Posts Tagged writing

[partim] Shotrox.

Feb 4

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Most of us don’t have enough friends to come together and create what we need—so every calends everyone who can comes together to help.

I sat in the circle near the center and focused on my need.  It was the same as always—I needed more time.

I’ve always been afraid, since I was young, of not having enough time—life is short, and even a full sixty years wouldn’t be enough to create all the art I wanted.

So I started wishing for time, to fit more into the day.  The way it works, I see things going slower, and get nearly twice as many hours in the day.  I have to stop for sleep around midday, and I end up eating twice as much, but I can afford it.  I sell a lot of art, and my skill keeps increasing with all the practice.

The magic usually runs out around the middle of the month, though.  We can do a lot, but we’re not omnipotent.  And there’s always more I want to bring into the world, so I keep coming back for more.  Some desires are addictive, and this may be one of them, but I’m not hurting anyone.

The circle of light continued to brighten.  Many come in covering their eyes, but I found inspiration in the illuminated air, and gazed into it as long as I could.

As the threshold of power was crossed, I saw the movements of the other maccans begin to slow.

Ah, sweet time.  I lay back to look up at the sky.

It was absolutely dark, and it wasn’t the rain.

I leapt up immediately, yelling “Nightmare!”, escaping the circle and making a good bit of distance before anyone else had a chance to react.

There was a terrible grinding noise as the darkness penetrated the light.  There wouldn’t be any opportunity to go in and save anyone—it would already be too late.

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[scrap] Mařa.

Dec 30

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This one’s also a bit more rambly than I’m fond of…

I don’t like to generalize.  It’s too easy to generalize—to say, I helped a lot of people—but then it stops being meaningful.

You help one person, concrete and specific, and that’s great… You help a lot of people, —well, it’s a lot, just one lot, no matter how many are in it; and it’s hard to be excited about an abstract category.  Humans and demihumans alike have trouble with scale.

So I can’t talk to you about a lot of people.  Even ‘one person’ is a bit abstract.  I’ll talk to you about Jevin.

When we’d first met, it’d already been a horrible day for me…

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[partim] Blake.

Dec 30

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I grabbed Blake’s shoulder and hauled myself up on his back, gripping his long neck as he pushed it back against me.

His body was so soft, and so big—and still growing by the moment—I could feel him spreading out, slowly, between my legs.

He took off running, and I held on as tightly as I could as he ran downhill, spreading out his wings, which nearly filled the whole street.

“You’ve done this before?” I said.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

I felt his muscles readying under me and I gripped him tighter as he leaped into the air.  The movement was impressive, but failed to catch air; he landed, carefully, and immediately took off again, with a grunt and a greater effort than before.  This time, we soared.

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[partim] Isaac.

Dec 30

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Now I say I had the planet to myself, and that was mostly true.  Far from Martian habitation, there are not many of the nightmares; but they are out there, so there is still some danger.

And danger it was really… determination notwithstanding, I was still at an age vulnerable to their influence.

I still remember very clearly the first time one was on me.  I was only about twelve feet tall at the time, still very young but already too large to fit into the shelter.

I couldn’t move—I just lay across the ground, my head full of darkness, unable to see anything but the gruesome images the nightmare poured into my brain.

They say the nightmares don’t go for the most cherished images—love and home are usually stronger than its corrupting influence.  Instead it goes for the subtle, the day-to-day things that are always all around you but that you barely notice—the ground you walk on, the air you breathe, the clothes on your back, converted into loathsome, fetid, pustulent, ichorous…

I lost consciousness before they got me underground; they said I was lucky to wake again at all.

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[scrap] Micah.

Dec 30

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This one’s a bit rambly and unfocused, not too fond of it.

The red landscape of Mars was a constant distraction as I tried to focus on homework.  Charlemagne never saw this pink sky; did that make us better than him?  Silly question—the future would take the new world for granted.  I wouldn’t be in any history books, though the men who built the rockets surely would be.

Would there be any history of Mars?  Or would it be like the moon, just a place of curiosity for scientists?  Obviously it’d be a refuge for Atlanteians as well, but it was yet to be seen if that’d enter human history.

For the thousandth time, the persistent thought—if only I’d been born human.  I shut the history book and got up to look for a more effective distraction.

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[partim] Taaq.

Dec 21

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In those days, the world above the water was full of monsters, and all the people had to have either places of refuge or habitation below the water, where the monsters couldn’t go.

I’ve since learned that monsters like these have been known on many worlds.  In ours, we remember them as faceless creatures with fearsome talons, and massive fins by which they could swim through the air—which probably means what you would call wings.

Anyway—the monsters hunted our cubs, and many were either consumed in desolate places, or drowned in the sea attempting to escape.

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[partim] Mori.

Dec 21

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It didn’t even take me long to put the formula together—it would have been difficult or impossible for the ancient alchemists, but that was only because of collecting the ingredients; both lunar and terrestrial components were required.

The golem’s locating ability helped me find everything easily in the giant’s laboratory.  From what I could see, most of the supplies were quite stale; whoever had worked here had not been here in a very long time.  Fortunately nothing organic was needed.

The final product glowed with the pearlescence of mixed moonlight and earthlight—slowly growing brighter as the last reaction took place.

I noticed one of the kelvins had appeared and was watching me.  “Does this place belong to you all?” I said.  “I’m sorry I didn’t ask first—my foot got crushed and my golem brought me here to fix it.”

The kelvin’s initial look of sadness deepened to outright desperation.

“Do you need this too?” I said.  “There’s enough to share here…”

I went up to the kelvin, limping carefully, and moved to put my paw on his shoulder—and felt a powerful disinclination as I got closer.

“Let me touch you,” I said.  “I won’t hurt you.  C’mon…”

The kelvin didn’t respond.  I pushed through the resistance till finally my paw closed on his shoulder.  I tried to make it a reassuring touch, but the kelvin’s body was very hot—almost burning to the touch.

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[scrap] Piñata.

Dec 18

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The crowds cleared, and I stood, immobile, in the dawn light.

It was getting hard to think.  Like a wave of sleepiness the thought came over me that thinking wasn’t what I was made for.

It felt like it would be so easy to enter that sleep, just let go and be what I was made for…

What am I made for?

—That’s not important. You don’t need to worry about it.  That’s not what you’re made for.

I don’t need to worry about it.

—You don’t need to think about it.  Just be, don’t think.

I don’t need to—

—Just be. Don’t think.

Don’t th—

—Just be.

I am.

And it was quiet in my head.

A wolf came around the corner and stopped to look at me.  He looked, for a moment, like he recognized me—and then he picked me up and took me inside the building I’d been outside of.

A couple of minutes later, I’d been purchased.

The wolf took me upstairs and sat me down in an office breakroom, showing me off to everyone.

And then I was hung from the ceiling, a blindfolded lion below me, swinging a bat.

—You can think about this.

—This is what you were made for.

I was nervous.

I was excited.

The lion swung the bat and missed me.

I was excited.

I was nervous.

The lion swung again and hit me.

I was afraid.

The lion swung again and missed me.

I was afraid.

The lion swung again, and the force of his swing broke me apart.

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[partim] Blake.

Dec 18

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When we left the restaurant it was still raining.  I didn’t have anything damageable on me, so I didn’t bother manifesting an umbrella.

Blake was looking up into the downpour, looking even bigger than before—actually rounding out and looking chubbier by the moment.

“Um, Blake?”

“Hey marten,” he said. “Want to do something impossible?”  He turned to me and grinned, though his face was already changing.  His muzzle lengthened, straightening out into a solid red beak, and he sat back on his haunches, hands on the ground and looking up at me as he continued to grow.

When he was at eye level with me even in his crouched position, he stretched out, his arms growing into slender talons while his hindquarters took on a more feline appearance.

“Stand back,” he said, in a strange rumbling voice and I jumped back as two frankly enormous red wings sprouted from his back fully-formed, and a flick of the tail seemed to complete the transformation, leaving it a leonine shape with a dark red tuft.

“A gryphon?” I said.

“Climb on,” he said.

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[scrap] Mařa.

Dec 18

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I can’t save everyone.  Ultimately, I don’t think I can save anybody—everyone die, sooner or later—but there are better and worse ways to go.

I saw pretty early that I wouldn’t really be able to do much with my talent as a doctor, which was my first thought.  There woludn’t be much changing lives—mostly people would only come in for problems they already knew they had, and any human doctor can give decent odds on how a person would make out—I’d just be better at it.

Instead, I volunteered to work with the homeless.

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