Posts Tagged old

Kaido no Yume XI

Mar 7

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This is the old, old, old bit of story I mentioned earlier. Kaido no Yume was a story I started about a decade ago but which never saw completion. I found this chapter—which is the next after what I’d written so far—in one of my old notebooks. I believe the only other chapter written so far is the ending, and I don’t know where that is. Forgive the writing; I’d number this among my juvenilia—besides the style, some of the facts contradict later continuity. Hopefully the second draft, whenever I get around to it, will fix everything up.

After their audience, Kohath and the tigers went out again through the long tunnels, which were no longer dark now but glowed with an eerie, reflective radiance.

When they came out again into the moonlight, Kohath saw it was not the walls that were lit, but that they themselves were glowing with a subtle radiance.

Nyaiya cried out, “Ai, wuafo, your fur shines with rainbows!”

Kohath looked over himself. Sure enough, his pale blue fur divided the light that shone through it, surrounding him with a spectral aura. Nyaiya insisted on keeping a piece of it. — “The light will fade from us, but we can preserve a little” — so he let her cut a few strands of fur from his arm with a sharp claw.

“Before we leave this place,” Maro said, “it is customary to sing. Will you honor us?”

Kohath looked up at the moon, enormous in the sky, and suddenly felt homesick again. Somewhere, terribly distant, his home on a moon much like that was empty. He found he had already begun singing:

“My paws ache for the earth of my homeland,
and to walk on the roads I once knew,
So much time I have spent from my homeland,
and the ones that I love.  Haru—”

The song had a slow beat, which the tigers found and clapped to.

“My nose thirsts for the smell of my homeland…”

The kits joined in, and Kohath realized the music was not being translated for them, as they sang nonsense happily with the tune, and the gusto with which they went for the ending howl. Nevertheless, he went on through the final verse—

“My tail waves for the friends of my homeland,
and my brave brothers, fallen but true,
I’ll remember the love of my homeland,
For as long as I’m traveling, haru—”

On the final howl, hundreds of fireflies rose from the forest beneath them. Maro gathered up the kino cloth, he and Nyaiya both kissed Kohath, and they all went down the hill and back home.

 

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First day on the moon.

Jan 10

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More ancient scraps. Most of the notebook I’ve been copying stuff out of is undated, but a poem on the ending page of this that I posted to LiveJournal around the time I wrote it gives this a terminus ante quem of September 29, 2005.

1 Aug
The trip to the moon was short and uneventful. I knew it would be—it’s just a routine shuttle, after all. Still, I was hoping for something special for my first time off the planet.

A circle of lunar humans off the ’port staff waited to greet us as we came out the gate. Most of them wielded video recorders in case any of the terrestrials wanted to say anything stupid. Souvenir discs of My First Words on the Moon go for €10.50. Nobody wanted to announce any giant leaps for Podunk today—all the other passengers were either lunars coming home or tired businessmen who’ve probably done the trip a thousand times. Me, of course, you’d never find doing anything so touristy.

The welcome committee soon dispersed after seeing no one really cared about being welcomed. I passed through the crowds and bound up the stairs to baggage claim. My muscles were used to hefting around a body six times heavier than I now weighed. I figured I’d better enjoy it while I could—I knew I’d be paying for it trying to lug around my pudge when I went home for the summer.

I got my bags and found my way outside. The dome above was darkened, indicating the fiction that was the lunar city’s night.

Right. I pulled my computer out of my pocket, uncrumpled it, and called up local time. Quarter to ten… fifteen minutes until there wouldn’t be anybody at the college to let me in. I pulled up gmaps and a compass and got directed to a bus line that went straight there.

The bus was empty. I stood and watched the city go by. Unlike the inside of the bus,… the city for the most part seemed clean and new.

I reached the university gates just a few minutes before closing. The gate guard pointed me to the dormitory, and I rushed to get in just before the doors locked.

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Scrap – Mori

Jan 6

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This is from an old notebook I’m in the middle of transcribing. In Nother, an astrode is a device similar to an orrery which allows for teleportation based on astrological principles.

Moriarty ascended the stairs of the ruined apartment. The thick air did nothing to obscure the golden light blazing from the attic room. He shaded his eyes as the room entered his view, and there as he had dreaded, stood the broken astrode.

—”How’m I sposta fix this?”

That doesn’t work.

I could barely see for the brightness, and my footpaws were damp and sticky from the pool of sunshine I was standing in.

How ’bout I start with this—

I ran back downstairs to find a pitcher. My footprints glowed in the dust. “Frotz,” I said.

I came back up and scooped up the most part of the sunshine. It was sticky and puddled together on its own, like mercury. The pitcher was about half-full when I was done.

I set it on the stand at the angle left by the tracks in the floor.

The band of planetary signs along the wall lit up.

“Oh crap,” I said.

I didn’t recognize any of the signs.

There were only five, laid out thus:

I set up the stand with the moon that had fallen over, and crossed my fingers. Only one way out, and that by trying… I pulled the dusty globe and it began to reflect the beam directed from the pitcher of sunshine. The other moon had quite shattered, and I was thus left with three choices. , I thought, bad sign. The was too complex to— could be a distorted Mars…

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