that was the case, he would have to just bet his luck and charge in after them, hoping to still be able to overbear the prey before they managed to get inside their shelter.
He relaxed his muscles, when the prey looked away, knowing that the prey may have heard something, but had just passed it off as one of the annoying little fliers that flew around the jungle. Many of them lay perched in the trees, crying out their own little pings of sound at his presence which was obvious to them. However his prey must not have heard their calls at all, or if it did hear them, had disregarded them.
He was lucky these beings existed in such amble supply. He had nearly starved to death those freezes previously, when he was unable to kill any of the hard shells and had been forced into scavenging the unliquefied remains of those kills left behind by his uninjured brothers and sisters. It had been quite by accident that one of the smaller beings he now preyed on had come up on him and startled him while he slept.
He rarely had approached them previous to that and this encounter certainly hadn’t happened as a result of his own choosing. Ever since he had come out of the hard shell, his mother had taught him to avoid them. They did not have much food on them, and they were just as liable to attack you as you were them. But when the one in the false skin that these creatures wore stumbled over him, he had leapt to defend himself and impaled it right through the chest. The being had given a loud scream that he felt more than heard, and in a panic he had ran away, leaving the corpse still impaled on the horn.
After he had calmed, he became aware of the limp corpse hanging off the horn, and let it slide off. He had almost left it there, for where there was one, there could be others, but the rumble in his stomach and the smell of the corpse enticed him further. After liquefying part of the corpse he had eaten. It had a bizarre taste, stranger than anything else he had preyed on, but he had at least found nourishment off this being.
That had been the first, and he had since started hunting them exclusively, except where he was able to bully kills off the much more nourishing hard shells that his brothers and sisters brought down. Against the odds, he had managed to survive, and now he was still able to hunt.
He crept forward on his haunches right to the edge of the forest where the tall plants still covered his body adequately enough. His muscles tensed and adrenaline flooded his bloodstream and he pounced forward at the prey, bursting out of the vegetation like a boulder rolling down a hillside. A moment later it was over. Another kill down, and food guaranteed for the rest of the day.
You were already given a bit of an intro into the world in a previous post, so I'll assume you at least looked over it. It may make things clearer for you I hope.
Questions to be answered
1. Can you tell this section is done from the PoV from a predator? What are you feelings on that, as far as a non-"sophant" perspective?
2. How about the way it goes along? Does it seem to sound like coming from the PoV of a predatory animal? If not, what can be improved or changed?
3. How about the animal itself? Can you gather a decent picture in your mind of what it is or what it looks like? What can't you picture about it?
4. Any other observations? This is relatively short for a normal piece (around 1600 words).
Chapter 1
At that time, I wasn’t aware that the creature that had been dubbed the Byzarch Man-eater was anywhere in the proximity of my home. We were living in a very remote cabin at the time, easily ten or so miles away from the nearest large village, a small place called Kyl’s Wells. Pa rarely headed into town, and any news he picked up, he kept to himself. I sometimes wonder if he had known about the presence of the beast at all beforehand.
The animal crept through the dense undergrowth that covered all of this section of the mountainside. Each step that the animal took sent a lance of pain through its body but was strongest in its rear left leg. The animal knew something was wrong with that limb, as if a foreign presence had been introduced to the leg that even now bit and slashed at his limb with determined ferocity. But many inspections on previous occasions had turned up nothing there. The beast recalled a time previous when the pain had first appeared many darknesses ago.
Lying after taking a kill down, the beast had been resting in the shade that provided such a pleasant distraction from the otherwise intense heat of the day. There had been a loud crack off in the distance, like that of when one of the great trees fell to the ground. A lancing pain had shot through that same limb, and he had bolted away from the area in fright.
Now, the pain still lingered, and had become such a problem that the old male could no longer hunt the prey that he once had feasted on. To take down one of the larger beasts, the ones with the great shields on their heads and backs required speed, agility, and strength. He had all but the first, and that was enough to have spelt his doom.
The old male had been around for a long time, and many passages of the great freezes stuck in his mind of the ages that he had wandered this land. He had ran with the packs, and mated and produced many offspring. Now he was well past the prime of his life but for all his many weathered years, he still considered himself top dog and any of his brothers or sisters that encountered him knew that. He was far larger than the others of his kind and age had only given him a grizzled determination. He knew were it not for that pain in his rear left leg, he could still easily take down any beast of the forests that he came across.
He crept forward again through the dense brush of the forest. Each step was cautiously measured so as to not startle his prey, nor give them any warning that he was even in the area. Hundreds of kills over the many long seasons had imbued him with a perfect sense of how to stalk prey, and he rarely if ever missed a kill.
His limbs were lithe and muscular, and each of his legs branched off into a two pronged foot and each foot ended in a softly padded “hoof”. The digits gave him unparreled balance, especially when he was forced into the mountains, or the great sharp bush forests that lay farther up the mountain sides. He levered his long flat tail to the ground, keeping it low to the ground. The tail allowed him incredibly power when he came to the great waters, and it allowed him great balance as well when he moved through the mountains. The females of his kind likewise were attracted to those who had such great plumed tails and he was well aware of the magnificence of his.
His large crescent shaped head kept low to the ground, and he listened for the motions of his prey. Each sonar ping bounced back to the affirmation that his prey had not moved. Their obliviousness was the strange thing about these targets, but was one that he had quickly taken advantage of.
The great hard-shell herds, and their smaller cousins would have noticed the pings that he now boomed out to gain a clearer view of his prey and would have either scattered or formed their great circles around their young, and prevented him from acquiring a kill. But these ones seemed to be completely oblivious to his presence and his calls. Still he watched. Simply because the last few hadn’t noticed him was still not merit to remain unwary.
His prey was dangerous. Far more dangerous than the hard shells were even though the hard shells were much more massive. These two-legs were smaller than him, easily half his size, but they carried sticks around that made loud noises. But if they weren’t aware of his presence then they became the easiest prey he had ever stalked and feasted on. Even given his injured state, he could run them down without difficulty, and once he was close enough, a quick flick of his head would impale them squarely on the great spikes that marked the edges of his crescent shaped head. One sweep and they were down, never to give him trouble again.
But their small size meant they didn’t offer as much nutrition as he preferred in his prey. A single hard-shell would feed him for several darknesses, but each of these lasted maybe a single darkness at most before he needed to hunt again.
His prey still remained motionless out of its large shelter down below him. The shelter was of odd construction, like the trees around the male, but it wasn’t. He had tried his hardest to break into many in darknesses past, but found them semi-impossible to get inside. No, he would have to wait until they were outside like this one and their guard was down.
He had just moved across country during the early morning light, passing through the field that others of his species made their homes. Each kill would sometimes require the long movements across the land, because the others of his prey would inevitably leave their surroundings and flee for safety with others. He may have been strong, but he knew enough not to risk attacking many of them at once. There was too much of a chance of getting injured there. A break in one of the impaling horns on the side of his head would mean his death.
He stalked forward another pace, keeping low to the ground again. The prey looked up, and for a moment, the beast tensed where he lay, thinking his prey had spotted him and his cover was blown. If that was the case, he would have to just bet his luck and charge in after them, hoping to still be able to overbear the prey before they managed to get inside their shelter.
He relaxed his muscles, when the prey looked away, knowing that the prey may have heard something, but had just passed it off as one of the annoying little fliers that flew around the jungle. Many of them lay perched in the trees, crying out their own little pings of sound at his presence which was obvious to them. However his prey must not have heard their calls at all, or if it did hear them, had disregarded them.
He was lucky these beings existed in such amble supply. He had nearly starved to death those freezes previously, when he was unable to kill any of the hard shells and had been forced into scavenging the unliquefied remains of those kills left behind by his uninjured brothers and sisters. It had been quite by accident that one of the smaller beings he now preyed on had come up on him and startled him while he slept.
He rarely had approached them previous to that and this encounter certainly hadn’t happened as a result of his own choosing. Ever since he had come out of the hard shell, his mother had taught him to avoid them. They did not have much food on them, and they were just as liable to attack you as you were them. But when the one in the false skin that these creatures wore stumbled over him, he had leapt to defend himself and impaled it right through the chest. The being had given a loud scream that he felt more than heard, and in a panic he had ran away, leaving the corpse still impaled on the horn.
After he had calmed, he became aware of the limp corpse hanging off the horn, and let it slide off. He had almost left it there, for where there was one, there could be others, but the rumble in his stomach and the smell of the corpse enticed him further. After liquefying part of the corpse he had eaten. It had a bizarre taste, stranger than anything else he had preyed on, but he had at least found nourishment off this being.
That had been the first, and he had since started hunting them exclusively, except where he was able to bully kills off the much more nourishing hard shells that his brothers and sisters brought down. Against the odds, he had managed to survive, and now he was still able to hunt.
He crept forward on his haunches right to the edge of the forest where the tall plants still covered his body adequately enough. His muscles tensed and adrenaline flooded his bloodstream and he pounced forward at the prey, bursting out of the vegetation like a boulder rolling down a hillside. A moment later it was over. Another kill down, and food guaranteed for the rest of the day.
Mental Homicide
(A quick disclaimer: this is a piece a I wrote for a class assignment that we will be turning into a short "silent" film. thus said, there is no dialogue except visual dialogue, words are mouthed etc. and there are no descriptions of sound whatsoever. So take that into account when critiquing it. Also, when you write a screenplay, you cannot write "Tyler was surprised..." because that is a very non-visual description and is rather ambiguous. rather you would write "...Tyler's mouth dropped open, his hands released his books that clattered to the ground." Thus the visual representation of surprise is depicted. That is how this piece is written as well. Please take these 2 things into account when reviewing the piece.)
Jon, a young man with glasses, slowly opens his eyes in a pool of water. He blinks repeatedly from the impact of more water falling onto his face from the sink above.
The door to the restroom opens as another man in a dark jacket (no tie) walks in. upon seeing Jon’s state in the messy bathroom the Jacketed Man hurries to aid Jon in getting back on his feet. Jon leans against the wall holding his head, while Jacket man washes his hands.
Jacket man leaves but as he does, Jon glances down and sees Jacket Man pushing a wallet into his back pocket. Jon, does a double take, reaches for his own wallet and realizes its missing. He is startled for a moment, but after regaining his composure, he runs out the door to confront the man who has just pick-pocketed him.
Outside the bathroom Jon sees his assailant disappearing around a corner to his left. Jon inhales deeply and then starts walking in pursuit. He hasn’t taken more than 3 steps however when something draws his gaze to the right. He quickly looks to find the same jacketed man sitting at a table. Shocked Jon looks to his left then his right repeatedly. He mouths the words “how did you…?”
Jon shrugs it off and marches to confront the man. As Jon reaches the table, the man motions for him to have a seat across from him. Jon, skeptically, pulls the chair out and moves to sit, but, to his surprise the chair is suddenly gone, and Jon stumbles to the ground.
Jon picks himself up again only to find himself next to an old house that’s decrepit and crumbling. Jon rubs his head and scans the area. He hears a noise and steps to peak around the corner.
He sees the Jacketed man hunched over a tree stump, using a rusty knife to cut carrots. Jon is shakes his head and blinks repeatedly in disbelief. He stares on at the jacketed man in an attempt to decide what his next move is. Suddenly, the jacketed man looks up and meets eyes with Jon. Jon jumps back around the corner, sure that the man has already seen him.
Slowly Jon takes another peek. The man is gone but the vegetables and axe remain on the stump. Jon checks his surroundings. Nothing. Jon looks back to the stump—the axe is now gone.
Jon begins to shake in panic. He slowly creeps forward and investigates the stump.
As he leans down and picks up the shredded carrots, the Jacketed man approaches from over Jon’s shoulder. Jon does not realize the man is approaching. The man raises the axe and at the last second. Jon turns to find his assailant.
He is thrown backwards over the stump. Jon stumbles, rolls, and breaks into a run making it around the nearest corner of the house. As Jon run’s he looks back over his shoulder for his pursuant, but to his dismay, the Jacketed man is gone again.
Jon rounds the corner and smashes into someone—the jacketed man.
Jacket man grabs Jon and begins to shake him. He then reveals a pistol from his coat.
Suddenly, the pair are in the middle of a road. Cars flying by on both sides.
Suddenly they both are struggling in the bathroom. They’re feet slosh water as they struggle for hold on the gun.
At last Jon wrenches the gun from Jacket-Man’s grasp. He steps back and points it at Jacket man’s chest. But Jacket man continues to grin. From behind him he reveals the axe. Jacket man takes 2 steps forward. Jon motions for him to stay away with the pistol.
Then, Jon lowers the gun for a moment as his mouth gapes open.
Flashback.
Jon is in the bathroom alone. As he washes his hands he slips in the water and hits his head like a rag doll on the lip of the sink.
Back to.
Jon holding the gun. Jacket man is in front of him but does not advance. Jon reaches in his back pocket and finds his wallet is still there.
Astonished, Jon looks back to his hand and though his fingers are still formed as though they were holding a gun, there is nothing in his hand. Jon looks forward, Jacketed man is not there anymore either.
Jon closes his eyes and opens them. Jacket man is back in the bathroom and the gun is in Jon’s hand once more. Jon slowly shifts the gun to his own head.
Jacket man yells “Noooo!!!”
Jon, now without a gun in his hand, Jon closes his eyes, and pulls the trigger.
A Flash of light and then blackness.
Jon stands alone in the bathroom. He closes his eyes and opens them. Jacket-Man does not return.
The End
Jon, a young man with glasses, slowly opens his eyes in a pool of water. He blinks repeatedly from the impact of more water falling onto his face from the sink above.
The door to the restroom opens as another man in a dark jacket (no tie) walks in. upon seeing Jon’s state in the messy bathroom the Jacketed Man hurries to aid Jon in getting back on his feet. Jon leans against the wall holding his head, while Jacket man washes his hands.
Jacket man leaves but as he does, Jon glances down and sees Jacket Man pushing a wallet into his back pocket. Jon, does a double take, reaches for his own wallet and realizes its missing. He is startled for a moment, but after regaining his composure, he runs out the door to confront the man who has just pick-pocketed him.
Outside the bathroom Jon sees his assailant disappearing around a corner to his left. Jon inhales deeply and then starts walking in pursuit. He hasn’t taken more than 3 steps however when something draws his gaze to the right. He quickly looks to find the same jacketed man sitting at a table. Shocked Jon looks to his left then his right repeatedly. He mouths the words “how did you…?”
Jon shrugs it off and marches to confront the man. As Jon reaches the table, the man motions for him to have a seat across from him. Jon, skeptically, pulls the chair out and moves to sit, but, to his surprise the chair is suddenly gone, and Jon stumbles to the ground.
Jon picks himself up again only to find himself next to an old house that’s decrepit and crumbling. Jon rubs his head and scans the area. He hears a noise and steps to peak around the corner.
He sees the Jacketed man hunched over a tree stump, using a rusty knife to cut carrots. Jon is shakes his head and blinks repeatedly in disbelief. He stares on at the jacketed man in an attempt to decide what his next move is. Suddenly, the jacketed man looks up and meets eyes with Jon. Jon jumps back around the corner, sure that the man has already seen him.
Slowly Jon takes another peek. The man is gone but the vegetables and axe remain on the stump. Jon checks his surroundings. Nothing. Jon looks back to the stump—the axe is now gone.
Jon begins to shake in panic. He slowly creeps forward and investigates the stump.
As he leans down and picks up the shredded carrots, the Jacketed man approaches from over Jon’s shoulder. Jon does not realize the man is approaching. The man raises the axe and at the last second. Jon turns to find his assailant.
He is thrown backwards over the stump. Jon stumbles, rolls, and breaks into a run making it around the nearest corner of the house. As Jon run’s he looks back over his shoulder for his pursuant, but to his dismay, the Jacketed man is gone again.
Jon rounds the corner and smashes into someone—the jacketed man.
Jacket man grabs Jon and begins to shake him. He then reveals a pistol from his coat.
Suddenly, the pair are in the middle of a road. Cars flying by on both sides.
Suddenly they both are struggling in the bathroom. They’re feet slosh water as they struggle for hold on the gun.
At last Jon wrenches the gun from Jacket-Man’s grasp. He steps back and points it at Jacket man’s chest. But Jacket man continues to grin. From behind him he reveals the axe. Jacket man takes 2 steps forward. Jon motions for him to stay away with the pistol.
Then, Jon lowers the gun for a moment as his mouth gapes open.
Flashback.
Jon is in the bathroom alone. As he washes his hands he slips in the water and hits his head like a rag doll on the lip of the sink.
Back to.
Jon holding the gun. Jacket man is in front of him but does not advance. Jon reaches in his back pocket and finds his wallet is still there.
Astonished, Jon looks back to his hand and though his fingers are still formed as though they were holding a gun, there is nothing in his hand. Jon looks forward, Jacketed man is not there anymore either.
Jon closes his eyes and opens them. Jacket man is back in the bathroom and the gun is in Jon’s hand once more. Jon slowly shifts the gun to his own head.
Jacket man yells “Noooo!!!”
Jon, now without a gun in his hand, Jon closes his eyes, and pulls the trigger.
A Flash of light and then blackness.
Jon stands alone in the bathroom. He closes his eyes and opens them. Jacket-Man does not return.
The End
Monday, September 6, 2010
Finished story
As stated previously, i finished writing Illusions of Control some weeks past, and have been partially resting and partially editing it. It's fully edited for the most aprt now, so those of you who desire to read it in its fullness, toss me your email address (gmail preferred) and I'll give you access to the whole thing.
It currently stands at somewhere near 140k words, so it is a decently long read. My next story should be appearing sometime this week.
It currently stands at somewhere near 140k words, so it is a decently long read. My next story should be appearing sometime this week.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Tricky business, fragment 1
Hello, amigos! It's been a long time since I've posted... and I still have to catch up on yours. In my defense, I've read over 250 pages of Dostoevsky for a class in the past week... :)
This is the first fragment of a contemporary sci-fi novel. It's long -- bear with me a bit the setting up phase and it will pick up a good deal. There's a few elements of non-existent technology in it, but for the most part, I intend it to look a lot like the world we live in now (which is like writing science fiction in the first place!) Unfortunately, I could only start writing in the very middle of the action, with very little introduction and not a whole lot of a story arc. Therefore, this first post is kind of intense and will likely be spread throughout the story. It also doesn't have an ending. I apologize that it's not a novel yet, but I hope to get the ideas out there and hang them in the plot as they develop a bit.
The second section is where the main action picks up. It's only half of the scene because I'm running up against the word count... but I guess that means I have something for next week, too.
My questions:
1. What is your reaction to Heath (the narrator)? Can you relate to his experiences as a child? Suggestions.
2. What do you feel is the most interesting conflict in the second fragment?
3. How interested are you in what happens next? How curious are you as to what motivates Heath? Dalton?
Any feedback is welcome. Sorry for such a long post!
You might think that your mother's murder would stand out as the defining moment of your childhood, but the fact of the matter is that I was too young to make much sense of it. Against the gray backdrop that was my life, it was simply the darkest spot in a murky series. Time and intervening circumstances slowly washed to event into the background even as they highlighted the much more pressing issue—being without a mother. At five, it hardly matters how your mother dies. Death is something grownups talk about in whispers than it is some sort of ultimate reality.
I never saw my mother's body, so in my mind, she was still alive. At any minute she might come through the back door into the kitchen, set down the tall brown bags of groceries and ask me to put the canned peas in the pantry next to the green beans. She never came, but sometimes it seemed like I heard her closing the hatchback door, like I heard her shuffling up the steps, and next she would turn the handle.
When I think of that time, the first thing I remember is crying for hours in the little nook between the dining room and my father's study, shaking and shivering all over as sunlight poured through the window and futilely tried to warm my skin. I also remember my father with his face in his hands, shaking and sobbing while Aunt Faye held him steady. The sight of my only pillar of my life crumbling shook me, then drove me into a terrified rage. I screamed, and Aunt Faye snatched me up and brought me to my bed, where I clung to her desperately until I had cried myself to exhaustion. And I remember my little brother Chris wandering around in his little pajamas, dragging his blanket around, his eyes red, his nose runny, and smelling like he had made a mess in his pants.
I don't remember much of the funeral, except for the pictures in my dad's room that he kept under the bed before we moved from the suburbs to the city. I do remember something of the graveside service, and standing very still as the priest said something over her enormous black coffin. I couldn't take my eyes off of it. It seemed like it was the hole which I was going to fall in to, no matter what I did. When the service was over, my aunt tried to hold my hand and walk me to the car, but I broke free and ran away. I felt like if I didn't stop, the black wouldn't catch me, but when I had run along the road all the way to my father's car, I realized there was nowhere else to go. I wanted to melt away somehow, or fly away, but there was nothing but the hot paint and the dusty gravel and it was hard to breathe, so I waited there until my father unlocked the door and Aunt Faye put Chris in the car seat and I opened the door and sat down next to her and fell asleep as my dad drove us home.
OK, so that's a little bit of the background. Here's the plot:
My name is Heath Sewell. I am a prosecutor because I believe those who flaunt society should see justice, and justice to its full extent. Anyone who is unwilling to live by the rules of society should be removed from it, before they remove the rest of us. Life is a war, the only respite from which is enforced by law. That law is imperfect, and we can't prevent every tragedy: stock markets crash, old ladies get swindled out of their retirement, your iPod gets swiped. Sometimes your mother is killed. But that just drives me more frantically to put those who would destroy us somewhere where they will never harm another soul. If you'll forgive me the metaphor, our legal system is the angel of vengeance that brings peace back into a chaotic world, into lives shattered by tragedy.
So when I sat across the table from Terry Dalton and his lawyer, working out a deal to get him out of prison, I had mixed emotions. I was a representative of the people of Idaho, who had in recent years seen the increasing need to empty overcrowded prisons and fund schools. Disconcerting as it was, the legislature and the DA's office had decided to try something new: neuro-therapy to control the violent tendencies of inmates. Some of those inmates, after treatment, would be able to rejoin society if they behaved. There had been virtually no relapses after the proper course of treatment – no repeat offenders in four years of the program in California. Resolving crime through medicine had a powerful attraction to it, not only because of lives saved, but also because of the potential lives regained.
Mr. Dalton had been convicted on several counts of assault and one rape, someone who had shown that his brain was incapable of controlling the violent impulses that occasionally surged through it. He was up for parole in a month, but he had been up for parole three times already and failed each time because of a series of aggressive outbursts among the other inmates. If anyone was a prime candidate for David Lund's neuro-therapy, it was Dalton. But for some reason, Dalton wouldn't budge, and I was done being patient.
“Look, I don't know how I can possibly explain this in more attractive terms than I already have. You're not going to get parole any time soon with that cafeteria fight on your record, and you've got two more decades in here otherwise. I'm offering you a chance at freedom here, and not just from these cinder-block walls.” I leaned across the metal table closely, staring intently at Dalton and dropping my voice. Dalton's dark eyes peered quietly back from his fat, sunken face hovering over a thick neck and shoulders. His size and history might have been unnerving except for his handcuffs.
“You won't have to worry about your anger anymore, Terry. You wouldn't hurt anyone. It's a new slate, a new life, a new you. Your past won't matter. As long as you remain under the operation of the neuro-therapy, you'll be out of here and in the real world. You can get a job and get a life. All it takes is a signature here, and you'll be free in two months.”
I slid the contract across the table toward Dalton, who sat hunched over the table with his hands folded in a tight knot. His public defender, Alma Bocaz, muttered to him quietly, “It's a great bargain, Terry. I don't know that we'll ever get a better deal than this.” Alma and I had both clerked for judges on the same district court out of law school. Even then, before my taste in women had narrowed to exclude fellow attorneys, her tendency to argue about everything and anything made it hard to share an elevator with her, let alone have dinner. Not that she shouldn't be that way, because it made her an excellent lawyer. It just also made her completely impossible to have a conversation with. On top of all that, I hadn't seen her do anything but frown, stare, or smirk contemptuously the whole time I had known her. It was as if her eyebrows were permanently knit together. I wasn't really happy to be across from her, but then I also knew how to deal with her—ignore her and work directly with the client.
The client, however, continued to stare at his hands and said nothing. I leaned back in my chair. “Listen, Terry, I've got other inmates to meet with and I'm sure several of them will be plenty interested in my offer. This isn't the kind of sales pitch where you can go home and think it over. The DA's office only has so many slots in the research program to offer, and if you don't sign up now, I can't promise there will be an opening for you later. If you're not interested, fine, you can stay here for the rest of your life.”
Dalton's face seemed to gray some to match the cement around him, and I thought I was finally getting through to him. I suppressed a smile and let him stew for just a minute. Alma seemed annoyed, but whether at me or at her client I couldn't tell.
“It's a painless procedure,” I continued after a moment, “and the patients who signed on to the project in California and Alabama reported no side effects apart from a little nausea at first and a little soreness from the surgery. In fact, the honest truth is that practically all of the patients on nuero-therapy are able to adjust their brain functions to the point where they are able to live perfectly normal lives. Now, considering your situation, Terry, I can't understand what could possibly make you hesitate.”
Alma's eyes narrowed to mascara-shaded slits. “That does beg the question, Mr. Prosecutor, what's in it for you?” I suspected that she was resisting more out of an adversarial instinct rather than a particular line of questioning. The checkmate was coming soon, and so I finally allowed myself a brief, confident smile before continuing.
“This kind of treatment would normally cost millions of dollars, but we've done the math. Allowing Mr. Dalton to leave state lockup will actually save the state money.” I turned to Dalton and tapped the edge of the table with my finger as I continued. “Meanwhile, you'll be free to pursue your life as a productive, normal member of society. You see, everyone is better off this way.” I flipped out my cell phone and tapped the screen to check the time. “But this is all the time I can spend on you, Mr. Dalton. I need a decision, and I need it now.”
Dalton finally looked up and locked his eyes with mine. Alma was trying to say something to him, but he seemed to ignore her, staring at me like he was trying to bore a way through my eyes into my skull. A chill ran down my spine, but I was well-trained and nothing was readable of my discomfort on my face. I tried to suppress the idea that this is what Dalton must have looked like to his victims right before he struck. There was something primal in the intensity of his glare, the look of concentration you can see in your cat as it stalks a robin. I swallowed softly, blinked, and asked with my head cocked just a little to the side, “Well, Mr. Dalton, what will it be?”
Dalton held up a finger to Alma and she folded her hands and shut up. Then, finally breaking his stare, he rubbed his face with both hands and took a deep breath. So did I.
“Mr. Sewell, I appreciate the offer,” he began, “but I have to ask you, if you were in my shoes, would you allow someone to put a switch in your head that could turn off your soul?”
I was surprised enough that I lost my calm veneer for a split second. Before anyone could notice, I leaned back in my chair with a quizzical grin on my face to cover my confusion. Alma wasn't so lucky. She was the one who was staring now, at her client. It helped me focus to relish the look of shock in her eyes—although her brow was still knit together, her mouth was also hanging open stupidly.
“Well, Mr. Dalton, I have to say I hadn't thought about it before now, but—yes, I would let them put a 'switch' in my head, as you put it. If my arm was broken, I can't say I'd mind if a doctor set it; if my brain was broken, I imagine I would feel the same way.”
“You seem to miss my meaning, Mr. Sewell. What I'm getting at is that if I let your doctors put a magnet in my skull and manage it remotely, I won't be myself anymore. I will be whatever they decide to make of me, a puppet to whatever game they want to play.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Dalton, these people are doctors. They have nothing but your very best interests at heart, far more than I do. And besides,” I said as I leaned back in close an earnest expression on my face, “what's the difference between this and medication, except for the fact that it has no side-effects and is one hundred percent effective?”
Dalton shook his head and scowled. “You can keep your treatment, Mr. Sewell. I won't allow you to talk me into relinquishing what's left of my freedom.”
It took all the force of will I had not to fly into a rage. This idiot wouldn't listen to reason, let alone what was good for him, but I also had other reasons for wanting him to take up my offer. I took two deep breaths behind an expressionless face, and then, composed, I nodded politely, stood, and gathered my briefcase and my coat from the back of the chair. “Well, Mr. Dalton, I suppose I can't help you then. Although, I do wonder what in the world you mean about remaining freedom. Look around you, Mr. Dalton. You've already lost whatever small chance you had at retaining your dignity. It's a shame to see you lose this opportunity.”
“Freedom isn't defined by whether or not walls around you have barbed wire on them or not, Mr. Sewell. That may be the only thing I've learned here worth knowing. I may be a convicted felon, but I'd like to remain a man.”
I shrugged and headed for the door. Alma finally pulled herself together and began frantically trying to talk Dalton out of his irrational position, but I went out as fast as I could. My heart was still racing from what felt like a brush with a madman, at least as terrifying in his unstable way of thinking as in his violent hands. Trying to control my breathing, I walked down the hall without acknowledging the nods of two guards walking the opposite way. I got all the way through security and two steps into the sunshine and fresh air before Alma Bocaz caught up with me, practically running. “Wait! Sewell, wait!” she yelled from the other side of the metal detector as the door swung shut behind me. I turned and opened it again just as she burst through, almost running into me. I took a couple of steps back and stumbled a bit to catch my balance on the steps. Leaning against the door, she held up a finger, asking me to wait while she caught her breath. Her expression was set and even stonier than usual. I was genuinely surprised, and I didn't try to hide it this time.
“Well?” I asked. Maybe Dalton had a change of heart when he saw his freedom walking away.
“I can change his mind,” she gasped between breaths. “He's not serious. He just wanted to pull your leg. Give me twenty-four hours,” she panted between gritted teeth. Her black hair had come out of its clip on one side and she stubbornly kept tucking it behind her ear, but it was too short and wouldn't stay.
This was too good to be true. Proud Alma Bocaz was asking me for a favor. Sure, it's not like I needed anything from her, but the pleasure of having her so unexpectedly ready to compromise—a once in a lifetime event!—had its attractions. I toyed a bit with the idea of leaving her in suspense, but why press an advantage when you've already got what you want? I shrugged. “I suppose I can leave a spot open till the end of the day tomorrow, but after that I can't promise you anything,” I said. “I'm under a lot of pressure to get this program filled, so I'm not going to waste any time on someone like Dalton, even if you do run down the hall in a prison and through security to catch me. Just give me a call next time, eh?”
A little jab like that was more than enough to make me feel like I had made the most of the moment, so I turned to go down the steps. Alma stamped her foot and I watched over my shoulder as she stormed back into the state prison. I laughed aloud after she was safely inside and headed for my car. I had missed Dalton, but I had a pretty good consolation prize in Alma Bocaz's humiliation. I'd have to patch that up later, but for now, beating one of the most stubborn attorneys I knew was a ray of sunshine that kept me warm all the way through the slush and the snow, driving back to the office on a gray winter's day.
This is the first fragment of a contemporary sci-fi novel. It's long -- bear with me a bit the setting up phase and it will pick up a good deal. There's a few elements of non-existent technology in it, but for the most part, I intend it to look a lot like the world we live in now (which is like writing science fiction in the first place!) Unfortunately, I could only start writing in the very middle of the action, with very little introduction and not a whole lot of a story arc. Therefore, this first post is kind of intense and will likely be spread throughout the story. It also doesn't have an ending. I apologize that it's not a novel yet, but I hope to get the ideas out there and hang them in the plot as they develop a bit.
The second section is where the main action picks up. It's only half of the scene because I'm running up against the word count... but I guess that means I have something for next week, too.
My questions:
1. What is your reaction to Heath (the narrator)? Can you relate to his experiences as a child? Suggestions.
2. What do you feel is the most interesting conflict in the second fragment?
3. How interested are you in what happens next? How curious are you as to what motivates Heath? Dalton?
Any feedback is welcome. Sorry for such a long post!
You might think that your mother's murder would stand out as the defining moment of your childhood, but the fact of the matter is that I was too young to make much sense of it. Against the gray backdrop that was my life, it was simply the darkest spot in a murky series. Time and intervening circumstances slowly washed to event into the background even as they highlighted the much more pressing issue—being without a mother. At five, it hardly matters how your mother dies. Death is something grownups talk about in whispers than it is some sort of ultimate reality.
I never saw my mother's body, so in my mind, she was still alive. At any minute she might come through the back door into the kitchen, set down the tall brown bags of groceries and ask me to put the canned peas in the pantry next to the green beans. She never came, but sometimes it seemed like I heard her closing the hatchback door, like I heard her shuffling up the steps, and next she would turn the handle.
When I think of that time, the first thing I remember is crying for hours in the little nook between the dining room and my father's study, shaking and shivering all over as sunlight poured through the window and futilely tried to warm my skin. I also remember my father with his face in his hands, shaking and sobbing while Aunt Faye held him steady. The sight of my only pillar of my life crumbling shook me, then drove me into a terrified rage. I screamed, and Aunt Faye snatched me up and brought me to my bed, where I clung to her desperately until I had cried myself to exhaustion. And I remember my little brother Chris wandering around in his little pajamas, dragging his blanket around, his eyes red, his nose runny, and smelling like he had made a mess in his pants.
I don't remember much of the funeral, except for the pictures in my dad's room that he kept under the bed before we moved from the suburbs to the city. I do remember something of the graveside service, and standing very still as the priest said something over her enormous black coffin. I couldn't take my eyes off of it. It seemed like it was the hole which I was going to fall in to, no matter what I did. When the service was over, my aunt tried to hold my hand and walk me to the car, but I broke free and ran away. I felt like if I didn't stop, the black wouldn't catch me, but when I had run along the road all the way to my father's car, I realized there was nowhere else to go. I wanted to melt away somehow, or fly away, but there was nothing but the hot paint and the dusty gravel and it was hard to breathe, so I waited there until my father unlocked the door and Aunt Faye put Chris in the car seat and I opened the door and sat down next to her and fell asleep as my dad drove us home.
OK, so that's a little bit of the background. Here's the plot:
My name is Heath Sewell. I am a prosecutor because I believe those who flaunt society should see justice, and justice to its full extent. Anyone who is unwilling to live by the rules of society should be removed from it, before they remove the rest of us. Life is a war, the only respite from which is enforced by law. That law is imperfect, and we can't prevent every tragedy: stock markets crash, old ladies get swindled out of their retirement, your iPod gets swiped. Sometimes your mother is killed. But that just drives me more frantically to put those who would destroy us somewhere where they will never harm another soul. If you'll forgive me the metaphor, our legal system is the angel of vengeance that brings peace back into a chaotic world, into lives shattered by tragedy.
So when I sat across the table from Terry Dalton and his lawyer, working out a deal to get him out of prison, I had mixed emotions. I was a representative of the people of Idaho, who had in recent years seen the increasing need to empty overcrowded prisons and fund schools. Disconcerting as it was, the legislature and the DA's office had decided to try something new: neuro-therapy to control the violent tendencies of inmates. Some of those inmates, after treatment, would be able to rejoin society if they behaved. There had been virtually no relapses after the proper course of treatment – no repeat offenders in four years of the program in California. Resolving crime through medicine had a powerful attraction to it, not only because of lives saved, but also because of the potential lives regained.
Mr. Dalton had been convicted on several counts of assault and one rape, someone who had shown that his brain was incapable of controlling the violent impulses that occasionally surged through it. He was up for parole in a month, but he had been up for parole three times already and failed each time because of a series of aggressive outbursts among the other inmates. If anyone was a prime candidate for David Lund's neuro-therapy, it was Dalton. But for some reason, Dalton wouldn't budge, and I was done being patient.
“Look, I don't know how I can possibly explain this in more attractive terms than I already have. You're not going to get parole any time soon with that cafeteria fight on your record, and you've got two more decades in here otherwise. I'm offering you a chance at freedom here, and not just from these cinder-block walls.” I leaned across the metal table closely, staring intently at Dalton and dropping my voice. Dalton's dark eyes peered quietly back from his fat, sunken face hovering over a thick neck and shoulders. His size and history might have been unnerving except for his handcuffs.
“You won't have to worry about your anger anymore, Terry. You wouldn't hurt anyone. It's a new slate, a new life, a new you. Your past won't matter. As long as you remain under the operation of the neuro-therapy, you'll be out of here and in the real world. You can get a job and get a life. All it takes is a signature here, and you'll be free in two months.”
I slid the contract across the table toward Dalton, who sat hunched over the table with his hands folded in a tight knot. His public defender, Alma Bocaz, muttered to him quietly, “It's a great bargain, Terry. I don't know that we'll ever get a better deal than this.” Alma and I had both clerked for judges on the same district court out of law school. Even then, before my taste in women had narrowed to exclude fellow attorneys, her tendency to argue about everything and anything made it hard to share an elevator with her, let alone have dinner. Not that she shouldn't be that way, because it made her an excellent lawyer. It just also made her completely impossible to have a conversation with. On top of all that, I hadn't seen her do anything but frown, stare, or smirk contemptuously the whole time I had known her. It was as if her eyebrows were permanently knit together. I wasn't really happy to be across from her, but then I also knew how to deal with her—ignore her and work directly with the client.
The client, however, continued to stare at his hands and said nothing. I leaned back in my chair. “Listen, Terry, I've got other inmates to meet with and I'm sure several of them will be plenty interested in my offer. This isn't the kind of sales pitch where you can go home and think it over. The DA's office only has so many slots in the research program to offer, and if you don't sign up now, I can't promise there will be an opening for you later. If you're not interested, fine, you can stay here for the rest of your life.”
Dalton's face seemed to gray some to match the cement around him, and I thought I was finally getting through to him. I suppressed a smile and let him stew for just a minute. Alma seemed annoyed, but whether at me or at her client I couldn't tell.
“It's a painless procedure,” I continued after a moment, “and the patients who signed on to the project in California and Alabama reported no side effects apart from a little nausea at first and a little soreness from the surgery. In fact, the honest truth is that practically all of the patients on nuero-therapy are able to adjust their brain functions to the point where they are able to live perfectly normal lives. Now, considering your situation, Terry, I can't understand what could possibly make you hesitate.”
Alma's eyes narrowed to mascara-shaded slits. “That does beg the question, Mr. Prosecutor, what's in it for you?” I suspected that she was resisting more out of an adversarial instinct rather than a particular line of questioning. The checkmate was coming soon, and so I finally allowed myself a brief, confident smile before continuing.
“This kind of treatment would normally cost millions of dollars, but we've done the math. Allowing Mr. Dalton to leave state lockup will actually save the state money.” I turned to Dalton and tapped the edge of the table with my finger as I continued. “Meanwhile, you'll be free to pursue your life as a productive, normal member of society. You see, everyone is better off this way.” I flipped out my cell phone and tapped the screen to check the time. “But this is all the time I can spend on you, Mr. Dalton. I need a decision, and I need it now.”
Dalton finally looked up and locked his eyes with mine. Alma was trying to say something to him, but he seemed to ignore her, staring at me like he was trying to bore a way through my eyes into my skull. A chill ran down my spine, but I was well-trained and nothing was readable of my discomfort on my face. I tried to suppress the idea that this is what Dalton must have looked like to his victims right before he struck. There was something primal in the intensity of his glare, the look of concentration you can see in your cat as it stalks a robin. I swallowed softly, blinked, and asked with my head cocked just a little to the side, “Well, Mr. Dalton, what will it be?”
Dalton held up a finger to Alma and she folded her hands and shut up. Then, finally breaking his stare, he rubbed his face with both hands and took a deep breath. So did I.
“Mr. Sewell, I appreciate the offer,” he began, “but I have to ask you, if you were in my shoes, would you allow someone to put a switch in your head that could turn off your soul?”
I was surprised enough that I lost my calm veneer for a split second. Before anyone could notice, I leaned back in my chair with a quizzical grin on my face to cover my confusion. Alma wasn't so lucky. She was the one who was staring now, at her client. It helped me focus to relish the look of shock in her eyes—although her brow was still knit together, her mouth was also hanging open stupidly.
“Well, Mr. Dalton, I have to say I hadn't thought about it before now, but—yes, I would let them put a 'switch' in my head, as you put it. If my arm was broken, I can't say I'd mind if a doctor set it; if my brain was broken, I imagine I would feel the same way.”
“You seem to miss my meaning, Mr. Sewell. What I'm getting at is that if I let your doctors put a magnet in my skull and manage it remotely, I won't be myself anymore. I will be whatever they decide to make of me, a puppet to whatever game they want to play.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Dalton, these people are doctors. They have nothing but your very best interests at heart, far more than I do. And besides,” I said as I leaned back in close an earnest expression on my face, “what's the difference between this and medication, except for the fact that it has no side-effects and is one hundred percent effective?”
Dalton shook his head and scowled. “You can keep your treatment, Mr. Sewell. I won't allow you to talk me into relinquishing what's left of my freedom.”
It took all the force of will I had not to fly into a rage. This idiot wouldn't listen to reason, let alone what was good for him, but I also had other reasons for wanting him to take up my offer. I took two deep breaths behind an expressionless face, and then, composed, I nodded politely, stood, and gathered my briefcase and my coat from the back of the chair. “Well, Mr. Dalton, I suppose I can't help you then. Although, I do wonder what in the world you mean about remaining freedom. Look around you, Mr. Dalton. You've already lost whatever small chance you had at retaining your dignity. It's a shame to see you lose this opportunity.”
“Freedom isn't defined by whether or not walls around you have barbed wire on them or not, Mr. Sewell. That may be the only thing I've learned here worth knowing. I may be a convicted felon, but I'd like to remain a man.”
I shrugged and headed for the door. Alma finally pulled herself together and began frantically trying to talk Dalton out of his irrational position, but I went out as fast as I could. My heart was still racing from what felt like a brush with a madman, at least as terrifying in his unstable way of thinking as in his violent hands. Trying to control my breathing, I walked down the hall without acknowledging the nods of two guards walking the opposite way. I got all the way through security and two steps into the sunshine and fresh air before Alma Bocaz caught up with me, practically running. “Wait! Sewell, wait!” she yelled from the other side of the metal detector as the door swung shut behind me. I turned and opened it again just as she burst through, almost running into me. I took a couple of steps back and stumbled a bit to catch my balance on the steps. Leaning against the door, she held up a finger, asking me to wait while she caught her breath. Her expression was set and even stonier than usual. I was genuinely surprised, and I didn't try to hide it this time.
“Well?” I asked. Maybe Dalton had a change of heart when he saw his freedom walking away.
“I can change his mind,” she gasped between breaths. “He's not serious. He just wanted to pull your leg. Give me twenty-four hours,” she panted between gritted teeth. Her black hair had come out of its clip on one side and she stubbornly kept tucking it behind her ear, but it was too short and wouldn't stay.
This was too good to be true. Proud Alma Bocaz was asking me for a favor. Sure, it's not like I needed anything from her, but the pleasure of having her so unexpectedly ready to compromise—a once in a lifetime event!—had its attractions. I toyed a bit with the idea of leaving her in suspense, but why press an advantage when you've already got what you want? I shrugged. “I suppose I can leave a spot open till the end of the day tomorrow, but after that I can't promise you anything,” I said. “I'm under a lot of pressure to get this program filled, so I'm not going to waste any time on someone like Dalton, even if you do run down the hall in a prison and through security to catch me. Just give me a call next time, eh?”
A little jab like that was more than enough to make me feel like I had made the most of the moment, so I turned to go down the steps. Alma stamped her foot and I watched over my shoulder as she stormed back into the state prison. I laughed aloud after she was safely inside and headed for my car. I had missed Dalton, but I had a pretty good consolation prize in Alma Bocaz's humiliation. I'd have to patch that up later, but for now, beating one of the most stubborn attorneys I knew was a ray of sunshine that kept me warm all the way through the slush and the snow, driving back to the office on a gray winter's day.
The Planet Ryzel
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B24LU75HbwPPODZkMWVjZmEtZDlkOS00MjE0LWI5MGUtYzg0NTRhMGU4MmE0&hl=en&authkey=CMOnjvAE
This is a planet that the next novel happens on. The background is that mankind had established itself on several planets before being consumed by a massive civil war. The war ruptured all the planets and stranded them apart from each other with the collapse of the space ship industry. For almost half a millennia they were stranded from each other, and some of them reverted to less civilized states. This one became reminiscent of 19th century western America. Then the Earth humans who still retained some semblance of technology showed back up, starting to reunite all the planets. This is the second planet to have been reclaimed maybe seven decades previous to when the story starts.
The people specifically here on this planet are a hearty breed. The planet is covered mostly with temperate fores as well as boreal and alpine areas around the mountains,some tropical deciduous forests (think Washington state) along the southern edge of the larger continent, and one major inland lake. The people have a habit of using the "y" in replacement of "i" partially as habit in recognition of one religious leader that led the people during the civil war several centuries earlier. This man, Kyle Barlowe was a religious leader, as well as social leader, one part Joseph Smith, one part Mahatma Ghandi, and was martyred in the city of Robyn, that was since destroyed and subsequently abandoned since then. Many religious followers of his now travel on journeys following his life along the major continent and following a road now known as the Pylgrym Road, ending at the monument in Robyn.
Biological life isn't incredibly diverse, as this planet is about 300-400 million years younger than earth, probably around Early Permian. No sophant extraterrestrial life has been found, and humanity managed to settle at least two dozen planets.
Sorry, I can't get the link to work right so you have to copy and paste.
This is a planet that the next novel happens on. The background is that mankind had established itself on several planets before being consumed by a massive civil war. The war ruptured all the planets and stranded them apart from each other with the collapse of the space ship industry. For almost half a millennia they were stranded from each other, and some of them reverted to less civilized states. This one became reminiscent of 19th century western America. Then the Earth humans who still retained some semblance of technology showed back up, starting to reunite all the planets. This is the second planet to have been reclaimed maybe seven decades previous to when the story starts.
The people specifically here on this planet are a hearty breed. The planet is covered mostly with temperate fores as well as boreal and alpine areas around the mountains,some tropical deciduous forests (think Washington state) along the southern edge of the larger continent, and one major inland lake. The people have a habit of using the "y" in replacement of "i" partially as habit in recognition of one religious leader that led the people during the civil war several centuries earlier. This man, Kyle Barlowe was a religious leader, as well as social leader, one part Joseph Smith, one part Mahatma Ghandi, and was martyred in the city of Robyn, that was since destroyed and subsequently abandoned since then. Many religious followers of his now travel on journeys following his life along the major continent and following a road now known as the Pylgrym Road, ending at the monument in Robyn.
Biological life isn't incredibly diverse, as this planet is about 300-400 million years younger than earth, probably around Early Permian. No sophant extraterrestrial life has been found, and humanity managed to settle at least two dozen planets.
Sorry, I can't get the link to work right so you have to copy and paste.
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