Excerpt - NaNo 09

I may fail to post anything creative during NaNo, but that doesn't mean by two faithful readers should be completely deprived. Well, one of them is actually not deprived at all because I email him excerpts. Well, here's an entire Chapter of the Book of Venire for your perusing pleasure. Now let's see how screwy Blogger can possibly make the html here...

Oh, and I have removed the footnotes. They're fun, but this part is long enough without them.

Excerpt: The Book of Venire, Chapter in which believer Kinshos receives a True Dream but denies His True Word

Author: Unknown
Publisher: AuthorHouse

The Power That Dreams did touch the mind of a believer, Kinshos, and Kinshos did dream. The dreams of Kinshos foretold a new world, and in that world, Kinshos told all peoples about The Power That Dreams. Far did he travel and far did he preach the Word of the Supreme Lover of Souls. Though he did the work of the Higher Power, yet was he spat upon and kicked and thrown to the dust. Though he preached the Words of Love, yet was he battered by the people tainted by the whispers of the mongers of hate, the winged ones. Kinshos awoke with tears streaming from his eyes, for he had witnessed in his True Dream his own death. The Power That Dreams had shown him that the claws of the winged ones would tear Kinshos in twain, and again in twain, until naught remained of Kinshos but blood on sand.

Kinshos told no one of his True Dream, not his brothers and sisters in the True Faith, not his wife and children. The Power That Dreams saw all this as He slept 'neath the sea, and He did tremble with a most holy wrath. Kinshos forsook his brothers and sisters in the True Faith, his wife and children, and fled for a distant port on waters sapphire and still. But when Kinshos placed his unworthy foot on the ship that was to carry him far from his home and community, lo! The seas foamed as if beaten and the waters ran red as blood. The heavens darkened. Great storms whipped the seas into a screaming frenzy and harried the ship until it was many leagues off course. Monstrous creatures never glimpsed by human eyes rose from the seas, gnashing their many teeth and moaning their hunger.

“Surely a god has set his wrath upon this ship!” the sailors cried, but Kinshos remained silent. These sailors were masters of their seafaring craft, yet their every trick only cast the ship further and further from familiar stars and familiar waters.

“Surely a god is demanding vengeance!” the sailors wept, but Kinshos remained silent. He knew that his disobedience to the True Dream had sent this storm, yet the same fear that had driven him from his home and the course he had dreamed now drove him to silence.

The surface of the waters broke as a mountain appeared to rise from the sea. Luminous it was, shining though there were no stars to light its skin. The sailors fell upon their deck and hid their eyes, for they knew without understanding the reason that one glance upon this Great and Mighty Creature would drive them utterly from their senses. Only Kinshos dared to look, for he knew that he gazed upon the Power That Dreams. Still the Supreme Lover of Souls dreamed, but in His True Dream, he lashed out with one mighty tentacle to destroy the one who had defied the True Dream He had sent.

It was not a mountain that parted the foam, but a tentacle, as long as the horizon. Kinshos wept to see The Power That Dreams, no longer for fear but for the love he felt. The Power That Dreams sends True Dreams to those He Loves most dearly, and this man's treachery had cut him to His Loving Soul. For even in anger, the Power That Dreams Loves humanity with a Love that is beyond our reckoning. Kinshos leapt to the bow and spread his arms wide.

“Supreme Lover of Souls!” he wept. “I have failed the True Dream. Though I have woken Your Wrath, I do not deserve this glance upon Your Shining Flesh! Only spare these sailors, and I shall preach Your Word this very day. I shall preach it until the day I perish, whether that be this day 'neath Your Sea or a century from now in a far land.”

The Power That Dreams then Dreamt that He touched Kinshos as gently as a mother kissing her newborn babe. The waters stilled, the thunderheads departed, and the sailors stood again, amazed at what they had witnesses.

“'twas you!” they cried. “Kinshos, you brought this storm upon us!” He confessed that he had provoked the Power That Dreams, and they spat at him. They kicked him and battered him, but as the blows landed on his flesh, Kinshos proclaimed the True Word of the Power That Dreams. When the sailors tired, they found that their ship had drifted back to its course. They tied the moorings of their ship and brought Kinshos to the front of the bow.

“Kinshos! You have caused the wrath of the seas to rise against us, yet you also calmed them. Even as we punished you, you preached the True Word of the Power That Dreams. We must cast you now from our ship, but we must also confess that we are eternally indebted to you. For your faith, we have realized the error of our false faiths and have accepted the Supreme Lover of Souls into our hearts. Go now and do not curse our ship again, but spread the True Word that the Power That Dreams has tasked you to spread.”

Kinshos wept many tears. The sailors cast him from the ship, and he fell on sharp rocks as he tumbled to the sands of the shore. At that moment did he understand the True Dream the Supreme Lover of Souls had sent him. In truth, he had been spat upon, kicked, cursed, and battered. In truth, he now lay upon sands of a distant land as his blood spilled from him. In truth, he died, but it was his fear that died, his hardness of heart. All these were the claws of the winged ones he had seen in his dreams. After a day and a night on the sand, Kinshos arose again and began to preach the True Word of the Power That Dreams. He showed many of his brothers and sisters the Way of Love and Unity, and together they rejected hate and fear.

The world that Kinshos witnessed in his True Dream did not come to pass within his lifetime, for his brothers and sisters in faith were sworn to secrecy. Thus he had been taught, and thus would the True Faith thrive for thousands of years. Yet Kinshos did expand the community of True Faith, and many more reached out to trusted brothers and sisters. Thus for the first time did the community reach across the globe, like the great tentacles of the Power That Dreams.

Legal Fiction - first paragraphs

Well, the writing group shall have to wait until Tuesday for my piece, but I did get a good start on it tonight. It's not moving as quickly as I'd like, but I'm enjoying Elorna's character more and more as I write her. Here is a quick sample of the first few paragraphs before I stumble off to bed.

***
Elorna Mynee chose a terrible day to disappear.  

Every one of her clients and colleagues was working frantically to take advantage of a pending Supreme Court decision, hoping to poach on competitors' patents while protecting their own. All around the nation, equal parts champagne and stomach-burning whiskey flowed in wood-paneled offices all afternoon into the evening as the news beamed down from the hallowed halls of justice. Under normal circumstances, somebody would have raised the alarm that same night, but everybody who would have called to ask where she was was regretting the afternoon's indulgence, crunching aspirin through an all-nighter. It would be over twenty-four hours after she awoke before one of the other partners thought to dial her number.

Elorna's first thought upon awakening to the ear-splitting trill of her computer was that either the decision had come down early or that she had slept amazingly late. Her hand groped for the button that would send the call through as she squinted at the clock. Four-thirty a.m.? she thought blearily. Did the justices not sleep at all?

The computer screen informed her that the call originated from Archon University, but it was not a number she recognized. It also informed her that the call had been made to her business number. “Elorna Mynee, how may I help you?” She barely smothered a yawn as she spoke.

***

What is in store for our intrepid lawyer, aside from inevitable disappearance?? Only time will tell.

Progress - Book of Might Have Beens

UFPE continues on, this time in an entirely new medium. Yes, I have officially begun the comic. Right now, I'm writing the script for it and drawing a stick-person version so I have a vague idea of what it should look like, one day. I don't think it would be terribly interesting to copy it wholesale here, but I know - I'll give the captions for the first page (which is all I have completed so far). There are eight panels, and the captions say:

#1: Carnivala Floriena. They say Lady Fortune and the Lord of Love descend from the stars to dance with the farmers on this night.

#2: If they did attend, I hope they did not notice how badly I fouled my steps.

#3: After I was spun through three jigs, I begged my leave. My head continued to whirl as I looked out over the unending crowd, spilling out into the village green like a flurry of starfliers.

#4: I had never seen such activity, nor such crowds. People jostled me with every step, and my ears rang ceaselessly with the raucous cries they raised.

#5: I saw a man swallow his saber, and I waited with mounting horror for the silver blade to pierce his throat from the inside, to release a crimson fountain. Everyone else just laughed.

#6: Of course, he was perfectly fine.

#7: I spoke to him, after. He smelled vile, and I could see weeks of dirt caked into his flesh.

#8: All my life I had been told I was one of them, yet never before had I felt so utterly lost.

The MMC is quite the sympathetic character here - no trace of the villain he is to become. Even though my drawings are just stick figures, I'm very much enjoying glancing down at the page and seeing what I've created. I don't have the words drawn in, but I can follow what's happening without them. All in all, this is very exciting.

Prompt - story excerpt

Another dry period, another litany of what I promise are very good excuses.

But that's not interesting. About a month ago, I joined a LiveJournal writing community, and though they post prompts every week for a 100-500 word work, I've never actually written anything for them until this week.

The prompt was a quote by Neil Gaiman: “Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

Very dramatic. I was initially thinking of writing something with another character I've mentioned here, Illunova, but I wanted to write it right then and there, and the story I'd have for her would take a little bit of plotting to develop. Instead, I wrote something for the UFPE from the Bad Guy's POV. I've been trying to write his backstory for awhile now, but I've been stuck. This isn't exactly backstory, more of a 'Might Have Been' (phrase stolen from the incomparable Madeleine L'Engle), and it didn't go exactly where I had envisioned.

It has nothing to do with romantic love, as suggested by the prompt, but love more in the sense of patriotism and loyalty to one's own people (especially, in this case, when they probably don't deserve it), which is a major part of Bad Guy's motivation. I've really enjoyed developing his backstory, and sadly, I imagine he's a lot more interesting a character than the MC.

Enough rambling. The whole point of this post was to share the piece I had written. It's Luzeoir on the ever of a battle that (at least as I'm imagining the story arc so far) never will happen but could have, if not for the intervention of our heroic MC.

*~*

The nights were darker now. Structures of wood and stone that had reached into the sky lay in haphazard heaps of debris, and the buttery yellow light that had streamed from their windows had died in the destruction. Standing in this valley once used for farming, Luzeoir could see the stars wheel above him clearer and brighter than he had seen them the last time he was here. He drank in the sight, reveled in the soft insect song that told him he had succeeded, but he still could not read the stars.

Unimportant. A shadow quivered beside him, and a moment later, one of his disciples stepped into the starlight. “We engage them tomorrow,” the other man murmured. “here in the valley. The rivers will run red.” Alhreas bowed his head after he had finished his report. “What do you see in the stars?”

Long ago, a man here had told Luzeoir a secret. You must understand them, and they will consent to anything you ask of them. He did not smile, but had he been alone, he might have. “They speak of strife and tears. Darkness covers the land and extinguishes the false sun. They speak of balance and vengeance.”

Alhreas peered up at the night sky, as if he could see any of the things Luzeoir had described. The man was the best Shade Walker among them, but he lacked the slightest trace of Far Sight. When his disciple murmured his farewells and disappeared again, Luzeoir allowed himself a very thin smile. Alhreas would never have advanced so far, skilled as he was, had Luzeoir not personally chosen him for a messenger. 'Forgiving' was not a word commonly used to describe the Onyx Elves, and above all things, they loved to think that they knew things others did not. Alhreas's problem, Luzeoir had often mused, was not his lack of Sight but his forthright acknowledgment of this flaw.

You must understand them, and they will consent to anything you ask of them. The Onyx Elves had not left their jungles for centuries, and now they had consented to follow their general into the arid lands to the south. They had kept to themselves, obsessed with divining secret knowledge from the depths of the world, and now he had taken them into the heart of the enemy's territory.

Until he came along, they had not even known they had an enemy.

Until he came along, they were content to remain a fairytale. They had been a brittle people, turning ever inward and calcifying in their beloved shadows. Now they were proud again, a terror and a scourge, and the world would weep to hear their name.

His smile grew. He loved them so.