Thanks a LOT @Gargron for making the tags appear in little highlighted boxes so they're a super pain to copy (and paste, apparently, because now those boxes copy with a [CR]). SO necessary. 🙄
#WordWeavers 2405.01 — Introduce your setting as if it’s a character in your story.
[/Well, I decided to jump ahead in the WiP and write what might be the start of the next chapter. The title may be named:You Have Mail. Pardon the Dickensian texture; this is a first draft. —RS/]
I never expected a human habitation to feel as protective as my dorm room did. Sure, my lodgepole tent protected me through the blizzardy winters in the Fell Wood, as it did the wolf pack that had adopted me. I provided the tent, though. I repaired it, stored it, and raised it year after year. I maintained the cooking fire for all the wolves and cubs. It was I who was being protective, not it—or so it felt.
My dorm room wanted me to know that for the next few years, at least, it existed solely to protect /me,/ to comfort /me./ Increasingly, it did so as I added memories. Mother Wolf and I used one of the two small beds, the left one, piled with fuzzy brown blankets as needed or clothed with luxurious white cotton sheets that felt cool against cheek or jowl. Since I was tasked with the cleaning instead of the dorm servants, my room smelled of us, faintly of yeast, sweat, and a wolf that occasionally hunted rabbits but favored the cafeteria's pasture-beast stew.
The little red iron stove kept us warm through winter; the room's wood panel walls kept us shaded from the hot summer sun. It lovingly provided a rare enclosure—almost like walking within the orange and white rock walls of the slot canyons of the south woods—creating a remarkable silence in a land of noisy humans and huffing machines. This and its soft radiant cloud-light ceiling made me feel... what? Swaddled? Like being /home,/ as my parents would have used the word back on the farm when I was a child. My spirit books, fashion magazines, and papers cluttered the worn ink-stained blond pine desk. I ran my bare feet over the oval tapestry rug letting the patterns of wands and dryad trees caress my toes. My skin stuck to the cushy tan leather chair as I stood, but I knew that was it hugging me.
Situated to the rear of the building on the first floor, the casement window at the end of the rectangular space opened to the clay roof of a shed. Crisp autumn breezes fluttered the gauzy drapes as I looked out at the barrier forest beyond the stables, lit by the setting sun. The window conveniently allowed Mother Wolf to jump up, as she did right now, and clatter into the room as she pleased. She greeted me with an ever-wet red tongue on my face and backside. (A white wolf opening the front door of the women's dorm, with a key in her mouth, and walking in always frightened at least one student or professor. People called me their Wild Woman, but still never got used to the implications of the name.)
Best of all, as the special guest of Her Highness, nobody dared inspect my room. Everyone knocked, no exceptions. Wolf inside, right? Framed pictures of my boyfriend hung suspended by single powder blue silk ribbons, and they were /very/ inappropriate. Looking at him warmed me deeply, reminding me of being /us,/ together—so I didn't care that my foolish "civilized" human brethren might think. People existed to enjoy themselves, regardless of what nosy people might say. This room supported me as I lived here, trapped in the Townships because circumstance required me to learn to be "more human" as Her Highness was fond of saying. My little supportive enclave encouraged me to be me, and allowed me to dress or not dress as I pleased behind its closed oaken door.
When the House Mother knocked, I simply threw on a dressing gown. I turned the pictures around before answering—to be respectful. It tickled me that she never asked why I always smiled when I opened the door.
#WordWeavers 2403.01 — Introduce yourself as if you were a character in your story. What would your role be?
Can my story be autobiographical?
My first recollection was looking up at a dashboard in a car. It was green, made of metal. My dad was driving, but I don't think there were seatbelts.
I don't remember much from those days because I acquired language late, and then it was French because Mom sent me to a Montessori. I don't remember French, so I don't remember much. Autism was a secret that ran in the family, though I wasn't as bad as Uncle who stayed home all day building houses with cardboard and tape.
My specialness would account for other factors when I grew up, and, oddly, lead me to becoming an author. I think I had little native understanding of people's behavior, less of their expressions. It led me to intensely studying them, learning to predict what they'd do as if my life depended on it.
It did. If I didn't get it right, bad things happened. Don't remember specifically what, but I'm sure of this. Not understanding the language, nor the people, made it hard to remember more than images.
My next recollections come from when I was 7 or 8. It was night and I was home alone, no lights on. Batman was on primetime (/POW! Zowie! Holy Guacamole!/). By the flickering light of the the TV, Chef Boyardee raviolis heated in the pot and smelled really good...
#PennedPossibilities 282 — Are there any insignificant memories that stick with your SC to this day?
Well into my teens, I had made friends because by then the last and least of the chieftain's sons was not and was know never to rely on his status for anything. People thought me safe, and I earned my place amongst the fishers and the traders. It's the girl whose name translates to "the winged silver fish flying" who became my best pal, as the Endless Islanders use the term. We sailed together, fished, ate together when we were in the same village, occasionally explored the two volcanoes that make the eyes of Crab Island. Boy or girl, didn't make a difference to us. Strong, she was always trying to prove herself my equal in strength and courage. In the end, she proved more courageous.
That particular day... She put her hands on me, wanted what could be shared by becoming closer as boy and girl. Very close. I remember her yellow-brown eyes. Her smile, her kiss.
But also who I was. The throwaway son of the chieftain, but his nonetheless. Yes, Islanders can't marry unless she's pregnant and we knew how to prevent that. We agreed, not ready. But it's not 100%, never could be.
If we had had a child... If it were known we loved one another... With what would happen after my father was murdered, it would not have been simple worry for her safety during succession as Mother had taught me, but that she'd be a hostage—or killed.
That day, I said "No." We'd never discover if it were love. We both cried.
That "No" comes back to me every time I meet women, especially exiled in the Endless Island where I feel guilty that I'm safe.
Technology and science wasn't magic, and Sharp Eye knew this more than ever. Five generations ago, Fleetmaster Running Talon had turned a portable cannon on his first Tyrannosaur, and ended their species rein of terror. Since that day, science and progress had ruled their world. Telescopes and the study of astronomy were unknown to her grandkin. The laws of orbital dynamics took a decade to render correctly, and her own grandmother had invented the slide math-relator that made verifying it all possible.
She lived in a world that promised her hatchlings steamships that could cross the Great Ocean between ports reliably, in days, because it need no sails. It offered /their/ hatchlings the possibility of powered flight using a lightweight heat engine. Literature discussed the not too fictional possibility of one day visiting the moon.
She ought have been happy with life and her grand future.
This wasn't the case. She turned the great telescopes with there photo capture plates toward the sky every night.
She'd found a streak.
Not a new planet. Something far smaller. Something far closer.
The rodent was very brazen outside the window. She'd been throwing the mammal bits of meat for the last month as she'd directed the telescopes, so of course he was. It chittered. With googly eyes, needle teeth, and the rotted smell of offal, the creature wiggled its pink nose and whiskers at her. It could see through a window! So smart. Its furry kind survived the freezing nights on the mountain, where despite her downy feathers, and a heavy parka, she could barely breathe the frigid night air. It burned her lungs.
She'd found a giant rock in space. A week later she confirmed it was two. The latest plate insisted she'd found a co-orbiting swarm, the biggest the size of a city or larger, the rest not that much smaller. Its mass made her think it was mostly iron-nickel. The length of the streaks on the plates grew smaller as the planet's gravity well influenced the orbit, sending it down on their heads.
Physics was physics. The ellipse calculations were irrefutable.
Between the constantly erupting volcano lands on the opposite side of the continent—which made sunset burn orange and purple, and sometimes caused snow to fall at the equator—and the dirt and dust that would be kicked out of the atmosphere by the meteor impact to rain down molten rock across the land, would it be that prolific mammal's descendants who'd inherit her decimated world?
Sharp Eye took a deep breath, inhaling the steam of her tea. The big question was: Did she announce her findings? While she had time?
Did it matter?
Who was she to break the world's ignorant bliss by announcing the inevitable? Fame didn't matter any more. How could it?
She sipped her tea and watched the soon to be victorious vermin nose through gravel, looking for roaches. She set the cup down, thinking how pleasant living only in the present was. She knew the future.
Then she thought, surely roaches would survive. Right?
How many years was it since I adopted this family of two-legged monsters? I'd trained them well to feed me on demand and provide me a warm bed and reliably clean litter. In return, I kept their house free of cockroaches and sometimes left a fresh bird on their doorstep.
It took me all this time to figure out the sounds they'd been babbling at me were actually a name! My mother had named me Flash Claws because no kitten was faster.
My monster family had named me, "Whiskers."
How much more demeaning could it be to be named for a body part that every cat had in common? Not much.
I. Was. Soooo. INSULTED.
I immediately took it out on the roll of paper the two-legs mounted for me to get my frustrations out, but the folds of white did nothing to ease my frustration. I walked by my scratching post and took it out on the sofa instead, but that wasn't enough.
Whiskers? REALLY?
The female monster with her kittens left the house, and I thought maybe I'd give her a scratch. I rushed out the cat door. I stopped quickly when she dropped her set of metal door openers. I snatched the keys and jumped back through the cat door.
The thumping on the door was gratifying, but then there was the male, who'd probably come up with the ridiculous name because he was just that stupid. He often sprawled on the sofa—the one I'd just scratched my frustration out on—containers of smelly liquid sometimes foaming all over him, watching his flicker box and farting when nobody was looking, right in front of me where I could smell it. Like an old dog. Many were the times he'd not let me sleep on his stomach. So uncouth.
I loped into the room with the bed and the clothes, selecting a nice white shirt. I dragged it to my litter box.
"Someone explained to me that you were a prizefighter," the blue-winged day angel said unexpectedly. "Makes sense why you were such a good enforcer for the Boss." Bolt had been thoughtful the last block or so. Like the approaching clouds in the sky and hot rising humidity, I saw it coming on her face.
"He blackmailed me," I said, shrugging. "Fun work, though. You saw, I frightened people into paying. Acting crazy. Fists, sometimes." I cracked my knuckles. "Which was fun, too."
"Blackmailing you was his first mistake."
"And his last."
Bolt chuckled, but paced me, slightly in front, evaluating my expression. An ask? "I'm told you don't like dairy—"
/Okay. Where's this going?/ "Upsets my stomach—"
"—and rarely eat eggs. Just veggies. Even with beans and lentils, that's piss-poor low-grade protein for all the physical training you do daily."
I shrugged.
"No fish? Not pescatarian?" Arched brows. Her wings lifted, expectantly, feathers rustling in the breeze.
I studied her. Bolt was a new friend. I'd saved her during the sting operation to topple the Boss, from being shot by the constables—spiriting her away before they could arrest her, and me. The next day, she'd saved me from being blasted by a thaumaturge far stronger than me. I'd have been incinerated. She had healing burns all over her legs for her trouble. We'd both been used all our lives, and bonded over that, when it came down to it.
Yet... Someone had fed her misinformation about my diet. I suspected who. An old friend, a devil-boy who'd once worked for me, loyal to a fault. He had a crush on me, but was accepting my new boyfriend, not fighting it. For the time being, at least.
He was testing her.
I shrugged, just as my stomach growled, loudly, and my face warmed.
She pointed to the top of the building we walked under. "Just so happens, the best Fish & Fry pop-up in Home City is topside today on the terrace." Day angels "roosted," living on the top floors of buildings (or the canopies of forests, or on cliffs. Wings. Naturally.) The physical requirements of flight made them pescatarian. Devil girls and boys were never that strong. I was an exception. Prizefighter. For others, fish was yuck! Eyeballs, don't you know?
"Wanna try some fish?" she asked.
"Um..."
"Mackerel's got the crispiest, sweetest, lightest batter in existence. Shrimp, also. Broiled. Fried kippers and onions. It makes me drool, thinking about it."
I looked askance, waiting to see where she went with this, equivocating non-verbally.
"I'll fly you up! You'll love it."
"What makes you think so? I am no kind of angel."
"The extra protein will help your training, but I guarantee the taste will win you over. I'll even buy."
"Guaranteed, huh?" I stopped. Looked up. Counted fifteen stories. A lot of stairs. With a ride? /Let's test this!/ "Wanna make a bet?"
She sniffed the air. She pursed her lips. "Yeah, sure."
"I don't need money." I gave her a look, grinning, wanting to test her certainty, her resolve. "You kiss me." I would not force her to pay, of course.
She took a deep breath. She looked away, so I didn't know if she flushed. "I can do that. Deal!" She grabbed me around the chest before I could renege, under my armpits.
She hoisted me skyward. It was thaumaturgy: Gravity fields warped around us, playing with my inner ear as she flapped, manipulating them with her wings. A minute later, she set my feet on terracotta tile. The scent of fried food hit me. Super fresh oil. I heard the hiss of fryers, the clack of plates, and flatware tapping against earthenware. Day angels swarmed the vendors. I saw none but the feather folk. I captured every eye.
Of course, I /loved/ Fish & Fry. Kippers and onions, too. Everything she bought me.
Bolt said, smiling nonetheless, "Were holding out on me, weren't you?"
"Don't know who sold you that bridge, but they made a profit. This is as good as any place on the sea coast." I shivered. "Crispy. The perfect amount of oiliness. The homemade hot sauce... the right amount of malt vinegar and salt." I licked my fingers, my lips, then wiped with a tissue. "Thank you! As for our bet—"
In front of all the angels—who minutes ago had watched wondering if I'd turn green or upchuck—she kissed me. Not on the cheek, either. One of those tilting your head kisses. Deep. I—
Was she testing me?
I returned it, though I preferred devil boys, myself.
After a minute, when she decided she needed to breathe, I decided she wasn't a half bad kisser. Maybe she liked me? More than the being-grateful-for-saving-her part? We'd have to discuss, but she needed to buy me a second helping of the rice-battered shrimp, first!
The main antagonist. This is the person she once considered as the person who ruined her life. She once worked for someone whose stated goal was assassinating her, and didn't care if they succeeded. For the last few months, the MC lived in a roommate situation that made them neighbors. Her roommate was being trained by the main antagonist, but also had a bad relationship with her. Their proximity was always a background tension in the story. In the current story, the MC is now working for the main antagonist and understands the MA's "evil" reasons better, but still dislikes her. The MC could ask for her own suite, free of charge, in the same building but is planning on taking her new salary to live elsewhere.
#WordWeavers 2405.02 — What are your MC’s living conditions like? Are they better or worse than average?
Wow, this question! A bit of background: I wrote the original novella, then wrote a prequel novel based on the history in the first story, then retconned the novella, worsened the situation and followed it with new events to make it a novel, /then/ wrote the sequel. It's her life story, now.
In this last story, the answer to this question is the running joke. The new work takes place over three days. She starts having been living with a fellow student, an ever-seeking-male-companionship elite who months ago offered her a free roommate situation—so long as the MC slept with her in the same bed (and her new roommate only sleeps well being held). The next day it's the couch after the MC is reunited with a former coworker (bodyguard) whom she introduces to her elite roommate. They hit it off. Noisily. All night long! The next night, not wanting a repeat performance, she connives to spend a (satisfying) night with her new boyfriend in "palatial" digs in the Residency where the main antagonist lives, but is currently out on a military adventure. Having reconciled with a childhood friend, the subsequent night she ends up on his bed, in a Residency guest suite, sleeping with him and a pile of thaumaturgy books they nerded out over. She regrets not having had more fun with him, but he's too sweet and obviously not ready for that. The next day, she's fighting for her life in a hospital.
Her living conditions are way above average, arguably superior.
Previous Living Conditions
Born in a nice house in an obscure village
Raised in a newly built mansion for a newly titled elite (her)
Homeless for months, having run away, living in encampments and wandering the east coast
Big city hostel for over a year
Gangland trainer's nice apartment with separate beds
Boarding house with aspects of a brothel, where she must defend herself
Leased a one room dance studio where she sleeps on a mat between a wall of open windows and a wall of mirrors, having no need of further furniture
A series of high line hotel and mansion rooms owned the Doña she works for
As for the homelessness, she was moving around without money while hiding her identity, and rarely stayed long. The worst was trying to sleep under eaves in the city during storms; she didn't always have a tent. Regardless, it qualifies as below average living conditions for a total of about a year. It did focus her like of asceticism.
#PennedPossibilities 310 — MC or SC POV: What was your favorite day or holiday when you were a child? Favorite Day Remembrance CW: Sad.
Why are you making me remember this now? My favorite day? When I was a child? It was /that/ day, each time Mom returned home. She would sing to me, but she belonged to the world, the theatre, to the concert hall. Plenty of her albums proclaimed that. "Midnight, the Voice and the Heart of the Nation." Those albums, they're all I really have of her. She wasn't one for family pictures. Or family. It's why I can't listen to them any more, and walk out of restaurants when any of her show tunes play.
I do sing her songs in the shower, unthinkingly. My roommate doesn't know who I really am, but she's told me my voice is just like hers. Stupid memory. Stupid reflexes.
I remember being /so happy/ when she'd return home. She'd sing to me, but wasn't at all "hands on." She'd sing and she'd listen to me telling all the things that happened that day with friends and nannies—always with a smile, but I was always on the floor or in my bed or in someone else's lap. Her manager—with whom I share my hair color and skin color so he likely fathered me—would hold me while she sang sometimes. He'd read to me. He'd call me his little tomato, since that was the hair color we shared.
I remember the pair once laughing after I'd been put to bed, not sleeping. I'd peeked through a barely opened door to see. /Him/ she held.
I loved them both.
You've made me remember. Are you happy now? How many times could it have been that I remember her returning? A few dozen? They died before I was five, and now I remember /that,/ too.
[That's the Aurora Midnight, the devil girl from the Reluctance stories. Author retains copyright (c)2024 R.S.]
#WordWeavers 2405.10 — Antagonist POV: What do you like the most about yourself?
[A short tootfic. Likely canon. Her Highness speaking. From /Inklings:/]
My jaw almost dropped at the shear gall of the question, but the Midlands plenipotentiary was, if anything, expert at being jovial. His smile was disarming. He was a diplomat. I didn't gape, but put the tea cup down carefully.
"You're referring to the dragon incident, aren't you?"
He nodded. He plunked a couple lumps of brown sugar in his tea, stirring. It accounted for his corpulence, something rare amongst his gaunt brethren who spent much of their day running on forest paths. He'd made it from the Midlands in just weeks, on horseback I guessed. Poor horse. "It's on everyone's tongue. You'd mobilized the militia. Detailed reports hit the Forest Ridge High Tower as if carried by a thunderstorm."
He was making sure I knew "people" kept him well informed, and that my military wasn't what interested him. Much, anyway. I sighed, crossing my legs as I sat back.
I'd mobilized the best and most radiant of my magic users. None could best me, but we expected to face a wyvern the size of my in-town mansion. It had burnt up part of the Fell Woods. A good thing, thinking about that unassailable haven for monsters and wild beasts. Then it attacked a farm.
"The attack on the farm was an accident," I said off-handedly, steepling my fingers.
He paused. Blue eyes speared me. I'd never announced the details of what happened because if I made them official rather than rumor, the public might panic. Nobody died.
The Midlands ought know, I decided then and there. It'd be to my advantage. I'd let him decide the implications. "The grain silo had a moisture problem. It had started to ferment. Who would have thought a dragon might like beer?"
He chuckled, then, "You're serious? You know this? /How?"/ He put down his tea cup with a loud clink, spilling some of the reddish liquor.
I'd rode in with an elite company of my army, through a wood arch that proclaimed "Cornfeld," into a farm yard. I'd been ready to use my radiance to repel fire; dragons of all shapes breathed fire. My troops had the best spears, but it had been centuries since anyone had needed weapons against dragon scale. Would newiron even work? Drowning the beast by swirling airborne the farm's pond was almost our best offense, if the magical beast decided to fight. I knew they disliked fighting. I hoped that I had that much correct. If I had to resort to radiant kinesis to heave rock from a stone fence, it might decide to retaliate against my Townships—if I failed.
What I found was a half-naked girl, barely a woman though very tall, mollifying a distraught farmer and mediating with a red dragon who looked to be hanging on her every word. I could tell this, even though the dragon had the form of a giant bat.
Apparently, with her mediation, both parties were apologizing to each other!
Worse, though covered with mud and ash, visibly scarred, the young woman was devastatingly beautiful. The type of beautiful that made a seasoned and well worn woman like me think of a different kind of bedmate. I wasn't a man...
Wintereyes was her name. She had befriended a dragon.
Innocent and kind.
And immeasurably dangerous.
The ingénue now attended my magic university, despite being uncomfortable around people and wearing clothing. Learning to be human. One of mine.
I said, "What I like about myself is that I know when to fight and when to make friends."
#PennedPossibilities 311 — What is a memory that makes your SC swell with pride?
That armor. The black dragon armor, light as an autumn breeze. The last who owned it, legends say, a million died to take it away from her, but failed in the end.
She gave it to me: The ruler of the world, the most powerful thaumaturge alive. I was the one who nearly killed her, when we fought for our lives incidentally breaking the Curse of Harmony upon her.
I didn't break the curse but was the one who nearly killed her. Yet...
My friend—whose life I saved by pushing her out of the way of a plasma bolt and getting my flank burnt as a result—reminded me of the legend. Made me test the magic, which let me fly like an arrow and loop and dodge more agilely than a sparrow. She added, "She told me it's the first time anyone's got that close in a century. It's a bribe, you know, A loan. She wants you to work for her. You impressed her. "
#WordWeavers 2405.20 — How did you settle on your antagonist's appearance?
Antagonists almost always are regular people with different agendas than the MC's. Rarely, they have a skewed sense of right and wrong or how reality works, which could describe a few MCs. In any case, I very much wish to prevent latching on to a stereotype as it will paint a divergent picture of what I want to represent and, far worse, comes with a subtext that I have no control over. Like the MC POV, I keep appearances vague so the reader can use their imagination, only less so because antagonists are seen and features important to the story must be eluded to. The MC will also make uncensored comments in her internal dialogue, aka 1st person narration.
In one case, the antagonist got her own side story as the POV. Note in the following #excerpt from Fledge, she has woken up with bodily changes (and amnesia). She self-labels herself as a chimera, a monster that's a combination of creatures but in her case parts of other people. She never states facial features, needs never say anything about hair color, or what we relate to as race. She does mention an in-story kind of human. However, the following feature is important to her "appearance" as it relates to the question, as well as the plot. She's squatting on a tree limb two dozen stories high...
He [her rescuer] pointed at the useless things on my back. "You remembered enough to shield your fall [...] using them. You're learning."
Below my normal right shoulder blade, a red-feathered monstrosity twitched. Adjusting my hips carefully, I glared left to see iridescent blue and purple feathers and down lit by the setting sun, better suited for a pigeon's breast. The day angel wing poked out, balancing, splaying breeze-rustled feathers to instinctively steady me. My blue "add-on" was larger than the red. Both went thwack to my back, acting as if they'd noticed I'd noticed my alien, unasked for, new limbs playing—behind my back—and hid. I had to steady myself with a hand.
#PennedPossibilities 324 — SC POV: If you could relive one day of your life without changing anything that happened, which day would you choose? Tootfic: Reframing the Experience
[When my SC says armor, it's really a weightless magical exoskeleton that melds with her body. It looks like blackened bones, because it is. —R.S.]
Oh, there's plenty of days I'd relive unchanged. Like the day I fledged, when I first flew on my own. Or the day learned the thrill of hauling things through the sky. Both good events in a rather dull and awful childhood that turned to cinders when my parents disapproved of the way I wanted to live my life. Said I aimed for the dirt not the sky. Maybe they weren't so dumb—I ended up badly, flying messages for a crime boss over a dozen years. But, then, there was that day last week...
I've told you a few times how I ended up with the armor and a new job training as a pretorian, you know, having faced down the greatest thaumaturge who ever lived, having nearly killed her. Impressed her.
I thought.
Well, my drill instructor was training me that dawn. I wore the armor. The thaumaturge dove at me, full speed. She's a monster flier, taller, more massive, immortal. I jumped into the sky. Fled.
She followed.
Though the armor let me fly like a sparrow, change direction in a heartbeat, and take a thumping only slightly changing my course, it had been her armor once. She kept appearing before me, striking at my face or heart, sending me into spins toward the ground, stalling me out, almost panicking me into flying into trees or buildings. For all her mass and the inertia that implies, I barely avoided her, half the time with her cackling at my barrel rolls or dives that sent down feathers flying. She had muscle; I tired despite the armor until I thought my heart would burst from my chest, at which point a flyby pitched me into the ground.
I skid across the running track on my belly right up to my instructor. I don't know how I didn't break a wing or my neck. Ok, I do: The Armor.
She landed beside me with a loud thump. She wasn't even winded! She told him, "She lacks stamina. Train her harder."
She leaned down until her face was in my face. I smelled maple syrup on her breath. She said, "You need to use the magic in the armor. There's a class at first bell in the Ivory building, room B7. Shower and be there ON TIME."
I have wings.
I don't do magic.
I showered though, once my legs stopped shaking. I slunk into the class still half-frightened out of my wits. My new friend was there, the curse breaker, a former prizefighter, the one I'd fought beside against Her, that ended up with me getting the armor. It was some sort of advanced special Ed class for mages. I suddenly felt totally inadequate and I cried. Me. At the age of 27, I cried telling her my story, pointing to my purpling bruises, complaining that had She gotten in a good strike She would have caved in my rib cage.
My friend was having none of it. She said, "You're a day angel who just went ten minutes fighting Her. Somehow, you're still alive."
I hadn't thought about it that way. I later learned the word, "Reframing."
The instructor came in with a truckload of tomes and grimoires. She had prepared him for me. He gave me a magic primer. I knew it was a primer because it had PICTURES of youngsters playing. Despite the stares of the other students, I read the book.
Half hour later, I got the armor to glow dull red, like iron out of a forge. Truly. Awesome. Didn't know what it did except look intimidating, but still...
Awesome.
I felt my heart grow large in my chest, and it struck me. Someone (okay, the ruler of the nation) wanted me for who I was and who I could become, and because I was capable. She wanted me to aim for the sky. My new friend supported me and pushed me forward. I liked this, who I was, what I was finding I could be, could become.
And.
Oddly.
I realized, for what it was worth, my parents would approve. (And flap them if they didn't!)
#WordWeavers 2406.04 — Antagonist POV: Is it easy for you to apologize? Can you apologize to someone right now?
If I made a mistake or bumped into somebody? Of course. Many people recognize me, or take a look at me, and something between awe and stupidity sets in. I account for that. I've survived the fall of civilizations; I can be charming. What I won't apologize is for doing things I must do, whether it simply upsets you or ends up killing people you knew, and all the permutations in between. My role in this miserable life that never ends is ensuring humanity survives. Nobody apologizes to me for saddling me with that responsibility. You know what really ticks me off? Questions like this one. Sorry!
#Writever 2404.01 — Time
[/Apologizing ahead of time. —R.S./]
"Are you sure using /Unlock/ on his door— what?" Céline said, getting her first look inside the centuries old Montpellier townhouse. Dust coated everything in the foyer, and the apples in the crystal bowl on the Art Deco console looked like shrunken heads. An orange was covered in blue-green and the dried soup might have been a banana. Little flies and a cloud of spore swarmed up in the gust of air when Béatrice shut the door.
Celine covered her mouth with a kerchief as they walked around the rat droppings on the red Persian rug toward the stair. She added, "So, Risgold died?"
"Not exactly..." Béatrice's voice trailed off.
"Well, I'll miss the old fart; was missing him is why I mentioned it at the Sorcerer's Club. Always good for chuckle, his misinterpreting things in spells." They descended the stairs.
"Yeah. Always discovering the unexpected by accident—"
"Needing us to point it out. Why are we going to the servants quarters?"
"He lived alone, so he cooked."
"Ah. Of course—"
Béatrice sped ahead. She held out an arm to stop her from entering the kitchen. The stately woman shook her head.
Céline groaned. "He is dead, isn't he?" She sniffed. "Something smells off."
"It's the icebox; he left it open. Please be careful. Open the door but don't enter. There's an active spell."
Céline nodded. With eccentric Risgold, it was /always/ a spell. These days, male sorcerers wore a business suit when working with customers, or jeans and a white t-shirt when they worked because they were comfortable and easier to clean. Risgold? Robes. Shades of the 17th century. His white hair wasn't a powdered wig, but at his age looked like one. He even used a finger flame to light women's cigarettes, the few that still smoked, anyway. Then there was his candles. He used them around his house instead of electricity.
The sconce beside the door held a melted down, drippy sample.
The door was a swinging door, the better for the servants to push open with a foot with filled trays for the upstairs. Béatrice had Céline pull it open, possibly because it kept Céline from reflexively stepping in...
Risgold looked up in the light of the ten candle chandelier, blue eyes sparkling in the dancing flames. "Ah!" he said, tugging on his long wizardly beard. "I'm glad you showed up. This is a half-recipe, but should prove plenty for all of us. It's really simple—" He squinted at the /Provence Cuisine/ cookbook he had propped up before him.
Céline's smile grew as she cried, "Risgold, it's so good to—"
Béatrice restrained her by grabbing her shoulder tightly. She pointed to this side and that. The icebox door stood open behind the old man, rotted meat on one shelf, a burst carton of milk having toppled itself to the floor. Inside of a sphere centered on Risgold, everything remained fresh. The chicken on the marble top. The sliced vegetables. The stock pot on the gas fire, bubbling and steaming. The man: very much alive.
Risgold looked up, his finger on the recipe book. "Just a minute. I'm trying to figure out what this means." He tapped the page with a finger, then grabbed his ebony wand. "Don't know how to measure 3 grams of time, but I can certainly add 3 minutes—" he finished, swishing it.
The flash was blinding. The next instant, the stock pot splashed as Risgold dropped cut potatoes into it, then returned to scrutinizing his recipe. In the space of three minutes, Risgold noticed his visitors, greeted them... grabbed his wand and swished it.