Archive | March 2011

Draft map of Reiassan, showing a few major landmarks

Mar11

Draft map of Reiassan
Draft map of Reiassan

showing a few major landmarks

The borders are general “around this latitude” border markers; the border itself would be much more wiggly, following the terrain. The higher border is a historical border, when Ossulund was Eretia, but the border has moved a lot through the centuries

The line in grey down the right-center of the continent is the highest elevation of the major mountain range; the absolute highest peaks are up in the glacial area, petering down to hills by Bitrani territory.

The large river in the middle is the Velka Ree (“big river”), the dot near that is Ossulund.

Although I’m contemplating making the planet slightly smaller than Earth, right now, a degree latitude is the same as it is on Earth – approx. 69 miles (111 km). The continent is approx. 2760 miles long (4441.79 km), 518 miles (833.64 km) wide at the widest point.

Because of the very uneven terrain, travel on goatback is approx. 15 miles a day, down to 10 on the rough parts. Much of the travel is via rivers, and, since the rivers generally flow from North to South, this is part of the reason Callenia is better able to conquer Bithrain than the other way around.

15 Minute Ficlet – Building

Mar9

From Ty’s prompt here, check out the picture!

They were building it anew.

There hadn’t been much left after the devastation, and the city they’d lived in had been a stinking, rotten, fetid ruin. Better to leave it to the dead and dying, better to leave the diseases to work their course. Those of them who could walk, who could carry a pack, who wanted to live, had banded together and headed for the hills.

They had among them a surprising number of skills for “city people,” and just as surprising, to them, were their gaps in knowledge, vast holes that the city, that civilization had filled in. but they had what their ancestors had had, in spades: a strong desire to keep living, and a willingness to innovate.

They didn’t all have a willingness to work hard, but those who didn’t either fell by the wayside, or found ways to work “smart,” to reinvent old technology quickly, and to steal or jury-rig what they couldn’t just make.

They were on an old tor, where thousands of years ago, castles had risen from the ground. The castles were gone, victims of age, victims of the same devastation that had ruined the city, but the things that had made the tor a good place to build a castle were still there: fresh water, a view for miles in every direction, and stone. Stone and stone and stone. They grew tired of looking at stone, of carrying stone, of cutting stone. Their hands were covered in so much dust that they might as well be stone. They dreamed of stone.

But they dreamed in safety, behind sturdy walls that grew sturdier and safer every day; they dreamed with full bellies, their food supplies growing from hunting and gardening and plain old scrounging; they dreamed in a growing community, in a world they were building for themselves:

Their dreams were of stacking stone; but their hopes were of stacking knowledge.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/21335.html. You can comment here or there.

Three Word Wednesday: In her Song

Mar9

This comes after Curriculum, which came after Learning Curves,, which came after Flattery, but it can stand on its own.

It’s in my fae apoc setting, in the same locale as Walled Flowers and Slipping the Trellis

Three Word Wednesday is a once-weekly 3-word writing prompt.

The three words are dainty, haunting, tantalize.

In Her Song

Flowers and herbs are, by nature, mute, pretty, to be savored, adored, enjoyed; and thus was it with most of the Flowers in Lady Alouetta’s Garden: they might converse, but only as an echo of the patrons’ conversation. For the most part, pleasure was taken of them without engaging them except as a decoration, a receptacle, a delicacy.

One Flower was different from all the other pretty things in the Garden: rarely touched, and never without her consent, rarely spoken to, her presence in high demand but, unlike the other Flowers, almost never privately, almost never for the bedroom or the grotto.

Her name was Zinnia; her name was always Zinnia, and that alone set her apart, when her fellow Flowers changed name with the day, with their handlers’ moods, with their patrons’ desires. It was, of course, not her birth name, but no-one but the Lady herself, and Zinnia, knew who she’d been before she’d come to the Garden.

She was slender, dainty even in comparison to the others there, who tended towards a slim fragility favored by many patrons, with tiny hands and feet and an ethereal speaking voice that she rarely used. Clothed in lavender and cornflower, she brought to mind more a lily of the valley or a forget-me-not than a hearty, bright Zinnia, but Zinnia she was, last in the alphabet, last in line, last in the bunkhouse. Newcomers puzzled over her, chin high, smile faint but perpetual, until the first Saturday night.

When she stepped up onto the small stage and the room quieted around her, granting her the courtesy of attention they granted no other Flower, even the densest newcomer began to understand something was afoot. When she opened her mouth, it all became clear.

She had a haunting voice, unearthly, fae; she drew people out with a note, with a measure of a melody. She pulled at their hearts, at their bodies, at their wallets; she could tantalize an aesthetic into dance and bring stoic businessmen to tears. When Zinnia sang, everyone listened.

The boy who was sometimes known as Jason was serving tables today, a jonquil tucked behind his ear in lieu of a name tag; it was the first day Lady Alouetta had seen fit to allow him in public, and the first time he had heard Zinnia perform. He watched the patrons around him struggle with their emotions; he watched them lose the battle, one after another, like dominos falling, and he worried. If he cried like that, would the Lady understand? The other Flowers were smiling, moving among the tables as they were called for, seeming oblivious to the song’s tug.

He chewed on his lip, knowing he wasn’t supposed to do that, either, but too concerned not to. The song was pulling at him; she was singing of home, which was just cheating, a home he could barely remember. Weren’t the others bothered by it? Hadn’t they been torn from their lives, too?

Jason-Jonquil glanced up at the stage, at the singer, just as she looked at him. She threw in a trill that sounded like a flamenco dancer twirling, and winked, very deliberately, at him. Her melody changed, a tug and a tear, ripping the song from home to prison, ripping the listeners with her. The Flowers, who already lived in prison, who had already been torn from home, swayed with the music and were unhurt; the patrons reeled.

He stifled a chuckle and moved on to the next table, to the next patron scrubbing surreptitiously at tears, understanding, for a moment, why the other Flowers smiled at Zinnia’s songs.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/21035.html. You can comment here or there.

Sure! Census meme

Mar9

Ganked from mmegaera, who ganked it from ann_mcn.

In 2011, I am living with my husband, with one cat, in a one bedroom apartment in Trumansburg, NY, between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes, half an hour from Ithaca, an hour from Syracuse and an hour and a half from Rochester

In 2001, I was living with my husband-then-boyfriend, two roommates, one of whom I’d used to date, and two cats, in Brighton, NY, a suburb of Rochester.

In 1991, I was living with my parents in their log cabin in Churchville, an exurb of Rochester, with two cats (different cats).

In 1981, my parents and I moved from a duplex in Spencerport to the log cabin we finished building (okay, they built it, I watched). We had a cat, who lost herself on the move.

In 1971, my mother had just turned 20 and my dad 21, and I don’t know where they were.

Unproductive

Mar8

Started writing a to-do list.

Stared at it.

Decided tonight would be unproductive. And then, by Saturday, I’ll figure out how I’m going to go about the geographical/climate/biomic worldbuilding bits for Reisassan.

A small rant on tolerance

Mar8

This began on Twitter, but I’m posting it here after some encouragement to do so.

In short: I’m sick and tired of hateful blanket statements about other groups/parties/affiliations.

To be tolerant, one needs to be universally tolerant; either it’s okay to have any opinion, or none are okay.

(Noting, of course, that an opinion or a political affiliation are not, in themselves, actions (hitting someone with a stick is still bad))

Religious group X, political group Y; they do not themselves hold opinions. Bigot A, Loudmouth B, they may, but assuming they represent an entire group is just turning around and being as hateful and prejudicial as they are.

To the end of “all I can do is disagree,” I will unfollow people who are spewing hate speech, whatever direction they are spewing it in.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/20675.html. You can comment here or there.

Carry On Tuesday: Walking away

Mar7

This is a weird one, from Carry on Tuesday and http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/writingexercises/ss/pictures.htm – prompt “And that is how I remember them”

And that is how I remember them, standing by the highway, he fussing over the tire, pretending he knew what was going on, she posing, as she liked to do, Mama’s little drama queen.

If it strikes you as odd that I can talk about them like that, the daughter I bore out of my own body, the man whose bed I shared for all the years after her birth, then remember: that moment, standing there on the desert highway, is the last time I saw either of them. I took a snapshot and told them I would walk to the nearest gas station and call for help.

To my credit, if you’re willing to credit anything to a woman who walks away from such things, I did call for help. Then I kept walking.

I hadn’t meant to. I’d meant to do exactly what I’d said when I’d headed out: call, then head back to the car and, maybe, salvage our vacation.

Call it the straw that broke the camel’s back, if you want – not the tire, these things happen, but his helpless uselessness staring at it, her prim and proper put-out expression, so much like her father. There was no helping, of course. I could have fixed the tire. I could have … well, I don’t know what I could have done for her. I’ve never known how she came out that spoilt, despite all my admittedly-amateur attempts as child-rearing. She was always his little princess; I could do nothing about her. But I could have fixed the tire.

It was his snappish defense of his inadequate male pride that did it. I called the tow truck, bought a bottle of water and a straw hat from the gas station, and took out as much money as the credit card and ATM would let me advance. I dropped my purse in the bathroom garbage can and headed south.

Statistics tell me thousands, maybe millions of people vanish every year. I don’t know if it’s true; I’ve never talked about it with anyone, not in so many words, and no-one has ever told me, flat out, that they had walked away from their life. But I know that our little town gets more than its share of paperless drifters, sunburnt and close-lipped, just like I was. I do for them what was done for me, help them find a job, help them move along, and don’t ask any more questions than I have to.

I never ask if they look back, if they wonder how their families are doing without them; I wouldn’t want to be asked about it myself. It might make me wonder how he felt, if he ever knew I’d abandoned him with another man’s bastard, or how she felt, if she knew her tantrums had finally driven her mother away. It might make me wonder if they missed me at all, or if I was truly the cuckoo in the nest, and not her.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/20049.html. You can comment here or there.