A Plague - Prompted Free Write

Prompt: A plague

Wordcount: 1250

written today

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Day 14 of the Month of Julium, Year 1109

Everything was empty when we first walked into the village. The streets were unswept and silent, market stalls closed, windows shuttered up or else hanging open loosely, a curtain half visible here and there, listlessly fluttering in the breeze. It was unnerving to be sure, and gave a man more than a bit of pause. I’d wanted to turn back then, to guide the horses back onto the road: our supplies were not nearly so badly depleted as to necessitate a stop in such a place. Even if they had been, well, few men have died of a day or two of riding on an empty stomach but quite a few, by the look of things, had died from staying in this place. Once we got a few more yards in, the place began to positively stink or rot and disease.

Again I found myself wondering what I was doing amongst these people, for I knew as soon as I opened my mouth in protest that she would disagree, would push forward into the bloody deathtrap. There was no chance of Harman disagreeing with her either – even after four weeks, I wasn’t quite sure what the tie between the two of them was, why such a big man, a warrior clearly trained by one of the Seven Orders, was traveling with a Black Mage as if he was a common mercenary or bodyguard. Of course, one might ask why one such as myself – a journeyman Arcane Mage trained under the auspices of the Royal Academy, was traveling with her as well. That of course is a story described elsewhere in these journals. Suffice it to say that Ayelet was not what you would expect of Black Mage, and on the whole, certainly worthy of our loyalty.

In any case, we soon made out way to the center of the village, which was as empty as the outskirts, though a certain flash of movements here and there in some of the windows let us know that a few of the inhabitants of this place, at least, had not yet perished. Whether we would actually seen any of them, however, was at this point very much in question: the villagers in these parts were never particularly amenable to outsiders – when one of them happened to come wearing the black robes, in the midst of such devastation…well, one could hardly blame them if they came to certain conclusions, and thought it best to make themselves scarce.

Wary of entering any of the buildings, which might be full of disease or hostile survivors, we decided to rest in the village square. I cast a few sigils of light and protection around us, both for our own comfort and in the vague hope that some of the inhabitants still living might recognize these as the marks of the Academy and come forward despite Ayelet’s presence. Such luck was not forthcoming, however.

Ayelet prepared a thin gruel for us out of the remainder of our provisions, which we shared in a muted silence, influenced as we were by the mood of our surroundings. Afterwards, I looked through my apothecary case for any useful supplies, while Harman sharpened one of his blades and Ayelet sat in meditation: loathe as she would be to admit it, this place, the death here, was strengthening her significantly. Of course there were other, much more noxious methods by which a black mage like herself could gain strength at plague site, but she was, as I previously stated, quite different from most of the black mages one is wont to encounter in this world.

After some time, she stood up suddenly, and made her directly towards one of the houses, her posture showing a certain immovable determination. Harman glanced up from his work, his eyes flashing warily. He was up in a flash, grunting in annoyance and hurrying after her. With a sigh and not a bit of dread in my soul, I stood up as well, not wanting to be caught alone when they started whatever it was that they were liable to start. Ayelet pushed open the door to that abode without effort and strode into it, the two of us following close behind her. Inside, we found two children, neither possibly older than his tenth year and both within the final stage of the illness. I noted that the plague they suffered was the blackening illness, which darkened a man’s skin to the color of ash and before breaking out in pustules. In the final stages of that disease, a man vomited blood and sometimes bled from the other orifices as well. It was a terrifying illness, and simply sharing a room with these two blighted wretches sickened me; it was all I could do not to go running out again. Instead I stood in the doorway, tense, and watched her.

Ayelet knelt down by the children, unafraid of their disease (she had that right: as a black magician, she had a certain immunity from illnesses, even the most severe varieties) and laid her hands on them. At that point, she did a certain magic, one I have never observed or read in any volume, an ability that seems to be unique to black magicians and among whom it would seem she was the only one ever to have the inclination to discover and use: she absorbed their illness. We watch their skin clear up, a healthy glow return to their previously ravaged bodies while hers, for a few moments at least, took on the look of a plague-ridden woman moments away from her end. Then of course, her natural abilities manifested, and she healed, grew healthy again, if exhausted. I had seen this enough times not to be shocked, of course, but nonetheless I couldn’t help but be awed just a bit, still, by this most orthodox method of healing.

At that moment of course, the surviving villagers, so scarce until now, appeared not far from the doorway in which I stood, looking none too happy with our presumed interference with two of their dying children. Things might have turned out badly for us of course, if not for the presence of Harman, who took that moment to step forward and explain. Coming from such a big man, clearly a skilled warrior, the villagers, many of whom were still clearly weakened from their trials, relented somewhat in their angry assertions, particularly upon discovering the two children alive and in good health. Of course, that did not stop them from running us out of the village, in spite of the lateness of the hour, but Harman did, through a certain menacing swinging of his axe, convince them to sell us a few measures of grain upon our departure.

Not an entirely unexpected end to a day, I must admit, nor particularly undesirable, from my perspective at least. I was more than happy to spent the night sleeping on a patch of cold, hard earth again, rather than in that accursed place. Once, I’m sure, I would have been mortified to be run out of a place in such a way, but traveling with a black magician, you get used to that kind of thing. We moved onwards the next morning, and even had a rather eventful encounter at a certain bridge, though that is, I must say, a story for another entry.

Until then,
Sub Arcane Mage Timothey das Ostraa
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A Parade - Prompted Free Write

Prompt: A parade

Wordcount: 837

written today

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The black boots, shined to a uniform, gleaming perfection, stomped down against the still-frosty earth, again and again in tandem, in waves. Row after row of black and khaki-clad men moved forward, pulled inexorably by unseen force towards the center of the city. They clogged up the bridges and streets: automobiles and bicycles were nowhere to be seen, nor pedestrians making there way to the stores or their jobs. No, today there was only the steady thrum of footfalls, marching soldiers, and on the sidelines, slightly less uniform in appearance, a long line of drummers working diligently at their craft. There were bright banners and oversized flags strung up on the outer walls of nearby building and on lampposts – words of encouragement and lithographed images of smiling children and of Him, always Him, printed just so and clearly visible above all others.

The sidewalks along the main route were crowded, filled with less-than-enthusiastic bystanders. Some, though not all, had stupidly exaggerated grins plastered onto their faces and waved small, cheap flags with a modicum of energy. The rest stood alone or in small groups, bundled up in thick coats, huddling together in attempts to keep warm. Their eyes darted only occasionally towards the procession. Here and there groups of schoolchildren stood dressed in their school colors, most more intent on gossiping or fooling around than on the proceedings; their matronly teachers stood near them, some giving the children grim, reproachful looks, though many others seemed apathetic.

Karl, like most of the other men and woman shoved out onto the sidewalks at the crack of dawn, longed to be elsewhere. It wasn’t even the cold that bothered him, for the makeshift laboratory where the man spent most of his daylight hours was a drafty space with cracking windows that offered little protection against frigid winter temperatures; Karl was well used to the sensation of cold that chilled down to his very bones. No, for Karl, it was the noise, the obnoxious drumming, the whistles of the so-called Peace Officers making sure everyone stayed in line, and of course, the thumping of the boots. They were heavy boots, those, and Karl could still remember viscerally the pain they caused when one was kicked with them, over and over, right in the center of the gut. Karl remembered broken ribs as well.

More precisely, really, Karl wished that he could disappear. It was almost possible – his current project, the one on invisibility, was progressing well. Invisibility could be obtained, in a very limited way and for very short periods, but the current side effects – a particularly painful and persistent rash of the skin chief among them – were such that its use on such an occasion was still far from advisable.

Sighing, Karl shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of his overcoat and looked up, his eyes drawn to a particularly large and colorfully illustrated image of His benevolence hanging from the roof of a nearby storage depot. What would He, His minions, do if they knew what Karl was working on – that Karl was in fact still working, if secretly and quietly now? Nothing good, certainly. Invisibility was, after all, a very promising technology with many possible uses. Yes, they’d like nothing more than to get their greedy paws on his work. He’d taken certain measures, however, to ensure that this would never happen. Karl had learned from his mistakes: he was careful now, cultivated the image of the doddering, broken old man, lean from years of just getting by, his overcoat always dusty and increasingly covered in mended patches. He almost never spoke with strangers anymore, beyond the vaguest of pleasantries (no one who had sense these days did, come to think of it) and he dutifully allowed himself to be herded to these parades without protest. It was painful, standing here, watching this for what felt like the millionth time, and terribly tedious, but worth the sacrifice for the guise of anonymity it allowed him to maintain.

In the afternoon, after all was said and done, the officials back in their villas and the soldiers back in their barracks, Karl would make his way carefully across the city to the little cellar where he worked. He would meet with his apprentice, who would be waiting (hiding) for him there, and together they would work out a solution to this latest riddle of chemistry and mathematics. She had a mind, that one, and he would train her to be something even better than himself. She would never waste time, years, tricked by His words, by their lies. She would perfect anything he didn’t have time to complete, and well – how much easier would it be, for an assassin to succeed if that assassin was bless with a certain invisibility? The possibilities were astounding.

So Karl remained, standing, perhaps even limply waving a little flag when one was thrust at him by a passing officer, and the soldiers kept marching, marching past in their black boots, their robotic motions.
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'A Kindness' - prompt based short story

I suck at titles... 
re-written/edited/expanded version of a writing prompt from 4/2010 
original prompt: "Choosing to hurt someone close to you"

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They climbed out onto the cavetops together. Today, Relanna was acutely aware of the feel of the blueish rock under her fingertips and feet as they moved skyward. As always, the first cold burst of wind was a pleasant shock, a dramatic contrast to the stale, vaguely metallic air of the caves. As they made their way to the nearest launching perch, Relanna’s gaze drifted over the vast, rocky expanse of the surface, desolate as always of any real trace of life: on this world, living things were nurtured deep within the earth, not above it. She tried not to think about conversation she would have to have in a few moments. Like so many things, it had haunted her thoughts for days.

The particular cavetop they had been climbing tapered off slowly to a jagged edge the jutted out over a long canyon. Relanna looked up at the sky. It was dusky and rich, orange with just a tinge of purple and a particular milk-foggy quality to it that never quite went away. The moons were hidden behind that fog, and the stars. She stood at the edge of the cliff, stretching a bit and then standing with the particular stiff, upright ease of a trained soldier, her gaze still focused somewhere far into the distance. After a few moments of this, she turned to the man who had followed her and they both outstretched their wings. Hers were clearly a marvel in comparison: the wingspan was nearly doubled, the quality stronger, vastly superior – even in the dusky half-light, they shined. His were plain, little better than the utilitarian pair that all the free cave dwellers had wielded into their backs when they came of age. More out of habit than any real necessity, Relanna inspected her wings with a critical eye, searching for any flaws that needed repair, any features that could use an upgrade and, of course, anything that could lead to danger in the upcoming flight. Satisfied, she turned her eyes back to her companion.

“Halim” she said, speaking softly, drawing his attention away from his own, much less detailed inspection of his wings. “Halim,” she said again, this time for herself, running the two syllables gently across her teeth. “Halim, Halim, Halim…” she said again and again, but now only in her own head as his gentle eyes rose to meet hers, as his eyebrows rose expectantly. What was she to say to this man who was her cousin, but so much more - a brother, a lover, her oldest, closest friend? What was she to say when she her lips were sealed with the strictest of orders, when all that needed to be said was unspeakable?

She looked up again at the sky. There were so many things that see wanted to tell him. I am going to fly to the moon. I am going to fly into war. Half my body is welded with soldier’s implants, just look at their metallic brilliance, their power: look how far this cave rat has come. Do you remember how we used to run through those old tunnels, how we used to crawl, our hair always sullied with ash, dirt? Now I can fly, further and faster than you could imagine. I still dream, cousin, those dreams that horrify, but what does it matter when I can fly now, fly all the way there to death and moon, as far away from these old caves as I can become. She wanted to talk and talk, to tell him everything so that she could breath normally again.

“This is the last time we’re going to fly together,” she said instead, matter-of-factly.

“What do you mean, Rel?” the man, Halim, asked. He seemed frail now, so slow and breakable, defenseless in the face of all the dangers that lurked in the skies, beyond the fog. She wondered how it could be that once, he’d taken care of her so completely.

“It’s…just how it is. I don’t have time for these things anymore. I got an offer to move to another lode, closer to the Center. Honestly… these flights are a bore. You can’t keep up with me anymore, Halim. I need more,” she said, careful to keep her tone merely bored, knowing how the words, the accompanying lack of emotion would grate. She knew him well enough to know what buttons to push: injure his pride, make him feel insignificant.

“Rel…”

“I’m serious. I don’t want to drag this out. This is goodbye. We both need to find ourselves people more….on our own level.”

“I see. So I’m not ‘on your level’ anymore,” he said, a bitter, taunting tone creeping into his voice. Pain. Relanna said nothing. She remembered the taste of his lips on hers, giggling madly in some old crevice of the rocky blue walls, his hand wrapped around her back at the waist. She remembered how safe she felt when he held her, when she woke up from the dreams gasping. You can’t protect me now, she wanted to scream. She shrugged.

“It’s better this way,” Relanna said.

“Better this way? Are FUCKING serious?”

Once, she used to dream of her mothers death, the way the falling stone had crushed and split open her skull, spilling out blood and a grey mass. She used to dream of that terrible shaking. Now she dreamed of her own death. She dreamed of her many possible deaths and the aftermaths, the tears, the screams. She dreamt of him, Halim, screaming till his throat was raw, dry heaving uncontrollably. Yes, Relanna was far too familiar with the effects of loss not to know what would happen afterwards. Those images played over on her eyelids even now, waking, as she once again tearlessly shrugged.

“I should go.” She was all she said in response.

“Yeah, go, wouldn’t want you to waste your precious time with the likes of me. Selfish cunt.”

She wanted to hug him. She wanted to feel his body one last time, pressed against hers, to touch his skin. She wanted to take the pain and anger out of his eyes. Instead she launched herself off of the cliff and into the endless tangerine sky. Her hair flew up as the wind wrapped around her small muscular body, chosen and endlessly tweaked by the engineers who gave her those glorious wings. Halim’s figured retreated into the distance, growing smaller and smaller, becoming nothing.

You can’t protect me anymore, but I can protect you.

If there were tears, no one would see them up in the skies. The wings shined brilliantly.

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"A Stare" - Short Prompted Free-write

Prompt: "A crumpled one dollar bill"
Wordcount: 642
written today
  
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She pays you in crumpled one dollar bills so often you wonder if she is some kind of stripper or whore, though you’d never be so bold as to ask, of course. She doesn’t really dress or act like it though: when she comes into your store, her ash blond hair is almost always tied back in a ponytail or a loose bun with a few strands floating freely here and there, and she wears loose jeans and long cardigans that almost reach down to her knees and always cover her arms. She doesn’t wear make-up or high-heeled shoes or anything of the like, so you have no evidence for your theory, such that it is, except for those dollar bills, and the fact that she always comes in during the day, mid-morning often as not, so who knows what she is doing or dressed like at night.

She always smiles at you, in a vague, distracted way, but rarely speaks more than a word or two as you go through the motions of your transaction. Sometimes the smile reaches her eyes, but usually not. Usually, you think she looks rather sad. You tried to tell her a joke once or twice, to see if you could make her smile, but she didn’t seem to find it funny or really even understand it was a joke you’d just told – most people are like that though, don’t get your jokes, never have. Sometimes you think back on her visit hours after she’s left, trying to imagine what you could have said or done differently, something that would have gotten her to talk or laugh. It’s been months since you’ve first seen her and you still don’t know her name.

You could try talking to her straightforwardly of course, but that never seems to work out very well for you, with anyone. You never know what to say, can’t be bothered with the little things that mean nothing that people are always saying to each other; the things that really interest you, the things you really know, are things that no one wants to hear about. You used to talk about them anyway as a kid, talk and talk to anyone who’d stay still long enough to listen because they were just so exciting and you wanted to share. You lost quite a few friends that way, annoyed quite a few rather larger kids who hadn’t been friends in the first place… These days you know better, stay quiet mostly, and that works out well enough with most people.

With her though, you wish you could speak. You wish you could ask about semi-circular the bruises you saw on her neck once, about why she comes in so often when almost everyone else only comes in once a week or maybe twice at most (you count their visits, keep track compulsively the way you keep track of the number of steps between your counter and the break room, the way you sort your food on your plate or tray by color before you eat, the way you check three times that everything is off before you leave your house in the morning), about the money and the far off look in her eyes and about how pretty she is and whether she would like to…

You ask her in dreams, in lazy flights of fancy born of mid-day ennui, in the little blue ink doodles you scribble on the edges of the paper notebook you keep on the counter at all times. You ask in words that float away, that dissipate before they are ever formed, in jumbled thoughts, in the little cracks and sarcastic remarks that you recite for yourself every day. You ask when you stare so intensly at her back as she walks in and out, at her eyes, her hair.

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An Older Short Free-writing Prompted Exercise

This isn't really complete, but I do like the atmosphere of it, something to potentially expand on later on...

Prompt: “The golden harp...”
Wordcount: 530

written 07/2010

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The golden harp loomed over the left half of the castle’s antechamber, polished, shining, and as always untouched. It was said that the thing was a relic from another age, from when giants ruled the earth or, alternatively, when the kingdoms of man were still so great that a man’s fingers were large and strong enough to pull at its taut strings. These days, there were few brave enough to touch the thing, never mind actually using it for its intended purpose. These days, it stood only to awe and intimidate, kept in near-pristine condition by a good half-dozen overworked servants.

         

In that it was mostly successful, drawing stares from many of the less familiar faces among those milling around below it on some official business or other. It even affected Fiddle, who was perched atop it, though in his case it was excitement, rather than fear or awe, that raised his pulse above its usual steady rhythm. Fiddle was, among other things, a rather musical creature, and even now the young man’s fingers itched with the urge to try to make the old instrument sing. He could almost imagine the shocked, then appreciative looks of his audience – gratifying, yes, but sadly impossible. Fiddle, you see, happened to be invisible at the current moment, a state that granted him the freedom necessary to go about his business unharassed. The enchantment he was wearing cost quite a bit of coin to have cast, and would be quite ruined by an explosion of music in one of the castle’s most frequented chambers.

         

So the young man sighed, gave the golden harp one last forlorn glance, and scurried onwards, silently making his way to the core of the castle, where the most serious of city matters were being conducted. Among the many talents that the young man possessed, by far the most lucrative was his skill as a spy: Fiddle, the boss liked to brag, could not only get you any and all of the information you required, but also do it so the target would never suspect a thing. Spying wasn’t the funnest of activities – not nearly as nice as playing his lute on a street corner or even a good if not-so-honest game of cards, but as far as coin was concerned, nothing else came close. These days Fiddle could easily afford all kinds of nice little luxuries, chief among them these solid invisibility chants that stayed on for hours and didn’t wear off at the slightest hint of stress or moisture. Of course, Fiddle still tried to stay dry and calm, out of prudent habit if nothing else, but it was nice to have some leeway, a bit of just-in-case wiggle room and the like.

          

All that success did have its downsides – these days he had much more to lose if he failed, and the subsequent high-stress background to the missions was almost enough to make the man go back to selling his music for pennies in the street. Almost. “Well, I suppose everything in this world has to cost you something,” he told himself whenever thinking too much about the state of things started to give him a headache.

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Preliminary

So here we are. I do not plan, as a general rule, to post anything here besides creative writing exercises, projects, related miscellanea, because that is not this point of this. But I want to test out the appearance of things, so...

I have vary many odd and not necessarily intuitively complementary interests, ranging from politics and economics to tarot and astrology. I am, I suppose, creatively inclined, though I don't necessarily think of myself as a writer or an artist or anything such. Sometimes random ideas, characters, scenarios, worlds, systems of government or magic or whatever else, come floating around my skull. I like to play with words, thoughts, ideas, perspectives.

Motivation is always the issue, though, isn't it? I don't write nearly as much as I could these days, even if it is just writing for self-indulgence/as an intellectual exercise. Perhaps this shiny blog, this little space in the vast abstract ether that we call the internet will encourage me to do so. Perhaps interesting things shall come of this. Perhaps...

Will be mostly aiming to post new content/work here, but also planning on going through a few (slightly) older things to potentially edit...those might go up here as well, and will be noted as such.