Not all gods can see the future—but I knew, when Aiol looked at me that day, that he didn’t see my future in making wheels turn. It was the disappointment in his face—so intense, it made my own heart sink, and I couldn’t look him in the face. I wasn’t sure whether I was going to be sick or if I was going to cry; luckily neither happened to me before the god turned his gaze away.
I suppose he spoke to the temple masters about me; I was never called back to the class again.
The rat shook his head. “No, no holdup on the boats, just the people. Some fool destroyed a railroad bridge.â€
“A bridge?†I said. “Don’t they have to be pretty sturdy for the trains to go over them?â€
“Never mind that,†he said. “The priest here will just have a few questions for you and you can be on your way.â€
It was a bit more crowded than I’d hoped, but about as much as I’d expected. I started to have doubts about my story. What possible reason could anyone have to come to Sepouri, of all places, for a ship to Karkedon?
A rat soldier in a Tarsan crest and an ibis priest of Aiol approached, and I got off my horse to show appropriate deference.
What did people normally come here for anyway?
Small town with a harbor. Not exactly a hub of commerce, so… Things don’t come here, things come from here.
“And what brings you to town today, young wolf?â€
What comes from Sepouri?
“I’m a… freedman,†I said, answering the soldier with only a bit of hesitation. “On my way home to Karkedon.â€
“A freedman with a horse?†said the priest.
“Must have been a favorite slave,†said the soldier. I tried not to blush.
“Well, he doesn’t look like he’s been working in the galena mines.â€
Galena, right. Who could have remembered that?
“Are the boats being held up today?†I asked.
Oct 21
Tags: demihumans, Mařa, Mitch, Nother, scraps, Toby, WIP, Wolftever Theater, writing
I don’t know the best way to start talking about what happened. I should probably start with an introduction.
My name is Mařa _____. I started the Wolftever Creek theater with my brother Rouss, not long ago when we first moved into town. We share the business, and the living space, with our friends Mitch and Toby Kowalski.
Mitch and Toby are demihumans like us, but that’s not the only reason we’ve taken them in—both have what you might call special needs.
Mitch was born without any illusionary ability. Demihumans tend to vary considerably from the standards of human appearances, and our illusion, though generally not very powerful, is a necessity for living in human communities.
His cousin Toby is usually able to cover for him. Toby’s trouble, though, is on a rather larger scale—being a giant, upwards of forty feet tall. Illusion is of little use in concealing this; he lives in a large subbasement under the theater, and sends an illusionary projection of himself instead of going out into the world.
The inactivity is not doing him well. Life is hard for giants.
I don’t know if I’ve posted anything about this story before—site search isn’t coming up with anything—but I’ve recently started trying to pull it out of my head and get it on paper. Not sure if this fragment will make it into the narrative, but it gave me a few ideas about this character’s character.
Ever since I was a little girl—as long as I can remember, really—I’ve been able to tell when people are lying. Any sort of lie, really—everything from ‘you look beautiful today, Kelly!’ to ‘Daddy still loves us, but he has to move to Atlanta for his job…’
The lies just kind of stick out—just like you can tell if someone’s talking to you in English or not, I can tell if you’re telling the truth.
Sometimes, if the lie’s really obvious, I can tell what the truth behind it is.
Doesn’t happen near as often as I’d like.
Now, people lie all the time—you think I’d grow up to be pretty cynical because of it, but that’s almost exactly what didn’t happen.
I love lies.
There’s the white lie, it’s my favorite. You’ve got a good person talking to you and there’s an uncomfortable truth coming up in the conversation, and the first thought that comes up is ‘This will hurt you to know. How can I bend reality to keep you from finding out?’ It’s so sweet—behind every white lie, a white knight.
Then there’s the false promises—from sad little puppy dog minds: ‘Trust me… please trust me… tell me it’s okay and I’m a good guy…’ Those’re the well-meaning ones, anyway.
There’s also the backstabbing sort of lie. ‘Look how I’m pulling the wool over your eyes. How stupid you are to trust me…’
Those, actually, I’m not too fond of. But nobody’s dared try that on me twice.
I’ve gotten very good at lies myself over the past seventeen years—and I can get away with some big ones of my own, easy as pie.
It’s just like speaking a foreign language I know quite well—one that goes straight in to other people’s heads.
I just ordered a drink to start with and the waiter left us alone again.
Blake pulled down my menu to look me in the eyes. “Nothing,†he said, “including whether your boyfriend’s Deep American roots show from time to time. You can sit there and look ashamed, or you can remember you don’t have absolute power over me, so anything I do is not yours to be ashamed of.â€
“I’m sorry.â€
“No, you’re not,†he said, “because you don’t think you’re in the wrong yet. But don’t worry about it. I don’t have power over you either, of course.â€
This was not the way I’d imagined our first date would go.
Found this scrap in an old black notebook—don’t think I’ve posted it anywhere before. Might just come into the story later.
On my third week studying body-modification formulas, I knew I was getting close to my second breakthrough. The first one was a warmup, really; just a basic modification of a regeneration potion to grow extra body parts. It takes a couple days to get used to an extra pair of arms, but once you do get the hang of it, working in the lab is so much easier.
I made a couple of other, intimate, changes as well, which I figured Toby would like. But this second project was for Toby himself.
I wanted to ask him to live with me.
But he’s human.
Humans don’t live in this world.
Traditional transformation formulas are kind of random. You can reliably change, say, into a fox, but it won’t be any fox in particular: fur and eye color, height and weight all may vary. Normally this is a feature—several people can use the same potion and not look like a clone army—but I wanted to make Toby an identity for this world, without taking umpteen different shapechanging drinks, which wouldn’t be healthy anyway.
Another old scrap from an old notebook—
Thunder woke me up in the middle of the night, and Jan had already gone. Â I rolled up my pack, figuring I’d get moving before the rain hit. Â The donut shop at the edge of the park was open all night and usually quiet.
In fact there was nobody there but Jeff behind the counter.  He shaded his eyes as I came in—even though I was half asleep, my light was the brightest in the place.
“Hey Shine,” he said, reaching under the counter. Â “The usual?”
“Yeah,” I said, taking my seat facing the wall. Â He brought me a tray with a dozen jelly donuts.
It started raining.
“You know, tiger,” he said, sitting across from me. Â “I’m sure you’d have a place of your own by now if you eased up on the food a bit.”
“Man,” I said, “I’ve told ya, you have no idea what it’s like when this light burns down.”
I tore into the donuts.
Old scrap, from old notebook—
I sat on the curb with Loukas, waiting for the rain to pass.  The other wolf twirled the umbrella he held and talked… or rambled, rather, in his way.  I didn’t bother to listen–mainly he just goes on to hear himself speak.
It wasn’t long after I’d gotten up that the message came through—that annoying, steady, high-pitched beep in my head was probably one of the things I hate most about the network these days.
When I was younger, I’d learned that our great-grandparents didn’t have the network in their heads—it was something the Lunars and the Martians brought in from off-world. Back then, I still thought being connected to planets and planets full of aliens and strange sights was a great thing; these times I’d gladly give it up, but I have an obligation now.
The message was a reminder of that obligation. It wasn’t another little human from Earth wanting me interviewed for a school paper—it was an update from the diarists.
Usually it was just a reminder they were still working: “168 hours recorded, ready to process.â€
Always “Ready to process.†They’d said I wouldn’t see much in the way of finished product from them during my lifetime—mostly it takes a finished life to tell the big picture, and recording me and my thoughts all the time takes a lot of time to work through anyway.
I turned out my lamp and rolled over on my back to watch what the alien diarists had put together. Off-worlders always just close their eyes to read the network, but the sky of Frontier is a dark enough background for me.
What they’d sent was basically a preface—for all the people who don’t know about Frontier, it was kind of a history or introduction to the world. But of course since it was for off-worlders, it started with the colonization of our world. I’d hoped there’d be more icebear history to survive—but I knew there wouldn’t be, not really. When I’d sat in the stifling hot classrooms in my youth, they’d not had anything before themselves. My mother’d taught me what she could, but she didn’t have anything past her own grandparents. Before that, I guess, we all lived solitary lives on the ocean.
Hah, the classrooms! I hadn’t thought about those in ages. The off-worlders all came, or at least originated, from Earth, a warmer and a brighter world. I don’t think any of them could actually survive on Frontier without all those superheated buildings of theirs, and the bulky clothing—I had to wear some of that, even in the heat—
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