Thursday, 25 April 2024
Life, the universe, pies, hot-pink bunnies, world domination, and everything
Continued from 2007.3. The original idea came from Prarilius Canix, who described it as “a thread for Musers who have written/are writing/want to write books… a place to bounce ideas off of other people who share that interest.”
Date: January 8, 2008
Categories: Fiction, poetry, and fanfiction
Do any of you guys ever have trouble with titles? I’m having a bit of trouble right now.
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ooooohhhh mygod… I’m working on editing my NaNo and i just double-spaced it… IT’S 186 FRICKIN’ PAGES!!! *hyperventilates* I have to get this done…
And, guys, what do you think of my title? I, personally, am not a fan. “Memoirs of a Teenage Zombie”. Hmm.
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2 – I haven’t read your NaNo, so, sorry, I can’t suggest a title or anything like that. 
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2- I dunno. I agree, though.
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I’m working on my Muse fanfiction spin-off, but I need to find a way to separate Aaron, Jim, Lyell, and Tristan from Beavo, Gim, POSOC, and TMFA respectively. The characters no longer resemble the MBers in the slightest,but the association is still there. Renaming Jim might help…
Plus I don’t have nearly enough girls and I’m going to have to resurrect Tristan’s friend just to have a female character. Which I was meaning to do anyway, but it’ll bring my total of MCs up to five, which is bordering on too many.
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1-I always have title issues, and I know Purple Panda does, too, because we were working on a Powerpoint together for school, and she made me name everything. Needless to say, the titles were dreadful.
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2-That sounds like an interesting title. I am writing a Star Wars parody, which is supposed to have dramatic titles, but there’s a few I like that I can’t decide between.
Options:
Episode V:
Revelations
Discoveries
Episode VI:
And Bid Him Contemplate The Stars
To Seek a Newer World
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7- ZOMG STAR WARS PARODY LUVVV
I wish I had the heart to write a parody.
And my story is actually 189 pages now. I think the computer hadn’t finished double-spacing all the pages when I posted.
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I’m never good at titling things. I usually just make something random up and then it’s not very good.
7-I like Revelations and To Seek a Newer World. Of course, I haven’t seen V and VI, so I’m not that great of a judge.
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8- It’s very fun, because I love Star Wars and I got to re-write the story of A New Hope, only set in the near future on Earth.
9- Both possible titles for Episode VI come from quotes related to the Space Exploration theme of the series.
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I’m writing a Muse Academy story. Sorry PP, I promise it will be better different than yours. All I’m using is the Muse Academy stuff that we ACTUALLY had on the thread. And only a little of it anyway. And with a different plot.
Here’s what I have so far:
Prologue
At exactly twelve o’clock on Saturday, July twenty-eighth, a scream echoed through Muse Academy, coming from the north tower of the hundred year old castle. Professors, servants, and students all rushed to the tower, where the Partepluma House had it’s dorms. The first to reach the room from which the scream had come from was Sabrina Sherlund, a thirteen year old girl who was accustomed to entering this room; it was hers along with five other girls.
What she saw when she entered the room was a body laying on the white and yellow carpet, two feet of banana blonde hair spread down the body’s back and across the stone floor. Sabrina gave a little gasp, rushed forward, and gently pulled the arm of the body toward her. The body rolled over onto it’s back.
A girl’s face stared blankly up at the ceiling. Her dark blue eyes were open, but they were not seeing anything. Her pale arm was laying at an angle from her. Sabrina let her eyes follow the arm down to the wrist, then the hand. The girl’s hand was loosely clutching a silver watch, which had obviously stopped at twelve one. Sabrina averted her eyes and a glint of metal caught her eye. Without looking, she slid her hand down the girl’s body until her hand struck something cold. Sabrina didn’t want to look. But she did.
A silver handled knife protruded from the girl’s chest.
“Chloe!â€
Another scream, Sabrina’s, filled the castle.
Chapter One
Muse Academy
~~~~~~~~
Admit it. You have no idea what I’m talking about.
That’s what I thought. Congratulations, I’m just the guy to fill you in.
Well, I’m not technically the guy, if you want to be specific. I’m the omniscient narrator, and I’m supposed to know everything. That’s a bunch of dragon crap and I know so because I have no idea who I am, where I come from, where I am, I don’t even know my own gender. Sometimes I think I might be God, but if I ever told anyone to go to hell (and I’m sure I did at one point even though I can’t remember) they didn’t pay any attention to me.
So I guess it’s safe to say I know everything, but just about the people and events of which I’m telling you (although that doesn’t mean I’m going to tell you everything).
And that’s something, I think, because there are a whole bunch of people running around these days talking about things that they have no idea about. I’d rather someone know at least something about the topic he or she’s ranting about, wouldn’t you?
It’s a good thing I’m not ranting on about myself. (That was a joke, I think.)
So anyway. Back to the story that I know everything about.
Muse Academy, the setting that most of this story takes place in, was a fairly young school. It was founded in 1983.
The address and building, however, are not so young. In fact, they’re quite old, dating back to the fifteen hundreds. You know, the time when there were all these princesses getting kidnapped by dragons and knights in shining armor slaying sea monsters. Ah, the good old dark ages. The Muse Academy castle was built then, on an island hidden from the prying eyes (and stalker satellites) of climate “scientistsâ€. And even if it wasn’t in a secretive location I seriously doubt that anyone in their right minds would want to approach it. After all, it is one of those dreary abandoned castles that have skeletons laying all over the dungeons.
Well, okay, it doesn’t. But that’s what you’d think if you got close enough.
The history of Muse Academy (the school, not just the building) starts with these four people. Whether Reba Graphikas, Nora Nesadizo, Roco Logicooz, and Rome Bakré decided that what the world needed was a real life Hogwarts minus Quidditch or they thought that the school would attract some of the most interesting, ingenious, and sometimes frightening minds in the next few decades is unknown.
What is known is that it doesn’t matter because once they found, funded and founded Muse Academy it pretty much did all three.
Once the school itself had been founded, before the kiddies could troop of to this unknown island, the four founders (as adults generally do) decided that there needed to be some sort of sorting into houses that would nurture their strongest abilities and keep them with people sharing interests.
As the four founders got along so well because they were so different, they might have decided this wasn’t necessary. Reba and Roco actually questioned the sorting for a while, but then came to the conclusion that it was probably the best thing to do. So they sorted according to the founders’ abilities.
Visually artistic children would be placed in the Partelumen house headed by Reba; children who thought mathematically and logically about everything would be sorted Parteratio headed by Roco; Partepluma was headed by Reba for the children gifted with a pen; and the eccentric, partially inane (just kidding) went into Partegurdy, headed by Rome. A questionnaire would be presented to each new student, and that would take care of the sorting business. Of course, this had it’s flaws, but the Sorting Hat hadn’t been thought of yet.
With this sorting established, they got to work on the castle itself. It had already been built, we already went over that, but it was in serious need of some improvements. Several parts were crumbling due to the fact that erosion really gets to damp, dark places (like islands). And then again, the castle had been pretty much abandoned for a pretty long time. Well, unless you count hordes of rats and spiders as occupants. I sure don’t.
The repairs didn’t take long. Reba was, well, magic. Not all Harry Potter magic where you need a wand and spells, she could just will something to happen, and it would happen. Of course, big stuff like changing the current of an ocean or making it rain took a whole bunch of brain power, so much that some can’t do it, and the even the best, like Reba, get a headache afterwards. This included renovating huge castles, so she couldn’t just think “I want this castle to be built†and it would suddenly pop up like an inflatable moon bounce. She had to imagine/create the castle (literally) part by part, wall by wall. Aspirin helped, too.
Nora helped quite a bit too. She had studied alchemy (after all, Nora was the great-times-a-million granddaughter of the alchemist, Nicholas Flamel who lived somewhere around 1330. The whole metal-into-gold thing was very convenient (and inexpensive).
Rome did all the architectural planning. He had basically thrown together all the good parts from the castles he had designed in the past and handed it down to Roco, who calculated everything. And I do mean everything.
So the whole renovation of the castle took about a year and a half. That sounds like a long time, but remember that there are four young adults here. Four. Two with magical abilities and one math genius. And one pretty darn great castle designer.
Furniture? Don’t even get me started on furniture. Do you know how long it took to furnish the whole castle? A week. (Take that, Extreme Home Makeover!)
Early 1985. The castle was finished and looking pristine (as pristine as a century old castle goes, plus creepy gates and all that shenanigans to keep people out), it was fully furnished, lesson plans were set. What’s missing?
Teachers. Professors. And people who would run around cleaning up muck that students left in the front hallways. So the four founders spread all over the world in a search for just the right teachers to teach all the regular, not-so-regular, and downright strange subjects selected for Muse Academy.
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Does anybody like it? Nobody I’ve read it to so far gets it at all. Partly because it’s Muserly…
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I quite like it, but I think you should introduce the background and exposition later.
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(11) It seems perfectly straightforward to me. How could anybody find that confusing? It could be straight out of Wikipedia — well, not yet, but someday, and Wikipedia will be called something else by then. So Rosanne tells me, and I’ve found it advisable to believe whatever she says.
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Beavo (11): I have absolutely no problem with other people writing Muse Academy stories. I used a lot of information from the blog and Muse, etc., and I would love to read other perspectives/adaptations of the school!
I think it’s really interesting, and quite different from the way I imagined it. Keep writing! 
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I think it’s pretty good, but it’s maybe too encyclopedic for an intro to a story. I’d like to see more, though.
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It’s a work in progress. There will be plenty of time to change it and reshape it later. The big hurdle at the outset is just writing something, even if you know the finished product will be completely different.
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I think I’ll have to include Rosanne’s clairvoyancy in my Muse Fanfic somehow.
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17-I knooooowwww…:roll: It’s called constructive critisism.
I’ll post something of my writing sometime…I’m not sure what, though.
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14- I’m more and more inclined to believe that Rosanne can see the future.
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It doesn’t interest her very much, though, and she forgets it almost instantly.
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Thank you, guys! I was scared that maybe it sounded, well, post NaNoWriMoish. Dry.
14-Maybe they found it confusing because it’s a bit Muserly? I dunno. Ron (she lives in my basement) says that it sounds like something Ebeth would right.
Yes, Ron’s read both Ebeth’s NaNoWriMo’s on Museblog, and she likes them a lot. (Then again, so do I.) Mom says that it sounds like something from CSI.
Did you guys catch the founder’s names, and find them…familiar? If you didn’t, here you go.
Reba Graphikas- Rebecca, Graphikas because she’s a Photoshop genius
Roco Logicooz- Robert with the Cooz from Coontz (duh) and logic…I dunno why logic. It just sounded like him (or you, if you’re reading this, Robert).
Nora Nesadizo- I used the full name Rosanne here, and I think “dizo” is something in Greek but I forget.
Rome Bakre- Paul. Bakre is supposed to have a little accent thingy but for some reason my keypad isn’t working.
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22-Yeah, I caught that.^_^
Inside jokes are fun.
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20, 21: It’s true, my memory’s not the greatest. But when you have the past and the future to remember the brain gets a bit overwhelmed.
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Then there are distractions. If a friendly dog walks by, you’re gone.
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23- Inside jokes are awesome. There’s quite a few in my Star Wars story.
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My best friend and I have tons of inside jokes (as best friends usually do) but ours are totally confusing. Like when one of us starts jumping up and down and asking to go to the maze, the other friend always follows suit because when *scrizzle* and he was *static fuz fuz fuz* and she said “OMG” when *hablurbs and an alien invasion*. Seriously, it was hilarious.
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On the subject of inside jokes:
If you see a blond-haired person walking down the street somewhere in California reading Muse, here’s how to tell if it’s me.
1. Tap person on shoulder.
2. Assume expression of mock seriousness and wide-eyed amazwement.
3. Say, quietly and slowly, with just a hint of an “m” sound before the word, “Boat.” If the person cracks up laughing, it’s either me or one of my two best friends who has borrowed a Muse.
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This is the begining of Conspiracy Wars: Quest for the Truth-
A long, long time ago, in a small town, far, far away…
I was out at the newspaper shop with my friend Jess, buying the latest issues of our favorite magazines, Sky and Telescope and Archeology. We also had to buy her parents’ newspapers, which stunk, because we really wanted to go to Tosche Station and pick up power converters to run our CD players on.
Not a lot happened in our town. It was said that if there was a bright center of the Universe, we were the farthest from it. (Of course, that’s a little silly, because the Universe doesn’t really have a center…)
As we were riding our speeder bikes home, I suddenly noticed something overhead, glinting in reflected light. A lot of reflected light. I pulled out my binoculars.
“Is it the ISS? That’d be so awesome!†Jess asked.
“No… it’s a space battle! Look!â€
“Gosh, and right in our system, too!†She looked.
There was a big, triangle-shaped craft, a symbol of the hated Conspiracy Theorists. The other, smaller ship, looked like a Blockade Runner used by people who fought against the “CTsâ€.
It looked like the Blockade Runner was loosing. They were being captured by a tractor beam on the CT Destroyer. Suddenly, I saw something being jettisoned from the Blockade Runner. It streaked through the sky like a meteor and vanished behind nearby Mount Ohsohigh.
“I think that was an escape pod! We should go to help- there could be Rebels inside who got away!â€
“What can we do Lana? That area is full of Sand People, and it’ll be swarming with CT soldiers. Doesn’t your Uncle always say ‘don’t get involved’?â€
“Uncle Owen just doesn’t get it. I want to go to the University and learn to be an archeologist. Kiki’s parents let her go study.â€
“Well, we’ll check the Holonet tonight and see if they say anything. Otherwise I’ll report you to the authorities for planning to help the Rebels.â€
I knew Jess wouldn’t really report me. She hated the CTs as much as I did, but she really had no stomach for danger.
I went home to my aunt and uncle, and tried to tell them about the battle, but they don’t really care for space. They didn’t even think much of the Pluto issue.
There was an item on the Holonet about the battle, saying that a squad of elite stormtroopers had been sent to look for the escape pod. Everything else was just typical CT junk about quack medicines, how to channel aliens from Zeta Reticuli, Illuminati spies with neutron beams and the like. For real news about things like the JASON project, you need to check illegal, underground channels like Immersion Presents.
My uncle didn’t see the news item. That night, I looked out at the suns stetting (Yes, suns. It’s a weird town.) All of the other stars were suns, too, I knew. It was a big, beautiful Universe, but so many people couldn’t understand it. And here I was, unable to do anything.
Glossary:
ISS= International Space Station
Pluto issue= Planet vs. Dwarf Planet
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I think I’m gonna keep up with the encyclopedia thing and change it when I’m finished with the whole thing.
~~~~~~~~
Teachers. Professors. And people who would run around cleaning up muck that students left in the front hallways. So the four founders spread all over the world in a search for just the right teachers to teach all the regular, not-so-regular, and downright strange subjects selected for Muse Academy. Since each class had been put under the category of Visual Arts, Written Work, Mathematics, or Random Craziness, each founder set out to find instructors for their specialty.
Unfortunately for the founders, Reba couldn’t imagine living things into existence. Manipulate them, yes, but not create them. And like sinking Ayers rock and leveling New York City, it takes extreme brainpower to manipulate an animal’s mind, much less humans. Plus controlling minds was a bit too evil-genius-y for Reba. So instead, they all took a short (not really, it was actually a bit long) road trip to the four corners of this sphere. (that’s an expression too, there is no such thing as four corners of a spherical object.)
This wasn’t all that easy, to say the least. Many have the creative mind set that the founders wanted. But there was one snag; most are under the age of sixteen. And why waste a good business trip? The founders continued on their search, jotting down names of kids and teenagers that would be suitable for entering the school.
Finally, with names of possible students and more than a hundred teachers, the founders returned to Muse Academy’s location to make last minute adjustments. Which, of course, were done pretty much right away.
December came ‘round, bringing snow, fudge, and Muse Academy teachers. When all had arrived at the castle (and their brains had been wiped of the location of the castle; with their consent, of course) they began setting up their classrooms, studying the lesson plans that they had been given. Each teacher had their own private study and bedroom above their classroom. Adjustments were made.
And then, at the last possible minute, the first Muse Academy invitation letters were drafted. More students’ names were acquired by, well, stalking. The final letters were sent to exactly eight hundred children, all ranging from the ages of twelve to sixteen. And not just regular middle school-going kids got letters. Magically talented children received their information packets via the SWAP, or Supernatural and Wizarding Aerial Post.
Muse Academy was officially in business.
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Oh, BTW, if you’d like to be featured somewhere in my story thingie, say so. SHORT physical description, please.
Chapter Two
The Letters
~~~~~~~~
Daniel awoke to the smell of breakfast. He sniffed. Pancakes?
“Daniel! Pancakes!â€
Yup. Daniel wasn’t surprised. His nose could tell what toppings were on the school’s pizza from the boiler room. This could be a disadvantage; the only constant topping was burnt.
Clearing his eyes of his dark brown hair, he slid off the couch. The red comforter that he had put on last night had slipped off in the night. He was a bit cold, now that he thought about it. Daniel replaced the comforter and sleepily made his way into the kitchen.
“Mom,†he muttered.
“That’s what they call me!†The bright red apron-clad Kathleen Ayle turned from the stove, spatula in hand, a smile rivaling that of Ronald MacDonald’s on her face (although on the creeping-out-little-kids factor, it ranged much lower than his, only a three).
She was a short, slim woman of thirty two. She was the only mother of one child: Daniel. Her dirty blonde hair never left the ponytail it had been tied up in when she was fifteen, except sometimes the shower. And that’s a sometimes. Generally, Daniel’s mother was quite cheerful, agreeable, and easy going.
Her past, however, was not so carefree. She had pretty much flunked her way though middle school, and scraped through on low C’s in high school. Her parents had both paid way more than the regular tuition so she could get into an acceptable college. This was no problem for them; they were one of those quiet rich families who buys non-expensive cars and less-than-gigantic houses. However, one semester later, while she was in college, her parents found themselves on the bottom of a seven car hog pile. Needless to say, survive they didn’t.
After attending their double funeral and inheriting everything they had owned together, Kathleen’s life started to accelerate down the hill of Ultimate Doom. She skipped all her classes, choosing to attend alcohol laden parties.
And then she met Daniel’s father.
And if you’re smart, you probably know what happened to Scott Marshall, since I already mentioned that Kathleen was a single mother.
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30-That’s neat. 
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I need constructive critisism. Please, don’t be cruel (not like you would), but everyone I read this to is like “Uh, I don’t get it, it’s good, I guess *drool*” so if it’s ever going to be good it needs help.
32-Which part?
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Robert (25): I do love dogs. Which must be why I’m so shocked whenever I hear about dogs doing something really horrible like attacking someone. Either way, they are distracting.
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I wrote a bit more. Should I post it?
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*procrastinates*
Someone tell me to get off the MB and go edit my novel.
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36- Get off MB and go edit your novel, Kiki.
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36-Please do.
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Sorry for the double post.
5-Who am I? I think I know who Jim is…
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39- Aaron. But you’re not *really* Aaron, it’s just hard to separate you two in my mind.
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40-Okay, I get it. *dosn’t* (Hard to seperate two completely different people?)
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Sorry, that was me, I’m already found out.
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40- Okay, so I started with the idea that I would leave the people the same but give them different names, and then I realized that the characters weren’t really resembling the actual people anymore, so I changed my mind and decided that I wouldn’t even try to leave the characters the same. But it didn’t work; I still associate the character with their respective MBers, and it’s really irritating.
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43-Ah, now I get it. Kay.
Should I continue posting bits of my novel, or should I send it in when it’s finished? (Mind you, if I send it in when it’s finished there’s a big chance it won’t ever happen because I’ve never actually finished a novel I’ve started, and MuseBloggers comments might keep me going).
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44- Post! Post! Post!
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Just in case, I’m going to post the last part that I wrote.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And if you’re smart, you probably know what happened to Scott Marshall, since I already mentioned that Kathleen was a single mother.
And hopefully you’re smart, because I’m not describing the turn of events. It gets a bit, eh, rated R.
“Daniel? Daniel? Daniel!â€
“Huh? What?â€
“You spaced out on me.â€
“Uh, I did? Oh, I mean, yeah, I did! Sorry. I was thinking.â€
Kathleen put her spatula down, piled two pancakes onto a plate, and turned off the stove. Thrusting the plate into Daniel’s hand, she strode toward the refrigerator and yanked it open.
“What were you thinking about?â€
The question caught Daniel off guard; his mother didn’t usually concern herself with what her son was thinking. She was convinced that whatever went on in their minds were harmless and none of her business besides. And most of the time she just wasn’t curious.
“You know. Stuff.â€
“Ah.†Kathleen found what she was looking for and ducked under the freezer door as it swung shut. “What’s pancakes without authentic Canadian maple syrup?
Daniel smiled. Those plastic bottles filled with dishwater that people would buy at the store was nothing compared to maple syrup that was actually made from sap in Canada. And nothing, nothing, topped the syrup that his mother exclusively bought from a forest in Ontario. Nothing.
Three circular pieces of heaven later, Daniel got up to clear the table. He swiped his mother’s can of Diet Coke and took a swig (to her disapproving glance) before grabbing the rest of the plates and loading them noisily into the dishwasher.
“Dan?â€
“Yeah Mom,†he responded.
“Go check to see if the mail’s here yet. And when you’re done with that could you please wake up your brother?â€
Daniel rolled his eyes. He didn’t hate Dylan Ayle, but it was hard to like someone a lot who bumped you out of your own room and forced you to sleep on the deteriorating couch. Even when that someone was only eight. So Daniel chose to switch the order of events that his mother had proposed and woke up his brother first.
He headed upstairs, turning at what used to be his door, the Gringotts warning still posted in creepy letters, held up by black gaffers tape. Daniel burst through the door, flipped on the light, and promptly tripped over a plush chair shaped like Winnie-the-Pooh.
“Drat. Dylan? Dylan!â€
Dylan sniffed and closed his mouth, head on his bright blue pillows. This upset a plastic lamp the same shade as the pillows and the lamp fell off it’s bedside table. Right onto Dylan’s head.
“Humph.â€
Dylan grunted and rolled over as the lamp hit the floor and smashed.
“DYLAN?â€
“What?†The boy with hair as light blonde as Daniel’s was dark brown. This was kind of creepy, because their mother’s hair was bright red.
“Mom wants you up,†grumbled Daniel as he replaced the Winnie-the-Pooh chair to where it was before he tripped over it: in front of the door.
“Right. Five minutes.†Dylan started to lay back down.
“No!†Daniel started to rush to the bed so he could prevent Dylan from going back to sleep, and tripped over the chair again. From the floor, he grabbed Dylan’s elbow and squeezed. “I’m not your maid, and even if I was I’m not going through this whole routine of tripping over all your stuff. Get up. Now!â€
Grudgingly, Daniel’s little brother levered himself back up and got out of bed. “You can let go of my elbow.â€
“Oh,†said Daniel lamely, and let go. “I have to go out and get the mail. So please get dressed, brush your teeth, etcetera.â€
His brother stared at him in silent protest.
“Mom made pancakes.â€
That was all it took to get Dylan to obey, within the time it took Daniel to get to the door, his brother was sliding into a T-Shirt.
Daniel grabbed a thin jacket on the way out of his house. It was the end of the summer, and the weather had decided that maybe it should start fall early. This was kind of depressing, because it reminded Daniel that he would have to go back to school in a few weeks.
Two gates and a pile of leaves later, Daniel was reaching into his plain black mailbox with his left hand while holding the recycling bin with his right. He hauled both back down his broken-asphalt driveway and through the rusted metal front gate, down the brick walk that slowly transitioned into cement.
He hung up his coat again in the hallway coat hanger and trekked into the kitchen where he found Dylan piling eight pancakes onto his plate and his mother sipping coffee.
“Mail, Mom. There’s a bit more than usual today, I think.â€
“Thanks honey.â€
Daniel dumped the pile of mail on the table. Kathleen immediately grabbed the first few envelopes and started shifting through them.
“Bill, bill, bill – God, do they send us anything other than bills? Oh, here are the school supply lists for you two. Start looking through these, please.â€
She tossed the boys two neatly stapled packets, with “Back to School!†in large font on the top, a pile of leaves that were obviously copied off Google Images, and “School is Cool!†in smaller font under everything.
Dylan snorted. “School is cool. Yeah, right.â€
Daniel didn’t say anything, but he silently agreed. School was most defiantly not cool, at least not after summer. Why didn’t they start school in the winter, when everyone was freezing to death and praying for snow that wouldn’t come? Without looking at it, he slid his packet aside and glanced back up at his mother.
“Anything else interesting, Mom? Mom?â€
Daniel’s mother was staring blankly at a piece of official looking crème paper. Dylan had noticed and looked up as well, syrup dripping from his chin like a waterfall that had just been turned off a second ago.
“What’s wrong, Mom?â€
Dylan’s cute, innocent voice that a only a child could have drew Kathleen’s eyes off her paper.
“Could you leave the room for a moment, Dylan, honey? Please?â€
Dylan’s round eyes went from big to huge. “Am I in trouble, mommy?â€
“No, hon. I just need to speak to your brother. Privately.â€
“What’s that mean?â€
“Alone, Dylan, alone.â€
“Kay, mommy.â€
Dylan slid out of his seat and padded down the hall, up the stairs, and into his room. Only when his door had made a soft ‘thunk’ that meant it was closed, did Kathleen turn her head toward her first son. Daniel tried to keep a look of mild interest on his face. But inside, his heart was pounding against his rib cages. He’d never seen his mother this pale in his life before. He knew she must feel anxious or tight sometimes; he had heard her crying in her room before. But he had never actually seen her looking like this. He didn’t really know what the emotion that showed on her face was called. It wasn’t really sad or angry, or depressed. It looked a bit nervous. When he glanced into her eyes, he could see that he had no cause to be expecting the worst because they were twinkling despite her facial expression.
“Mom?â€
“Daniel, there’s something I need to tell you, something that I’ve never told anyone in my life before. I want you to listen very carefully because this concerns your life directly.â€
“I’m listening, Mom.â€
“In the summer of 1976 right before I started my seventh grade year, I received a letter. This letter invited me to an academy of learning, a place where I could learn everything I wanted to. Everything. I had a whole world of knowledge at my hands. I could become anything I wanted, I would be with people my own age and be taught by professors and instructors that were the best of the best in every subject that I craved to know about. My life would be made perfect, literally, at this boarding school.â€
Kathleen blinked, and a tear slid down her cheek onto her apron. Daniel watched as tear drop expanded on the fabric while digesting all that his mother had just said.
“And I let it go.â€
More tears hit the red cloth, and Daniel’s eyes snapped back to his mother’s face.
“I valued being popular more than my life. I wanted to grow up with the cheerleaders, the preps. I wanted a jock boyfriend. I wanted people who would give me tips on nail polish and purses, not friends. When my parents died, I realized what a mistake I had made. But did I change what I had done? Did I try to turn my life around?â€
Daniel watched as his mother started sobbing. He placed a hand over hers, and she squeezed it.
“No. I didn’t. I let myself get drunk. I had sex with anyone who had bigger muscles than I did. And I met your damn father.â€
Daniel looked into his lap and withdrew his hand. He had never really heard much about his father and he really didn’t even want to. He sounded sick.
“Dan, some of my real friends, the ones I had in sixth grade, they got the same letter as I did. We were smart kids, even though I never showed it. We had all been accepted into numerous gifted and talented programs, and I amazed my language arts teacher every once in a while by writing beautiful poetry. And it was wasted.†Kathleen said the last part bitterly, as if she was spitting out, like an apple seed.
“Daniel, Daniel. Please don’t make the mistake I’ve made. I’m leaving it up to you.†She thrust the piece of paper she had been holding into his hands. At first glance, he found that this was obviously not a school supply list.
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WOW! I’m working on a story that’s not on the computer but it’s ok. I wish i had it now!
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You’ve gotta post it at one point or another!
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Conspiracy Wars, continued:
The next day, I woke up early and took my pet monkey-lizard, Tammy, on my speeder bike toward Mount Ohsohigh. Jess met us in the Dune Sea.
“Thanks for coming. I know you’re scared, but don’t you want to make a difference?â€
We found the escape pod half buried in the sand, and dug it out. There was an astromech droid inside, beeping like crazy, but no people.
“Those CTs must have wanted something on that ship, and I think it might be this little guy.†I said, looking at the droid. “But for the life of me, I can’t imagine why.â€
The astromech beeped something out.
“He says his name is S3-E3 and he’s on an important mission.â€
“It always creeps me out when you talk to robots like that.â€
We picked up Essthree and attached him to my speeder bike. Just then, figures in white appeared over the nearest dune!
“CT stormtroopers! Run!â€
We jumped on our bikes and went as fast as we could.
Keep going, don’t stop, don’t stop for anything or they’ll get you. A voice inside my head told me. I went one way and Jess the other.
“Ahh! Help!†I heard Jess shout, and then the sound of a stun blaster firing. I pushed the power even higher, trying to get away. I must have been a half mile from the escape pod when the engine blew, just as my bike was coming off the crest of a thirty-meter sand dune.
I went down in a spiral of smoke and jumped off at the last moment, while pulling on Essthree’s bonds to free him. I hit the sand hard and lost consciousness.
When I woke up, I was in a cave. I could hear Tammy’s noises nearby and see the blue sky outside the cave’s mouth. A figure was bent over Essthree in a corner.
“Hey, stop!†I shouted, feeling for my blaster in my jacket pocket. It was broken from the impact. A cheap piece of secondhand junk, useful only for stunning pests on the moisture vaporators, but it had given me an illusion of confidence.
“You’re lucky to be alive, young woman. Harassing stormtrooper without proper training or arms, although admirable, is not to be done lightly.†The person said, in an accent straight from the Core Worlds. New York in particular.
He turned around. I looked at his face- he had black hair with a few streaks of gray and thick eyebrows. His eyes were green, and they looked wise, but sad. Then, he smiled and said
“Although, I do admire your bravery, Lana.†Then he laughed a little. It was a nice laugh that made me feel good for making him laugh.
“You know my name? Who are you? I think it’s time that I ask some questions, buster!†I looked him over: black traveling boots, brown pants, a blue shirt under a tan jacket… and something very familiar on his belt…
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I need opinion just on this one quote:
“If Raven hadn’t been an atheist, she would worship Matt. His blue-gray eyes and spiky black hair were combined with a lean, athletic body to make him appear more than simply mortal.”
Yes, this is from the book that I’m writing. What I really want to know is if it sounds cliché/sappy/trite/just plain bad.
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NOTE: The names in this are most likely subject to change. If you wish to have you name removed from this story, please say so. These were just the first names I came up with.
Prologue
A soft, flickering light filled the room as dozens of candles burned and the five Founders put the finishing touches on their plan. They were going to create an academy; one that nobody had ever dreamed of before. It was to be a truly safe haven in a world where one could not trust anybody, even a family member. It was to be: Legendarium Academy.
“I cannot believe that noone has had an idea like this before,†said one of the Founders, Sir Lavizo, “By creating a place for intelligent, ambitious students, be they vampires or human, to come together, we are, in effect, reaching out to our vampire brethren in a call for peace.â€
“You have quite a way with words, Sir Lavizo. But we vampires are only asking for respect and equal treatment.â€
The four human Founders looked uneasily at the representative of the vampires, Lord Itamar. Humans, in general, distrusted any vampire that came into their lives, and vice versa. This mutual distrust was the product of centuries of wars and betrayals that left the land and the people scarred. Lady Rivers spoke next, “Our primary goal should just be to create this school and gain students. We can focus on peace later, Lavizo.â€
“Yes,†continued Lady Bitzin, “You know the government does not want any human to have contact with the vampires. Our school will have to be a secret.â€
“You never mentioned before now that this would break your human laws!†Itamar angrily interjected. “Any vampire royalty found to have conspired in breaking human laws receives only one punishment: death by fire. When I came here, I expected that this would be legal.â€
“We never meant to deceive you!†cried Sir Xavier, “We only meant….†His sentence was cut off by the sudden extinguishing of the candles.
In the cellars of a old castle, in a thick forest miles from the nearest town, there was noone to hear the inhuman screams that came from four humans as they were slaughtered by supernatural means……
Chapter One:
In which we meet our 4 main characters
*CONNECTING TO COMMUNITY NETWORK*
Raven Bitzin was waiting impatiently for the ComNet to load so she could talk to her friends. Her friends, who she could only talk to online, were already connected, sitting at their consoles, all the way back in Boston. Boston. Raven missed the city but missed her friends so much more. It still didn’t make sense to her why her family had to move from the best city in the nation, where they had only lived for five years since their last move. Her dad had tried to explain that their family was in constant danger, but he had always been extremely vague. The only thing Raven knew was that it was related to the myth of Legendarium Academy. Every child in the nation of Diblieri had heard the story of Legendarium Academy, even though the government had repeatedly and emphatically stated that it was only a myth, that it had no fact, and that it should not be retold. According to the government, the four Founders had never existed, the plans for the academy had never existed, and the Founders, who never existed, had never been slaughtered by a vampire that they never met, and who also had never existed.
Raven’s console beeped as a message appeared.
*Alice- Everyone is wondering why you left. Did your parents tell you yet?*
The message was from Alice Rivers, Raven’s best friend. Alice, the twin sister of Canix Rivers, was the type of person who could easily be lost in a crowd: quiet, petite, and average-looking with long, brown hair and blue eyes. Unlike many siblings and even twins, Alice and Canix were completely inseparable. They seemed to share a bond that could be called almost supernatural. It was easy for them to communicate without any sort of technology, but they were almost never far enough apart to need to.
*Raven- No. It’s frustrating.*
Just then, a new message popped up.
*MDX- Roses are red
Violets are blue
This poem sucks
But I still love you.
Sorry. Can’t talk right now. Bye!*
Raven smiled, somewhat sadly. MDX was her boyfriend, who, of course, lived in Boston. Actually, his name was Matthew Daniels Xavier, but he insisted that everyone call him either MDX or Hawk. If Raven hadn’t been an atheist, she would worship Matt. His blue-gray eyes and spiky black hair were combined with a lean, athletic body to make him appear more than simply mortal. Another message interrupted Raven’s reverie.
*Alice- Hello? Raven, are you still there?*
*Raven- Yes, I’m here. Matt just messaged me.*
*Alice- That’s strange. Hawk hasn’t been in school for a week.*
“Raven, get off the computer. I need you to go to the post office!†Raven’s dad yelled from down the hall of their one story house.
*Raven- Sigh. Got to go, Dad’s calling.*
When this message was sent, she turned the console off, and left her house. It was a small house that looked almost like a log cabin, but small didn’t matter since it was made only for two people. She had lived with her dad for as long as she could remember, and she had never met or even heard about her mom. Just another mystery for her to ponder.
It was a cold winter day, and the ice-covered snow sparkled on the ground. From her front yard, Raven could see the tall metal-and-concrete barrier that separated their town of Clark from the forest, where there was a settlement of vampires. Every town in Diblieri was fenced in, as a means of protection. It was also advised that people did not walk alone outside of the barriers.
Deciding to avoid the narrow road where all the bicyclists would be, she started to walk along the narrow dirt path that ran behind several houses. This path was generally abandoned, since it also ran right next to the fence. Every so often, a new story would spring up about some foolish person who got abducted because they were walking near the fence or near a gate at the wrong times. But Raven enjoyed walking here because of the solitude that it provided her, even though her house was the closest to the town gate.
And suddenly, her solitude was broken. As she felt an arm slide around her waist, and heard a sly voice say, “Raven, you know it’s dangerous for someone to travel alone. I think you need an escort.â€
She turned and saw his piercing blue-gray eyes. Pulling away, she mock-punched Matt, retorting, “Matthew, you know that it’s only dangerous outside of the towns!â€, and then kissed him. “How did you get here? You live in Boston!â€
“Not anymore.†Matt grimaced, “I ran away. My parents didn’t want me to keep in touch with you. But I can’t stand being separated from you. So I left home, and came here. I guess I picked the right gate to come in, though. Oh, and I was wondering if you’d gotten any strange letters recently?â€
Matt looked into her warm brown eyes and saw surprise.
“No, I haven’t. I was just going to the post office to pick up the weekly mail.â€
“Well, I’ll go with you. I can’t go back now, any ways.â€
Matt kissed her again, and then just looked at her, glad to be seeing her again. She was just the same person that he remembered saying goodbye to just about a month ago. She was about a head shorter than he, but not quite as thin. Gently, he brushed her brown, curly hair back from her face, and they started walking again.
Close to five minutes later, they had reached the red brick building that was the post office. Matt waited while Raven went in, retrieved her mail, and came back in a short amount of time. She flipped through the small stack of envelopes, pausing at a creamy yellow one. Matt recognized it immediately, thinking And the adventure begins now….
* * *
Dear Raven Bitzin,
We hereby declare that we are proud to accept you as a student at Legendarium Academy. It is not a myth. On the 30th of June, you must leave you town, and head to the town of La Côte. You will camp outside the town with other Academy initiates until the 15th of August. On that day, guides will meet you, and inform all potential students of what supplies you all will need. You will be given two days to purchase these supplies, and at the end of this time, you will begin to travel to the Academy. If you wish to join us, it is of the utmost importance that this letter be kept secret. This is the only correspondence you will receive from Legendarium Academy. May you travel safely on whatever path you choose.
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Yes, in case you couldn’t tell, I have finally finished typing Chapter 1 of my book. Of course, I’ve only written halfway through chapter 2.
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50- Mmm. It’s pretty good. The first sentence seems a bit forced, but I’ve seen worse.
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51- The writing is great, but the whole concept of Matt running away to be with his girlfriend – or rather, the way he explained it – is a bit iffy. Maybe if he has a different reason for running away it’s fine, but I would consider rewriting that if I were you. Give it deep meaning.
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50-Ooh, you liiike him! *pokes*
Really, it’s good. Beavo likie.
51-I don’t know what to think of the part where it says “Inhuman screams that came from four humans”, though. Is that on purpose?
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Again, I ask: Should I post snid bits of my story, or send the whole thing in when it’s finished?
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56- If it’s really long, like Conspiracy Wars, send it in bits.
What do you guys think of CW, by the way?
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I’m not sure if it’ll be long, I haven’t finished it. I mean should I post it as I write it, and send the finished thing in when it’s EDITED? Or should I just send it in then and not bother posting it.
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58- Send it in as you write it, if you’re proud of your work. If you think it needs a little polishing, wait.
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POSOC!!!!!!!!!!!!!! COME HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
~~~~~~~
The weather over the Rothschild house was unpredictable at best, even though its inhabitants were the some of the best qualified to predict it in other circumstances. Violent storms and hurricanes appeared and vanished in a matter of seconds. The sun changed color and brightness, and on several occasions had appeared to dance across the sky. Rain turned to hail, hail turned to snow. Snow sometimes turned to diamonds, or back to rain again. Clouds were shaped into embarrassing caricatures of brothers and sisters. The fragile sculptures had to be closely watched and guarded, as the affronted sibling would often disintegrate them by means of a fireball tossed from the highest tree in the backyard. Indeed, most of the Rothschild family had been performing magic before they could walk or speak, and loved every minute of it.
On one particularly hot day in August, Elizabeth Rothschild was down in the cellar, sorting through bottled months. “Hmm. January ’98? No, no, too much sleet. February ’62? It’s probably stale by now… Ah! March ’95. Perfect.”
She scorned gravity, molecular physics, and the cellar stairs, drifting gently off the floor and floating directly through the ceiling with a barely audible fizz. After passing through several feet of rock and earth, she emerged on the multicolored lawn and uncorked the frosted glass bottle.
Cold winds swept the perimeter of the garden and house, progressing briskly counterclockwise and driving back the sweltering heat.
For a moment Elizabeth sighed deeply, relishing the cool air, but then the wind came back at her full force, whipping into the bottle with a swooshing noise. The cork popped neatly into the top.
“Sorry, Mom,” called a voice from the house, and a tousled blonde head stuck out of the window to accompany it, “but Alex and I are going swimming. Can’t have February weather putting ice on the pool, can we?”
“It’s March,” sighed Elizabeth. “And you know how I hate it when you two turn the backyard into a pond. It gets so muddy afterwards and I have to clean it up.”
“Sorry,” said the boy, not sounding a bit contrite, and he withdrew. Seconds later, the back door slammed.
Elizabeth sighed and sank through the ground to the cellar again. There was no point in wasting a perfectly good March wind. Someone would want it tomorrow.
Selene watched her mother vanish into the lawn, and sighed wistfully.
“I’m never going to be able to do that,” she said, half to herself.
“I’m never going to be able to do that,” she said, half to herself.
“Hmf!” Donald Goldfinch snorted from his seat on a lower branch. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. You’re good, there’s no denying it. You’ve got the best fine control I’ve ever seen.”
A prematurely yellow leaf drifted down past Selene’s dangling shoes. She frowned, and it halted in midair. Fire started at its delicate base, crackling through the veins, forming a delicate tracery of ghostly flame. Selene blinked, and the miniature blaze was extinguished. The leaf turned to ice, then melted into gently rippling liquid, still holding its shape.
“See what I mean?” he said.
The leaf dropped onto the ground and burst, sprinkling Selene’s shoes with water. She frowned. “Sure, but . . . Yeah, well. I guess you’re right.” She frowned, still far from happy.
It’s your turn.
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60 – Wow, that start is awesome.
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61- Thank you. POSOC and I were collaborating on a novel at one time, but neither of us has written in ages. POSOC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Thanks for reminding me. I’ll write as soon as I can.
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60-Whoa. Great hooker.
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60- Very nice.
Do you guys want me to post more of CW or should I just forget it.
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65- Sure. Please do.
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65 – I dunno. I haven’t read any of it. What post(s) is/are it in?
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There are so many things I need to work on if I ever want to write again.
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67- Posts 29 and 49
DO NOT READ FARTHER UNLESS YOU HAVE READ THE FIRST TWO OR YOU WILL BE REALLY CONFUSED
The continuation:
“Your name is written on your coat lining. My name is Qorl Nagas, and I’ve lived near here for quite some time.â€
“That handle on your belt… that’s a… lightsaber, isn’t it? I mean, I’ve heard all of the stories from the old days…â€
He smiled again, removed it from his belt, and pressed a button. A blue-green blade of energy, about a meter long, appeared.
“Concentrated plasma. The weapon of choice for a Scientific Skeptic. What do you know about the Skeptics, Lana?â€
“The Holonet says that they were Illuminati disinfo agents and that they were all killed ten years ago.â€
“You’re too smart to believe that CT propaganda. Go on; tell me what you really know.â€
“The underground channels say that they were the guardians of peace and justice for one thousand generations. They were sworn to the pursuit of truth and dedicated to exposing all fraud and educating others.â€
“Yes, that’s all correct. The ability to be comfortable when educating others is useful, but rare. It was the absence of Scientists willing to use this skill that allowed the CTs to gain power. I did not realize how serious the situation had become until evil struck from where we least expected… it all began with the Viking Mission.â€
“You were in the Viking Mission? The first probes to land on Mars? That was in, like, ’76, right? And you timed it to land on 4 July, with the Bicentennial, but it had to be delayed until the 20th, right?â€
“All correct. I was on the Imagine Team with a few of my close friends. Most of us were Apollo veterans eager to explore new worlds. We’d never been to Mars before and had only a few photographs from the orbiting Mariner probes. We were literally discovering a new world, with winds, earthquakes, frost and dust storms. Yet the Holonet couldn’t have cared less. No one was more concerned than my friend Rick. We both had the rare gift of media teaching and planned to create a series of Holonet programs to inform people about the Universe. Then, the unthinkable happened.â€
“Order 52, I know. But I don’t know how it happened.â€
“A young member of the Imaging Team named Darth Hoaxland, a friend of mine before he turned to evil, betrayed and murdered my friend Rick. We fought, but many of us fell. I created and hosted the Holonet show myself, and won many to our cause, but it did not change what was already occurring. On the run from stormtroopers, I fled to this remote area and created a simple house ten years ago. Hoaxland fell victim to the accepting side of Scientific Thinking.â€
“Scientific Thinking?â€
“The essential mindset of a Skeptic. As a good scientist, one must be doubting and questioning, but also open-minded. These must sound like opposites, but a good scientist must have them in balance. Hoaxland saw some photographs of mesas in the Cydonia region of Mars. Due to tricks of light and our brains’ natural way of seeing patterns in random data, they appeared to be pyramids, such as those found in Egypt, and a giant, sphinx-like face. A scientist with balanced thinking would have thought of this, but Hoaxland’s ambition blinded his better judgments. He assumed they had been created by some advanced extraterrestrial culture, and told the press, hoping for fame. I tried to calm him down, to tell him as a friend that he was making a fool of himself, but it was too late. He had become an agent of the Forces of Chaos.â€
“And that’s when he killed the other Skeptics, right?â€
“Yes. All of us who served the Forces of Cosmos- that’s Greek for ‘universal order’- did. I fought him, hoping to stop him. In an act of desperation, I threw a cup of hot coffee in his face. I assumed that I had stopped him.â€
“But…â€
“Exactly. But he returned horribly scarred and vowing revenge. But there is a time for talk and a time for action. Now, let’s see about that droid.â€
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69 – Ha, I so see the Star Wars references. Nice job.
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Star Wars………… Yes I see it. Droids UHHUH! yup now it’s very clear. Great job, love it!
PEACE AND PIES FOR EVERYONE
ThE weIRdO iN tHE PolKAdOt tOp hAT
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70, 71- Thanks!
The next installment:
We picked up Essthree, examining him for any hint of why the CTs wanted him so much. Tammy watched intently, perched on my shoulder.
I felt something in a socket, jammed in real good. I pressed on it, and a flickering image appeared with a buzzing sound. Tammy jumped behind me in fear.
“Chill, it’s just a hologram.â€
The hologram showed a woman with short orange hair, wearing a comfortable dark blue shirt and pants. She looked like some sort of artist.
“I am currently under attack by agents of the Conspiracy Theorists. I have hidden information vital to continuing humanity’s quest to understand the solar system within this little droid. I hope that it safely reaches you, Dr. Nagas. If you’re even still alive… you must take these plans to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The flight controllers there are anxiously expecting it. Help me, Qorl Nagas, you’re my only hope!†The woman in the hologram said.
“Who is she?†I asked
“Princess Emily Lawada of The Planetary Society. We must take this information to JPL as she said.â€
“JPL? But that’s Pasadena, all the way in California! I’ve got to find Jess and- OMG, Jess! Where is she? What happened?â€
“I don’t know, I only found your bike and saw troopers searching. Evading them was quite easy. I fear that your friend has been captured.â€
The leader of the stormtroopers stood over the unconscious girl and spoke into his comlink.
“We did not find the photos. However, inform Lord Hoaxland that we have another prisoner.â€
Far away, an unfortunate secretary approached the door, tasked with giving the news. He slowly approached the door, apprehensive.
Inside, Darth Hoaxland stood, observing his prized model of the Cydonian “pyramidsâ€. He was a scary figure, clad in dark robes with a mask concealing his face.
“A message, sir. Our agents searched the entire ship, but failed to find the Cassini photographs. However, they captured a young rebel in-â€
“Failure? Failure is unacceptable! If the Illuminati get their hands on those photos, they’ll never see the light of day!†He shouted in the secretary’s face.
I don’t get paid enough for this. I really don’t. The secretary thought.
“Bring me those photos of the Saturnian moons! Failure is unacceptable!†He grabbed a heavy statue and hurled it at the secretary’s head. The employee ducked and quickly scurried out.
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Heehee. Hoaxland.
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73- It’s actually based on the name of a person in real life who advocates the “Face on Mars” theories.
But yes, it is a funny name.
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Conspiracy Wars, continued:
The type on the notice was thick and bold.
The residents of this house have been taken to Detainment 26 by order of Regional Governor Maartik.
“The CTs… were here… they took my aunt and uncle to one of those classified torture camps! What will I do?†I blinked away tears as I looked at the sky. They were the same suns as before, and yet, so different.
“I will go with you to California, Dr. Nagas. I bet the Rebels will know where Detainment 26 is. I want to learn Scientific Thinking so I won’t loose Jess as you lost Rick.†I said to Qorl.
“Right then, we’ll have to fly, Lana. Have you ever flown before?â€
“Only speeders and jetliners.†I answered.
The bustle of the city is a real change from our little town. Qorl said that he’d never seen a worse hive of scum and villainy. Almost everyone wore a blaster.
“This feels like one of those Wild West holodramas.†I said.
“I prefer the classics myself. When you’re in hiding, there’s a lot of time to watch vids.†Qorl said.
“What do you think of Jorg Sacul’s stuff? I think it’s dynamite.â€
We entered a small lounge in the spaceport. The guard held Essthree back, though.
“We don’t allow droids in here.â€
“Do you allow monkey-lizards?†I asked
“If they don’t cause any monkey business.†Then the bouncer cracked up at his own dumb joke.
We entered the lounge, where strange and joyful music was being played by a live band. Around the bar were the nastiest-looking toughs that I had ever seen.
These types would rob their mothers for ten bucks.
Qorl found a table where a man sat, accompanied by a Wookiee wearing a bandoleer.
“Are you a pilot?â€
“Vink Los, the best in the business, bub. What’s it to you?â€
“We’re looking for a pilot who can take us to California. A private flight, no questions asked, via Rocketplane.â€
“Now see here, buddy. I’m sure you and your kid want to go beyond the blue just as much as anybody, but you can’t just walk in here and expect me to take you into space on a private flight. Who do you think you are, Branson?†Los responded.
“We’ll give you 2,000 now and 16,000 when we arrive.â€
“You certainly pay like Branson, buddy! My co-pilot here, A’sar, will meet you at hangar 34 in one hour.â€
Qorl handed him some worn bills and Los snapped them up. As we turned away, I asked Qorl, under my breath:
“16,000? I’ll have to sell my bike and call in some favors at the junk shop maybe, but I don’t think it will be enough.â€
“Don’t worry. We’ll come up with something.â€
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What happened next? Read on to find out!
In another area of the Spaceport, we noticed a crowd. They were gathered around a tall woman wearing a strange headdress and costume.
“Ooooh! Oooh! Me next! Pick me, Madame Albeeda!†One little boy shouted.
“Madame Albeeda? This sounds intriguing. Pay close attention to everything, Lana. In science, observation is key.†Qorl said to me.
“Oh, yes. Your name is Marcus, is it not? I know all. Ask your question, boy!†She said, in a high, squeaky voice.
“Gosh, Madame Albeeda!†He put five dollars in a bucket near where she stood. There was already a lot of money in it.
“I want to see if you know what is on my mind right now.†Marcus continued.
“Oh yes, Marcus. I can see it all. You go to school in this city, do you not?â€
“Oh, yes!â€
“And there is one class you dread. It is a, the vision is not clear… an academic class, is it not?â€
“Yeah, that darn English!â€
“There are things to come which you are looking forward to, yes? And there are also… things you are dreading.â€
“Have you seen all that you need to see, Lana?†Qorl asked.
“I… think so. She’s a fake, right?â€
“That seems to be the case. Well, then- Ms. Albeeda, you are not psychic!†He shouted. “Use the facts, Lana.†He whispered in my ear.
She ignored him. Then somebody shouted
“Hey, that guy’s got something to say!â€
Her face lost all of its color for a moment.
“What makes you think I am fraudulent, sir?†Albeeda asked.
“Even a child can see it.†Qorl said, pushing me forward.
“Well, that prediction! It’s so vague, every kid’s got some class they hate and something they’re looking forward to.â€
“But what about me hating an academic class?†Marcus asked
“You’re athletic with a jersey for the school team on it. The school in this city.â€
“And how did she know my name?â€
Suddenly, Tammy jumped on to Albeeda’s headdress and knocked it off of her head. There was a comlink inside!
“I bet she’s got somebody looking it up!†I shouted
“You’ll pay for this, brat! Pay! Do you hear me?†Madame Albeeda shouted back at us as she ran off down a side street. The people grabbed her money bucket and gave the money to us.
“You deserve it, for being honest, which she clearly was not!â€
“All in a day’s work, Marcus.†Qorl told him.
Together with selling my bike, the money from that whole encounter was enough for our passage to California.
Just as we were entering Hangar 34, a bunch of tough looking guys with blasters rushed in. “Madame Albeeda†was with them.
“Run!†Vink shouted, although he really didn’t have to, we were already running frantically for the plane under heavy fire. Essthree, using his jets, was already way ahead of us.
“Nobody messes with an employee of Leigar the Hutt!†Albeeda shouted, just as I entered the door.
“We’re going in 5, 4, 3-†Vink shouted from the cockpit, and A’sar growled in disapproval.
“Yeah, we do seem to get into a lot of tight spots, but I do not go looking for trouble, A’sar!â€
The engines hummed and we felt a jolt as the rocketplane began barreling out of the hangar. We were barely on the runway when the engines began to kick it in for take-off.
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Um… comments? Anyone?
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77- It’s a bit fast.
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Okay, here’s Chapter 1 of my story (started on the Writing Theme With Variations thread). Sorry if it’s a bit long…
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“Leila, wake up! It’s time for school!”
The call rang through my ears like a shot. Thumping my pillow back into place, I slowly sat up and rolled out of bed, the sky blue covers trailing behind me.
“Leila! Don’t make me call again!”
My brain finally registered who was yelling at me, and why, and I mentally hit myself.
“Let’s see,” I muttered to myself. “For Dad to be yelling there must either be a fire, the FBI at our door, or the first day of seventh grade. To be honest, I’d prefer the FBI to school.”
“Leeeeeeiiiiillaaaa…” my dad said, his voice rising and nearing a screech.
“Coming!” I yelled. I pulled on a plain yellow T-shirt and jeans, and stomped loudly down the stairs. My bare toes clutched the shaggy blue carpet, as the stairs protested loudly to my aggressive pace.
“Stop that banging!” my dad yelled.
Inside my head I protested, but I had already made him mad enough today, so I slowed my pace way down until, I swear, a dead snail could have been moving faster than me.
When I finally entered the kitchen, my dad barely glanced at me before returning his gaze to the Stoneway Gazette, the local newspaper.
“Do you expect me to let you leave the house like that?” he said blandly, sipping his coffee.
“What’s wrong with the way I look?” I shot back angrily, grabbing a box of Sugar Crunch cereal from the shelf and pouring it into a bowl.
“Your mother bought you all those nice clothes, and you still go out in a T-shirt and jeans?” he retorted. “I at least expect you to wear them.”
“No,” I said, thumping the Sugar Crunch box down on the table so hard that sugary flakes flew all over the kitchen. “I never want to wear them.”
“Look, I know you’re still upset about what happened, Leila, but you’ll have to get over it some time.”
Without waiting to hear another word he could say, I grabbed my backpack, slung it over my shoulder, and left through the front door, making sure to slam it tightly shut.
My feet slid through last night’s snow like stubby little skis, although by and large the snow had already turned to slush.
Every morning will be the same, I thought. I would wake up, Dad would yell at me, and then I’d have a long, drawn out day of school to look forward to.
“Only this time of the day is quiet,” I said aloud to myself. “All the rest of the time, everybody is loud, even me when I’m trying to annoy my Dad. Why can’t everyone just shut up for a while?”
As though to illustrate my point, a car drove by at just that second and sprayed slush all over me, and then screeched away, sliding dangerously on the icy roads.
“Idiot,” I muttered, and then turned up the pathway to the school’s front steps. The yard was deserted, so I assumed that I was late. “I wonder if the teacher’s going to yell at me for being late,” I mused as I tried to brush the snow off me at least a little bit. “Probably not. She’ll probably be angrier at me for getting snow all over her classroom.”
I grinned a little maliciously at the thought, and checked in at the office on the way to my first class, math. I pushed the door to the math classroom with one gloved hand, and suddenly all eyes were suddenly on me.
“Sorry that I’m late,” I said, grinning wolfishly, the slush dripping off my arms and forming puddles on the floor. “I had a little run-in with an Eskimo, a snowball gun, and some pirates. But I’m here now – you may all return to your work.”
I slid into the only empty chair in the back row, and proceeded to pull out a piece of paper and began to work. Not on math, naturally, but on a drawing of an Eskimo, a snowball gun, and some pirates. The boy who was sitting at the desk next to me leaned over and looked at what I was drawing. Glaring at him, I flipped the paper so he couldn’t see what I was doing.
“What are you drawing?” he whispered, brushing the brown hair that had fallen over his eyes away.
“Nothing!” I hissed. “I’m doing my math, just like you!”
“Whoever’s talking in the back row, would you please stop?” said Mrs. Rose, my math teacher.
I rolled my eyes, and flipped my paper back over, curling the paper so the boy next to me couldn’t see my drawing.
A second later, a folded note landed on my desk, hitting my arm. At first I ignored it, but then a pencil jabbed into my side. Again I ignored it, but a second later it came again.
“Will you stop that-” I started to say, but then I clamped my hands over my mouth.
“Miss…” Mrs. Rose said, checking her attendance book. “Miss Leila Stellion?”
Silently I nodded, swearing in my head that I would get the boy back later.
“I will thank you to be quiet and do your work,” she said, and returned to her lesson.
Wordlessly I picked up the note and folded it open on my desk.
“What are you drawing?” it read in neat letters.
“NONE OF YOUR BEESWAX!!!!” I wrote back in block letters sprawling across the entire note. With expert motions I folded it back up and flicked it right at the boy’s neck. The boy just gave one, solemn glare at me, and then turned away again. “My name is Keal,” he finally said. “Welcome to Douglas Adams Middle School.”
That day at lunch, I sat at one of the back tables, trying to avoid attention as much as possible. I was already starting to think that my entry “speech” in Mrs. Rose’s class had been a dumb idea, and I was rather convinced that any chances of surviving at this school were next to none. Of course, it probably wouldn’t matter. My dad would get transferred again, we would pack up and leave, and nobody from Douglas Adams Middle School would ever see me again. As usual.
I heard a slight noise, and I looked up. “Hey there,” said the girl that stood there.
“Mind if I sit here?”
I nodded wordlessly, and she slid her tray onto the metal table and sat down. She had a round face and pretty blond hair that was hanging down around her shoulders, and I thought I recognized her from my math class.
“I’m Kaitlyn Miller,” she said cheerfully. “You’re the new girl, right?”
“Yeah,” I mumbled, still focusing on my turkey sandwich.
“If you have any questions about the school or anything, just ask me.”
I looked up at her face. It looked sincere, without any sense of maliciousness.
“Okay,” I said, trying to smile just a little bit. Kaitlyn beamed at me, and began to nibble on her lunch.
Lunch passed in silence for a couple minutes, and then I decided to try and make some sort of conversation. “So,” I said. “Who was that kid that was sitting next to me in math?”
“Oh, him?” Kaitlyn said, laughing a little. “That’s Keal Burton. He doesn’t talk.”
“He WHAT?” I said, not believing my ears.
“That’s right,” Kaitlyn said, leaning towards me and whispering now. “I’ve been his class since second grade, and he’s never made a single sound. He hasn’t cried, he hasn’t talked, and he hasn’t laughed.”
I jerked my head up, startled. “But-” I started, and then stopped, frowning. “Oh, I see what it is,” I said quietly. “Is this some sort of hazing? I’m not dumb, in case you haven’t noticed.” In one motion I picked up Kaitlyn’s half-full tray, and dumped it on her head.
“I’m not going to fall for that,” I said fiercely, and stalked off to find somewhere where I could eat in peace.
I finally found a quiet place where I could eat. That was the good news, and the bad news was that it was outside, the chilling November wind barely blocked by a bike rack to my left. “At least it’s not snowing,” I said to myself, thanking my lucky stars.
My turkey sandwich tasted like cardboard in my mouth, and I felt like retching on the carrots. Nothing ever tastes good when you’re angry.
Then I heard voices coming from nearby, and they were moving towards me. I scurried behind the bike rack and prayed to nobody in particular that its thin bars would block me from view, since I wasn’t sure I could take any more humiliation.
“So, you gonna talk today?” said one voice, rasping like sandpaper.
“Don’t shake your head at us!” said another. “Talk, you freak! Talk! Scream! Cry!”
Three large boys, probably 8th graders, moved into my line of view. They were all large and buff, and had crew cuts that made them look like soldiers on the march. I noticed that they seemed to be carrying something – and then I saw what it was.
Keal Burton, the kid from my math class and the kid Kaitlyn had been claiming couldn’t talk, was draped over their shoulders. Every couple seconds the boy that was carrying him would say something. Keal would shake his head no, and then the boys would yell at him and cuff him on the ears.
Keal looked like he was silently crying. Crying. Something that I have no patience for at all. I was about to pack up my lunch and make a break for it as soon as the boys turned their backs, but then Keal met my eyes with his huge brown ones.
“Help,” he said feebly, his eyes pleading. “Help me.”
Normally I would have drawn my eyes away and ignored him, but something about the scene made me hesitate. Maybe it was the look on Keal’s face, or maybe it was the sight of the boys cuffing his ears every time he shook his head no, but whatever the reason, I suddenly found myself standing up and walking towards the crowd.
“Stop,” I said, my voice tight with anger.
“Oh, lookie here!” the biggest one said, a look of stupid delight appearing on his face. “This must be your girlfriend, huh, Kealie? Too bad you won’t be able to tell her how much you love her.”
“Scram,” I said fiercely. “Leave him alone.” I was starting to doubt my sanity at this point, but something made me keep talking. “I have no idea why you’re picking on him, but stop. Now.”
To my complete and utter surprise, the boys obeyed. They dropped Keal on the ground, and then walked away, laughing.
“Have fun with your girlfriend, Kealie!” one of them said, a smirk on his face. Then they were gone.
“Are you all right?” I asked Keal, who was sitting on the ground, a mass of limbs and dust.
“I’ll be fine,” he said softly, brushing himself off. “Thanks.”
“Why were they picking on you?” I said as he got to his feet.
“They think I can’t talk.”
I started to say something, but he continued, “Please don’t think I’m lying. I swear to you, on my life, my honor, whatever it is you want, that I’m telling the complete truth and nothing but the truth.”
I looked straight into his eyes, and there wasn’t a hint of malice in them: just pleading and sorrow.
“All right,” I said with only a little hesitation. “Explain.” Keal looked at the sky as though words were going to fall down from above and into his mouth.
“It’s true,” he said at last. “Nobody has heard me speak since I was three years old.”
“I have,” I said, still searching his eyes.
“You’re different,” he responded. “And I don’t know why. See, even when you were talking to me in the back of the room, nobody else could hear me. To everybody else it just looked like I was moving my lips.”
“So am I crazy?” I said, my mind not wanting to believe him. “Or what?”
“I’m not sure,” Keal said softly. Then he looked up at me. “Look, can I tell you something without you thinking I’m crazy?”
“I already think you’re crazy,” I said, only half kidding. “So go on.”
“I’ve been having dreams,” he said slowly. “Weird dreams. For as long as I can remember. About…about you.â€
I started to back away from Keal, a little weirded out.
“Calm down,” he said, a little flushed. “I know it’s weird, but you have to listen to mw. You’re the first person that’s been able to hear me since I was three years old! Something very weird is going on, so you have to help me figure it out!”
“I think it’s very weird,” I said hoarsely. “And I think you are very weird as well. And I don’t believe you, either.”
Keal flinched as though my words stung as much as the older boys’ blows earlier.
“But I’m telling the truth!†he whimpered. “Please believe me!â€
“No thank you,†I said calmly, my voice filled with scorn. “I don’t believe you had dreams about me and I certainly don’t believe that utter junk you expected me to believe about nobody hearing you but me. I just don’t. Goodbye.â€
With that, I turned on my heel and strode quickly back into the building, not even daring to look back for fear I would lose my temper.
“I hope he’s not in any of my other classes,†I muttered as I walked through the long, near abandoned corridors to my locker. Every footstep echoed as though I were in a giant, empty cavern and when I closed the door to my locker it sounded like a very loud gong being hit right next to my ear.
I passed the remaining time in the lunch period wandering the meandering halls and trying to speculate what my time at Douglas Adams would be like. So far nobody had given me a reason to think it would be any fun at all, so I can say for sure that I wasn’t very optimistic.
Just before 12:05 pm, the end of the lunch period, I turned a corner and found myself in a dead-end hallway that ended in a blue door with a little brass plate above it that read “Room 212: Ms. Kelchumâ€.
“Hey,†I said, fishing my class schedule out of my pocket. I smoothed the creases out against the wall and ran my finger down the list until I found “Period 5 – 12:11pm to 1:11pm: English, Ms. Kelchum, Room 212.â€
“Great,†I sighed, folding my schedule back up until it could have been mistaken for a dry spitball. “There’s no time to go anywhere else†– the bell was ringing as I was this – “and there was no way I want to be the first person to English class today of all days.†I said this last part with a bitterness that implied exactly how I felt.
I soon decided to, from which I could emerge from and run to Ms. Kelchum’s room just before the late bell and an inevitable call home to my dad. Besides, if anybody asked, I could just say I was looking for the bathroom and had gotten lost in the maze of hallways. After all, that was mostly true.
Unfortunately for my grand scheme, at that very moment a person rounded the corner and made her way directly towards me.
I’ll admit it, I panicked. The last thing I wanted was someone popular – like this girl undoubtedly was, judging by her looks – and therefore capable of making my life miserable by finding yet another fault in me on my first day at Douglas Adams.
At lunch I had been graciously nicknamed “Eskimo Girl,†and surely by now stories of “The Girl Who Dumped Food on Kaitlyn Miller’s Head†would be traveling up and down through the lunchroom and hallways. I did not also need the title of “English Nerd.â€
Unfortunately, I was perfectly poised to receive it. To that girl’s perfect blue eyes it would likely appear that I had just crawled out of a dumpster. My scraggly brown hair was clearly no match for her perfectly straight blond hair held in place by a red barrette on either side of her face, and my T-shirt and jeans paled against her perfectly neat jean skirt and name brand top.
I froze against the wall, trying to look casual and as un-English Nerd-like as possible. The girl finally reached me, and, to my complete surprise, walked right past to the door of Ms. Kelchum’s room. She pulled out her little designer leather purse and started rummaging around inside. Finally she gave a little exasperated sigh, rolled her eyes, and refastened the clasp with a little click. Next she turned to me, who had been standing there watching this odd performance the whole time, and stood there, hands on her narrow hips.
“Well?†she said, her voice snippy and her eyes locked on me.
“Well what?†I said, glaring right back.
“Are you in this class?â€
“Yeah,†I said roughly. “So?â€
“Well, I know every kid in the school, and I don’t know you, so you must be new,†she declared. “Name?â€
“Leila Stellion,†I said, looking suspiciously at the girl.
“Well, Leila,†the girl continued. “Your name probably isn’t on my attendance sheet, so please run down to the office and ask Mrs. Shelton if she would add you and print me out a copy of the new list.†Noticing my gaping mouth, she flapped her hand at me, showing off nail polish that perfectly matched her barrettes. “Get going!†she said sternly. “Shoo! Skedaddle! Get moving!â€
“YOU’RE Ms. Kelchum?†I said, shocked.
“Who do I look like, Mr. Rodham?†she muttered, drawing a silver key out of her pocket and twisting it in the lock on the door to her room. “Now hurry up! The other students will arrive soon and nobody will appreciate it if you hold the entire class up with your tardiness.â€
“And whose fault will that be?†I muttered darkly and under my breath. But she was my teacher and I would have to live with her, so I went.
By the time I got back to class it was 5 minutes into the period already and the only seat left was in the back row between – naturally – Kaitlyn Miller and Keal Burton. Wordlessly I handed the attendance sheet to Ms. Kelchum and then I took that seat, pretending that the occupants of the chairs on either side of me each sent a glare my way. Kaitlyn’s was hateful and Keal’s, almost more torturous, was pleading.
Ms. Kelchum was describing what a metaphor was, so I got a little time to observe her. She was incredibly short, shorter than all but a handful of kids in the class, but she was pretty and appeared to be very young. You could practically see all the boys falling off their seats as they hung onto every word she said.
About halfway through the lecture a note landed on my desk, striking the surface with a tiny thump. I was about to tear it into little tiny pieces to show Keal that I wouldn’t fall for it again, but curiosity, as always, got the best of me and I slowly unfolded it and read.
“His plea for belief was as honest as the day is long on the summer solstice,†it read, and then three more words were added at the bottom: “Please believe me!â€
Angrily, I drew out a pen and began to add my own message below Keal’s.
“His apology was as pointless as trying to light up a black hole with a flashlight,†I wrote, and then added, “And I still don’t believe you,†at the end.
I added a drawing of a flashlight and sent the note flying back Keal’s way. Another few minutes passed, and I was starting to think Keal had given up on the joke and left me alone when another note hit me in the side of the head, almost landing in my ear.
“Her head is a black hole if she doesn’t believe me,†I read, running my finger along Keal’s neat handwriting. “Whatever goes in must immediately disappear.â€
I was shocked, and grinned in spite of myself. This kid, however annoying, had a quick mind! But my smile faded when I saw the “I really am telling the truth,†scrawled in faint letters at the bottom.
I was about to write back a fierce reply when Ms. Kelchum’s voice made me jerk my head up. “May I have the notes?†she demanded, holding her hand out. Meekly I gave in, dumping the paper into her outstretched palm.
Ms. Kelchum read through the notes, and then broke into a grin. “Well!†she said perkily. “These are some nice metaphors you’ve written, Leila and Keal!†She then proceeded to read them out loud, and if I could have sunk into the ground, I would have. Once glance at Keal told me he was feeling about the same way, which made me feel at least a little better.
The rest of rest of the day passed uneventfully, and when the final school bell rang, I dashed out the door, and down the street, leaving Douglas Adams Middle School behind.
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79-
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80 – You like it?
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78- Noted.
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The next part of Conspiracy Wars:
“I was not aware that the EADS designed their rocketplanes to be capable of this!†Qorl said, over the roar of the engines. We went faster and faster. Suddenly, the rocketplane left the runway and went airborne. In a few eye-blinks, we became able to see the whole city around the spaceport, and much of the surrounding geography. Any airplane could give a person a view like that, and we had both flown before so instead I looked around the cabin. There were six seats, big and padded, like on first class regular planes. Very, very large windows were built into the walls for sight-seeing.
On screens in front of us, our current altitude was displayed. We passed 31,000 feet, the cruising altitude of traditional jetliners, and kept on going. At 38,000 feet, Vink Los addressed us via intercom.
“Strap yourselves in; this is where it gets serious!â€
Outside of the window, the sky above us looked not blue, but purple, because there was less atmosphere to scatter the light.
We did as we were told, and the rocket engines ignited. The noise was incredible, but so was the view! There was the famous boom as we broke the sound barrier. Then, the rocketplane passed 62 miles, the boundary of outer space!
“Awesome! So, we’re astronauts, now?†I asked
“Technically, yes. With these space tourism vehicles, only SF just a decade ago, it’s not so hard. Still, at JPL, they could give you a ‘wings’ pin if you’re interested. Isn’t the Twenty-First Century amazing?†Qorl answered.
A rocketplane is not made to go much higher than the official boundary. Still, it’s an efficient way to travel and can shave a lot off the actual travel time.
“No higher than this unless you’re in the ‘Shuttle, guys!†Vink announced. A’sar bellowed something in the Wookiee language.
“I could too fly the Shuttle! They’ve just never asked…â€
Qorl turned to me and said
“Interesting, isn’t it? Fly high enough up in the sky and blue turns to black, so you can’t live without special gear. But dive deep enough down into the ocean, and blue also turns to black, requiring you to have special gear as well.â€
“So, we only live where it’s blue? Gosh, that’s small.â€
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83- Those last two paragraphs are weirdly inspiring.
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84- Thank you.
The next installment:
From the cockpit, I could hear Vink and A’sar arguing
“I know its restricted airspace, but coming down over the area will shorten the trip, A’sar!â€
“Waaahhhhg!â€
“Leave my mother out of this.â€
According to the little screen, we were descending, but I didn’t see a big difference. The descent started getting faster, but it was still measured. Below us were the deserts of Nevada.
At 20,000 feet, we felt a jolt.
“What was that?†I asked
“Something’s pulling us down- some sort of force beam or something!†Vink shouted.
We were going down faster than before. A large compound below us became visible.
“I’ve seen enough spy movies to bet that that’s where the force beam is taking us. Also that there are some very bad dudes inside.†I commented.
“We’re at full power, but we still can’t break free!†Vink informed us.
I looked at Qorl.
“You’re the smart guy, don’t you have a plan?â€
“Mmmm… actually, we could try…â€
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The CT troopers boarded the rocketplane, looking around, surprised at the apparently empty vehicle. Within five minutes, A’sar and Vink had stunned them, tied them up in the cargo compartment, and were examining their blasters.
“Nice make, wouldn’t you say, A’sar?†Vink asked
“If those are CT troopers, and this is their secret base, I’m willing to bet that Princess Emily is probably being held here, too.†Qorl said “You all should rescue her.â€
“Hey, get this straight, Mr. Mysterious Scientist- I’m just here to follow the Union Rules. Fly to the destination, protect the passengers, and don’t go off on crazy quests to save princesses-â€
“It actually says ‘Don’t save princesses’?†I asked
“No, but-â€
“But, if Lana is your passenger, and she goes off to save the princess, then, according to Union Rules, you would have to follow and protect her, right?†Qorl asked
“Uh, technically… yeah.†Vink surrendered.
“Very well, then, I found this scanner cartridge in one of the soldiers’ belts.†Qorl said, handing him the cartridge.
“How…?â€
“Slight of hand. Always comes in handy. As for me, I’ll deactivate that force beam.†Qorl said.
“But that’s too secret to be on the readouts! And, you can’t just go by yourself! You need protection!†I said.
“I can handle action. I’ve seen more than my share. One person is less conspicuous than two or three, anyway. As for finding the projector, well, anything that strong must be nuclear powered, and-â€
“Don’t tell me you’ve got a Geiger counter up your sleeve, too.†Vink said.
“In my briefcase, actually.†Qorl said. Then he turned and looked me straight in the eye.
“I’m leaving the briefcase itself on board. If anything should happen, if I should not make it back, within this case you will find everything you need, Lana.â€
Comments?
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86- Whoa, slow down. There’s nothing wrong with your story, but it could use some more of a) description, and b) Lana’s personal thoughts. It’s sort of confusing as it is.
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Hmmm…. Is Flight of the Fairies a good title for a fantasy story? I am almost done with the first part, then I am going to post it.
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I am back and I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN THE ROTHSCHILD STORY. But I cannot write currently.
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89- GOOD. I had given up hope.
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87- Sorry. Some bits are heavy on description and thoughts, some are light.
When did you stop being able to follow it?
88- That sounds good.
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91 – Thanks.
Is it better to start a story off by introducing all of the characters separately, or to start with them all together?
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The hallways were long, low-ceilinged, and painted a dismal shade of dark gray. Essthree beeped nervously.
“It’s okay, little guy.†I whispered. Tammy disagreed in monkey-lizard speak.
“I heard that. The elevator to the cells should be right- here!â€
Essthree manipulated the elevator controls to allow us entry. We left him hidden in the area, behind a consol. We entered the elevator.
“Waaaggggh!†A’sar said
“Think of this as a way to conquer that claustrophobia.†Vink said.
The doors opened, and we heard some voices just behind a corner.
“Go find out who it is, Tammy.†I said.
She shortly returned and told me that it was three stormtroopers.
“Any ideas?†Vink said
“Yeah, I’ve got one…â€
CT stormtroopers have minds like blank walls, which they probably couldn’t shoot at point blank range. We came out from around the corner with our shirts pulled up over our mouths, bandito style. A’sar’s hands were tied up with rope from my pack.
“Halt! Who goes there?â€
“Bounty hunters, delivering this rebel Wookiee.†Vink answered.
“Right, go lock him up. Here’s the master key.†The trooper said. And, just like that, we were in. We passed rows and rows of empty cells, until we saw one with a person in it. We rushed over and unlocked the door.
“Who the heck are you?†asked the woman inside. I recognized her from the hologram.
“I’m Lana Skywalker and I’m here to rescue you.†I said, removing my shirt from my face.
Suddenly, we heard footsteps coming from the opposite direction.
“Stormtroopers! We can’t just walk out the way we came with the princess!†Vink said, panicked.
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92- You can introduce them at the start, or jump right in and have the backstory fall into place later in bits and pieces.
I’m aware these next scenes are some of the most famous in Star Wars, so if I ruined them, please don’t throw any tomatoes at me that aren’t TOO rotten.
Thank you.
“Give me your blaster!†Princess Emily demanded. Vink threw his to her and she shot a hole in the wall of her cell.
“Garbage chute. I smelled it before. Jump!†She ordered.
We did. Gosh, it stunk in there. The chute led into a larger one, with some holes in the side like an elevator shaft.
“For throwing in trash from different levels. This base must go deep underground.†I thought.
“Uh, how do we stop sliding and get out?†I shouted to Vink
“Get out? Why do we need to get out? He asked
“Because all chutes lead to-†I began, but a thump interrupted me as we hit the bottom of the shaft. The floor suddenly started moving slowly towards a big opening in the wall. I could feel heat radiating from the opening.
“-The incinerator!†I screamed
“Oh, right. Charming, heh, heh.†Vink laughed, nervously.
We saw a service door up ahead. I felt for the master key. It wasn’t in my pocket.
“The key! Where’s the key?†It must have fallen out. I looked for it, frantically. Tammy dug into a pile of tuna cans, and I stuck my hand into the load of vegetable peelings behind me. It wasn’t there.
“Wait, we left Essthree up in that control room with the elevator!†I grabbed Vink’s comlink from his pocket.
“Essthree, stop the trash conveyer belt!†I shouted.
We got closer and closer to the opening in the wall. I could feel the ambient heat on my face. I shut my eyes, bracing for doom, and-
The floor stopped moving.
“Hurrah, Essthree did it!†Princess Emily shouted.
Tammy suddenly made an excited noise.
“And Tammy’s got the key!â€
We ran to the service door and opened it up, stumbling out into an empty hallway, covered in garbage. A’sar said something in the Wookiee language.
“A few more moments and we’d have looked a lot worse than this, buddy.†Vink told him. Then he looked at the readouts.
“Nearby elevator goes right to the hangar. Let’s hope Qorl succeeded.â€
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By the way, does anybody get the joke with Qorl’s name?
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Erm… isn’t he some guy in one of the Expanded Universe books?
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94- *thinks* *hands tomato* You forgot the monster.
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96- It’s based on that, but it’s a tuckerization of “Carl Sagan”.
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94- “The Monster” has a name- Dianoga (I may have spelled that wrong).
How rotten exactly is that tomato?
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Sorry for the triple post, but this thread doesn’t get much traffic.
In fact, at that very moment, Qorl was sneaking down a corridor two floors up, coming from the opposite direction. He could see the rocketplane through an open door. There were bound to be guards around the ship. He felt his lightsaber hilt and passed through the door. His heart skipped a beat and he saw the familiar, dark-robed figure standing beside the plane.
He couldn’t sneak around the back without being seen.
No, I’ll have to face him head on- although I haven’t used a lightsaber in combat for ten years! Qorl thought
As if on cue, Hoaxland looked up.
“Dr. Nagas, what a surprise. I expect you were flying the Cassini photos to your Illuminati friends. I’m going to do what I should have done ten years ago!†With that, Hoaxland activated his lightsaber, a blade of magma-red plasma.
Man, I miss the days when hot java could stop a guy.
Qorl thought, and activated his lightsaber.
“You can’t win, Darth. You might kill me, as you have my friends and colleagues, but you can’t destroy Truth. Even if you win, future generations will realize that I was right, just like Galileo.â€
The duel began.
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ALICE! I am back! And I have finally gotten something resembling a plot for my Mongol AH story! And I am going to write on the novel upon which you and I have been collaborating!
~
Selene’s introspection was interrupted by a large goldfinch hurtling past her head. It landed next to Donald, hopped along the rough bark of the branch, and opened its beak.
“Hey, Don. Y’d better get back home, or Mum’ll have your hide.”
Donald shrugged and waved to Selene. “See you.” He dropped off the branch and jogged heavily around the house, the goldfinch fluttering in his wake.
Selene watched him go. She could never figure out how he could be so at peace with his ineptitude. He came from a family of talented shape-shifters and sorcerers, but he couldn’t turn into a bird to save his life. He had plenty of power; his problem was control. If he tried to warm his feet, he started a wildfire fifty miles away.
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101- Hooray! You are lucky!
—-
And she, of course, had more control than anyone she knew but next to no power. And she hated it.
Now she leaned back against the tree and listened to her brothers laughing in the backyard. A water spout shot up above the house and fell back down. A girl shrieked, a door slammed.
It wasn’t fair! Dad hadn’t been able to work magic till he was six, but Selene was two-and-a-half times that, and she still hadn’t enough power to shape a thunderhead.
Another leaf plummeted prematurely from the upper branches, and Selene glared at it, then slid off her branch and walked off towards the marsh.
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I am considering prefacing “Conspiracy Wars” with this quote:
“It’s a shame that somehow
Light is changing to shadow
And casting its shroud over all we have known
Unaware how their ranks have grown
Driven on by a heart of stone
We could find that we’re all alone
In our dream of the proud.”
-Pink Floyd, On the Turning Away
What do you think?
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The outcome of the duel:
After rendezvousing with Essthree, the six of us (counting pets and droids) were approaching the hangar, when we heard the sounds of clashing lightsabers. Peeking out from behind a doorframe, we saw the whole terrible scene play out.
“I have no plans, I am only a decoy!†Qorl shouted
“But your friends must.†Hoaxland responded.
“I came alone. There are no others here.†Qorl said, lying to protect us.
“You lie!†Darth Hoaxland shouted, and performed a quick swipe with this blade, faster than Qorl could defend himself.
But the lightsaber hit nothing. Qorl’s clothes were empty.
“No! Qorl!†I whispered, in shock.
“What the heck?†Vink asked.
Hoaxland bent down to check for the plans. When he didn’t find them, he walked out of the hangar.
After waiting a minute, we made for the plane and were on board in what seemed like an instant. Fear is a strong motivator.
Vink and A’sar were revving up the engine, while I strapped myself in, and the princess dropped a bundle of clothes on another seat.
“Hey, that’s Qorl’s stuff!†I observed
“Yes, I saved them back there. We will perform the funeral rites with these, since we do not have a body.†She told me.
“Strap yourselves in, ‘cause here comes take-off!†shouted Vink over the intercom. He didn’t have to tell us twice.
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So, what do you think, Vixen?
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Chapter 1
The Mirror
Chapter 2
Girl With Head Of Lettuce
Chapter 3
Lewis
Chapter 4
The Thief
Chapter 5
The Real Thief
Chapter 6
The Mirror Breaks
Hmm. OK, this won’t be a long story. In fact, it’ll hardly be a novella. But I’m fine with that. Maybe it’ll develop. Cassie and Lewis won’t know what to do once Lewis has escaped, Cassie parents aren’t going to be too pleased with her, and breaking a mirror does bring seven years bad luck. But right now I’ll just stick with my tiny story.
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La Mort! You said I would appear in Chapter 2, and now that I’ve found this thread I’m extremely on tenterhooks. Am I as awesome in the book as I am in real life? What will I look like? How will I come into the tale? Am I a good guy or a bad dude? Whose blood have I partaken of?
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I have thought of a story. However, I have only worked out one scene and a few main ideas. I still need plot, characters and world.
Maybe I’ll post the scene here.
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I’s rightin’ 2 books. One’s philosophy, which you all know of.
The other’s a science fiction ship’s logue of a IASA (I for international) space captain whose crew is sent to explore an inhabited planet. Mo’ latuh.
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109- Cool.
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Here’s the beginning of a story I wrote a while back. If I like it enough, then I’ll write more to it. Do you guys like it?
The Wolf Within (or something like that )
The wolf cried as the sun rose. Her body was aflame with a white fire and as it charred and burned as her form changed. His mate screamed in determined denial as he forced the pack away from her. She collapsed in a bundled heap on the ground as the sun fully rose. Her fur was burned away, leaving thin pale arms and legs. Her ears were small and on the side of her head. The human form restricted her powers. All that remained of her old form were her green eyes.
She tried to whimper, but the sounds that escaped her throat were hard and brittle. She crawled toward her mate, but he glared at her. Stay back! he screamed. Frustration dyed his words with hate. He stepped slowly towards her and placed his paw defiantly in front of her. The rage inside her unleashed and it was only Marax’s speed that saved him from her human teeth and the curse.
You know that if you come back here with the curse we’ll rip you to pieces. It’s our territory.
”Our territory, Marax. I’m here. Fenris. Me. Fen.”
So you can talk, mongrel? I recognise. You are a hidious thing inside.
He led the pack away from her. At the edge of the trees he turned. You have until dusk. Be gone. I do not wish to kill my love.
Fen watched him leave. She closed her eyes and struggled to her feet. She staggered away fro the forest. She managed to find the human highway before she collapsed on the ground. Then, all was black.
The girl was seventeen or so. She stood over Fen, smoking a cigarette. When she saw that Fen was awake she asked, ”Do you want to file a police report?”
Fen gaped at her. There was something very odd about this human. Her form was almost blurred in places, and her teeth were unusually sharp and white.
”Is this your first time transforming?” the girl asked.
”Third. My mate tried to help me the first two times.”
”Did you bite him?” the girl asked bluntly.
”No.”
”Good. The world doesn’t need anymore of us rabids.”
The girl sat down and threw her cigarette on the road. She had dyed black hair and black rings around her eyes. ”I’m Loba.”
”Wolfess? How obvious can you get?”
The girl squirmed. ”What’s your name, then? Count Dracula?”
”Fenris. Fen.”
The girl snorted. ”No better name for a werewolf.”
”Yeah. Guess not. ”
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107- Grant! I know I promised a chapter 2!
You most likely be awesome, but I’m not sure whether you will be good or bad yet, and you appear in the story as the head of Legendarium Academy (the ‘Chairman’, as a matter of fact).
Chapter 2 is unfortunately…..not really existent, at this moment. I haven’t really thought about writing it in a while, and the last time I started to write chapter 2, I destroyed it because I didn’t like the idea.
I’ll stop making excuses now.
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Can some one read 111???? It would really help me out as this tory is’t my usual style, and I don’t know if I’m pulling it off.
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CAN SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME??? See post 113.
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113- It’s good. It took me a minute to figure out that Fenris was a girl and Marax a boy, but that’s the only problem so far.
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114- I like it. It turns the werewolf legend upside down.
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115- I changed her gender halfway through.
116- Exactly. The humans are not always the superier species. ;)P
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114- good, good.
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Blogs back up. I wanna type up a little thing I thought up to gauge peoples reaction…
Drake pulled up his familiar piece of metal, and began grinding it up and down on the mossy rock ledge. As he did so, he muttered to himself in the dark,”Scissors are only good sharp. You’ll see. They put me in the stone cell? Oh really! Well how do they like scissors? Eh?!” He shouted the last word as he finished the more and more violent scraping.
Slowly and quietly another voice rose up from a dark corner in the cell. Rising into the light, a thin tall man with shaggy black hair, glasses, and a thin beard spoke. “Look, Drake, put the scissors down. Okay? They’re not putting you in the electric seat, alright? Put ’em away…” He dragged out the last word and faded off in a nagging fashion.
Drake hissed as he stood up into the cold moonlight as well, revealing his own unshaven, wild face. “Look, I just don’t think they oughta put us here, if they ain’t gonna do that to me, ‘k? I mean, why are you so relaxed? Hm? Stone cell, eh? Whadda you think, hm?” Then he shouted, “Scissors!” Spraying spit through the dank air.
Then, both of the men turned to a deeper voice rising from another corner of the room. “Listen, both of ya. I see your thoughts, an’ I don’t wanna disrupt, but in the end, will it matter? Hm? I mean, either way, what’s the worst thing that could happen? I just want some rest…” The dark figure slumped back into it’s hunched and uncomfortable position.
Drake coughed and hacked a bit before pondering on the words, and then went back to sharpening his scraped and ruined scissors. “Stay back, I say…”He muttered and he dazed into incoherency. He looked nervously about the empty cell. Nothing moved, and he grunted as he slumped back into his corner, his black hair falling over his eyes, and getting in the way with his cracked glasses.
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Hmm. Intriguing. They’re obviously all quite insane, but I can’t help wondering what scissors have to do with it. You should write more.
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Continued from 111-
Loba stared down at Fenris. “We’d better get going. Pretty soon this highway is going to be stuffed.” She threw a jacket down to Fenris and a blanket. “Put the jacket on and wrap the blanket around your waist. The humans will stare if you walk around in nothing but your fur.”
“Thanks.” Fen looked at Loba directly in the eyes.
Loba looked down. “I’m not here to save you. No one can save you now.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Saving myself.”
Loba’s car was old, red, and gurgled when it braked.
“Are you sure this is safe?” Fen asked nervously, raising her eyes at the torn seats of the car.
“Relax. We only have a couple of miles to go.”
They started driving down the highway. The trees on the side of the road seemed dark and hostile, unlike her home that she was used to. Fen roled down the window and sniffed the air. “The stench of humans is getting stronger.”
“What did you expect? The lovely sent of caribou?”
“I don’t know. Not this hidious stench of death.”
Loba turned suddenly in her seat. “Whatever you do, don’t mention that smell around humans.”
“Watch the road, mongrel! I really don’t want to die right now,” Fen yelled.
“Yeah, well, there’s things worse then death,” Loba snapped.
Fenris looked fearful and curious. “Like what?”
“Don’t you worry your sweet little head about it.”
“All right. Where are we going?”
Loba sighed. “My apartment. It’s the only place we are safe right now. And you need some help.”
“I do not need help! I can manage perfectly well by my self,” Fen snapped.
“Honey, you look like you’ve been raped and dumped by the side of the road. There’s scorch marks on your body, and you can’t even tell time.”
“I can, too!”
“Sure, sure,” Loba soothed sarcastically.
“I can.See?” Fen said, looking at the sun. “It’s two hours after dawn.”
Loba laughed. “You just made my point.”
Fen shook her head and gave up.
“Good. You surrender. We are here. ”
they had arrived in front of a gray apartment complex on the outskirts of Detroit. The windows were black, and in some cases, broken. As they chugged into the parking lot, a dog started barking.
Who the hell are you? Get away! Get away! Street mongrel!
STREET MONGREL! THIS IS MY PLACE! LEAVE! The barking suddenly became frantic. WEREWOLF! FILTH! LEAVE ME ALONE! STAY AWAY! GET – AWAY- NOW! the dog barked.
“Charming, isn’t he?” Loba grimaced. “Try to ignore him. For your own good.”
Fenris snorted. “What breed is he? A yorkshire? What could he do to me?”
“He’s a Pommeranien. And it’s not what he could do to you that I’m worried about.”
As the girls climbed the stairs to the apartment complex, Fenris could scent the Pomeranien directly below them. He had stopped barking, replacing it with a worried nonarticulate whimper. A shadow crossed the girl’s faces, slightly moreso on Loba’s face.
They unlocked the door to the apartment. The apartment was messy, and it took Fenris a second to adjust to the dark. As son as she did, she noticed that there were people sleeping in various places. One girl was snoring in a chair while a teenage boy was sleeping on a couch. there were some kids, too, around the age of ten, sleeping in sleeping bags.
Loba snarled. She grabbed apan from the kitchen and started beating it with a spoon. “Hey! Mongrels! You know the rule! Get out! The sun’s up already!” The people moaned and stretched, grabbing articles of clothing out of duffelbags and backpacks.
Fenris caught the sent of one of the kids. “They are werewolves!”
Loba raised her eybrows. “Well, that didn’t take long at all, Misses Sniff-sniff.”
“Why are they here?”
The same reason as you. Do you think that you’re special or something?” Loba snapped.
“You know, I really have trouble understanding this sarcastic tone everytime I ask about something,” Fenris growled.
“Well, that’s not a surprise! You can’t understand anything!”
“Loba, do us all a favor and go to bed,” a girl a bit older than Loba said. She had lightbrown hair and blue eyes. She winked at Fenris. “She’s useless whenever she’s been on patrol. Well, I’m Larentia. You are?
“Fenris. Fen. It’s nice to meet you,” she smiled.
“Stay here as long as you want, Fen. These mongrels have been here so long tha they’ve forgotten their nature. They’ve begun to lose their sense of smell, and their scent,” she motioned towards the pack moving slowly out the door.
Fen nodded. “So that’s why I didn’t smell them right away… their scent has mostly disapeared.”
Larentia nodded and smiled sadly. “Most of them can’t even transform. They are stuck as humans. Slowly, they will forget all about their lives as wolves and seep into normal society.”
“Then what happens?” Fen asked, dreading an answer. A prickly feeling was crawling up her back.
Larentia looked at her seriously. “The demons gain another number.”
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120-all? what do you mean all? Don’t you see?… Yes, well, now I need a plot… let us see. Oh, mainly, the scissors are something he concentrates on, so…
Morning came. Drake slowly rose, his face in a twisted frown, sometimes night could be the worst time. He looked around the medieval looking cell and snorted to himself. Empty. As usual, save some moss and a few fallen stones. He slowly trudged to the wall and looked the barred window. He hummed a little growl to himself. “Eh…” He moaned, and twitched his upper lip. Pulling the scissors he had worked so hard on out of his pocket, he examined the rusted bars and lifted his hand.
He slowly squeezed, but yelled out in frustration as the scissors snapped in two. He stomped around the room screaming and kicking the stone walls, which meant pain, which made him angrier.
After about ten minutes, he walked back over to his sitting stone, and waited. Waited for food. Yes, he thought, food is good. I would like some food.
He waited until some men opened the old, bolted, wooden door. Their white coats stood out against the dark cell, unlike Drake’s ripped t-shirt. He hissed through his teeth, but reluctantly took the soup from them. As the men turned, he slipped his hand into his pocket.
He groped around until he found his scissors. He pulled them quickly out of his pocket to find that they were broken. As soon as the men had left, he turned, screamed, and hurled the scissors as far as he could through the bars.
He slowly held the bowl up to his lips and sipped. Soup. Something to relax about. He drank even deeper, but soon felt drowsy, and collapsed on the floor. He moaned. No movement. He couldn’t move. He directed his eyes up to look at a familiar face. Familiar black hair, nose, beard, glasses. The man looked down, sadly, and asked, “If you knew it would happen, why did you drink it?” The man turned his head to the spilled bowl on the floor, and shook his head. Then the room faded to black.
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Oh, no one responded to my next section of writing…
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123- Sorry. It’s still dark, still mysterious, still intriguing. Keep it up!
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What about 121? I know that it is itimitating?!
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-8 Hey! did you get the idea of that name from a series called “Warriors” by erin hunter.
i’m currently working on an 835 page book,(wow! i’ve got guts) but i’m still trying to think of a title.
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126- 835 pages? How many words?
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ZVX- Who? Me?
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126- 
! Thats like 6 NaNovels.
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129- More. Mine was 50,000 words and only about 65 pages on 8 1/2″ x 11″.
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130- Really? *is flooded with discouragement* Then why was the sci-fi RRR, which was 52,000 words, about a hundred pages? Word is unreliable.
Appleworks can’t be any better.
HOW WILL I SURVIVE SCRIPT FRENZY??????
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-127 it hasn’t been written entirely yet, so i don’t know.
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129- is that book size?
131- in book view. NaNo Says that a 50,000 word novel in book view and font and size, is about 173.
Script frenzy uses letter paper, a font type, and 12 point.
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133- Oh. OK. *relieved*
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134- Script Frenzy isn’t a big worry. I’m going to finsh on the tenth, I bet.
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135- That’s ten pages a day. A bit far-fetched, don’t you think?
Since I’m pre-writing a lot of it, which I will later adapt, I’ve got a bit of a head start plotwise. Which is good because believe me, it took a while to think of an inciting incident.
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136-not really. I wrote 23 pages of an improperly formated script in a day. I can write 6 pages in half hour.
I’ve got my plot all planed out. I just need to write a treatment. I think.
And Here is something I’m working on:
~~~
Introduction
Humans, as a whole, have under estimated the rest of the animal kingdom. Some, of course, have said that animals are smart, and may be equal to, or smarter then, Humans. But most people refuse to believe in these, because, of course, we only human.
But the animals are smart. Very smart. So smart that the main reason humans don’t believe in smart animals is that they don’t have there own governments. Well…
They do.
There is no way to know from looking at animals. There is no way to know from walking into the jungles and searching. The animals are very cleaver in this regard.
The only way to find out is by them telling you.
Or reading this book.
This book is a compilation of the year 2006 in the animal kingdoms.
Thats right. Kingdoms. More then one. Four, in fact. Bird, Pet, Fish, and Primate. The kingdoms, altho sometimes it feels like it, are not separate. They cause ripples into the rest of the kingdoms. And then something happens. No kingdom is on it’s own.
So now, Let the animals tell us there story.
CHAPTER 1
KINGDOM OF THE BIRDS
“Immigration service, Migration Department, How may I help you?†ask the Large Toucan. He was a typical with a rainbow beck and a black body. He held the phone to his beck clumsily, as he was still use to the older, more popular Bird to Bird Tella or BBT. It was a clunky system of wires, extending from root to root of the trees. The main problem with the system was the fact that if you were located outside of the Main jungle, it was very hard to talk to some one in the system.
The process worked (And, indeed, works) like this: a bird, calling from, say, New York City (And we all know what that bird would be!), would use the Phone to contact the Tella/Phone switch, located in the Communication service of the the Government. The Birds working here would connect the Phone line to the Tella line. This gave a lack of clarity, and, most often, the birds would be hooked up to the wrong bird. This caused problems, particular in October and November when the birds were planing migrations. If the birds were hooked up to the wrong tella number, a whole flock could miss there Reservations in the nesting trees. This was big.
~~~~~
This is Animal Kingdoms.
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137- OOoohhhhhh…. I’m hooked.
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137- 
SIX PAGES? IN HALF AN HOUR? I can write six pages in 3 hours, maybe two. Maybe one. But not half of one.
Script is different, of course. It’s mostly dialogue, briefer, and there are a lot of lines.
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I’m at the library now, so I can’t paste in anything from Conspiracy Wars, but if you guys care enough, I’ll post the rest of the story later. So give a holler to say if you care what happened to Lana Skywalker.
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139- Yeah! Six pages of prose: 6 hours
Six pages of script: 1/2 hour.
the sample of Animal Kingdoms is a page that took an hour.
I’m reading a book about screenwriting, and the guy wrote a 120 page screenplay in 13 day. and got $3 mil for it. He’s a pro, but I’ll try!
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Ah, I missed today on writing my next section. It’s sort of planned out in my head where drake talks to himself, sees what he could do, and sort of sees what he is oh, it’s hard to explain. You’ll see later… I don’t want to write it today… most likely.
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My latest story, actually my SF idea written in novel format (which I will adapt to script during April), is coming along quite well. Six and a half pages, just over 3000 words, and ideas galore. I may post some here. In fact, I think I will.
This is after it’s begun but before it gets really strange. So far all you need to know is that Kirsti and Conall are basically no more than acquaintances, you couldn’t even say friends, and they’ve met at the market. While Kirsti is buying bread, her little sister, Mig, wanders off. While looking for her, Kirsti and Conall find themselves transported to somewhere they’ve never seen.
—
Slowly the world came back into focus. But it wasn’t the same world at all. “Where are we?†breathed Kirsti, almost forgetting the disaster in the midst of her confusion.
From the look on his face, Conall had no more idea than she.
They were standing in a field of long yellowing grass and purple flowers, which came up to Kirsti’s waist. The sky was a shocking blue, not the grey of the city, and Kirsti was beginning to sweat in her wool overcoat. The grass rustled nearby, and the girl turned towards it. A long, furred creature even more brilliantly blue than the sky looked at her. It blinked a large amber eye, and slithered away.
Both Conall and Kirsti had seen snakes – in the summer, the city was crowded with circuses, menageries, and the occasional snake charmer from the south – but neither had ever seen a snake with blue fur.
“In the name of all that is holy,†whispered Conall, “what over, on or under earth was that?â€
Kirsti shook her head. “I don’t know. Let’s leave now.â€
“That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day.â€
Kirsti looked around. Her feet were sweating now, and she couldn’t take off her shoes after seeing that thing. “Which way’ll we go?â€
“Does it matter?†said Conall. “It all looks the same to me.â€
“But there’s something – and some people, I think – that way,†said Kirsti, straining to see beyond the heat haze.
“Let’s go, then.â€
At this point Kirsti was far from wishing to walk more than two feet, dreadfully hot, and beginning to be thirsty. Conall’s hair was damp with perspiration, and he had taken off his coat and rolled up his trousers. Kirsti had been glad of three petticoats and wool stockings when she left her house that morning, but now she was hotter than she’d ever been in her life.
“We shall expire of the heat,†she mumbled.
“We’ll do that anyway. This way we might get somewhere before we die. And I for one want to know where we are and how we get back.â€
Kirsti nodded miserably. “Lead the way.â€
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Comments?
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144- I like it.
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I can take a hint. Nobody cares.
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146- What? I care! Even though I forgot to say so…
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146, oh dear, we didn’t mean it like that! I for one, haven’t read the first part, so I can’t say that I want to read the second! Can you do me a favor?
-take a deep breath. We all love you. You know that. (Sorry if I’m being freaky)
-Post the first bit.
-Post the second bit.
-Eventually post reminders that you want comments.
-Please?
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146- If you post the rest, I’ll Read the first bit.
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Okay, the first part of the story is in posts 29, 49, 69, 72, 75, 76, 83, 85, 86, 93, 94, 100 and 104. Yes, it’s long, but it IS based on a two hour (I think) movie.
“Lana, I must thank you and your friends for coming to rescue me. But tell me, who are you and how did you come to find Essthree?†Princess Emily asked
“Well, Your Highness-†I began.
“No ‘Your Highness’ or ‘Your Majesty’ or any of that, I’m just plain Emily. Cool?â€
“Cool. My parents were geologists; they died in a volcanic eruption in Chile when I was only a baby. For I lived out in this little town with my aunt and uncle, and my best friend Jess…†I told her the whole story as the rocketplane barreled out of the hangar.
“The rebel’s ship is escaping, Lord Hoaxland, and the tractor beam is deactivated.†A lackey began.
“Then we shall shoot them down! Nagas did lie!â€
“Aye, cap’n! We’ll send ‘em to Davy Jones, we will!†A soldier shouted. The lackey turned around.
“Uh, this is Conspiracy Wars. The pirate extras are needed on the next soundstage over. See, if you look at your card, it says-â€
“Silence! Why aren’t you chasing them?†Hoaxland demanded
“What are you, crazy? We can’t afford fighter planes! We can barely afford that imperial issue spam. Slime Posing As Meat, that’s what spam is…â€
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Comments?
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151- It’s good. I can see the story beginning to unravel, but in a good way. It looks like it’s on purpose.
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The stormtroopers are supposed to be silly.
Finally, why the CTs wanted that disk:
Back on the rocketplane, I fiddled with the lock on Qorl’s briefcase. The lock needed three two-digit numbers to open.
“Man, we’re lucky the CT’s didn’t find this. They must have searched the ship because they freed the stormtroopers in the hold, but I don’t even know why this case is so darn important.â€
“Did you try 10-04-57?†Emily asked
“I’ll try it right now.†I lined up the numbers. The lock came open.
“How did you know?†I asked
“October 4, 1957. The launch of Sputnik 1 and the beginning of the Space Age. I was just trying to think as Dr. Nagas would.†She answered.
“You mean that you knew him before?â€
“No, by the time I got to JPL, he was already in hiding. But it was watching his Holonet series that made me want to become a science journalist. I’ve covered a lot of missions.†She said, smiling.
I examined what was inside of the briefcase. The case itself, now that I could see the inside, was made of very hard plastic and o-ring sealed, like professional camera cases. Qorl had been very careful to keep everything inside safe. First, I pulled out a lightsaber hilt that looked like Qorl’s. I looked for the button that he had pressed, and activated the plasma blade, but this one was violet, not blue. I pressed the button again and deactivated it.
Next, I pulled out something thin and smooth from a side pocket. It was a case holding a CD marked with the letters “CSSNI IMGS-IPTSâ€.
“That’s the disk I burned the photos onto and hid in Essthree!†Emily announced.
“But why are they so important?â€
“They were taken by Cassini, NASA’s mission to Saturn- you’ve heard of it, haven’t you?†She asked me.
“Yeah, orbiting since ’04, right? And the size of a school bus- isn’t it?†I responded.
“Yup. These photographs are of a moon called Iapetus. The last photographs of Iapetus were taken in the ‘80s by the Voyager probes and showed some interesting geology, including a range of equatorial mountains stretching around it like the seam of a walnut. To most of us, just an interesting feature, but to Darth Hoaxland, it looked artificial. He thought Iapetus was an ancient space station, an artifact of the same extraterrestrials he believed to have ‘carved the Face’.â€
I was giggling. “A space station? For real, that’s what he believed?â€
“Yes, and he still thinks it to this day. But when the Cassini Imaging Team transmitted these photographs to me, I could clearly see with Cassini’s improved cameras that the seam was just a mountain range, and I was preparing to post them on the Holonet. Because this could potentially be important, I burned a copy on to a disk. It was lucky that I did, because soon after that, a CT Destroyer attacked. Darth Hoaxland believed that the new photographs would prove his ideas correct. I did not want to see the data used to further his delusions, so I deleted the photos from my computer and hid the disk in Essthree. Somehow, the CTs figured out that was where it was.â€
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More!
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154- Here you go!
I felt around in my backpack for a biscuit, as Tammy was making “hungry†noises. I gave it to her, and took out two energy bars, realizing that I hadn’t eaten all day.
“Do you want one?†I asked Emily.
“Thank you. Anything’s better than that Imperial spam. They’ll be food when we land.â€
I went back to the briefcase. There was the money to pay Vink, a few folded papers, and a white laptop. I lifted it out, carefully.
“I’ve seen these in magazines. UNICEF designed them for underprivileged children in aid schools. This baby runs on a solar panel built into the top-†I pointed to it “has a screen that can be read in direct noontime sunlight, could still work after being thrown on the ground and tap-danced on, and can get Wi-Fi in the Amazon. In short, this is one heck of a laptop.†I said.
“I can understand why Nagas would have used it when he was in hiding.†Emily said.
The rocketplane landed and we stepped out. Technicians and engineers ran out to meet us.
“Emily! You’re okay!†Someone shouted
We hurried into a building where Emily told the whole story and someone was nice enough to give me a chicken sandwich.
Finally, the photographs from Cassini that we had risked so much for were shown on a large screen.
They were beautiful pictures, showing in amazing detail the craters and mountains of Iapetus. And yes, they clearly were only mountains.
All of a sudden, a frantic Rebel came rushing in.
“The latest word on his website is that Hoaxland’s going to have a press conference at where you were- which, curiously enough, is where Agent Tot’fsse went missing. This will be in a few hours and he’s sent invitations to all the major news organizations.â€
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nice. It’s starting to not be a *Almost* total copy of STAR WARS.
I don’t want to get you mad.
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156- It’s more of an adaptation than a usual parody. Some parts are very clearly Star Wars, some are very clearly related to Space Exploration.
There’s a joke in the last part of the second-to-last sentence of that last exerpt with the Rebel agent’s name.
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156- No, no! I mean You are acuatally adding! good job!
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“I… agree.†Emily said.
I was puzzled, but then I realized what they meant:
“So, we’re going back to the nasty desert place to ruin the press conference of somebody who just cut down an old man?â€
“Yeah, that’s about it. You aren’t afraid, are you?â€
“Well, today I outran stormtroopers, bailed from a speeder bike with engine failure, revealed a fake psychic, flew into space, impersonated a bounty hunter, nearly got incinerated and rescued a kidnapped rebel leader, so… why not?â€
“It’s a crazy plan that’ll get us killed, that’s why not.†Vink snapped.
“Sorry to hear that, Los, we all think very favorably of Rocketplane. In fact, there’s a design contract…†Emily began
“Fill the fuel tanks, people!â€
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Ooops, an engineer said “I think this would be a good time to reveal the photos.” That’s what Emily was responding to. I made a mistake while cutting and pasting.
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0k, here’s a bit from my story….it’s about cats by the way.
Suddenly a rustling overhead caused him to spring up, but too late, a weight smote him with tremendous force; crashing to the ground, Pouncer seized his sword as the creature backed off screeching.
On closer observing, Pouncer realized it was a falcon that had attacked him, however this falcon was very different than the only one Pouncer had ever known; Crius.
“Well, well, well, what the feathers have we got here?†the falcons’ voice was grating and rasping, the voice of a warrior.
“I’m a cat on an urgent mission for my ruler,†Pouncer tried to ignore the fact that the falcon looked as if he could kill him with a single blow. “I didn’t mean any harm to you or your kin.â€
“Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not. i’d better take you to my chief, the lord of falcons, he’ll decide what to do with you. for your information, i don’t have any kin.”
ok, i know you won’t be to get all of it, but you get the gist.
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Our story continues…
I squirmed in the seat as the rocketplane taxied in, landing on a runway at the desert base. Many other planes, both conventional and rock, were already there. I was wearing an itchy red wig, and Emily was wearing a blond one. Two members of the photography team also disembarked with us, as we once again entered the dismal gray corridors. Without Tammy, Qorl or Essthree, I felt even more afraid.
Needing to scratch under the wig, I headed into a bathroom near the entrance of the base. I had gotten my scalp back to feeling normal and the wig was back on my head when I heard a voice outside the bathroom door.
“I don’t have any more money! But I do want to see you show your photographs to the press, I do!â€
“Not good enough, girl! I need money to fight the Illuminati!†That was clearly Darth Hoaxland. My muscles tightened.
“I just want to know!†The voice sobbed, and the person who had been speaking ran into the bathroom, and behind me, into a stall, to cry. In the mirror, I saw her face- Jess!
Cautiously, I walked up to the stall and opened the door.
“Are you okay?†I asked
Jess lifted her head to look at me. She was wearing a strange helmet made out of a metallic foil, and her green eyes looked glazed over, as if she was in a coma.
“I-I thought I could trust Hoaxland! I really thought I could, but I’ve failed!†She sobbed.
She’s hypnotized or something. It must be that hat. If I took off my wig now, she’d only drag me out of this room and straight to Hoaxland! But those tears- she’s not exactly a zombie; she must have some control over her emotions! And if it’s not total control, there must be a way to break it! If I could convince her that Hoaxland is a liar, maybe she’d take off that mask herself! But how? I asked myself.
And then, I remembered what Qorl had said
“Use the facts, Lana.â€
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Any comments?
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163- I like the Use the facts.
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163- That’s one of the best pieces of this story I’ve read so far. It’s really good.
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164- It just seemed to fit.
“Listen, if Hoaxland was really all that good, why would he keep everything so secret? If he needs money so bad, why not ask the public instead of demanding so much from a kid?†I asked.
Something stirred in Jess’ eyes for a moment. I was reaching her.
“He says all these features were built by ancient aliens, but isn’t that a lot to swallow without any other proof?â€
“You mean, they could be natural?†Jess seemed strangely afraid as she said this.
“When all else is equal, the simpler explanation is usually the correct one.†I said “But this is America, make your choice freely.†I removed print-outs of the Iapetus photos from my pocket and pressed them into her hand.
Jess looked at them and her eyes became lively again and also wide with surprise.
“My gosh, they are natural!â€
“Take off your helmet, Jess Krad, you can trust me.†I pulled off the wig, as Jess pulled off the metal hat.
“Lana? What’s happening?†She asked me, completely free. “I feel like a concretion that’s been through electrolysis!â€
“Long story, we’re fighting CTs- come on!†I shouted, and we hurried out the door, as I stuck my wig back on. I had an idea.
Just as I’d hoped, the room where Hoaxland was going to make the announcement was nearby. Jess cautiously pushed open a door, and we saw a big, empty room with rows of folding chairs and a podium in the front. Near the podium, just as I’d hoped, was the sort of projector I knew from school. Unlike the older models, which only projected images that were on special transparent plastic, this one showed an image of any object placed on the “shelfâ€. Under the projector was a manila folder filled with printouts of Voyager pictures showing classic signs of Photoshop.
We went to work.
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The results of the plan
In the sixth row of folding chairs I sat, between a photography specialist and Emily, playing with my notebook. (I was, I mean, not Emily.)
“Yes, it may at first seem hard to accept, but these photographs, ladies and gentlemen of the press, prove that the ‘moon’ we know as Iapetus was an expeditionary battle planetoid created by ancient extraterrestrials- a battle station with enough firepower to decimate an entire system! As you can see here…†Hoaxland said, turning on the projector.
The reporter all burst into giggles. One shouted
“That’s no space station, that’s a moon!â€
At that, Hoaxland spun around to see the equatorial mountains of Iapetus rendered in the exquisite clarity of Cassini’s cameras.
“I… uh…†Hoaxland stammered and turned pale. He rushed over to the projector and hastily added the next image.
Another shot, just as clear as before, and just as natural.
Franticly going through the photos, the laughter escalated. The last thing in the folder was a piece of notebook paper on which Jess had written in big block capitals “For more information, see www. nasa. gov/. Darth Hoaxland, you have lost Face.â€
“The spies with the neutron beams! They switched my photographs!†Hoaxland shouted
“Sure, next you’ll be telling us that Peter Parker is Spider-Man!†A reporter called out. Still more laughter.
Hoaxland looked at the crowd and shook his fist:
“I don’t know who is responsible, but I swear you’ll pay!†Then he ran out a door. Jess and I looked at Emily.
“Well?†we asked
“Job well done.†She said, smiling.
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it’s over?
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168- Nearly.
The Happy Ending:
Standing in the “briefing roomâ€, Jess and I stood before Emily, Vink, A’sar, and all the engineers, technicians and photography team members. She was holding three identical small boxes and handed one to each of us. We opened them, and saw pins with our names-
“Astronaut wings! Thanks, Emily!†A technician helped us pin them on.
She cradled the third box in her hands.
“I-I just want to say, that I think Dr. Nagas would be very proud of you two. It’s a big universe, and we’re only just beginning to explore, so- let’s get to work!â€
Glossary:
Star Wars terms:
Core Worlds- The center of the Star Wars galaxy. Analogous to “The Big Cityâ€.
Holonet- The Star Wars equivalent of the television news.
Vaporators- Used in dry areas to gather moisture.
Monkey-Lizard- A cold blooded, intelligent creature that resembles a monkey. Jabba the Hutt had one as a pet
Space Exploration:
Saturnian- Of or relating to the planet Saturn.
ISS- International Space Station.
Rocketplane- A converted jet plane that can fly to sub-orbit because of added rocket engines. As a brand name, the company based in Oklahoma that builds them.
Astronaut Wings- Military badge awarded to people who go higher than 62 miles.
EADS- European Areonautic Defence and Space Company.
“Pay like Bransonâ€- Richard Branson, billionaire founder of the Virgin Galactic space tourism organization.
‘Shuttle- Collective name for NASA’s fleet of Space Shuttles, or a way to refer to one specifically without calling it by name.
Other stuff:
Geiger Counter- Instrument used to measure how much radiation is in an environment and locate radiation sources.
JASON project- An underwater exploration and education program, begun in 1985.
Illuminati- Secret society the CTs think rules the world.
Wi-Fi- Internet access.
“Like a concretion that’s been through electrolysisâ€- I feel like I’ve been thrown into acid and electrocuted. This is a process used by archeologists to free up objects stuck together in lumps called concretions.
UNICEF- United Nations Children’s Fund.
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Book 1: Alonia: After recieving transmissions from an alien world, astrounats are invited to it. Their tour is interrupted by a war.
Book 2: The Elder Folk: On the way home, they detour on a planet whose highly evolved habitants are extremely wise, though their lives are surprisingly simple.
Book 3: When the crew finally returns, the earth’s biggest nations have divided themselves up. They realize that relativity cost them 50 years. The descendant of Saddam Hussein has conquered Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Afganistan, Pakistan, Iran, Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. They help the rest of the world defeat them
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So, who liked Conspiracy Wars?
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171- I did. But it desperately needs expansion.
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same
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172, 173- What do you think needs to be expanded on?
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174- Description. Put in lots more description. And some more of the characters private thoughts. Make them react to what they see and hear. Show their faces.
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As some of you may have heard on the Muse Academy emergency forum, I am trying to write a book in which music and magic are closely intertwined* However, I have no plot, characters or setting*
Thus, I am totally open to suggestions.
*I am replacing the periods with asterisks so that the full post can be seen on the Latest Comments Bar.
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176- As I said, I have no ideas.
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176- It would be cool if the magic made the subject of the music appear right there in front of the musician.
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177- Drat it all. I suppose I’ve got to think something up on my own.
I do have a vague idea, though. The world was a lot like ours in the past, but at some point there was a disaster known as the Discord, which caused a lot of smaller disasters and general upheaval. I’m not sure what caused it (other than that it was vaguely musical) or what its effects were. Yet.
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176-ahaha! awesome! just like bards in d&d! That sounds really cool. I think that the music would make the magic happen… Musical disaster? A musician murdered? Hmm… perhaps a musical mishap angers a world’s ruler…?
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woah, Alice-are you still writing the thing with ‘Jim’ and ‘Aaron’ and all the other people? I just flipped through the thread and saw that. If so, where can I find it? Note:I cracked up when I saw the names… a bunch of obscure ones and then there’s Gim/Jim.
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I don’t want to write my story right now. Any of them. (Well, I only have two.) I’ve pretty much given up any ideas I had before the fire, and a lot that I had after. I think I’m getting used to the fact that not every story will work, and you sort of have to let go…stop being quite so attached. I’ve millions and millions of idea; if I try to write them all I’ll be stretched far too thin. The question is, where do you stop being overly attached, and start simply casting out stories that you’re bored with? it’s a very fine line, I think. I clung to Makepeace far too long, but just because I’ve let go of that story doesn’t mean that other stories from that era have no potential.
OK. Forget that. I’ll just write what I feel like writing, and keep on saving it all, and in five, ten years, maybe an idea will feel just right, and I won’t look at it and think, This isn’t good enough, and then something will come of it. After all, I’ve plenty of time to look for that perfect idea.
That was enormously helpful. Writing things out like that helps.
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181- No… And I spent way too much time on names. Jim was mostly a placeholder, until I found a better one. It was the most obvious.
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180- Thanks!
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184-yeah, no problem. I’ll love to watch the story move along and progress.
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(170)-Sounds like a good start, but I don’t like the idea of a decendent of Saddam conquering the middle east. It’s overly black and white, and enforces the idea that being evil depends on what you are.
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So I’ve got a very vague setting. Now I need a plot of some sort.
I think it will be a conspiracy. Perhaps a conductor (conductors are the most underappreciated and the most accomplished Musicians. They have to control entire orchestras, which are capable of incredibly powerful songs, so any discord is their responsibility, but they’re often looked down on because they don’t actually play instruments) is murdered, and the main characters (some of whom will be inept at Music, others very good at it) have to find out why.
The Discord brought about the end of the Roman Empire and also cut Music off from its power in most of the world. It was only during the Renaissance that Music with a capital M began to emerge again, and only after the Renaissance was there a significant difference in this world’s history from ours. (I’m thinking Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions might be put into practice with a little harmonic help…)
Sorry if the above seemed a little rambling. I’m just thinking out loud. (Well, not literally out loud, but… )
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186-yeah, I agree. Didn’t saddam’s son try to fix up some of the destruction? Luke’s the son of Darth Vader, eh?
Okay…
187-wouldn’t conductors be really powerful, then? I mean, like generals of an army? Well, maybe not. It probably fits into the storyline just as it is. I see that it’s turning into a murder mystery. if it were me, I would avoid that… they should probably find out why about a quarter through… to fall into a bigger plan, or maybe halfway… or maybe near the end(sequel time!). Hmmm… just how big should this group be? of ‘detectives’? Actually, perhaps we could collaborate? Well, do you want it to be a solo project? maybe I shouldn’t… [/POSOC-like rambling]
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188- These are just vague ideas I’m throwing out. And at the moment I’d like it to be a solo project.
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189-okay. I figured. I’ll still help out with ideas if I can…
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189- *glowers* Yeah, look what happened to our collaborative project. Maybe I should look at that…
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191-I dunno. Collaborating just seemed like fun, and I wanted the story to progress. I suppose if it doesn’t work…
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The weather over the Rothschild house was unpredictable at best, even though its inhabitants were the some of the best qualified to predict it in other circumstances. Violent storms and hurricanes appeared and vanished in a matter of seconds. The sun changed color and brightness, and on several occasions had appeared to dance across the sky. Rain turned to hail, hail turned to snow. Snow sometimes turned to diamonds, or back to rain again. Clouds were shaped into embarrassing caricatures of brothers and sisters. The fragile sculptures had to be closely watched and guarded, as the affronted sibling would often disintegrate them by means of a fireball tossed from the highest tree in the backyard. Indeed, most of the Rothschild family had been performing magic before they could walk or speak, and loved every minute of it.
On one particularly hot day in August, Elizabeth Rothschild was down in the cellar, sorting through bottled months. “Hmm. January ‘98? No, no, too much sleet. February ‘62? It’s probably stale by now… Ah! March ‘95. Perfect.â€
She scorned gravity, molecular physics, and the cellar stairs, drifting gently off the floor and floating directly through the ceiling with a barely audible fizz. After passing through several feet of rock and earth, she emerged on the multicolored lawn and uncorked the frosted glass bottle.
Cold winds swept the perimeter of the garden and house, progressing briskly counterclockwise and driving back the sweltering heat.
For a moment Elizabeth sighed deeply, relishing the cool air, but then the wind came back at her full force, whipping into the bottle with a swooshing noise. The cork popped neatly into the top.
“Sorry, Mom,†called a voice from the house, and a tousled blonde head stuck out of the window to accompany it, “but Alex and I are going swimming. Can’t have February weather putting ice on the pool, can we?â€
“It’s March,†sighed Elizabeth. “And you know how I hate it when you two turn the backyard into a pond. It gets so muddy afterwards and I have to clean it up.â€
“Sorry,†said the boy, not sounding a bit contrite, and he withdrew. Seconds later, the back door slammed.
Elizabeth sighed and sank through the ground to the cellar again. There was no point in wasting a perfectly good March wind. Someone would want it tomorrow.
Selene watched her mother vanish into the lawn, and sighed wistfully.
“I’m never going to be able to do that,†she said, half to herself.
“I’m never going to be able to do that,†she said, half to herself.
“Hmf!†Donald Goldfinch snorted from his seat on a lower branch. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. You’re good, there’s no denying it. You’ve got the best fine control I’ve ever seen.â€
A prematurely yellow leaf drifted down past Selene’s dangling shoes. She frowned, and it halted in midair. Fire started at its delicate base, crackling through the veins, forming a delicate tracery of ghostly flame. Selene blinked, and the miniature blaze was extinguished. The leaf turned to ice, then melted into gently rippling liquid, still holding its shape.
“See what I mean?†he said.
The leaf dropped onto the ground and burst, sprinkling Selene’s shoes with water. She frowned. “Sure, but . . . Yeah, well. I guess you’re right.†She frowned, still far from happy.
#
Selene’s introspection was interrupted by a large goldfinch hurtling past her head. It landed next to Donald, hopped along the rough bark of the branch, and opened its beak.
“Hey, Don. Y’d better get back home, or Mum’ll have your hide.â€
Donald shrugged and waved to Selene. “See you.†He dropped off the branch and jogged heavily around the house, the goldfinch fluttering in his wake.
Selene watched him go. She could never figure out how he could be so at peace with his ineptitude. He came from a family of talented shape-shifters and sorcerers, but he couldn’t turn into a bird to save his life. He had plenty of power; his problem was control. If he tried to warm his feet, he started a wildfire fifty miles away.
And she, of course, had more control than anyone she knew but next to no power. And she hated it.
Now she leaned back against the tree and listened to her brothers laughing in the backyard. A water spout shot up above the house and fell back down. A girl shrieked, a door slammed.
It wasn’t fair! Dad hadn’t been able to work magic till he was six, but Selene was two-and-a-half times that, and she still hadn’t enough power to shape a thunderhead.
Another leaf plummeted prematurely from the upper branches, and Selene glared at it, then slid off her branch and walked off towards the marsh.
~
I’m not at all sure why she went to the marsh, only that when POSOC first posted a description of Selene I thought, “She spends a lot of time wandering about in marshes and meadows,” and so later I said that without thinking why. Therefore, we must concoct a reason. What is there in the marsh for a teenage semi-magician?
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192- Technically there’s nothing wrong with collaborating. It’s a nice idea, and kind of fun. The only trouble is that if one person forgets, the whole project sort of fails. So I have to keep reminding POSOC. (And it doesn’t help when I forget too.)
BTW, ignore the # sign in my last post. I meant to erase it.
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193- Thanks for posting it.
Maybe now’s the time to introduce the other character? Patrick Warble, wasn’t he? A twenty-five-year-old assistant manager in one of the industrial cities.
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The Old Holborn-Seawood express thundered down the tracks like a juggernaut. Patrick dozed in the cold leather seat, his head lolling back on his shoulders. He was dead tired, and the trip had hardly begun.
First, there had been the incident with the rotten tomatoes. The lines between the industrial cities had been built as straight as possible, but there was one patch of steep hills between Old Holborn and Seawood which the trains wove slowly through on a series of switchbacks. On this particular day, a mob of magicians- at least fifty- had been waiting near the sharpest curve, where the train would slow down enough to provide an easy target.
Fortunately, the magic-damping effect of the meteoric iron that plated the tracks and sheathed the locomotive and coaches prevented them from throwing anything too destructive, but it offered no protection from the putrid produce that had pummeled the reinforced windows for a solid minute. And it certainly didn’t stop the cries of “Smokestacks!” and “‘Dustries!” that filtered through the rubbish: some merely jeering, others hateful. One of the taunters had been just ten years old.
Notes: Old Holborn and Seawood are two of the three cities. ‘Dustrie and Smokestack are terms used by magicians for those who favor industry over the traditional ways. Smokestack refers to the smokestacks of the factories: ‘Dustrie, of course, is short for Industrial.
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196- Sweet. That’s perfect. Unfortunately, Mother needs to use the computer, so I shall have to retreat until tomorrow, when I write.
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Just before the climax, Selene and Patrick ought to meet and strike up a conversation while they’re both in a dilemma. And each should choose a course of action based upon something that the other said.
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186, 188- Descendant, not son. He’s not born yet, and he may be as evil just as much as he might be good.
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199-so why even bring up that they’re related? That’s just pointless.
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198- Si, si. Fun.
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Mmm. OK. I’m thinking. Nothing’s coming right now, and I’ve got to go, but I haven’t forgot.
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Mmm-kay, I’ve got the following:
One vaguely developed character
Several general ideas about the setting
A few vague ideas about the plot
What I need now are specifics. I may do some more brainstorming on here later.
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I have a lot of beginnings, but I’m not sure they’ll ever go anywhere. I wrote a good one last night (my best writing happens late at night when I need to go to bed. Figures.) Here it is:
Our story begins with an end. Three ends, really, but wrapped up in one event so that they might almost be counted as one. The end of a balloon, a woman, and a mystery.
Sometime in the course of a day a little before the ends happen and the story begins, someone let go of a red balloon. For a while, it floated up into the sky, but eventually the atmosphere grew so thin, and the pressure inside the balloon consequently so great, that it popped, and its fragments began to float back the long distance to Earth. And as they fell, they gathered momentum, so that when one of them finally hit something – in this case a woman – it had enough force behind it that she died immediately. So that’s two ends. The third, the end of a mystery, has just happened. A few short seconds ago. Now you know what happens to balloons that float away. That was the mystery, and now it is over.
I love it dearly, despite its flaws, but it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere. I sort of feel that now the plot
• has to have something to do with balloons and yet
• it can’t be too ridiculous. Humorous, yes. Stupid, no. (No balloon-murderers.)
Any ideas?
MY NEW DECLARATION:
Forge ahead with stories even when they look as though not much is going to happen. Heck, my characters are in a LABYRINTH! Surely I can think of something interesting that can happen to them! And if I can’t, then I’ll just skip ahead…
The story I’ve been working on a lot:
Title: Productive Chaos (probably going to change pretty soon…)
Characters: Kirsti, 13, Tom, 15
Basic premise: Kirsti and Tom are somehow subject to some completely random happening, and as a result are traveling through alternate universes. At first their goal is simply to get home… And Kirsti keeps picking up little items. And then suddenly they find themselves smack in the middle of an age-old battle between two entities, neither of which are worth siding with, and have to somehow get out of that mess… One of the entities, Mortimer, has created a machine or engine of some sort, and it does something that pleases him greatly but results in innocent people being catapulted across a number of odd worlds. So I think Kirsti and Tom are going to try to shut that down, which may or may not mean that they’re stuck in that world and hbave to find an alternate way out.
So, what do you think of that?
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204-excuse me, but have you heard of terminal velocity? On earth, there’s no way a balloon could go fast enough to kill someone. And plus, air resistance.
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205- Yes. I know. But it doesn’t matter, does it? Because it’s fantasy, and besides it’s not like the story’s ever going to go anywhere.
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204- That sounds really exciting!
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206-it could go somewhere.
herr zepplin! it is simply wonderful! It’s put ballooning right back on the map!
It’s not a balloon d’ya hear? NOT A BALLOON! *shoves out of zepplin*
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208- Zeppelins. Yes. I love zeppelins. And people pushing other people out of them. That’s a very good idea indeed….
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Our story begins with an end. Three ends, really, but wrapped up in one event so that they might almost be counted as one. The end of a balloon, a woman, and a mystery.
Sometime in the course of a day a little before the ends happen and the story begins, someone let go of a red balloon. For a while, it floated up into the sky, but eventually the atmosphere grew so thin, and the pressure inside the balloon consequently so great, that it popped, and its fragments began to float back the long distance to Earth. And as they fell, they gathered momentum, so that when one of them finally hit something – in this case a woman – it had enough force behind it that she died immediately. So that’s two ends. The third, the end of a mystery, has just happened. A few short seconds ago. Now you know what happens to balloons that float away. That was the mystery, and now it is over.
But with the end of the mystery comes a new mystery, as you will see shortly.
When I was four, Mom died. She was killed by a piece of balloon falling from the sky, they told me. “But a balloon’s not heavy,” I protested.
“It’s what happened,” said the policeman who had brought the news. He was very tall, and very serious, and it never once occurred to me not to believe him.
I posed the problem to my older friend, Cecilia, with whom I was staying until a foster home could be found. “If something gets going fast enough, it gains momentum,” she said. “And if it has enough momentum, it can hurt. Or even be fatal.”
“What’s fatal?”
Cecilia tactfully ignored me.
Looking back, I didn’t really understand what had happened. For a while I had nightmares about balloons brutally murdering all my friends, but I grew out of them. Within a few years, I hardly remembered what Mom was like at all.
When I was in fourth grade, I told my teacher how Mom had died. She didn’t believe me. “No one can die from a balloon hitting them,” she said. “There would be too much friction. It wouldn’t gain enough momentum.”
“It would be too light,” I said.
But the next day, she pretended nothing had happened, and when I asked her about it, she said something about having researched it, and she was wrong, and would I pass out these papers for her, please? I think she must have talked to my foster parents.
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210 – It’s a very…unusual story, that’s for sure. Good start.
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Ha. Unusual. Yeah. And interesting.
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210- So obviously it wasn’t a balloon, and there’s some sort of cover-up.
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212 – I like the part in italics.
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210-I like that.
*has writer’s block*
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213- Obviously. And it may or may not have something to do with Gim’s zeppelins…
214- Yes. The italicized part was and inspired beginning. The rest of sort of…OK. Let’s see where this goes. But I wasn’t able to duplicate that style, dang it…
214,215- Thanks!
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210- Interesting!
“The darkest night which ever fell on Earth never snuffed out a star.” – Annoymous
A long time ago, in a land far, far away…
It is a dark time for the Space Program. Although the Cydonian Conspiracy (The CTs) has been defeated, a lack of money and widespread ignorance still threaten our heroes’ quest to understand the solar system.
Offering to help wherever they are most needed, Jess Krad has gone to the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico, but Emily Lawada and Lana Skywalker are… somewhere very different.
The Chaos Lord Darth Hoaxland, meanwhile, is still at large…
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Well, ladies and gentlemen, I now have a vague protagonist.
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Another decision on the world I’m going to set Notes* in: It will have certain parallels to our world, but its history and geography will be nothing like ours.
Oh! Brilliant idea!
The protagonist’s last name will be van Clef, and his first name will be something else. I don’t know. But the important thing is, his nickname will be Trouble. If you don’t get the obvious pun, you are clueless about music.
*For lack of a better title. Or maybe I’ll just name it after the protagonist.
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217- *clap clap clap* Who/what is en?
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*218-
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219- *is clueless about music* Please explain? *bribes with lime popsicles*
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Here it is, the long-awaited chapter 2 of my story!
Grant, if you’re lurking, come and read this. I need to know how badly I misrepresented you what you think of the character that is based on you.
Chapter Two:
In which we discover the Academy
Grant O. Lavizo, chairman of Legendarium Academy, sat thinking as he stared out a tall window behind his desk. The bare trees and the snow-covered ground seemed even bleaker as the gray light from the overcast sky shone down in the thick forest. As a half-vampire, he was able to enjoy the daylight when his full-blooded brethren would have been destroyed by it. Yes, he had the mongrel blood, that endowed him with supernatural strength, speed and senses, and yet still allowed him to enjoy human pleasures; it protected him from plagues and diseases but did not debilitate him with the normal vampiric weakness, sunlight. He was an immortal in the truest sense of the word, as strong as any of the millennial vampires, and yet he was cursed and condemned by anyone who knew what he was. Nobody, vampire or human, wanted to believe that at some point in the past, just one member from each species had loved each other and been able to create this mixture, and that this mixture had survived and traveled down through the generations, even while the two species were sworn enemies of each other.
So now, Grant was stuck in the job that seemed to have been created for him, and all of the outcasts of society. He was the chairman of a place that hardly anybody believed to exist. He had no real power; he was just a pawn for the greatest outcast in the history of his world. Itamar, the one who truly ran Legendarium Academy, was seen as a traitor to his own kind; by humans he was seen as a merciless murderer. Grant was just a puppet, controlled by Itamar, and even if Grant called himself the Ultimate Supreme Executive Chairman of Legendarium Academy, he would still only rule over mundane matters.
Or Grant could rule on matters that Itamar had no knowledge about. Grant was the one who could decide on secretive matters such as finding the descendants of the Founders and gathering them at the Academy. It was a mission that every Chairman before him had tried to complete; a way to avenge the bloody beginnings of the Academy, for it was believed that if all the Founders or their descendants were together again at the Academy, then Itamar could be destroyed. But Itamar always discovered these plots, and it was always the current Chairman who was destroyed. It was only luck that Itamar had never discovered that every single person who had been Chairman at the Academy was a descendant of one of the Founders, or there would never have been any Chairmen. So now it was Grant’s turn to try his hand at the impossible mission. It had seemed to him a simple matter to slip just four names into the list of new students, putting those names in alphabetically by first name instead of last. Ah, it seemed incredibly clever, putting the names in places that he knew would not be scrutinized. Now, a harder part had come: waiting for the four, the special four, to arrive.
Grant did not realize how long he had been lost in thought until an icy chill filled the room. Out of instinct, he touched the small silver chain that he wore around his neck. Then he turned away from the window, which was now black with night, and faced the one vampire who was allowed to enter the Chairman’s office on a whim.
“Hmmm, interesting effect. You still flinch whenever I enter this office unannounced. It’s almost as if there is something that you’re hiding from me, that would make you afraid of me…..†Itamar’s mocking voice trailed off, leaving no doubt about what he was implying.
“You know that the effect you have of sucking all the atmosphere out of a room constantly surprises me.†replied Grant warily, hoping that Itamar had no real reason to suspect him of anything.
“Well, regardless of that, I came to inform you that I shall be teaching a new class this year. A class that will be mandatory for all students, based on the vampire wars and fighting styles. Of course, the students will be practicing those fighting styles and techniques on each other, and if some of the puny inferior humans cannot keep up, there might be some accidental deaths.†Itamar paused, and then continued in an angry, sneering tone, “Afetr all, nobody will miss them or even realize that they’re gone. They are all runaways, they’ve left their families behind, and they are all presumed to be dead anyways. A few real deaths can easily be achieved, and it will lower the population of annoying humans here.â€
“Why bother with a class? Why don’t you just let your vampire students feed on the humans? Why are you even telling me this? You know I won’t stop you. You don’t even need me here.†Grant shot back, outraged. If Itamar was really going to attempt this, Grant might as well leave and find the four himself, and find a new plan to vanquish Itamar. He could not risk having one of the four ‘accidentally’ die.
“If the world in general knew that I still existed, this Academy would be destroyed. The Academy needs to appear humane until such a time as I can use it for a better purpose. And I need you to help continue this illusion by pretending that you run the Academy. Once I have a sufficient following, then I can turn this into the battle school that I have been planning, and then I can raise an army, and then the vampire race will destroy the puny humans once and for all! But until then, I need your cooperation. Or your death. Oh, and don’t think I don’t know about you being a half-blood. I have dealt with ones like you before. Decapitation and fire will work just fine to destroy you.â€
Grant simply stared at Itamar, amazed at the vampire’s lunacy. There was only one possible course of action now. He had to play Itamar’s game, and try to protect the four that he was searching for by making them half-blood. Or attempting to at least. He had no idea if it would work, or how to even try it.
Itamar left the room, cackling.
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222- Trouble van Clef. Treble Clef.
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Does he have a brother named Base?
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224- Oh. I thought it was something more obscure than treble…
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223- Oh dear. *dies*
That’s very good, though.
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224- I don’t think so. His parents were very careful to avoid just such a pun, as it would be an albatross around the neck of anyone with negligible musical talent. That’s why they named him William. But since he’s an incorrigible prankster, the nickname “Trouble” grew up despite his parents’ efforts to stamp it out.
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Aha. So, no sister named Elizabeth and nicknamed Bess, either, I assume.
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229- Actually, that was a possibility that had not occurred to me. But probably not. I think one music pun is enough in one family.
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223- That’s pretty good! It does sound as though that’s the way I would act in that situation. And being half-blood rocks. All the benefits without any of the problems that come with it. Just like Dick Cheney and the presidency.
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I just had another idea.
So, in the future, this new sort of cult springs up. Basically its premise is that technology is elevating the human race into a whole new state of being, and that all relics of the outdated past must be destroyed. This includes books.
Now, there are a lot of people who don’t like the idea of giving up their books, so as the movement grows…
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232- Aren’t there stories like that already?
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233- Yeah, I even wrote a parody called “The Extinktion of C” where the government has outlawed the letter “C”, and this girl named Christina who doesn’t want to change her name is on the run.
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233- Well, it’s not over yet. This is just the backstory, the main idea is totally different.
234- Post it! That one sounds like it would krakk me up. What sort of sivilization would outlaw the third letter of the alphabet?
…governments who don’t endorse it store books and other works of art in gigantic libraries with advanced security systems to protect them from the angry mobs. Private collectors do the same thing, only with some rather interesting innovations of their own.
Then there’s a nuclear war, and the deeper levels of the libraries (being in out-of-the-way places and built to withstand enormous damage) are some of the only buildings that remain.
A few centuries later, when civilization has recovered (slightly), everything in the libraries is incredibly valuable but very, very hard to get at, and there are specially trained librarians who venture into the depths of the libraries and…
Well, it seemed like a good idea when I thought of it. Meh.
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235- *gasp* I wrote that! Well, I wrote about the specially trained librarians and the very valuable books, but not the rest.
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Apropos of books, the main character in mine is about to have a major artery in his thigh cut open so that he nearly bleeds to death but not really because he can’t.
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Okay, here’s the very very beginning of a short story called “Nightmare” that I’ve been working on. I’m still not sure how to end it yet, and I’m not sure whether he’s crazy or whether the shadows really are there…
I’m walking down a deserted street. Everything is gray and black; the sky is a greenish-white, like right before a storm. There’s no wind—just an unnatural stillness. I start jogging, feeling hunted in all that quiet. I can hear footsteps padding behind me, but when I look back, nothing’s there. I’m running down the silent street with footsteps coming closer and nowhere to turn, just a straight street with no end…
I awake.
I’m lying in my own bed, staring up at the poster of Incubus that’s been stapled to my ceiling for years. Sunlight is slanting through my open door from the big bay window in the stairwell, but I feel like something cold and clammy is gripping me. I’m sweating like I’ve run a million miles; but here I am, safe in my bed.
Suddenly my alarm clock goes off, shocking me awake. Trying not to have a heart attack, I slam my fist on it and jump out of bed. It’s winter but my mom tries to save money by turning off the heat at night; consequently, the very first thing I do every morning is run downstairs in my boxers and punch the little thermostat arrow up to seventy. Then I walk upstairs again, yawning, and pull on something that’s clean before running back downstairs again.
This morning, though, I kind of want to stay cold. I’m one of those weird people who likes just the opposite of everyone else; you say light, I’ll say dark, you say hot, I say cold. I’m not trying to be difficult, I promise, but that’s just how I am.
I pull on some jeans and a t-shirt and tiptoe down the steps, so I don’t wake up Mom. Part of this is courtesy, but really I just want to stay alone. I like my morning time, when the rest of the world’s sleeping and I’m still half in a dream—unless it’s a nightmare like the one I had last night. I step hard on the last step so it creaks and wakes up Mom and I’m not alone any more.
I busy myself getting ready for school, but don’t really mean it because I can hear the shadows behind me. They’re creeping up like panthers to steal me away—I turn fast to show I know they’re there, but then Mom comes downstairs in her bathrobe so I don’t know if I scared them off or if she did.
“Brush your hair, Seth,†she says sleepily as she trudges to the coffee machine, just like every morning. Automatically I smooth down my spiky black hair; both of us know nothing short of cement could put my hair in a respectable shape, but it’s what a mother is supposed to say to her son. As my hand runs over my head, the hairs spring back up to stand up in spikes again. My mother, watching, sighs and makes some coffee.
School starts at eight, so at 7:45 I’m out the door into my truck and driving away. I like this part of my day too. My truck is only a 4runner, but I still see it as my ticket out of here. When you get a car, your whole world opens up. My truck is freedom on four wheels. I roar to school and get there right as the bell is ringing.
My first class is English. We’re about to start when the door opens and a girl walks in. All the guys elbow each other because she’s really pretty, Hispanic maybe, with long black hair and big eyes. She speaks to the teacher and he adds her to the role book. I’m grinning because the only empty seat is next to me.
She sits and we get on with the lesson.
“What’s your name?†I ask her while the teacher is switching notes.
“Ciara de la Vista. Yours?â€
“Seth Lynceus.â€
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The man’s head jerks up. I don’t know who I am I never knew stop the pain or you’ll regret it
Cold steel introduces itself between warm flesh. Pain gone regret here bet you wish you hadn’t done that
That’s a very short story.
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235- It’s happening quite a bit in the real world. Some authors write magic as magik, and Inca as Inka. That’s where I got the idea.
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I’ve just written a short story (different from the one above) and I was wondering if people could critique it for me. Thanks!
PS It looks long but it’s only about a page on Microsoft Word
The Chair
by [Nthanda the Laugher]
Alexander Ludek walked down the oppressive white cement halls of the state penitentiary. Behind him were two guards, armed. One held his left arm; the other his right.
They turned left onto another white hallway. This one was narrow, with a white painted door at the end of it. Through the crosshatched bulletproof glass, Alexander could see the Chair.
It sat in the corner of the room, made of some sort of dark wood. It looked so mundane that but for a trailing wire here or there, Alexander felt that he might place it in his living room and ask company to sit in it—if company had ever visited him. He stopped thinking that; why worry about the past when your immediate future looked so bleak?
One guard knocked and, with a wave through the glass, pushed Alexander through the door into the sterile white room. Only two technicians were in it, wearing regular guard uniforms. They neither looked at nor acknowledged Alexander; instead they waved at the guards, who left, and went back to toying with the generator.
Alexander thought briefly of overpowering the two men. He was well-built; two years of prison fitness had swelled his muscles and made him powerful. But what was the use? He couldn’t leave the prison. And if he did—improbably, against all odds—he had no one to go back to. They were all—
One of the technicians approached him—a little nervously, he thought. The man cleared his throat. “If you will sit, sir, we will begin the procedure.†Alexander sat in the chair. It was comfortable and smelled faintly of disinfectant.
He watched the two technicians scurrying around their equipment like mice. How strange, he thought, that they will know things for ten, twenty, who knows, maybe fifty years from now—but in a few minutes, all the knowledge of Alexander Ludek will be dust. He saw, vaguely, their lives running away like two schoolboys in summer, while he sat behind in a dusty little house with no windows and no doors.
The same technician approached him again and began fixing the wires surrounding the Chair, setting them here, there, just so across the back of the chair. The wires were tangled, and Alexander was reminded suddenly of the case that had brought him here—full of loose ends and twisted words and tangled motives and people. As he watched millions of dollars worth of equipment being carefully calibrated, he smiled wryly and thought of how a few hundred of that million might have been enough to send him a thousand miles away to—who knows where. But a hundred for a better lawyer, maybe even a few hundred in a bribe to the man who’d really killed his family—who knew were he might have been at this very moment?
The technicians were ready. “Last words?â€
Alexander shook his head.
The man approached him and took hold of the leather straps across the chair. Carefully he pulled them across Alexander’s torso, legs, and arms, sparing himself the unpleasantry of flailing limbs. He stuck two copper electrodes to Alexander’s head and leg, and Alexander shrank away from their coldness, but then almost laughed at the irony.
A salty sponge and a piece of copper mesh were pressed to his cranium, then a stiff leather helmet that settled uncomfortably over his shaved head. He wrinkled his nose futilely against an itch above his left ear. As the technician moved away, Alexander felt a slight sparkle of nervousness in the pit of his stomach. He was past caring about death—it was too late for that sort of thing—but he did wonder if he would feel any pain. He almost opened his mouth to ask, but, looking at the technicians’ pale faces, guessed that they did not know any better than he.
A few more adjustments, and the technician’s hand moved towards the red button marked Electric Chair Control. In the span of its millisecond journey, a woman and two children flashed briefly through Alexander’s mind, only to be eclipsed by the thought of a dark-haired man, a man still out and alive with a future. A wave of rage crested and broke in Alexander, but it was quickly replaced by an ocean of sadness.
The hand had completed its movement. It hovered over the button.
Alexander closed his eyes.
Maybe now, he thought, after thirty-four years and so much anger and sadness and stress and pain and—and—life—
Maybe now…
I will find peace.
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The following was accidentally posted by Jeeves on the Writing Challenge thread:
Yello, I have a kind of wierd writing style, so constructive critisism apreciated. I am aiming for this to be a trilogy, but “heheâ€, I’ve only written the beggining and end. If you guys like it, and don’t mind spoilers, i’ll post the end later. Plus, this beggining is kinda boring I know, But it gets VERY interesting later, so here goes!
Prologue
Paradise. Who would want to turn down that? Even Luke couldn’t mess this up. So why was Almighty worried? This was a foolproof plan. It was his plan. Besides, It was too late to turn back now, the foundation was laid. It was a plan fit for a king. Or a God. No, not even Lucifer could mess this up.
Chapter I
“You are going to die†said O’ Malley, or rather his appearance, simply before I, well died.
As you can see, I know how to begin a story. With the drama. Even if that drama is mostly hoarded away after the beggining of the book. Later on in this story, you may find certain “supernatural†events hard (or rather, impossible) to believe. But then, that would mean disbelief in the almighty… ehm… Almighty now wouldn’t it? And that could easily score you a place in the Land Down Under, and it isn’t Austrailia. But maybe I should begin…
“While the religious pray to their god for a miracle, it is science that provides the miracles!†A voice boomed through Chastenburg Cathedral, it’s message defying the structure itself. It’s listeners would later swear the foundations of the building creaked and groaned at every word. “We cannot rely on this god for these miracles. While a cancer-ridden person will pray for a cure, it is we who will provide it in the end…â€
The speaker was a tall man, wearing a neat black suit, which looked out of place on the wild faced, unruly haired man of about thirty. He was about to go on, when the man next to him caught his eye, and gestured for him to be seated. Glaring at him, the black suited man sat, gasping for breath after his speech. The man who stood to speak ignored the glare. He was shorter, with a pristine face, flowing grey robes, and you could tell he would not have been caught dead with a hair out of place. His expression was usually strong but kind, just the sort one would want in their local priest. However, there was nothing kind in his current expession.
“It may be true that science has brought us farâ€, he announced, with a warm yet hollow smile, “But God has bought us further. And I would like to remind you allâ€, he said kindly, his gaze sweeping all the openmouthed audience, “That had it not been for Gods gift of the mind, your scienceâ€, and here he turned to his opponent, “would be executed by beings no more intelligent than animals wallowing in mud.†The word “animals†slipped off his tongue like poison, and his gaze shifted from the black-suited man to his dog, A snow-white Arctic fox mix, that the man had insisted on bringing. The dog met his gaze, and uttered a deep growl. Her human companion’s glare suggested he would have readily started growling as well. The priest bowed mockingly, before turning back to his attentive listeners. He spoke more about the subject at hand briefly, before changing the subject to events that would be happening at the church in both the near and distant future, convieniently wasting the time his counterpart could have used to retort the former speech. The man made furtive signs for the priest to sit down, but he didn’t seem to notice. By the time the man finished telling every detail of the easter egg hunt for the younger generation next year, the sermon was over. He feigned surprise as he strode over, his friends lagging behind, to the man opposite of him, who looked like he was close to tears, or wrenching his hair out, and said loud enough for all to hear,†Pardon me sir, I must have got carried away. A relief you had nothing to say of truth or interest.†With this and a barely disguised smirk, he walked out of the door, half of the crowd following him, the other half, not sure what to do, eventually faded away, one by one, leaving blank in the now silent empty building, head in hands. This sort of thing had been happening to him since elementary school. He stayed in this position a long time, while his dog tried to comfort him and stare knives at the door the priest had left by all at the same time. Finally the man rose with a sigh, stared at his hat gloomily before placing it on his head, and left the room with an unreadable expression.
……………………………………………………
“Taxi!†blank hailed a passing cab. But the driver drove on. Perhaps he had not seen. Or possibly blanks “trusted†reputation had preceeded him, quite possibly. Either way it didn’t matter to the driver, and when the cab drove by, it went through a puddle the driver could probably dodged, and a large sheet of brown water flew towards the already rain soaked unfortunate, but doing him good or not, he instictively dodged the barrage nimbly, with surprising agility for one his age. But then, he was used to dodging things. It was part of his job, a little extra bonus. Athena however, bounded to a safe distance even before the cab hit the water, as blank had never leashed her, and never would. The occurance left blank with plenty of time to talk to himself, which was not unusual. But instead, he talked to Athena. “Another day, wasted by an uppity preacher. Why are we cursed?â€
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241- That’s really well done. It only hints of past events, but it does so very well so that you’re not left confused. I like it a lot.
242- It’s an intriguing beginning, but it needs two things:
1) A good proofreader. There are too many commas in the wrong place.
2) A way of distinguishing each man from the other. I got confused in the beginning.
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Whoa that was quick, thanks GAPAS, -yeah, it was even more confusing earlier, because everyone was called blank. Thanks for the tips.
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Oh, and sorry it was on the wrong thread, could not find this one.
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This is [once again,] a beginning of one of my probably unfinished books.
One hundred and fifty brown small packages simultaneously appeared out of nowhere, each at a different location. They were all the same: One and a half feet by ten inches, eight inches tall, wrapped in plain brown paper. No address was written on it, nor a return address. For that matter, there were no markings on the packages at all, making them almost invisible to the casual onlooker. But this was no ordinary box. The contents of the box would directly alter the future of one hundred and fifty teenagers, not to mention the rest of the world. And none of them could do anything about it.
Like it? I might cut ot the last line, it seems a little corny.
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I even have a plot for this one! *surprise of surprieses*
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I have two characters now for Trouble Clef, but I’m afraid I have no plot.
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248-indeed… apparently the protagonist is a troublemaker… so… I don’t know why, but I get the feeling that something small is going to lead into a corrupted government or something…
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246–I like it. Keep the last line, it keeps the clipped rhythm of the rest of the piece.
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Is Trouble Clef related to Marshall Artist?
Forgive me, I just like making puns.
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250-Thanks! (Whatever that last part meant…)
Clipped the rhythem?
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Woops. That was my ex-alter ego speaking.
By clipped rhythm I mean all the sentences are short and tight, and that promotes tension. It also means that it has a very proper grammer style, leaning towards sarcastic.
Sorry if that’s all technical. I tend to be very sensitive to the rhythm of words and sentences. In basic English: Keep the last line.
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I have a book idea, but I am being a bit lazy. Can some of you pie me into sitting down to write, finally? And is Flight of the Fairies a cheesy title? Didn’t I already post that on this thread?
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254- I’m sorry, But My pies are all thrown.
BUT! Wait around to november! We’ll get you down into that chair and giving 50,000 words in month easyly. It’s called: NaNoWriMo.
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My friend just read the electric chair story, and thought it was really deep.
I do too, duh. It’s really good.
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256-electric chair story?
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I recently had an idea for a story. It’ll be set in a city that resembles an M. C. Escher painting. In different parts, gravity pulls down, up, left, right, forward, backward, and two directions which the human mind is unable to comprehend. That’s right- the city’s built inside a tesseract. And that’s just the beginning of the weirdness.
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258- Cool! I always liked Escher’s stuff.
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258 – You’re right, I can’t comprehend it. That sounds cool!
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I’m thinking that the city* will be the administrative capital of the multiverse. Every sapient species sends a delegate to the Congress of Everything whenever a problem comes up that is too big for one of their regional divisions to handle. My protagonist will probably be a human being who is picked at random for the Congress, and thus gets caught up in events which are far beyond his understanding.
*I’m considering several names for it. Which sounds better: San Einstein, Las Fisicas, or Hypercube City?
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And as for the physics of this story- they might not be all that plausible, but whatever. This isn’t intended to be hard science fiction.
There are twelve dimensions. Four dimensions of space, four dimensions of time, and four dimensions of something that is incomprehensible to any matter-based brain. Most universes (whether two-, three-, or four-dimensional) go forward in one dimension of time, but some go backward. That is how time travel is possible. Jump to a retrograde universe, ride it for a few days, then jump back, landing a few days before you started. The second dimension of time is possibility. Every time an event takes place, it takes place in a different fashion in another universe which splits off from its parent and goes slightly “sideways” before progressing forward (or backward) again. There are an infinite number of “big bangs,” each of which spawns a universe which is capable of spawning an infinite number of possible universes.
The third and fourth dimensions of time I haven’t figured out yet. Ideas?
The city exists in two four-dimensional universes, each of which only lasts a few hours after its “big bang” before collapsing into a singularity again. However, one of them is retrograde. The city jumps from the foregoing to the retrograde just before collapse, and back again just before the retrograde collapses. Time progresses forward inside it, but it’s in a closed loop. Not even the end of the multiverse can prevent it from continuing to exist.
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261- I like San Einstein.
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Let’s see. I’m fiddling with that balloon/zeppelin idea. A girl’s parents die when she’s a toddler, and for some reason or another(1), it’s covered up and she’s told some barely plausible story. Eventually she discovers the Facts, and she stows away aboard a zeppelin, or something, and tries to solve the mystery. Meanwhile, this person has killed numerous people by the same method as en killed Protagonist’s parents, and Protagonists ends up facing him on a zeppelin or hot air balloon and pushing en off. Now I need:
• A developed MC
• A developed MV
• A thoroughly developed plot
• Motives
(1) I think that the murder was done by some extremely secret and elite group, and they didn’t want to expose it, so they tried to cover up the murder.
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I think I’ll call the city San Hintonio, after Charles Howard Hinton, who coined the term “tesseract.” Of course, that’s just the name that its hominid visitors use. It is estimated to have at least googolplex to the fifth power names, not counting nicknames.
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Hey, Does any one know what A four-D shape is called?
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265- Living there would be very strange, but then, I’m very strange, so I might like it!
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I started a new book (I hope) a few weeks ago and I’m pretty far. It starts:
Jeff was an average guy who died in a car crash on his twentieth birthday. A driver fell asleep at the wheel of his U-Haul and Jeff was killed instantly. The diver got off without a scratch. Jeff figured that when he died, his body would be six feet under and his soul up in heaven. What he didn’t know was that there were ways back.
When Jeff opened his eyes he knew he was dead immediately. He was thirty feet above the ground and rising steadily. He found himself on a gold covered escalator with ivory railings.
“Woah,” he exclaimed, awed.
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266- A 4-D cube is a tesseract or a hypercube, a 4-D sphere is a hypersphere, but I don’t know about the others.
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Well, my Mongol alternate history story (which I have neglected in the past) is revitalizing itself, so you might see a few chapters posted here in the future. I have to figure out the world’s history first, though.
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I have a Problem.
I am currently in the process of fleshing out the historical, technological and cultural progression of my Mongol story (which I’ve named Golden Horde, for lack of a better). There are some days when I love doing this. However, being far from an experienced historian, I often feel like I’m floundering in the seas of unknown detail, and I ought to give up because the end result will be far from accurate. Other days, I want to just make up a world with vague, if any, historical background, and to heck with accuracy- I’m trying to have fun.
I’m trying to keep the attitude of “well, it’s never going to be 100% plausible and accurate, so I should do my best to keep it as believable as possible, but not constrain myself by crosschecking every single detail and giving up if I can’t find a reference.” That attitude is Difficult To Maintain. I want to get the history to at least mid-19th century, hopefully present day, before I begin writing an actual story, but I’m still stuck in 1275. Keep in mind that the change from real history takes place in 1242.
Maybe I should be more patient. Maybe the slow pace is a good thing. Maybe it allows for more detailed research and a more pleasant and well-rounded ultimate effect. But it’s Hard To Do.
Furthermore, I’ve learned in this process that Wikipedia Cannot Always Be Trusted. It’s good for a general outline, but you’re better off with websites- or, indeed, books- that are actually devoted to history and backed up by authoritative sources. I’ve also gained a Fondness For Capital Letters.
Which reminds me: Does anyone know of Good Websites or Easily Found Reference Books on Asian and European medieval history? That would Really Help Me Out.
Sorry if the above seemed to Ramble On and On. I’m a bit odd today, In Case You Haven’t Yet Guessed.
Well, Bob’s Your Uncle. Signing off before I Meld Totally with the Computer.
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271- That’s how I feel with RRR SMAS-TT.
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272- I’m rather proficient in American history, but much farther back than 1700 and I begin Losing My Way.
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History is not my thing at all.
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271- this is why It’s nice for SMAS-TT. it takes place a few years after the advent.
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273- I don’t even have that. 
My knowledge of American history is this:
[sometime in 1770s]: America decides to secede.
1776: Something important happens. Maybe it’s the previous article, but it might be the end of the revolution. Or something.
America wins. Decades pass.
1804: Thomas Jefferson sends Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on an Expedition. I know more about this expedition than any other bit of history.
1806: They get back, and there was much rejoicing. And Clark doesn’t free York. 
And Lewis commits suicide. 
And Clark names his son after Lewis. There are many spelling errors.
[sometime in 1860s]: The South decides to secede. They fail.
[19-something]: WWI happens. I’m not sure what part we played in that, but we must’ve done something.
1940s: WWII happens. There is drama and horror and blood and ostracism of the Japanese in America.
1970s: Vietnam war happens. More blood. Less ostracism. Lots of people killing other people (again!)
1990s/2000s: Iraq war. Afghanistan war. Etc.
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276 – I’m quite possibly worse, because I don’t know about the dates at all. I have managed to miss nearly every history class ever, because of moves and other stuff.
For example, when I lived in California, we were supposed to do state history in late 4th grade, and American history in 5th grade. When I moved to Washington in the middle of 4th grade, they had already done Washington history earlier in the year, and did American history in 5th grade. And then, the school I go to now, which I started in 5th grade, does history on a 4 year cycle, so I haven’t gotten any at all until this year. (We’re doing it both this year and next year)
So, basically, I didn’t get any American history until 7th grade.
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274- Yes, I remember you describing your knowledge of American history. “There was the revolutionary war, and then the civil war.”
275- Yeah, I agree with you. Totally
276- Well, at least you know something about American history. Lewis and Clark were very important. By the way, the important thing in 1776 is the Declaration of Independence. The war didn’t end until later.
I’ve corrected a few factual errors and made a map, which always cheers me up. Year of Conquest and Pax Mongolica eras are fleshed out. On to the Seventh Crusade!
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278 – I don’t remember that exact description, but it’s completely possible. I was probably being slightly sarcastic then, though, because I at least know a little about what happened.
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278,279- That was Cinnamoon.
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280- Oh, my mistake.
I’m at 1275 now, and a war between Mongols, Ilkhanate, Marinids, and most of western Europe is beginning. This might be fun, if I can keep it from spinning out of control.
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280 – Oh, all right.
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276-*laughs head off* Oh my. That was very entertaining.
POSOC, your tesseract idea made my head pop. what happened to the music one?
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283- My problem with the music one was that I was trying to force it to develop, and that never works. I think now it’s just one of those ideas that slowly accretes in your brain until, one day, it suddenly bumps against your prefrontal cortex and says “Write me.” Premature attempts to use those ideas always end in disaster.
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I just finished a story about/for my friend. (who actually goes on here sometimes (Punk Goddess)). I’m going to revise/add/change it until it’s long enough to be a book with the other two parts of the story, by me and Punk Goddess.
I can’t wait till NaNoWriMo. Then I can force myself to stop procrastinating on my book. I have some great ideas for it, I just never sit down and write it! (Pie me please, someone.)
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Good news- my music story is beginning to shape up in my mind!
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And (apologies for the double post) I’ve reached the 14th century in Golden Horde. And it’s Friday. My authorly status? Pretty caking good.
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I’m not going to do NaNo. It kills my creativity.
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288- Really? It’s the opposite for me.
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Is it cheating to work on your NaNo before November?
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289- I don’t know. SF did, at least. Or maybe it was dead before SF came along. It’s so hard to tell.
But the thing is, I was fairly creative in my story, just…all my other projects died. If they weren’t already dying.
MY NEW RULE:
Outline. Carefully. Specifically. So that I know where the story is going. And write character bios. And all that boring stuff.
I’ll try NaNo with that and a computer and see what happens. It’ll help fill up October too.
I’ll let the balloon idea sort of grow slowly, and I’ll work on PC and rewriting my script.
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290- Only if you’re actually writing in it.
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OH GOD you’re thinking about NaNo already?
I’m writing about superheroes. It’s awesome.
MC: Cassandra.
Supporting Chars: Accelerate, Daniel, Rainbow (actually not a super), and Angie.
Sample from my hastily written outline-
-has to choose btween saving friend & saving world *gasp*
-comes across Angie trying to TURN decay, Accelerate &root
-“NO!” tries to kill angie but she reverts 2 her true form and is Revealed
-friends R shocked.
-“let’s go save every1!!!”
Heh. I’ll post an exerpt when I feel like it.
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293- Yeah, please do- I’ll post something from my Mongol story as soon as I get up to it. Or possibly Trouble Clef.
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hey, NaNoWriMo is only 5-6 months to NaNoWriMo!
I have like ten ideas!
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I’m writing about these 3 kids. They are trapped in a totally different world and find they have to play a story. A story with giant spiders, a dragon, sorcerers, 5 evil kittens, and one very big kid, and more. That’s not really a good description of the story. Maybe another one will help.
It is a story about 3 kids in another world. They have to complete a prophecy. There are many talking animals, and one kid learns how to talk and communicate with them. The queen goes missing so they set off on a epic quest where they meet a giant boy, and one girl who seems to not talk, and is very mysterious. That’s still not a good story. I’ll post it when I finish. Which will probably be in a loooooong time.
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Wow, it’s much easier to write when you have an outline! xD I just discovered that.
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297- I agree.
I have 1662 words on this story. I think I started it yesterday. I don’t know what’s wrong with my writing. It’s so very dialogue-y. I have almost no description at all. I just don’t know how to incorporate it. I think I should go read something with plenty of description.
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From now on, I’m focusing on Trouble Clef.
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Well, I finished Chapter 1. I feel it’s quite decent for a first draft, if a little too full of dialogue. I expect the dialogue will become less as time goes on and Screnzy draws further away.
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YES!! I have a plot AND 2 well-developed characters AND an almost-developed setting for Trouble Clef!
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301- Good for you.
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I now have a fully developed plot for Trouble Clef, and I have solved most of my perspective problem via double first person and flashbacks. However, it now seems set to develop into a series. Whatever.
I’ve got an excellent antagonist, but I haven’t figured out who’s controlling her. She’s certainly not acting on her own.
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303- Well, that’s good.
I feel bounden to finish my Screnzy-adaption, merely because I have to finish something, and this is already outlined and everything, so the hardest bits are done, right?
Wrong. The hardest bit is staying interested, and I’m failing at that. Seriously. Maybe I should write a nautical story to get it out of my system. But of course I have no inspiration, and at any rate, it wouldn’t really work.
I’m excited about my balloon story. I’ll definitely work on it this summer while I’m rotting in the heat and lack of things to do.
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303-goody! Somehow I think it’s going to be the government…
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305- I think I’ll develop the government some more. Thanks for the idea.
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The four monarchs of Brythonia have possessed varying degrees of power in proportion to their varying degrees of gumption, but currently almost all the power resides with the parliament, including command of the “King’s” Quartet. I’m not sure if the villain will be trying to restore power to the rulers, or depose them completely and set up a new government in their place, or if en will be involved with the government at all.
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Random names for places:
•Ewin
•Dewaters
-Atwaters
-Bywaters
*Trinkley
•Bondura
•Rautenberg
•Studwell
•Allwood
-Atwoods
•Rayshell
•Piercefield
•Kenton
•Zinapanah
•Qureshi
•Lajaunie
I like random name generators.
So now maybe I can develop my balloon-story world.
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307-I actually was suggesting that you have a corrupt government, but it’s all up to you.
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I am in serious need of help.
This popped into my head, whole and finished. It wasn’t an idea that slowly developed. One instant it wasn’t there, and the next it was. I have no idea where it came from or where it’s going.
To Prof. Arnold Bessemer
c/o the Bodleian Library,
Oxford, England
Dear Sir,
I recently came into possession of an unusual document which I believe you may wish to examine. Let me relate the extraordinary circumstances which led me to acquire it.
I had been working for less than two weeks in the Belfast Public Library. On the Thursday before last, I arrived at the building as usual. My day continued in a perfectly ordinary fashion until approximately 3 PM, when a rather curious customer entered the library and approached my desk.
He appeared perfectly respectable, dressed as though he had just left a formal ball, and though there was something undeniably ruffianly about him, he greeted me with impeccable courtesy and made it clear that he wished to return a book. I directed him to the drop-off slot, but he persisted.
“You don’t understand,” he told me. “It’s overdue. Fifty-two years next week.”
At first I assumed he was making a joke, but to humor him I checked the register. To my utter surprise, there was a book of the same title marked as Missing on the date he had specified.
While I looked, he continued to speak. “I apologize for the unfortunate delay. The book has saved my life more than once, but in the end, I’m glad to be rid of it.”
I nodded, smiled, and began to inform him of the fine. He returned my smile, and to my astonishment, placed a thick wad of money on the desk. When I counted it later, I found it to be in excess of five hundred pounds.
When I protested, he simply waved me away. “Believe me, sir, I’m shamelessly fleecing you, but I doubt I could convince you to accept the true value of the book.” He winked. “Oh, and if anyone checks it out after me, tell them to pay close heed to the warning hidden in the frontispiece.” He shucked off his right glove, revealing that his last three fingers had been cut off at the first knuckle. “I wish I had. Goodbye.”
He vanished into the crowd with staggering speed, leaving me with a considerable sum and an inexplicable book.
I have not yet returned the volume to the shelves. None of the library officials remember it. Furthermore, when I checked the register again, the listing for the book had vanished.
I must admit I have no idea to do next, and considering that you were such a good friend of my mother, I hope that you will do me the kindness of looking at this remarkable book.
Yours sincerely,
Benjamin J. Sherwood
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OK, my book, er…here’s some of it.
Chapter 1
Fishing
Yoko was an energetic young cat; stretching luxuriously in the warm summer sun, he looked up at his beloved castle, its turrets and towers and formidable walls looked so powerful to him. Lying on the large lawns dotted with gardens and fountains, he was able to see all across this side of the castle, its walls made of a brown-colored brick, the window sills were hung with ferns and all other manner of lush vegetation.
Yoko watched with considerably more interest as a robin flew overhead, it seemed to be reveling in the new season as it zipped onward, its clear call piercing the sunlight: chirrup chirrup chirrup. Yoko continued watching for a moment, and then he heaved himself up and padded off toward the castle, lunchtime.
Yoko walked across the lawns slowly, enjoying the warmth on his back. The huge walls that protected the outer flank of the castle shown a reddish-brown color that reminded him of afternoons spent out fishing, boating on the creek that ran not far from the castle, in fact, the creek was just a quarter mile from where the fortress lay.
Pushing open the huge oaken doors, Yoko entered, immediately (predictably)
He was toppled over backward, stampeded by a huge crew of young kittens.
Squealing with delight, the kittens pummeled him fiercely, leaving Yoko to yowl,
“Gettoff you little fiends!†Yoko bellowed. “Dugger, you’re the ringleader, you little devilish infants—” but his reply was cut off by a homely catwife, (who was incidentally Dugger’s mother).
“Why, what are you doing? Stop tormenting young Yoko there, you included, Rimples!†she said, swiftly waylaying a young one who was attempting to escape up a lofty flight of stairs. Yoko spoke out on the behalf of the apprehended young cats. “Oh, their fine, they were only having some fun. To tell you the truth, I actually enjoy it.â€
With a clamor, the young kittens cheered, happy that they had not been punished
For their open disrespect for their “elder†though Yoko was really only the cat equivalent of a teenager. “Go out and play, before you get up to any more mischief,†Yoko tried hard not to laugh as the little ones cavorted out the door.
“Thanks, Imbleberry,†said Yoko. “I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t there to help me, well, actually, I’d probably get pummeled to death by the kittens.â€
“Think nothing of it dear,†Imbleberry fussed with her apron strings, “I must be getting off to work on lunch, we’re having a fish pie tonight, your favorite I think?â€
“Indeed it is, thanks again Imbleberry,†with that Yoko trotted off towards his bedchamber, Maybe sitting down would do me some good, thought Yoko, as he made his way up the stairs, Nah, too nice a day for that he admonished himself, but continued up the stairs.
Entering, Yoko saw that his room had been tidied up in his absence. The curtains were thrown open and the bed was neatly made, coupled with the fact that the ashes in his fireplace had been cleaned out and his armchair was devoid of its usual three or four cloaks that often hung over its back. Yoko yawned loudly, reaching under his desk; he pulled out a pair of sandals from underneath the table, pulling them onto his footpaws, he sprinted back down the stairs at top speed.
“Hey! Whatchit!†Yoko sailed through the air ears over tail; looking wildly around to see what he had hit. His friend Crius the Aplomado Falcon was rubbing ruefully at an injured tail feather.
“Ouch. That hurt.†Said Crius, “I don’t know what you think you’re doing these days Yoko.†He rubbed his tail again, and then continued with a will.
“I’ve just been sent up to fetch you. Pouncer and Merlin want you to come and go fishing with them, they say they just bought new bait from Binkle’s Bait Shop, you know, the one that we used to go to and Binkle would give us free treats, boy, that ole cat could catch any fish that ever lived. And they also told me that if ye don’t get down there fast, they’ll go without you.†Crius left off rubbing his tail for a minute, and then fluttered his wings for a moment to make sure they were all in order.
“Well, I guess I’d better get down there pretty fast. Nice to see you Crius,â€
Yoko resumed walking down the stairs, this time at a slower rate, the light shining through the stained glass windows danced upon the winding stairs, there long motes showing the dust in the air. When he reached the hall, he walked through it at a sedate pace, admiring the wonderful carved pillars, depicting the many heroes and patriarchs of catten history: Utara the Warrior, Edgar 1, Amar the Fighter…the list went on and on. Yoko reached the doors, still watching all around him, the words of his father came back to him in a flurry: more may be learned by hours of watching and waiting than ever could be seen by those who spend their time doing practices of our system of writing and numbers, true, thought Yoko, ah, but he was supposed to be down fishing, not staring blankly at long-dead heroes, but he reminded himself, though he never liked to, that he was a prince, and that once he would have to rule the throne. It was a grim fact, but one Yoko knew he would have to accept. His father, Edgar II, still held the castle though, so Yoko could still revel in the joys of being young and unburdened. Oh why did he let his mind run like this? Yoko chided himself, wondering at the way his just skipped from subject to subject, never staying in one realm. FISHING! The thought intruded on his head, and he started to lift the bolt—then realized that, there was no bolt. Odd, Yoko thought, since when did the doors not have bolts?
Hmmmmm, well, I’ll tell Merlin and Pouncer about it as we boat down the creek.
Yoko pushed open the doors, much the same as he had done just fifteen minutes earlier, and walked out on the lawns. The soothing perfume of roses and mint hit his nostrils as he padded past a pool surrounded by gardens, a young trout swam lazily underneath the cool surface, it all seemed so peaceful here. To Yoko, it looked like nothing could ever disturb the serene lawns of his castle. From his position he could see the treetops poking over the east walls, their leafy foliage casting patterns of light across the ground.
“Yoko! Over here!†Pouncer and Merlin, Yoko’s two friends from the city were calling from the east corner, holding poles and their small drift boat. Merlin was a white cat with blackish-gray patches, wiry muscles showed under his lean coat.
Pouncer was similarly built, but he was an orange tabby, and slightly smaller than Merlin, with the M of a typical tabby marked on his brow. Sharp claws protruded from both cats paws, gleaming in the light of the sun, their coats shone lustrously as Yoko approached.
“Hi! Crius jus’ told me that you were waiting on me.†Yoko called.
“Oh, we thought he might, we were just tellin’ Imbleberry about fishing, Crius never failed to hear, seeing as he was sitting in the tree above us. He thought we didn’t know he was there.†At this point, Pouncer snorted, “Well, we did, but he went off to tell you anyway.â€
“What? He told me you sent me a message!†Yoko was surprised.
“Well, I guess it was the only fib he’s ever told,†Merlin answered, shaking his head. “But we’d best be off, I here Hugh will be out fishing, we’ll wanna get our twitchy little tails in the creek before he catches all the fish.†He shouldered the boat, carrying it over his head, seeing as they were smaller than Merlin, Yoko and Pouncer hefted the poles and a surprisingly heavy tackle box, given its small size.
“Wow, what’s in this?†Yoko held up the tackle box. “Rocks, by the weight of—oof!†he crashed to the floor, overbalanced by the immensely heavy box.
“Whoa there Yoko, can’t ye lift a tackle box? It’s full o’ Binkle’s newest style of bait, the best anywhere, but the problem with it is that the bait has to be soaked in water constantly, which means that it’s full with jars of water.†Merlin laughed his voice echoingly strangely from the inside of the boat, which he carried over his head.
“There, tha’s better,†Yoko lifted the box, then set it down again, and opened it.
“Hey, you’re right; it’s completely full with water jars.†Pouncer peered inside it, looking surprised. “Merlin, what were you thinking? There’s no way we can tote this all the way to the creek.â€
“Here, I’ll take it. You carry the boat, it’s lighter than you’d expect.â€
He set the coracle down with a grunt, lowering it carefully so as not to hurt his paws. Yoko and Pouncer lifted it with a flurry of labored breathing, their muscles groaning in protest at the weight.
“You call this light?†Pouncer snorted derisively, shaking his head. “How did ye get that kinda strength, Merlin?†Merlin merely answered: “I was born with it.â€
And continued trudging towards the wall’s door. “You’d better hurry up. There’ll be no fish left if we don’ get goin’.†The others followed suit, balancing the boat on their shoulders, with much hard breathing, they lifted it.
They made their way out through the main gate, which was wide enough for the boat to fit through without any problems, walking out onto the hard worn dirt track that wound through the ancient trees, many of which were much wider than ten boats put together. A thrush fluttered overhead, its wings slicing the air was the only sound that penetrated the dense foliage.
“A lovely noontime to be out,†said Yoko, letting the sun shine down on his jet-black fur. “But we’d better hurry, that is, if we want to catch fish, ah, well, you two know what happens when Hugh goes fishin’.â€
Soon they came to a fork in the trail, one going towards the stream, the other, the flatlands; those were off beyond the wood, maybe four days good hiking to reach them. Merlin walked off down the left one, the one that went to the creek, Pouncer and Yoko followed him. Yoko stopped to look at the ground; he had never seen tracks like that before.
“Merlin, Pouncer, c’mere, ye need to see this!†Yoko called; the prints were large, with huge depressions, apparently massive claws. “What do you think passed by here? In all the time I’ve studied tracks, I’ve never seen them like this, and the other thing is: there’s no bolts anymore.†Yoko sniffed the tracks; they smelled musty-sweet, with a fetor of rotting meat to them. “Sure don’t smell to good,†he said.
“C’mon though, we should get goin’.†Pouncer said, and then started to lift the boat,
“Yoko, the boat!†Yoko got up, his mind whirring, I don’t know what they are, but I’m going to find out if I can, he thought. He could begin to hear the stream rushing nearby, its waters swirling peacefully.
♦ ♦ ♦
By noon, they reached the stream, its waters babbling on undisturbed: kingfishers flitted from tree to tree, dragonflies buzzed lazily across the water, Peaceful, thought Yoko, I could live here… the thought floated through his head like the damselfly that was now inspecting his nose: it started to buzz away.
“Break out the fishin’ gear Yoko, are ye gonna sit there all day?†Pouncer’s voice sounded above the rushing of the creek, “time t’ fish, not dream.â€
Yoko picked up his rod, “We need some o’ that—’’ his claws sketched quotation marks around the word—“‘bait’ you bought, Merlin,â€
Merlin reached down at the phenomenally heavy tackle box, yanking open the lid, he peered inside, “Um…oops, some of the water spilled…but I think its okay…â€
Yoko moved in closer to observe: the box was filled with what looked like old canning jars, one of which was now releasing a trickle of water from where the lid was screwed on. “Hmmm…don’t look to good.†Pouncer observed, but what’s in the other jars?†Merlin picked a jar up from the bottom of the box, “This.â€
He held up the jar: it was filled with what looked rather like a…well a yellowish paste, which looked slightly orange when the sun shone on the jars.
“Uh…Merlin, are you completely sure that it’s safe to use?†Yoko voiced the question that he felt was surely being echoed in Pouncer’s mind.
“O’ course it’s safe, Binkle gave it to us.†His face turned to exasperation, “Oh, wot is it? Ye look like fried toads witnessing the roasting of two fat sausages.†Merlin could be surprisingly inventive when it came to descriptive terms.
“Hmmm…nicely phrased Merlin, what do you think Pouncer? Do we actually look like—ah, Merlin what was that you said? Roasted toads eying fried sausages? Or was it—whatever.†Said Yoko, laughing: then he picked up the end of his line and rolled the paste into a ball, which it did surprisingly easily, then poked it onto the hook at the end of the thin, clear, cord.
Raising the rod, Yoko whipped it back and cast, sending the hook, with its burden of paste, whizzing over the water, then reeled it back in fast. “Casts good,â€
He remarked, “Let’s get the boat on the water though.â€
Yoko, Merlin, and Pouncer heaved the small coracle down the muddied bank, and slowly pushed it into the water, the stream lapped gently at its sides.
“All aboard!†Merlin leaped in, pulling the tackle box with him, “Last one in’s
A fried toad!†Yoko and Pouncer swiftly hopped in, teasing Merlin. “Well, here’s the fried toads!â€
Chapter 2
A suspicious sign
Light of a blistering sun blazed down on the cloaked back of Husky Whacker.
Thousands of evil beasts were arrayed in full armor before him, pikes, whips, knives, spears, banners, scimitars, and swords, all these gleamed and snapped in the painful temperature, the very symbol of Husky’s power, and all that he stood for.
Husky was a dog, or at least, that was what he had originally been, before he had become a warlord, he was now the most feared creature that had ever walked under the sun, or the moon, for that matter. His muscled back was covered in shining silver plates, and his head was covered in a terrible mask, it too had silver metal on it, but the muzzle was black, with long curving spikes protruding downward from his jaw.
The worst part of all of his armor was the black spiked crown worked onto the top of the helm.
“Whom do you serve?†his voice was low, snarling, cold, but it could be heard across the entire ranks.
“Husky Whacker, all powerful slayer of enemies!†weapons flashed in the sunlight as the Cooligans that served him roared the words out, knowing their lives depended on it, for Husky constantly made examples of mutinous servants.
“And whom will you follow to the death?†Husky’s red eyes swept across the colossal army, daring them to challenge him.
“Husky Whacker, warlord and ruler of all he sees!†once again the reply was en masse, blades waving in the air again.
Husky prowled forward, his ominous presence making the Cooligans stand ever straighter, knowing what the punishment was if they so much as dropped a dagger.
Husky walked straight up to a large, strong looking Cooligan, who immediately stepped forward at a flick of Husky’s paw.
“Yes, Mightiness?†the Cooligan spoke to Husky, but kept his gaze on the ground.
“Are they ready to march at a moments notice, captain?â€
“Yes, master.â€
“Good. Have them bring out the catapults, otherwise, if you fail me, Knifeye, then your screams will be heard to the ends of the earth!â€
Knifeye gulped visibly, “Your word is my command, highness!â€
Husky turned his back, still speaking, “Come to my tent after you’ve done that. We have a few of those plans of yours we need to discuss.†He walked away, back to where he had been standing before; then suddenly whirled back on the army: “Get ready. We march tomorrow!†the Cooligans swiftly turned and each went to their tents, going to gear up for war.
Husky entered his tent: the interior was hung with all sorts of fascinating dried plants, shrunken skulls, fur, feathers, bones of all kinds, poisons, swords and daggers with curiously shaped blades, all were lit up with a bloody reddish glow, light of the sun shining through the canvas of the tent walls, adding to the fearsome atmosphere that always hung about his tent.
Seating himself on a small, roughly made stool, he watched the tent walls: it was an old trick Husky had learned through long hours of command, a way that, when sun shone strongly, allowed Husky to see the shadows of Cooligans on the outside, therefore adding to his reputation of all-powerfulness, and, it let him keep on constant watch for subordination in the evil ranks that made up his army.
“You there, get me some food. And drink.†Husky commanded of a Cooligan, who was guarding his tent, though Husky did not really need guards, for in affect, he was a single-beast army.
The Cooligan answered swiftly; “Immediately, master,†he scurried off, blade flashing in his belt.
Husky sat there, turning his thoughts over, his adviser had told him that the castle would soon fall, but he did not know exactly when, and who knows, maybe the cats had already noticed his infiltration, perhaps they had even killed his spy and his assassin, who knows. Husky thought that, in arriving early, possibly he would be able to mount a full-scale assault on the city, and if he did that, he would immediately have access to the innermost recesses of the castle.
“I have come, Mightiness.†Knifeye knelt as he walked into the tent, careful not to disturb a huge cobra that was sleeping in a tank.
“You came. Sit.†Husky rasped. “We need to have a little…discussion…about the plans you presented to me.†Knifeye gulped again, “I have them here, My Lord.â€
He spread out several pieces of paper, roughly made from the pulped bark of trees; it was covered in squiggling lines, and was dominated by a large drawing of the castle. “I have spoken to your spy, he thinks this is the fortresses’ weakest point, the small door in the north side, it could easily be blasted down: giving access to the castle faster than through a siege.†Knifeye sincerely hoped that he had not said the wrong thing, he knew the punishment if he had, but his worry’s were fruitless: Husky did not so much as glance toward him as he studied the wriggling lines that ran across the paper.
“True…but, my way will work far better…†Husky’s steel claws ran over the parchment, making a scratching noise that made the hairs (though he didn’t have many) stand up on the back of Knifeye’s neck.
“And…forgive my asking, lord, but what are yer plans?†Knifeye nervously fingered the dagger in his belt—his mouth dry with fear that he had said the wrong thing.
“Aaaahh…well I see no reason why you shouldn’t know the rough parts of it…I will attack the castle with my entire army at night, they will not be expecting an attack. They will die swiftly, that way, I can burn the main door…what point of victory is there if one cannot gloat, or at least have some fun with his victims.â€
Husky’s fiery red slits of eyes lit up, so much that it appeared as if Knifeye were looking at the blistering sun outside.
“Fun, Mightiness?†for the first time, Knifeye’s voice sounded almost…well non-fearful, all around the entire world, Cooligans were renowned for their lack of pity on their victims, those that fell into their grasp were often killed, if not killed, enslaved. This was why Husky had taken command of them: the fact that they were just as cruel and pitiless as their master—well, almost.
“Yes, my servant, and treasure for my captains as well, yessss…very valuable treasure it is as well.†This time it was Knifeye’s eyes that lit up, but they were empty words, Husky always promised treasure and riches to his captains, so long as they were loyal to him, then, once the conquest was over, he usually killed them, sometimes directly, other times merely getting two Cooligans in a fight over something, then, either way it turned out, the intended Cooligan would always die,
If they won the fight, then Husky would accuse them of killing a fellow member of the army, if they didn’t win, then…that was that.
“Mightiness…?†Knifeye’s voice was tentative, wondering what his ruler had been thinking about, Husky whipped his head back up to face him and—
Did nothing. Except turn towards the door and growl “Enter!â€
The cooligan Husky had sent to get food had returned, he was bearing a roast magpie, newly shot by cooligan archers, and a beaker of who-knows-what; the cooligan set it down on the dirt floor beside the stool which Husky occupied, careful not to spill anything, or, for that matter, look directly at Husky.
“Lord,†the cooligan murmured as he put the food on the floor, rather nervously, knowing that Husky had never taken to those who spilled things in his tent.
“You may go.†Husky rasped coldly, and casually, but with unerring aim, threw a pebble at an ant that was climbing the wall of the tent. It struck.
The cooligan ducked out of the canvas, and resumed his vigil, guarding against any who could bear ill will to their ruler, Husky was often beset by mutinous Cooligans, all power hungry, but lacking the wits and skill to attack him directly.
“Get ready Knifeye. I shall consider your…ah…idea.â€
Knifeye bowed respectfully and left, but Husky just sat there, thinking, he drew his sword, beginning to sharpen it; he stared down at its lethal blade, the blade that had taken thousands of lives.
♦ ♦ ♦
“O, I caught a big fish
An’ put him on a dish
’Cos that was my dearest wish!
The life of a fish is often smooth an’ carefree,
’til he bit the lure, that little fishy mystery
But now he’s been caught,
(Fish like these never get bought)
An’ livin’ in the stream, they never get hot
But ask a fish a question, an’ he’ll question you,
His only response is ‘wot?’â€
Yoko, Merlin and Pouncer finished the last line at top volume, carrying three splendid bass between them, they marched up the path singing lustily, and rehearsing the stories of all three catches, (adding a few fictional bits, as is customary after a good fishing trip).
“So then you Merlin, you reached out with that net and jus’ brought that fish in, ’e was fightin’ like mad too!†said Yoko, proud of his fish, which he had landed with Merlin’s weird bait, which turned out to work quite well, catching fish effectively, three bass and one small trout that they released due to the strict rules in the castle about never taking any life that had not already matured and mated.
“Yeah—did you see me get jerked over the side of the boat?†asked Pouncer, who had the biggest fish, the one that had fought so hard that Pouncer went over the side of the boat, but the thing about the cats of the city was that they did not fear water, they could even swim in it. Their coats were far sleeker and shorter than most other cats; it was often said though, that far away, in the Tallpeak Mountains, there was a breed of cats that were able to swim like an otter, fast and lithe.
Merlin added his own contribution. “I had that one on the hook so hard that it almost broke the line, but I got it in fast, it should go down in catten history!â€
This caused a good-natured argument: “No, mine was more spectacular!†to which Yoko countered: “Your landing? Mine could beat yours anyday. Anyday!â€
“Nah, I beat ya both.†Merlin added.
“What? Ye call that a landing? Might’ve passed for a lame duck!â€
“You’re a fine one to talk!â€
“Ha! Jus’ look at this fish!â€
“Okay, think we can shut down the verbal warfare here?â€
The argument continued, as afternoon light lanced through the foliage above them, the fish’s scales glittering as motes of sunlight hit them.
“Why don’ we think about the tales that we need to comprise?†asked Yoko, turning to his argumentive companions with an exasperated look on his face.
“Don’t ya think that some guard’s going to like as not ask us about the fish?â€
Merlin turned to Yoko as if explaining that two and two make four to a small kitten. “Yoko, the only way we’re ever goin’ to create a spectacular tale is if we debate it.â€
Yoko commented dryly. “Then keep the ‘debating’ down. Y’know, it’s rather peaceful right here, I think we might as well take a little coolin’ of our paws over by that big cedar, no, not that one, the one with the little knot on the trunk,â€
“That’s not a knot, pun intended, it’s a burl.†Said Merlin, pointing with his tail.
“Knot, burl, what does it matter? The tree with the protrusion, shall we say?†said Yoko, “Anyway, break out the lunch packs. I’m hungry as…â€
“A howling pine marten dancing a jig on the top of a sandstone cliff.†Merlin supplied another one of his gems of descriptive language.
“Or a cheese bass coming after bit of insubstantial goat fur.†Pouncer surprised them both, seeing as it was usually Merlin who was able to come up with extremely weird things to say; a quality that Yoko and Pouncer much admired.
“Hmmm…you’re getting quite the ear for that sort of thing…†said Yoko grinning at him, his eyes dancing with a merry light.
Merlin yawned audibly, and lay down on the ground beside the tree.
Yoko picked up the lunch pack and opened it. “Wow,†he said. “Imbleberry did us proud: scones, apple butter, salted and spiced nuts, fresh bread, and a flask of cold, sweet, spicy tea!†he stretched, arching his back, then unzipped the efficiently packed little bag fully. “Aaaahh…here we are,†he took a swig from the tea. “Mmm…delicious, we need to ask Imbleberry how she makes it. I never succeeded in making anything other than—well let’s not go into that.â€
“No need to go to the trouble, we already know what it looks like,†Pouncer called lazily from behind him. Yoko whirled on him: “You ’orrible liddle beast! Everyone knows that you’re attempts at tea-making look more like a puddle of—of I don’t know.â€
“Greenish-yellow mud?†commented Merlin from behind.
“Exactly! We all know that what you call tea is—what did ya say Merlin?â€
Merlin stretched out. “Grayish gangly bits of mint leaf? That’s close to what it actually looks like, Pouncer. I can say that I make tea quite well, in fact, superbly! I create tea magnifico.â€
Pouncer flicked the shell of a nut he had just finished cracking at Merlin. “Er…I really hate to break it to you, but you’ve never made tea,â€
Yoko started on a scone with apple butter. “Well, you know that’s true, Putchy.â€
“Putchy†was Merlin’s nickname, he often put on that he didn’t like it, but he really did.
“Why, what did you call me that for?!†Merlin picked up a pinecone and tossed it at Yoko, who ducked and fired back with a second cone that was lying on the ground. Yoko lay out on the warm turf and thought about the wonders of baked bass. I could lay here forever… he thought, stretching in the warm afternoon sun, savoring the warmth of it seeping into his black fur. Suddenly he saw something carved into the bark of the cedar.
He pushed himself up and walked over to look. It appeared it had been crudely etched into the tree with a sword or dagger. It read:
×
€
Yoko peered closely at it: it looked like someone had carved a distorted C into the wood, but the rune above did not add up. Yes, it was the old sign for ‘Sword’ but that didn’t explain anything; he sniffed it: the smell! The same smell that he had scented earlier in the tracks they had found on the way to the creek.
“Merlin, Pouncer, c’mere! Look at this!â€
Pouncer came over first. He looked at it, then at Yoko. “Hmmm…Sword and a C, Yoko, I reckon we need to get to the castle. Fast. My ole grandpa taught me that if I ever find the old rune for sword carved or scratched anywhere, come home immediately. He didn’t say why, but from ’is face I knew that it was important.â€
Merlin took a look at it. “I remember hearing the same thing. Mr. Hugh told me about it when I weren’t naught but a little white-furred orphan. Except he said it looked like a fancy N, only kinda curly, and he said to be especially worried if there was a C under it. I think we’ve come across exactly what he was talking about.â€
“Why, in the name of fur ’n feathers are you two freakin’ out about a piece of graffiti?†asked Yoko, looking in exasperation at his friends. “Apparently some weirdo decided they were gonna carve a dark sign into a tree. Probably some newcomer who don’t know our rule.†In the city and surrounding country, there was a rule—more of a law really—that said no creature, cat or otherwise, could harm a living tree.
“We’re not ‘freaking out’ as you put it, Yoko,†Merlin sounded slightly irritable. “We’re jus’ repeating what we learned about signs like this. This is one of them. I’m sure of it. Mr. Hugh’s done some travelin’ in ’is time; seen a lot o’ things too. I’ll bet Pouncer’s grandpa was the same way: he prob’ly was the same way, traveled a lot in ’is younger days, then settled down to raise Pouncer when he was done roving across the country.â€
“Well if you say so.†Said Yoko, but inside he was burning with curiosity about the mark on the tree.
“Once we get back, we’ll ask Mr. Hugh about it. He’ll know what to do.†Said Merlin, “But I think we need some fuel first. What’cha think, mates?â€
“Aw, sure. Where’d’ you get so wise, Merlin?†said Yoko and he lay down again, stretching his back and shoulders then made a halfhearted grab at a scone that was poking from the food pack. “Y’know what my sister’d say if she saw me doing that? ‘Why, I never saw such bad manners from you, O revered prince’ then she’d chase me up several flights of staircases, and whack me to death with her little kitchen mitts. You two are sooooo lucky not to be princes.†Yoko yawned loudly, twitched his tail irritably. “What are you laughin’ about? Ye look like…um…widdleshinned weasels doin’ a traditional song but falling asleep to the sound of…that’s it! A yelling trout who likes the sound of flutes.â€
“Hmmm…you’re learning fast, Yoko…†Merlin mused, unconcernedly scratching his nose. “But I think that something a little more to the point is called for—um—a cat that caught a bat.†He flicked his tail with an assertive air, then with lightning speed, shot out his paw and caught a leaf that had swirled their way from a nearby oak.
Yoko sat up, “We should go: those bass won’t last all day in weather like this, can’t see how anyone could stand the heat at the castle, they’re prob’ly all sleepin’ in their beds. I really do hope those kittens found something to do—so long as it’s not too destructive—remember the time they got hold of Kéllo’s shield and escaped to the creek to take a sail on it?†Yoko laughed, wiping tears of mirth from his face.
“Yes. I remember two very bad little cats who locked themselves in the kitchens and didn’t come out for two days…didn’t they also eat all the pastry that had been cooked for dinner—can you recall their names Yoko?â€
Yoko whirled on Pouncer. “How dare you! The right side of my tail’s never been the same agai—you didn’t hear that!†he turned to Merlin, only to find him feigning sleep; Yoko crept over, then suddenly pounced on him, tickling hard.
“AAAAAAAARRRGGHHHHH!†Merlin rolled over, his rear swinging through air where it caught Yoko a colossal clout.
“Ouch. That hurt, Merlin.†Yoko said weakly from the ground by the roots; he pulled a face, “Hmmm…you’re far more substantial than I am. How did ya get like that?†he asked Merlin, grinning. Yoko lay back on the needles that had fallen from the cedar, aaaahhh…he thought. It felt so good just to lay there with his friends, talking and reminiscing about the times they had when they were young ones.
Why was he so worried about marks in the bark of a tree? Surely they were just marks, nothing all that meaningful, but they did have an air of…malevolence about them. As well as the fact Merlin and Pouncer thought they were some sort of evil symbol. What could it be? The thought coursed through Yoko’s head, threatening to overwhelm him with questions.
“Ah, let’s get goin’.†He said, getting up. He walked over to the pack and picked it up, then turned to his companions. “Hey! Time to go!†he called, and turned in exasperation at his snoozing companions. They showed no sign of waking up, but did groan slightly, and roll over.
“Ah, time to go already?†Merlin turned back to Yoko. “I was barely sleeping by that time, and we have to go get interrogated about that confounded sign in the tree bark. Why oh why?†he sat up, then looked piteous, and fell over to lie down again.
“But Merlin, you’re forgetting something. Imbleberry told me she’d bake a fish pie if we got home soon enough, besides, that sign might be important.†Yoko turned pleadingly to his friends, then was seized by a better idea. He picked up two pinecones from the ground, and hurled them both at Merlin and Pouncer’s backs—hard.
“Uuunnh!†Pouncer groaned as the cone hit him. Merlin had a likewise reaction.
“Ouch. That felt like….oh, I dunno.†Merlin growled lightly, and continued. “You’re lucky I’m tired Yoko, or else I’d fire back.â€
Yoko winced from his last memory when Merlin “fired back†otherwise known as clouted Yoko with a snowball so hard that he was out cold for fifteen minutes.
Yoko almost laughed out loud with the fond memory of when he was younger. But then he pushed himself up, and took one of the fish.
“C’mon! We’re goin’.†He said; Merlin and Pouncer both got up and took their own respective fish, also picking up the pack, while Merlin carried the boat, and pore Yoko was left to wrestle with the tackle box.
♦ ♦ ♦
An hour later, they reached the castle with no further discussions than that of the fish. As they padded forward, staggering under the weight of their belongings, a Mountain Bluebird rose joyfully into the air. Truly, an afternoon to be alive on.
“Let’s see if we can find Terem when we go in,†said Yoko. “He should be on guard duty at this time.†Terem was another young friend of Yoko’s, being a few years older, he often volunteered for guard duty, but spent most of his time with Yoko, Pouncer, and Merlin.
“You don’t know he’ll be there Yoko.†Pouncer pointed out. “He does it sometimes, not always.â€
“Yes,†answered Yoko. “But that doesn’t mean he won’t be there.â€
Chapter 3
A question
Dinner was by no means a short affair to the citizens of the cat society; every night there was pies to be baked, fish to be cooked, vegetable to be stir-fried…everything was perfect, ready to be eaten, prepared by the castle’s expert chefs.
Terem the guard stood by the gates, leaning on his staff. Though he was very young, and therefore had no need for it, the staff was part of the cat-guard outfit, not to mention it allowed some relief on the legs; seeing as guards spent all their time on their feet as they did their duty.
At that moment, Yoko, Merlin and Pouncer came through the gate, still staggering under the weight of their burdens.
“Ah, it appears you had a good trip,†said Terem, laughing. “The great cat himself couldn’t lift those things.†The “great cat†was a generic term that was used to indicate power, meaning: Cougar, Leopard, Jaguar, Lion, ect.
“Yes. Undoubtedly we’ll have to tell the whole grand story to the CSLE; you know how the captain is about fishing.†Said Pouncer. CSLE (pronounced Sssle) stood for the following number of lightly boring initials: Catten Squad of Law Enforcement. Yoko never could tell why they liked to talk with him about virtually anything he did, from sleeping to washing the laundry, maybe it was because their job was rather boring, unless some lawsuit against someone coughing too loudly. Then it was just pointless.
“Well, yes I do know what they’re like but…†said Yoko. “They just are so bored with their jobs that they like to talk to other cats…â€
“Shall I escort you inside? You know you can’t go in without an eligible adul—’’
Terem leaped to the side to avoid a flying blow that Yoko launched into his side, which was not overly hard, but something to avoid nevertheless.
“Oh, sure, so long as you can stay silent and invisible, and oh, what do you think we should throw in there?†Yoko appealed to Pouncer and Merlin. “OK, you make intelligent conversation, no remarks about our adolescence, and you aren’t on guard duty when you’re with us, remember, you’re the cat from the docks, and—’’
He broke off, massaging his shoulder. “Did you really have to do that?†he said irritably to Terem, who suddenly slowed down to walk behind Pouncer.
“You just tried to do it to me.†Replied Terem. “I did it for your own benefit.â€
“Yes but—’’
“You two stop bickering!†Merlin cut the argument off with an exasperated look. “If you can’t talk civilly then don’t talk at all.†Yoko could tell he was annoyed. He quickened his pace.
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310- I don’t know where it’s going either, but that’s really truly exciting.
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I want to write a story in documents, letters and newspaper articles and journal entries and the like. Don’t you think that’d be cool? Actually, I guess no one really knows about the Luness, do you? Well, that was something I attempted for NaNo, and I’d like to do that in that format.
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I accidentally posted this on RRR SMAS-TT:
POSOC COME HERE!!!!
Here’s more of the Rothschild/Warble story.
And it hadn’t stopped at that. The furious storm that descended on them a few minutes after had certainly not been natural–the sky had gone from the clear blue one saw only outside the cities to a roiling purple-black within seconds, and the hailstones were of a frightening size. Again, the meteorite-iron had protected the train from damage, but the mood created by watching hailstones the size of your heads whiz past you mere feet away was not a pleasant one. By the time the storm had ended, Patrick was shaking all over, and he had gratefully fallen into slumber.
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314- Excellent! I’ll be back to write more.
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315-so a documents story? interesting. Sort of a historic reference to an inexplicable time period… They should have it so that it ends where you figure it out…
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After nearly two months of excruciatingly detailed planning of characters, plot, and world, I HAVE STARTED WRITING TROUBLE CLEF!!!! It’s true! Here’s an excerpt:
Chapter One
Watery, gray sunlight leaked through the boarded-up windows in a pathetic attempt to look cheerful. I did my best to ignore it. Tip and Cinder would be outside in the square, working the crowds. People were getting wise to them already, but their innocent faces and Tip’s charming lisp might give them a few more days before someone got suspicious enough to tell the justices. By that time, we’d have collected enough money to move on.
I wouldn’t be joining them. I conducted most of my business at night, as a rule. It was the sort of business you can’t really conduct in broad daylight. Unless the prospect of only seeing daylight after it had been filtered through a barred window doesn’t bother you. Besides, I was a night owl by nature. After the coffee incident, everyone knew better than to wake me up before noon.
The door thundered. It took my addled brain a few seconds to realize that somebody was knocking. Considering that each blow sounded like cannon fire, it had to be Charlie. It always amazed me that those meaty, colossal hands could play a delicate harp with such ease.
Aaaand that’s all I’ve got so far.
NOTICE: Since I am particularly paranoid about this story being stolen, I will not be posting any large portions of it- just short excerpts. I will not engage in any exposition on plot or characters, either. I’ll just post enough to tantalize you, or to give you an idea of what I need help with. I trust most of the MBers, but this website is open to everyone… *clutches manuscript furtively* *reinforces walls*
Drat it, I meant to come here and work on the Rothschild/Warbler story, but I forgot my idea. *leaves, scratching head*
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317-ohhh… we’ll never see your whole story… *is feeling sad*
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318- Maybe he’ll get it published someday. Maybe.
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319- I’ll do my best.
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I wanted to write a book about a guy who wrote a will, and people kept chasing after it, and what really happened was the guy turned into a peacock (he didnt die!) and then watched the people. He was cursed so that if they acted mature about the will, he would turn back into a human, reveal that he is alive, and then leave them his property when he DID die, but if they didnt (which is what happened) he would stay a peacock. however, he would have a chance to write a letter to them about what was going on, and then in the end they have a discussion, something along the lines of “what have we done?”, and it’s all sad. moral of story-no gold for immature people. Shopuld I get writing or is it all just a load of posh?
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321- That’s very original. I’d like to read it.
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322-that may happen in about a year. or two. I haven’t done anything about it yet except write the above summary and buy a notebook for it. but anyway, anyone else have any comments?
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I had an idea for testing out 2nd person perspective… but it’ll have to wait….
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This thread is fading. We are beyond 300 posts. May we please have a new one?
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Because Hypatia and Alice asked for it, here is the begining of my first COSMOS adventure:
My journey to the stars began with absolute, mind-numbing boredom.
It was the second week after the end of school, and everyone in my class was en route to somewhere exotic on vacation. Jake Hu was going to Paris. Christy Marsh was going to Mexico. And Alexa Day (that’s me) was going… to stay in South Point, New York. Where nothing ever happens.
“Can we go to the beach today, mom?†I asked, tying my red hair back in a ponytail.
“Not today, Alex. I’ve got to drive to the University in Grenvile to help balance the budget. You’re welcome to come along.†(Mom’s an accountant)
I considered the options. Dad would be working at the hospital until five PM, and besides, Grenvile University had a lot of cool old buildings to explore. It was a no-brainer.
“I want to go, mom.†I said
The University library towered above us, its windows sparkling in the summer sun. It was a big, old Victorian building and one of my favorite spots on the campus, probably because I hadn’t fully explored it yet.
Mom parked the car in the lot nearest the library and we stepped out.
“Now Alex, I’m only going to be in that building across the courtyard.†She pointed to a small, red brick building.
“’Kay.â€
“Promise me you’ll stay in the library until I come to get you?â€
“Sure thing, mom.†I didn’t plan on going anywhere else…
“Right then. You can go inside now.†Mom said.
I hurried down the sidewalk and through the doors, into the main reading room- pleasantly air conditioned. At the dark wooden tables, some people were reading, others were typing on laptop computers making a tap-tap-tap sound.
Behind the check-in desk, a woman with blond hair was helping a man return his books.
Near the desk, the magazine shelves showed colorful travel magazines, full of glossy pictures of places everybody else in my class was. I made a beeline towards them, so I could at least read about those far-away wonders.
Walking by the check-in desk, I caught sight of a book that was on the check-in counter. The cover, somewhat faded, showed a space scene with many orange blobs of light.
There isn’t anywhere more exotic than outer space… I thought
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That’s great! It’s better than Conspiracy Wars, I must admit. It makes more sense, and moves at a more reasonable pace. Where’s the rest?
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326-I love it! Good pace, pleasasantly detailed, and, well, the style has a lot of viscosity (my mind’s on science )…it really flows!
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327-I’m at school now, I’ll post more when I get home. Thank you for your kind words! Conspiracy Wars was never intended to be completely serious. This is.
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More of the COSMOS story:
I read the title of the book out loud.
“Cosmos, by Carl Sah-gan.â€
The librarian turned and looked at me, laughing a bit.
“It’s pronounced Say-gun.â€
“Nice name. Was he Japanese?†I asked
“No, Japanese names end in vowels. Good book, by the way. Worth reading.â€
I picked the book up and looked at the author’s name again. S-a-g-a-n. It sure looked Japanese. Taking the book under my arm, I walked off, looking for a good place to read.
Soon, I could no longer hear the tap-tap-tap of the people with laptops. I was at the far end of the main room, near large, glass windows with cushioned seats. (Which are awesome!)
The shelves back here were a bit dusty, and the books were sun-faded. A mural of jungle animals was on the wall, over the windows.
Nobody else was in this area, so all of the window-seats were wonderfully empty. I chose one with red cushions and sat down, then opened the book when I was comfortable.
I turned to the Table of Contents. The first chapter, The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean, was on page 3. Flipping past an introduction, I came to the first page of Chapter One and began reading to myself.
“The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. Our contemplations of the Cosmos stir us. There is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice. A faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the grandest of mysteries.â€
Wow. I thought. You don’t find prose like that on the back of a cereal box!
“Oh dear!†There was the sound of something crashing into a bookshelf. I looked up from the book, in time to catch a glimpse of something disappearing behind a shelf nearby.
“Hello? Is anybody here?†I asked
No response. Hesitantly, I approached the shelf. I reached out and touched the side, preparing to peek around the corner. Libraries in movies usually weren’t haunted, were they?
What I saw next made me pinch myself.
You may begin speculating over what Alex is seeing now.
321- I think that would be a very good story!
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KaiYves,
It’s about time for me to start version 2008.2 of this thread. If I do, will you mind reposting your story so far?
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Sure, no problem, I’ll just cut and paste.
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post 321? Only one person has responded.
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331- That would be wonderful. Please do.
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Any comments on the second part of the COSMOS story?
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335- Suspenseful!
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Another bit of the COSMOS story, wherein Alex visits a familiar setting:.
About halfway down the length of the bookshelf and about two feet up in the air, a metal sphere about one foot in diameter was floating. A complex system of openings and cracks covered its body, and there was a small screen displaying something like a simplified face.
“Are you okay? Do you need anything?†I asked the robot. It spun around to look at me.
“Oh, how kind of you to ask! I seem to have become separated from the spaceship- oh, the doctor will be worried sick!†It said, in a voice that reminded me of C-3PO’s, only without the trace of an English accent.
Before, I had been afraid, but now, I was intrigued.
“Spaceship? Doctor? Oh, by the way, I’m Alex Day.†I said, holding out my hand. The robot floated over, and extended something like a metallic hand from inside its spherical body. We shook hands.
“TASTA. Time And Space Travel Assistant. Now, I must get back to the ship, the doctor must be-â€
This robot had a spaceship! And if I could go back to it with en… well, I wouldn’t be bored anymore, that’s for sure! There was no way I was letting this opportunity pass me by!
“Wait! Can I come with you? I mean, I’ve seen too much, right?†I asked, hopefully.
“Well, the doctor is fond of students… I suppose you could come.â€
“Yesssss!â€
TASTA extended another metal arm and turned towards empty air. There was a strange sound, and a circle of glowing energy appeared in front of us.
“Let me guess, a star gate or something?â€
“My, you’re perceptive.†TASTA said, and floated into the portal. I followed, a bit afraid.
The next thing I knew, my head was spinning, and I was in a big, off-white room with an arched ceiling. Looking around, I saw a desk with a chair behind it in front of me. A person wearing a tan coat sat at the desk.
But what really caught my attention was the large window before us, through which I could see many, many blobs of light. Some were sort of spiral shaped, others kind of circular.
“Galaxies.†I whispered, amazed. “Where are we, TASTA?†I asked, louder. The person in the chair heard me and turned around, swiveling in the chair.
“Hello, TASTA. Who’s this you’ve brought with you?†He asked, in a voice that was deep and slow, stressing the consonants.
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337- Whoo, nice story! I just read a few parts of it from earlier posts!
Would somebody please explain to me what we do on this post?
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338- First, a crash course in blog terminology:
The blog is made with blogging software, but works like a forum. Thus, although we call the blog a blog, we call the comments posts and call the posts threads. Confusing, I know, but you get used to it.
Second, this thread is for people who are writing/have written/want to write books. You can post excerpts, get constructive criticism, and bounce ideas off of everyone.
Third, welcome! *pies*
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I need to write more of Animal Kingdoms.
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339-Speaking of constructive criticism, It’s always welcome!
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Can we have a new thread?
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342- Seconded.
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New thread, por favor?
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Robert offered to create a new thread over 10 posts ago, and Kai and I agreed. Have we been forgotten? *sniff*
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