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queenlucythevaliant · 3 months

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Tell Your Dad You Love Him

A retelling of "Meat Loves Salt"/"Cap O'Rushes" for the @inklings-challenge Four Loves event

An old king had three daughters. When his health began to fail, he summoned them, and they came.

Gordonia and Rowan were already waiting in the hallway when Coriander arrived. They were leaned up against the wall opposite the king’s office with an air of affected casualness. “I wonder what the old war horse wants today?” Rowan was saying. “More about next year’s political appointments, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“The older he gets, the more he micromanages,” Gordonia groused fondly. “A thousand dollars says this meeting could’ve been an email.”

They filed in single-file like they’d so often done as children: Gordonia first, then Rowan, and Coriander last of all. The king had placed three chairs in front of his desk all in a row. His daughters murmured their greetings, and one by one they sat down.

“I have divided everything I have in three,” the king said. “I am old now, and it’s time. Today, I will pass my kingdom on to you, my daughters.”

A short gasp came from Gordonia. None of them could have imagined that their father would give up running his kingdom while he still lived.

The king went on. “I know you will deal wisely with that which I leave in your care. But before we begin, I have one request.”

“Yes father?” said Rowan.

“Tell me how much you love me.”

An awkward silence fell. Although there was no shortage of love between the king and his daughters, theirs was not a family which spoke of such things. They were rich and blue-blooded: a soldier and the daughters of a soldier, a king and his three court-reared princesses. The royal family had always shown their affection through double meanings and hot cups of coffee.

Gordonia recovered herself first. She leaned forward over the desk and clasped her father’s hands in her own. “Father,” she said, “I love you more than I can say.” A pause. “I don’t think there’s ever been a family so happy in love as we have been. You’re a good dad.”

The old king smiled and patted her hand. “Thank you, Gordonia. We have been very happy, haven’t we? Here is your inheritance. Cherish it, as I cherish you.”

Rowan spoke next; the words came tumbling out. “Father! There’s not a thing in my life which you didn’t give me, and all the joy in the world beside. Come now, Gordonia, there’s no need to understate the matter. I love you more than—why, more than life itself!”

The king laughed, and rose to embrace his second daughter. “How you delight me, Rowan. All of this will be yours.”

Only Coriander remained. As her sisters had spoken, she’d wrung her hands in her lap, unsure of what to say. Did her father really mean for flattery to be the price of her inheritance? That just wasn’t like him. For all that he was a politician, he’d been a soldier first. He liked it when people told the truth.

When the king’s eyes came to rest on her, Coriander raised her own to meet them. “Do you really want to hear what you already know?”

“I do.”

She searched for a metaphor that could carry the weight of her love without unnecessary adornment. At last she found one, and nodded, satisfied. “Dad, you’re like—like salt in my food.”

“Like salt?”

“Well—yes.”

The king’s broad shoulders seemed to droop. For a moment, Coriander almost took back her words. Her father was the strongest man in the world, even now, at eighty. She’d watched him argue with foreign rulers and wage wars all her life. Nothing could hurt him. Could he really be upset?

But no. Coriander held her father’s gaze. She had spoken true. What harm could be in that?

“I don’t know why you’re even here, Cor,” her father said.

Now, Coriander shifted slightly in her seat, unnerved. “What? Father—”

“It would be best if—you should go,” said the old king.

“Father, you can’t really mean–”

“Leave us, Coriander.”

So she left the king’s court that very hour.

It had been a long time since she’d gone anywhere without a chauffeur to drive her, but Coriander’s thoughts were flying apart too fast for her to be afraid. She didn’t know where she would go, but she would make do, and maybe someday her father would puzzle out her metaphor and call her home to him. Coriander had to hope for that, at least. The loss of her inheritance didn’t feel real yet, but her father—how could he not know that she loved him? She’d said it every day.

She’d played in the hall outside that same office as a child. She’d told him her secrets and her fears and sent him pictures on random Tuesdays when they were in different cities just because. She had watched him triumph in conference rooms and on the battlefield and she’d wanted so badly to be like him.

If her father doubted her love, then maybe he’d never noticed any of it. Maybe the love had been an unnoticed phantasm, a shadow, a song sung to a deaf man. Maybe all that love had been nothing at all.

A storm was on the horizon, and it reached her just as she made it onto the highway. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled. Rain poured down and flooded the road. Before long, Coriander was hydroplaning. Frantically, she tried to remember what you were supposed to do when that happened. Pump the brakes? She tried. No use. Wasn’t there something different you did if the car had antilock brakes? Or was that for snow? What else, what else–

With a sickening crunch, her car hit the guardrail. No matter. Coriander’s thoughts were all frenzied and distant. She climbed out of the car and just started walking.

Coriander wandered beneath an angry sky on the great white plains of her father’s kingdom. The rain beat down hard, and within seconds she was soaked to the skin. The storm buffeted her long hair around her head. It tangled together into long, matted cords that hung limp down her back. Mud soiled her fine dress and splattered onto her face and hands. There was water in her lungs and it hurt to breathe. Oh, let me die here, Coriander thought. There’s nothing left for me, nothing at all. She kept walking.

When she opened her eyes, Coriander found herself in a dank gray loft. She was lying on a strange feather mattress.

She remained there a while, looking up at the rafters and wondering where she could be. She thought and felt, as it seemed, through a heavy and impenetrable mist; she was aware only of hunger and weakness and a dreadful chill (though she was all wrapped in blankets). She knew that a long time must have passed since she was fully aware, though she had a confused memory of wandering beside the highway in a thunderstorm, slowly going mad because—because— oh, there’d been something terrible in her dreams. Her father, shoulders drooping at his desk, and her sisters happily come into their inheritance, and she cast into exile—

She shuddered and sat up dizzily. “Oh, mercy,” she murmured. She hadn’t been dreaming.

She stumbled out of the loft down a narrow flight of stairs and came into a strange little room with a single window and a few shabby chairs. Still clinging to the rail, she heard a ruckus from nearby and then footsteps. A plump woman came running to her from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron and softly clucking at the state of her guest’s matted, tangled hair.

“Dear, dear,” said the woman. “Here’s my hand, if you’re still unsteady. That’s good, good. Don’t be afraid, child. I’m Katherine, and my husband is Folke. He found you collapsed by the goose-pond night before last. I’m she who dressed you—your fine gown was ruined, I’m afraid. Would you like some breakfast? There’s coffee on the counter, and we’ll have porridge in a minute if you’re patient.”

“Thank you,” Coriander rasped.

“Will you tell me your name, my dear?”

“I have no name. There’s nothing to tell.”

Katherine clicked her tongue. “That’s alright, no need to worry. Folke and I’ve been calling you Rush on account of your poor hair. I don’t know if you’ve seen yourself, but it looks a lot like river rushes. No, don’t get up. Here’s your breakfast, dear.”

There was indeed porridge, as Katherine had promised, served with cream and berries from the garden. Coriander ate hungrily and tasted very little. Then, when she was finished, the goodwife ushered her over to a sofa by the window and put a pillow beneath her head. Coriander thanked her, and promptly fell asleep.

She woke again around noon, with the pounding in her head much subsided. She woke feeling herself again, to visions of her father inches away and the sound of his voice cracking across her name.

Katherine was outside in the garden; Coriander could see her through the clouded window above her. She rose and, upon finding herself still in a borrowed nightgown, wrapped herself in a blanket to venture outside.

“Feeling better?” Katherine was kneeling in a patch of lavender, but she half rose when she heard the cottage door open.

“Much. Thank you, ma’am.

“No thanks necessary. Folke and I are ministers, of a kind. We keep this cottage for lost and wandering souls. You’re free to remain here with us for as long as you need.”

“Oh,” was all Coriander could think to say.

“You’ve been through a tempest, haven’t you? Are you well enough to tell me where you came from?”

Coriander shifted uncomfortably. “I’m from nowhere,” she said. “I have nothing.”

“You don’t owe me your story, child. I should like to hear it, but it will keep till you’re ready. Now, why don’t you put on some proper clothes and come help me with this weeding.”

Coriander remained at the cottage with Katherine and her husband Folke for a week, then a fortnight. She slept in the loft and rose with the sun to help Folke herd the geese to the pond. After, Coriander would return and see what needed doing around the cottage. She liked helping Katherine in the garden.

The grass turned gold and the geese’s thick winter down began to come in. Coriander’s river-rush hair proved itself unsalvageable. She spent hours trying to untangle it, first with a hairbrush, then with a fine-tooth comb and a bottle of conditioner, and eventually even with honey and olive oil (a home remedy that Folke said his mother used to use). So, at last, Coriander surrendered to the inevitable and gave Katherine permission to cut it off. One night, by the yellow light of the bare bulb that hung over the kitchen table, Katherine draped a towel over Coriander’s shoulders and tufts of gold went falling to the floor all round her.

“I’m here because I failed at love,” she managed to tell the couple at last, when her sorrows began to feel more distant. “I loved my father, and he knew it not.”

Folke and Katherine still called her Rush. She didn’t correct them. Coriander was the name her parents gave her. It was the name her father had called her when she was six and racing down the stairs to meet him when he came home from Europe, and at ten when she showed him the new song she’d learned to play on the harp. She’d been Cor when she brought her first boyfriend home and Cori the first time she shadowed him at court. Coriander, Coriander, when she came home from college the first time and he’d hugged her with bruising strength. Her strong, powerful father.

As she seasoned a pot of soup for supper, she wondered if he understood yet what she’d meant when she called him salt in her food.

Coriander had been living with Katherine and Folke for two years, and it was a morning just like any other. She was in the kitchen brewing a pot of coffee when Folke tossed the newspaper on the table and started rummaging in the fridge for his orange juice. “Looks like the old king’s sick again,” he commented casually. Coriander froze.

She raced to the table and seized hold of the paper. There, above the fold, big black letters said, KING ADMITTED TO HOSPITAL FOR EMERGENCY TREATMENT. There was a picture of her father, looking older than she’d ever seen him. Her knees went wobbly and then suddenly the room was sideways.

Strong arms caught her and hauled her upright. “What’s wrong, Rush?”

“What if he dies,” she choked out. “What if he dies and I never got to tell him?”

She looked up into Folke’s puzzled face, and then the whole sorry story came tumbling out.

When she was through, Katherine (who had come downstairs sometime between salt and the storm) took hold of her hand and kissed it. “Bless you, dear,” she said. “I never would have guessed. Maybe it’s best that you’ve both had some time to think things over.”

Katherine shook her head. “But don’t you think…?”

“Yes?”

“Well, don’t you think he should have known that I loved him? I shouldn’t have needed to say it. He’s my father. He’s the king.”

Katherine replied briskly, as though the answer should have been obvious. “He’s only human, child, for all that he might wear a crown; he’s not omniscient. Why didn’t you tell your father what he wanted to hear?”

“I didn’t want to flatter him,” said Coriander. “That was all. I wanted to be right in what I said.”

The goodwife clucked softly. “Oh dear. Don’t you know that sometimes, it’s more important to be kind than to be right?”

In her leave-taking, Coriander tried to tell Katherine and Folke how grateful she was to them, but they wouldn’t let her. They bought her a bus ticket and sent her on her way towards King’s City with plenty of provisions. Two days later, Coriander stood on the back steps of one of the palace outbuildings with her little carpetbag clutched in her hands.

Stuffing down the fear of being recognized, Coriander squared her shoulders and hoped they looked as strong as her father’s. She rapped on the door, and presently a maid came and opened it. The maid glanced Coriander up and down, but after a moment it was clear that her disguise held. With all her long hair shorn off, she must have looked like any other girl come in off the street.

“I’m here about a job,” said Coriander. “My name’s Rush.”

The king's chambers were half-lit when Coriander brought him his supper, dressed in her servants’ apparel. He grunted when she knocked and gestured with a cane towards his bedside table. His hair was snow-white and he was sitting in bed with his work spread across a lap-desk. His motions were very slow.

Coriander wanted to cry, seeing her father like that. Yet somehow, she managed to school her face. Like he would, she kept telling herself. Stoically, she put down the supper tray, then stepped back out into the hallway.

It was several minutes more before the king was ready to eat. Coriander heard papers being shuffled, probably filed in those same manilla folders her father had always used. In the hall, Coriander felt the seconds lengthen. She steeled herself for the moment she knew was coming, when the king would call out in irritation, “Girl! What's the matter with my food? Why hasn’t it got any taste?”

When that moment came, all would be made right. Coriander would go into the room and taste his food. “Why,” she would say, with a look of complete innocence, “It seems the kitchen forgot to salt it!” She imagined how her father’s face would change when he finally understood. My daughter always loved me, he would say.

Soon, soon. It would happen soon. Any second now.

The moment never came. Instead, the floor creaked, followed by the rough sound of a cane striking the floor. The door opened, and then the king was there, his mighty shoulders shaking. “Coriander,” he whispered.

“Dad. You know me?”

“Of course.”

“Then you understand now?”

The king’s wrinkled brow knit. “Understand about the salt? Of course, I do. It wasn't such a clever riddle. There was surely no need to ruin my supper with a demonstration.”

Coriander gaped at him. She'd expected questions, explanations, maybe apologies for sending her away. She'd never imagined this.

She wanted very badly to seize her father and demand answers, but then she looked, really looked, at the way he was leaning on his cane. The king was barely upright; his white head was bent low. Her questions would hold until she'd helped her father back into his room.

“If you knew what I meant–by saying you were like salt in my food– then why did you tell me to go?” she asked once they were situated back in the royal quarters.

Idly, the king picked at his unseasoned food. “I shouldn’t have done that. Forgive me, Coriander. My anger and hurt got the better of me, and it has brought me much grief. I never expected you to stay away for so long.”

Coriander nodded slowly. Her father's words had always carried such fierce authority. She'd never thought to question if he really meant what he’d said to her.

“As for the salt,” continued the king, "Is it so wrong that an old man should want to hear his daughters say ‘I love you' before he dies?”

Coriander rolled the words around in her head, trying to make sense of them. Then, with a sudden mewling sound from her throat, she managed to say, “That's really all you wanted?”

“That's all. I am old, Cor, and we've spoken too little of love in our house.” He took another bite of his unsalted supper. His hand shook. “That was my failing, I suppose. Perhaps if I’d said it, you girls would have thought to say it back.”

“But father!” gasped Coriander, “That’s not right. We've always known we loved one another! We've shown it a thousand ways. Why, I've spent the last year cataloging them in my head, and I've still not even scratched the surface!”

The king sighed. “Perhaps you will understand when your time comes. I knew, and yet I didn't. What can you really call a thing you’ve never named? How do you know it exists? Perhaps all the love I thought I knew was only a figment.”

“But that’s what I’ve been afraid of all this time,” Coriander bit back. “How could you doubt? If it was real at all– how could you doubt?”

The king’s weathered face grew still. His eyes fell shut and he squeezed them. “Death is close to me, child. A small measure of reassurance is not so very much to ask.”

Coriander slept in her old rooms that night. None of it had changed. When she woke the next morning, for a moment she remembered nothing of the last two years.

She breakfasted in the garden with her father, who came down the steps in a chair-lift. “Coriander,” he murmured. “I half-thought I dreamed you last night.”

“I’m here, Dad,” she replied. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Slowly, the king reached out with one withered hand and caressed Coriander's cheek. Then, his fingers drifted up to what remained of her hair. He ruffled it, then gently tugged on a tuft the way he'd used to playfully tug her long braid when she was a girl.

“I love you,” he said.

“That was always an I love you, wasn’t it?” replied Coriander. “My hair.”

The king nodded. “Yes, I think it was.”

So Coriander reached out and gently tugged the white hairs of his beard. “You too,” she whispered.

“Why salt?” The king was sitting by the fire in his rooms wrapped in two blankets. Coriander was with him, enduring the sweltering heat of the room without complaint.

She frowned. “You like honesty. We have that in common. I was trying to be honest–accurate–to avoid false flattery.”

The king tugged at the outer blanket, saying nothing. His lips thinned and his eyes dropped to his lap. Coriander wished they wouldn’t. She wished they would hold to hers, steely and ready for combat as they always used to be.

“Would it really have been false?” the king said at last. “Was there no other honest way to say it? Only salt?”

Coriander wanted to deny it, to give speech to the depth and breadth of her love, but once again words failed her. “It was my fault,” she said. “I didn’t know how to heave my heart into my throat.” She still didn’t, for all she wanted to.

When the doctor left, the king was almost too tired to talk. His words came slowly, slurred at the edges and disconnected, like drops of water from a leaky faucet.

Still, Coriander could tell that he had something to say. She waited patiently as his lips and tongue struggled to form the words. “Love you… so… much… You… and… your sisters… Don’t… worry… if you… can’t…say…how…much. I… know.”

It was all effort. The king sat back when he was finished. Something was still spasming in his throat, and Coriander wanted to cry.

“I’m glad you know,” she said. “I’m glad. But I still want to tell you.”

Love was effort. If her father wanted words, she would give him words. True words. Kind words. She would try…

“I love you like salt in my food. You're desperately important to me, and you've always been there, and I don't know what I'll do without you. I don’t want to lose you. And I love you like the soil in a garden. Like rain in the spring. Like a hero. You have the strongest shoulders of anyone I know, and all I ever wanted was to be like you…”

A warm smile spread across the old king’s face. His eyes drifted shut.

#inklingschallenge #theme: storge #story: complete #inklings challenge #leah stories #OKAY. SO #i spend so much time thinking about king lear. i think i've said before that it's my favorite shakespeare play. it is not close #and one of the hills i will die on is that cordelia was not in the right when she refused to flatter her dad #like. obviously he's definitely not in the right either. the love test was a screwed up way to make sure his kids loved him #he shouldn't have tied their inheritances into it. he DEFINITELY shouldn't have kicked cordelia out when she refused to play #but like. Cordelia. there is no good reason not to tell your elderly dad how much you love him #and okay obviously lear is my starting point but the same applies to the meat loves salt princess #your dad wants you to tell him you love him. there is no good reason to turn it into a riddle. you had other options #and honestly it kinda bothers me when people read cordelia/the princess as though she's perfectly virtuous #she's very human and definitely beats out the cruel sisters but she's definitely not aspirational. she's not to be emulated #at the end of the day both the fairytale and the play are about failures in storge #at happens when it's there and you can't tell. when it's not and you think it is. when you think you know someone's heart and you just don'#hey! that's a thing that happens all the time between parents and children. especially loving past each other and speaking different langua #so the challenge i set myself with this story was: can i retell the fairytale in such a way that the princess is unambiguously in the wrong #and in service of that the king has to get softened so his errors don't overshadow hers #anyway. thank you for coming to my TED talk #i've been thinking about this story since the challenge was announced but i wrote the whole thing last night after the super bowl #got it in under the wire! yay!#also! the whole 'modern setting that conflicts with the fairytale language' is supposed to be in the style of modern shakespeare adaptation #no idea if it worked but i had a lot of fun with it #pontifications and creations

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taleweaver-ramblings · 6 months

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Inklings Challenge 2023: The Last Immortal of Evitra

'Tis the deadline day for the Inklings Challenge (@inklings-challenge), and I have not finished my story, but today is also Ren Faire day, and I will therefore not be able to finish today . . . but it's a long story that I'll have to post in multiple parts anyway, so have part one now, and I'll post the rest over the next week.

Also, in classic Taleweaver fashion, this is a fairy tale retelling. Which fairy tale should be fairly obvious. It is not, however, a romance.

Unedited; please be nice about typos.

~~~~~

The Last Immortal of Evitra, Part 1

Anatole Bérenger Judicaël Télesphore Corentin, lord of Blackrose Manor, last immortal of Evitra, woke to the sound of a child crying.

He let out a quiet growl as he reoriented himself to his surroundings. He’d dozed off in his study, it seemed. The last he remembered, the sun had been just at the top edge of the tall windows. Now it was gone, and the whole room was drenched in black shadows — though, of course, shadows had hidden nothing from him for the last four hundred years.

Anatole stirred and stretched, tracing the sound down the threads of magic that carried it. The child wasn’t within the manor house itself, thankfully, but it was concerningly close. Behind the stables, if Anatole read the magic aright. What it was doing there, he could guess, and the thought made him growl again. It had been a long, long time since small boys dared their friends to creep up to his home and spend ten minutes within his gates. If the practice was starting up again . . . well. It might require him to go down to the town again for the first time in decades.

Unless, of course, he could put a stop to it now. Anatole took his cloak from its hook by the door and swept it around his shoulders. Then he stalked from his study, through the halls to a side door, and out into the night.

By the time he found the child, it had stopped crying and moved inside the stables. There were no horses there anymore, nor even any hay — Anatole had no need for such things these days. But in the back, in a corner of the very last stall, there was a small boy, curled up and shivering with his eyes shut and hands balled into the ragged sleeves of his much-mended shirt.

Anatole stepped into the stall, making sure to leave space in the doorway, and growled again, low and menacing. “Boy. Leave my home or face the consequences.”

The boy startled, and his eyes flew open. Anatole knew well what the boy saw. His cursed form was a work of art, he had to admit — curving horns and red eyes and sharp fangs and claws all sharp and distinct and gleaming even without light, and the rest of him a hulking beast of shadows with just enough substance to resolve into one’s worst nightmares. It was a form to make the bravest of men turn and run.

But rather than fleeing, the boy pressed himself more firmly into his corner. “No. I’m not scared of you, demon.” His voice strongly suggested otherwise. “Oúte o thánatos, oúte i zoí, oúte ángeloi, oúte igemoníes, oúte oi dynámas —”

“Oúte oi dynámeis,” Anatole snapped. “If you’re going to threaten demons with the Holy Writ, boy, you’d better say it correctly. Fortunately for you, I am not a demon. But I am a monster.” He bared his teeth further and growled again. “Now, begone. Go home.”

“Don’t have a home.” The boy’s hands scrabbled on the floor as if searching for a crack or crevice to hold onto. “You’ve got the whole house and all the land. You can spare a corner for the night.”

“If you have no home, then get yourself to the orphanage. I understand that’s what it’s there for.” Anatole pointed out the door. “Go.”

“Won’t.” The boy, finding no handholds, crossed his arms and shut his eyes. “Go away, monster. You’re probably a bad dream anyway.”

How dare the boy defy him! How dare he!

Anatole felt the enchantments woven into every inch of the estate swell in response to his wrath. They didn’t anticipate his need the way they once would have — the curse ensured that — but they would answer swift enough if he called upon them. He could have this boy ejected and back on the road in moments, and in the morning he could add another layer of spellwork to more effectively discourage trespassers.

But it was full night, the town was well over a mile away, and there were wolves in these woods. Sending the boy out on his own would be a shade too close to outright murder for Anatole’s taste. So, with a sigh, he reached down, grabbed the boy, and slung him over his shoulder. Then he turned and trudged back towards the main house.

The boy thrashed and struggled to get free. “Let me go! Put me down, monster!”

“No.” Anatole shoved open the side door, stepped through, and then paused to lock it behind them. “If you’re spending the night on my estate, you’ll do it where I can keep an eye on you.”

The boy continued to wriggle and protest as Anatole made his way swiftly to one of the smaller guest chambers. There, with much relief, he dropped the boy onto the couch. No dust rose — cleaning spells were child’s play, and Anatole had spent his first week of isolation laying multiple in every room. But somehow, the cushions still managed to let off an air of long disuse.

Anatole took a step back. “You’ll sleep here and then leave in the morning.” Now that he’d brought the boy inside, the long-practiced rules of hospitality gripped him like an instinct. “Are you hungry?”

The boy eyed him with suspicion, but gave a tight little nod. Anatole shut his eyes, probing his awareness of the house to check what he had to offer. Apples, cold turkey left from his dinner, cheese — that would do. A few commands and a plate appeared on the low table beside the couch, along with a sturdy mug of water. Anatole opened his eyes again. “Eat.”

The boy poked at the apple suspiciously — rude of him, as Anatole had even gone to the trouble of having it sliced. “Is this fairy food?”

“I have no interest in trapping you in my home.” Anatole resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “I summoned it by magic, but the food is real.”

The boy picked up an apple slice, tasted it, and seemed to approve. “Are you planning to eat me?”

“There’s not enough meat on your bones to be worth the effort.” Anatole turned. “Eat, sleep, and be gone in the morning. I will come to this room at ten o’clock, and if you are not gone, I will remove you myself — and should you return, I may rethink eating you.” He waited to hear no further protests, but rather stalked out of the room, shutting the door behind him. As an afterthought, he locked it, laying a small spell so it would unlock again only after the boy had slept, and sent a command through the estate to close and lock all other doors and to only let them open at his own touch, or if they were necessary to let the boy out in the morning. With that, he made his way to his own bed and fell into a light slumber.

At half-past seven the next morning, he roused as he sensed the boy scurrying out the same side door they’d entered through the night before. Anatole remained awake until he felt the boy vanish off the edge of the estate. Then, satisfied, he drifted back into deeper sleep. He had done his duty; no one could argue that. And now the boy was gone and, with any luck, the threat of being eaten would be enough to keep others away for another hundred years or so.

~~~

Three days passed peacefully, and the fourth dawned cold, grey, and threatening either rain or snow. Anatole had decided some centuries ago that, on such days, resisting the urge to hibernate like the bear he somewhat resembled was far more trouble than it was worth. So, he spent most of the day in the library, alternately napping and listening as a speaker-spell read a book to him, stirring only when hunger made it necessary to summon a meal.

He was just waking from one of these naps when he felt a clumsy tug on the estate’s magic. Immediately, he shook himself, reaching out to see who or what dared try to use his power.

Once again, there was a child at the other end of the disturbance. The same one as before, if Anatole wasn’t mistaken. And there was another with him, smaller than he. Anatole growled, extracting himself from his blankets. Apparently, he’d been too kind to the boy last time. He would not make the same mistake again.

Outside, the sky had resolved into a storm of wind and driving rain and occasional flashes of lightning. Anatole trudged onward all the same, following the periodic tugs in his web of enchantment. A curse and a pox on the boy for choosing this day of all days to come back! And he was further from the main house this time, all the way out in the gamekeeper’s cottage — even longer disused than the rest of the estate’s outbuildings.

The door was locked, but it opened at his touch. The floorboards creaked beneath his feet as he swept inside, drawing himself up to his full height so he nearly touched the ceiling. “I told you not to return.”

The boy — indeed the same one as last time — looked up with wide eyes. He scrambled to his feet, darting in front of the other child. “What d’you care? You’ve got all this space and no one to live in it. We’re not hurting anything. I didn’t come anywhere near your house this time.”

“I care very much when someone trespasses on my property and tries to use my power for his own.” Anatole peered past the boy at the second child: a little girl, perhaps half the boy’s age, yellow-haired and thin-cheeked. “And you should know better than to wander into a monster’s den.”

“There’s monsters everywhere. You aren’t special.” The boy glanced behind him, and his shoulders sagged a little. “One night, Seigneur, please. Then we’ll leave. I promise. We’ll leave and we won’t come back.”

Anatole considered — but the rain and wind outside left him no choice. “I will hold you to that promise.” He turned. “Come.”

The two followed, straggling along behind him, the boy carrying a small bundle on his shoulder and helping the girl along with his free hand. However, after ten minutes, in which Anatole had to stop and wait five separate times for the children to catch up, he turned and simply scooped up both, ignoring their panicked protests. They were light as feathers, both of them — lighter than they ought to be, but perhaps that was merely the greater strength of his current form. Or perhaps he was misremembering. It had been many, many centuries since he’d had reason to carry a child.

He didn’t set the two back down until he’d reached the small guest room where he’d let the boy stay last time. There, he deposited both children onto the couch and once again summoned a platter of food: two bowls of the thick rabbit stew he’d started earlier that day for his dinner, cold flatbread rounds left from lunch, soft cheese, and juicy pears. This time, he very deliberately chose to materialize it on the table by the fireplace. “The food will stay warm until you eat it, at which point you will take care not to make a mess. You will remain in this room, the adjoining one, or the connected bathing chamber until after dawn tomorrow, and you will leave no later than ten o’clock. At no point will you disturb me. Is this understood?”

The girl just stared, but the boy nodded. “I understand. We’ll do as you say.”

“Good.” Anatole stalked from the room — but, to his surprise, the boy followed him out. “What did I say to you a moment ago?”

“I need to ask you something, sir.” The boy held his head up, dropping his tone. “If you eat one of us, make it me. Not Aimée. I’m the one who brought her here. And can you make sure she goes somewhere aside from the orphanage when you send her away?”

Anatole cast a cold glance at the boy. “The two of you together wouldn’t make as much meat as the rabbit I put in tonight’s stew. You may attend to the girl’s fate yourself when you both leave in the morning.”

“Thank you, Seigneur.” There was a bitter note in the boy’s voice, no doubt at the fact that he had to express gratitude for not being eaten. “We’ll not disturb you.”

He disappeared back into the room, and Anatole strode hastily away, working a belated drying-spell to pull the water from his cloak, clothes, and form. One night more. Then these two would be out of his hair and, with any luck, far, far away.

#story: unfinished #inklingschallenge #inklings challenge #team tolkien #genre: secondary world #(couldn't figure out how to work in both this time)#theme: food #theme: shelter #I actually have more written #but this is the cleanest break #and I want to leave myself a buffer

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masterfuldoodler · 22 days

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Concept art sketches for the fairytale I'm making up :3

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allisonreader · 6 months

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#inklingschallenge #inklings challenge #inklings-challenge #a poll for the Inklings Challenge

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inklings-sprint · 7 months

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I just had a thought about something that could be interesting and/or fun. Not something necessarily for this year, but it's still early enough that you could still do such.

But now that we all have our teams, it would be neat if there was a story that had multiple parts that were contributed by people on the same team. I know it's not a team challenge like that, but it would be kind of interesting to see.

#you don't actually want to know all the thoughts that I have about working a collective story together #it would take so much work and coordination with other people #but at the same time could lead into such an epic if there was a team crossover story #where potentially 3-6 people (1-2 from each team each doing a different genre) managed to combine/crossover their stories in some way #but also the original thought of just two people on the same team working together to create one story #it wouldn't even have to be retelling the same scene #inklings challenge #inklings brainstorming week #inklings-challenge #inklingschallenge #inklings brainstorming session

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on-noon · 6 months

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@inklings-challenge

Adreif recited a poem she did not understand at the graves of people she had not met. The sole human alive on the island, she felt obliged to deliver the send-off they couldn't give each other.

Adreif left the freshly dug graves to the isle of ash and shut herself into her box of a time machine. The sides pressed against Adreif's shoulders and vibrated as the box traveled perpendicular to time and space.

The vibrations stopped and the door latch fell. Adreif walked out into a thick, familiar forest. She walk through the sticks, unburdened by the leaves, as those lined the ground.

Adreif approached town cautiously.

A child called out, "Adreif is here!"

Adreif smiled, waved, and strolled into town. She greeted all the people in town. She knew half of the names. The people recognized her. To the small town of Calsand, she was "The Traveler," although she never told any of her travels.

Adreif stayed with Therin, in her small, cozy house. Besides the time machine, that house was the place she had spent the most of her time in.

Adreif stayed in Calsand a week. In that time, she attended a wedding and a coming of age ceremony. She played many games of dice. When Adreif left, the town came to see her off.

Back in her box, Adreif felt she could not stay– she needed to be an outsider to Calsand, otherwise she would not be able to hide the secret of the time machine. But she was glad the town welcomed her and knew her.

Adreif's time machine dropped her in a field after a war. Frozen corpses littered the ground.

Unable to dig into the frozen earth, she looked around for wood to build a pyre.

She could only find a log, weakened by years of rot. Adreif walked back to the field.

"Make sure to collect any metal as well," a uniformed Time Agent called to their partner.

Adreif froze. She wasn't a registered time traveler. There was no place to hide in the field. A terrible site for a battle.

Neither agent had noticed her or her time machine, although they would not recognize the box as capable of travel through time.

Adreif watched the Time Agents. Both knelt down to inspect a corpse. Adreif ran to her time machine, and traveled away.

While outside of time, she said the death poem she learned when watching her mother's funeral.

Adreif landed in a time with no sign of people. She spent some time there, eating the food she could forage. But once she ran through the easily available food, she left and found herself in a bustling city. Adreif wandered around for the day, watching the hustle-bustle of people strangers to one another.

Adreif left the time, as she was hungry and had no currency to buy food.

She arrived in the forest by Calsand. Her feet sunk into the the mud.

Once the forest thinned enough to catch a glimpse of Calsand, Adreif gasped. The town had been destroyed.

Every building had a mark, a broken door or window, timber from the wall missing, or a broken roof. Some houses had only a single corner left.

Adreif made her way to the center of town, investigating the damage.

She didn't see anyone until the field behind the church, which usually grew food for anyone whose harvest failed that year, or who couldn't work a farm.

Although it was spring, the people working in the field were not planting crops but burying bodies.

Therin greeted Adreif, "Hello, I'm sorry I don't have much to greet you with, my house needs repairs."

Therin leaned against her shovel, no longer as spry with the passing of the years.

"I'll help you with that work," Adreif said.

"It's no work for a guest."

"You've welcomed me into your town. Let me help."

Adreif joined in with the ten people from the town, digging graves and filling them.

Adreif said the mourning poem over every grave they dug. She stood by as the others mourned their friends, children, parents.

She stayed around for the entire ceremony, and left as it finished.

Epilogue:

As Adreif grew older, she was more selective of which times she remained in. She didn't want to forage for food when she wasn't sure if she'd find anything.

She traveled through time after time, not feeling anywhere right to settle down, but tired of her constant traveling.

Once she arrived at Calsand, she stayed. She thought of the town as her home, they welcomed her in again. As she lived there, she wondered why the town had never questioned the strange manner in which they must see her age.

When Adreif was younger, she had been careful, trying to only come to Calsand within a few years span, so they couldn't tell she hadn't aged. But after she buried half the town, she cared less.

Adreif died in Calsand. Therin buried her, years before Adreif would help Therin bury her daughter.

#inklings challenge #team tolkien #theme: burial #genre: time travel #story: complete

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swinging-stars-from-satellites · 6 months

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Bury the Dead (with a Stitch Through the Stars)

@inklings-challenge

though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light

i have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night

[The Old Astronomer To His Pupil, Sarah Williams]

Thirsty.

It’s the only thing she can think. It’s all dark and her eyes are sticky shut and she’s so thirsty. It isn’t supposed to make a sound.

Her eyes flicker open to the weak barking whine that come out of her without meaning to. “Thirsty,” she whines, though it’s not supposed to sound like that. When she blinks the stickiness from her eyes a person comes into view, blurry at first. It isn’t one she recognizes. She hopes this one won’t hurt her. She hopes this one will help her.

“Ah, there you are,” says the person in a soft rumbly voice. It’s a man with strangely colored eyes and a wiry beard speckled and striped with white around his mouth. He presses a hand to her back, making her shiver, and she sits up almost surprised to have been lying like that.

“Alright, there you go,” says this careful man. He tips his head in a question she cannot answer, then quickly walks away. She wants to follow him, instinctively, but thinks she does not have the strength. So she just whimpers. There is no one else to hear her. But it’s as if that calls the man back, because he returns with a worried look and holding a small clear cup. She can nearly smell the liquid inside it, can taste it already, and finds her limbs flailing as she reaches for it.

The strange man holds up a finger. She knows that that means wait. She forces herself to still and the man smiles behind his beard. That’s good, isn’t it?

“Drink it slowly,” he says. “Don’t shock your system. You’ll feel very thirsty for a while, but you had an IV the entire time to keep you hydrated.”

She isn’t sure what most of that means, but she tries to drink the cool, sweet water slowly like he said. She wants this man to be happy with her. She dips her tongue into the cup first, as if to lap it up, and ends up spilling much of it when her hands fumble.

“Careful, now,” chuckles the man. He has a familiar rolling accent, and she both knows and does not know the language he speaks in. “You were a part of the younger batch, but your charts didn’t show a name,” he says once she has sipped down all of the water. “You can call me Daniel,” he continues. “and you are?”

She tips her head sideways. There is only a piece of something she thinks may have been a name, once. “I don’t know,” she tries to say, her voice raspy from dis- and mis-use.

The man, Daniel, nods. He turns and writes something down somewhere. She tenses at this. This is familiar. She doesn’t think this is good. “That’s perfectly alright,” Daniel reassures her, though. “Amnesia is a noted side effect of this type of cryogenic inducement, especially at these rates.”

She tries to clear her throat. It sounds like a growl. “Is it… forever?” She asks. It does not bother her. She would just like to know, since it seems that she can ask.

Daniel hesitates, tipping first one shoulder up and then the other, one side and then the next, like swaying back and forth. “Most often, no. It can be permanent in some cases, but usually it’s a case of time and patience. You’ll be fine,” he says kindly. “Do you have a name you would like me to call you in the meantime?”

She thinks of the last warm voice she remembers. It fades in and out of her memory, black and white. “I think…” she licks her lips. “Lai?” And watches for a reaction.

Daniel nods. He writes another thing down, maybe her name? And smiles. “It’s good to meet you, Lai. I’ve already told you my name. I’m this vessel’s generational medic. If you have any health concerns, you may come to me anytime. And since you seem to be suffering from post-cryosleep memory loss, let me explain:

“We are aboard the mid-journey ship Aleya, en route to an experimental colony on the upper edges of the star Earendel’s solar range. As you likely learned in school before your boarding, if you remember that, humans can only stay in a cryogenized state for so long before bodily systems begin to break down, so this journey has been planned in stages. You and I will not see the light of Earendel in our lifetimes.” His voice quietens at this, a wry smile faintly visible in his eyes if not his mouth. “This generation will grow old and reproduce and raise each other so that when they are of a safe age, the next can go to sleep knowing they will wake in their new home.”

Lai sits very still, watching Daniel intently. All of what he is saying sounds very big. Big words she does not know, big ideas she can’t understand, but what she does hear is that what they are doing is big, very big, bigger than anything she’s done before. “I’m… important?” She hears herself say, strange raspy high voice she isn’t used to.

Daniel nods, smiles again. She likes that. The smile directed at her, mostly, but also the being important. She thinks she’s been told that before. She thinks it’s nice. She tips her head. “So what now?” She questions. There must be more beyond this space they’re in. How much is there she can’t see? From what Daniel said, everything seems very vast. She isn’t sure about that.

Daniel breathes out thoughtfully. “There are semi-private living quarters enough for everyone onboard this craft. You were the last of the batch to come out of cryo, so I will escort you to re-meet the rest of them, so you won’t run the risk of getting lost. Do you feel strong enough to walk a slight distance?”

She hesitates, then nods. She believes she can manage, but Daniel still has to steady her for a moment when she slides from the cot she was on. Standing on two feet feels strange. She looks up at Daniel, nervously licking her lips. She sneezes.

“будь здоро́ва,” Daniel chuckles as Lai stares at him, wide-eyed. She feels her face form into a grin, teeth showing and all.

“мой родной язык,” She exclaims in kind. My mother tongue!

Daniel nods thoughtfully. “I thought as much. It’s mine as well, ancestrally at least.” He says the last as an aside, half quietly and looking off as it at nothing before his gaze fixes back onto Lai. “Shall we go?” He holds out his hand in beckoning and from instinct, Lai reaches out and takes it. Daniel watches this, puzzled, but does not pull his hand away and she is grateful.

He leads her into a long, high-roofed hallway, walking slowly as if he worries she cannot keep up. But she does. She follows him by the hand through the tall white halls, head turned wonderingly up to see the ceiling, tiled in reflective blue. “What is that?” She asks softly.

Daniel follows her gaze up. “Ah. Stained glass,” he says. “This hall ends in the chapel, if you were to return the way we’ve just come,” he explains. “The stained glass lights the way. I like to think it offers some semblance of hope, as well. The rest of the Aleya is not so artful.”

The blue-ceilinged hall opens into a wide, vast place that immediately dizzies her when she reaches it, and she grasps onto Daniel’s hand harder. There are platforms at all levels around the edges of the tall, too tall walls, some wrapping all the way as far as she can see and disappearing into halls that must be similar to the one they’ve just emerged from. She gasps softly taking it all in, layers upon layers of floors and platforms, small forms moving around atop them and at the bottom, maybe a real floor. There are dozens of enormous glass windows, filled with inky blackness broken up by specks and swirls of light. It’s familiar. It scares her. It’s all she can see.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Asks Daniel softly. She looks up at him again, eyes pleading, don’t leave me, keep me safe. “Are you okay?”

Lai shudders. “это огромно,” She whispers. It’s vast.

Daniel hums and nods. “действительно.” Indeed, he tells her. “It’s our whole world.”

He leads her across the platforms in a complicated thread where her feet stutter and hesitate at times. She follows blindly, still staring around at this place, so big, so cold. She can hardly wrap her head around it. The sky outside is so dark, but is it still the sky with them in it? She doesn’t know. She isn’t sure she wants to know. The sky is their whole world, it seems.

They turn down another hall, plain ceiling tiles above them instead of stained glass. She follows them with her eyes, losing count every few, and follows Daniel by sound. His footsteps are steady, steady, then stop and Lai finds herself in a more shadowy room, where there’s a rustle of blended sounds and smaller doors that lead off into who knows where.

There are more people in there, in varying states of motion. A man with dark skin sits on a rounded, cushioned bench frowning and squinting at a flat, glowing object in his hand. Two children hover behind a different man who stands in a corner speaking to a woman with green eyes. In a chair near a doorway there is a girl with curly hair holding a book, turned sideways with her legs thrown over the arm of the chair. Scattered all about the room are little metal bottles that she is sure are full of water.

“Last one?” Asks the dark skinned man, looking up. He sets down the glowing thing and stands. “Took a while, didn’t it?”

“She did,” Daniel agrees, lightly squeezing Lai’s hand before letting go. She tries to not be upset at that. But then he puts his hand on her shoulder and it warms her. “This is Lai. She’s suffering from a touch of post-freeze memory loss, so if someone would like to help her settle in…”

The girl with the book unfolds herself from the chair. “I’ve got her, doctor,” She says in a lilting accent. “There is a bed in our cabin anyway, with Marla and her sister as well.” She offers Lai a smile. “I’m Esperanza.”

“Hello,” Lai says. This girl is taller than her, moves strangely. Her hair is long and curly. Lai thinks she is interesting.

“I will leave you to settle in,” says Daniel. Lai turns to watch him go and wishes he wouldn’t leave. “Желаю вам удачи,” He says in their shared first language. I wish you good luck.

#I HAVE THE SECOND CHAPTER FULLY WRITTEN AS WELL I JUST WANTED TO HAVE SOMETHING TO POST BEFORE DEADLINE DAY IS OVER #also i hope the russian is ok i had to source all my translations from the internet :(#anyway. yeah #the title is soooo weird to me idk if i like it but. parentheses.#it was going to be a reference to afterlife of the party but i already have two FOB references as chapter heading quotes so dsjkhdsjghkshg #figured i’d rein it in a little #Lu writes #inklings challenge #team lewis #genre: space travel #theme: burial #daniel is loosely inspired by prof. bhaer btw. just so you know #ok i’m done talking #it is 11:25pm on october 21st as i post this hopefully i made it under the deadline

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inklings-challenge · 7 months

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Genre Thoughts: Adventure

Chesterton famously said, "An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered," which suggests that adventure as a genre is less about the story elements and more about the attitude one takes toward them. Lots of genres can incorporate adventure, because adventure is largely defined by the tone. An adventure puts the characters in danger, but it gives the characters a chance to go exciting places and do exciting things, and generally takes an optimistic tone--this adventure is a good, exciting thing, and the characters are privileged to experience it.

Not that every adventure has enthusiastic and optimistic characters. Reluctant heroes are a staple of the adventure genre--someone who is pulled out of their comfortable life and into a realm of intrigue and danger. But the audience knows that the adventure, as inconvenient as it is, is a welcome escape from the safe routine of daily life, and will give the main character a chance to prove their mettle and become a hero.

Which makes adventure an ideal genre for promoting courage. Adventure lets the audience see that staying in their safe routine isn't always the best way to find happiness, that the problems in life can be opportunities, rather than inconveniences, if we take the right view of them, and have courage in facing them. As Christians, our life is an adventure that offers a lot of dangers and pitfalls, but also lots of opportunities for heroism.

As I said, almost any genre can incorporate adventure, but for Inklings Challenge purposes, we need to incorporate some type of fantasy or science fiction element. To differentiate it from the adventures that could be written by other teams--with their alternate universes or other planets--it could be best to try to keep the action largely focused on past, present, future, or an alternate Earth. Which still offers lots of opportunities for imagination. This is where writers can play with alternate history, steampunk, cyberpunk, dieselpunk (all sorts of -punks), fascinating future Earths, or even just someone in our ordinary world getting caught up, say, in a mad scientist's plot or involved in the political intrigues of elves. Your characters can go on Indiana-Jones-style quests, or Jules-Verne travel adventures, or anything else your imagination can think of!

Some types of adventure stories:

Mysteries

Spy stories

Thrillers

Quests

Treasure hunts

Superhero stories

Alternate history

Steampunk, cyberpunk, other "-punk" type universes

Dystopian/post-apocalyptic fiction

Writing Prompts

A person living in an underwater colony on a future Earth goes on a quest to find lost technology that could save their home from destruction.

Someone gets a package with a invisibility cloak and uses it to go on the run from nefarious criminals who'd do anything to get their hands on it.

On a post-apocalyptic Earth, the leader of a peaceful settlement must decide whether to trust the stranger and accompany him on a quest to find a food cache that could get the village through the winter.

In a steampunk world, a dead inventor's notebook leads his son on a quest to find a rare element that could revolutionize airship technology.

A woman is mistaken for a lost elven princess and must evade those who would assassinate her.

#inklings challenge #team chesterton #genre: adventure #writing help

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queenlucythevaliant · 6 months

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Clad in Justice and Worth

Written for the Inklings Challenge 2023 (@inklings-challenge). Inspired by the lives of Jeanne d'Albret and Marguerite de Navarre, although numerous liberties have been taken with the history in the name of introducing fantastical elements and telling a good story. The anglicization of names (Jeanne to Joan and Marguerite to Margaret) is meant to reflect the fictionalization of these figures.

The heat was unbearable, and it would grow only hotter as they descended into the lowlands. It was fortunate, Joan decided, that Navarre was a mountain country. It was temperate, even cold there in September. It would be sweltering by the sea.

The greater issue ought to have been the presence of Monluc, who would cut Joan’s party off at the Garonne River most like. The soldiers with whom she traveled were fierce, but Monluc had an entire division at the Garrone. Joan would be a prisoner of war if Providence did not see her through. Henry, perhaps, might suffer worse. He might be married to a Catholic princess.

Yet Joan was accustomed to peril. She had cut her teeth on it. Her first act as queen, some twenty years ago, had been to orchestrate the defense of her kingdom, and she was accustomed to slipping through nets and past assassins. The same could not be said of the infernal heat, which assaulted her without respite. Joan wore sensible travel clothing, but the layers of her skirts were always heavy with sweat. A perpetual tightness sat in her chest, the remnant of an old bout with consumption, and however much she coughed it would not leave.

All the same, it would not do to seem less than strong, so she hid the coughing whenever she could. The hovering of her aides was an irritant and she often wished she could just dismiss them all.

“How fare you in the heat, Majesty?”

“I have war in my gut, Clemont,” Joan snapped. “Worry not for me. If you must pester someone, pester Henry.”

He nodded, chastened. “A messenger is here from Navarre. Sent, I suspect, to induce you to return hence.”

“I would not listen to his birdcalls.”

“Young Henry said much the same.”

Joan stuffed down her irritation that Clemont had gone to Henry before he’d come to her. She was still queen, even if her son was rapidly nearing his majority. “Tell him that if the Huguenot leaders are to be plucked, I think it better that we all go together. Tell him that I would rather my son and I stand with our brothers than await soldiers and assassins in our little kingdom.”

Her aide gave a stiff nod. “At once, your Majesty.”

She would breathe easier when they reached the host at La Rochelle. Yet then, there would be more and greater work to do. There would be war, and Joan would be at the head of it.

When she awoke in the night, Joan knew at once that something was awry. It was cool. Gone was the blistering heat that had plagued them all day. Perhaps one of the kidnapping plots had finally succeeded.

Certainly, it seemed that way. She was in a cell, cool and dank and no more than six paces square. And yet—how strange! —the door was open.

Rising unsteadily to her feet, Joan crept towards the shaft of moonlight that fell through it. She glanced about for guards, but saw only a single prisoner in dirty clothes standing just beyond the threshold. He was blinking rapidly, as though the very existence of light bewildered him. Then, as Joan watched, he crept forward towards the gate of the jailhouse and out into the free air beyond. Joan listened for a long moment, trying to hear if there was any commotion at the prisoner’s emergence. When she could perceive none, she followed him out into the cool night air.

A lantern blazed. “Come quickly,” a voice hissed. “Our friend the Princess is waiting.”

The prisoner answered in a voice too quiet for Joan to hear. Then, quite suddenly, she heard his companion say, “Who is it that there behind you?”

The prisoner turned round, and Joan’s fingers itched towards her hidden knife. But much to her astonishment, he exclaimed, “Why, it is the lady herself! Margaret!”

But Joan had no opportunity to reply. Voices sounded outside her pavilion and she awoke to the oppressive heat of the day before. Coughing hard, Joan rolled ungracefully from her bed and tried to put away the grasping tendrils of her dream.

“The river is dry, Majesty” her attendant informed her as soon as she emerged from her pavilion, arrayed once again in sensible riding clothes. “The heat has devoured it. We can bypass Monluc without trouble, I deem.”

“Well then,” Joan replied, stifling another cough. “Glory to God for the heat.”

They did indeed pass Monluc the next day, within three fingers of his nose. Joan celebrated with Henry and the rest, yet all the while her mind was half taken up with her dream from the night before. Never, in all her life, had her mind conjured so vivid a sensory illusion. It had really felt cool in that jail cell, and the moonlight beyond it had been silver and true. Stranger still, the prisoner and his accomplice had called Joan by her mother’s name.

Joan had known her mother only a little. At the age of five, she had been detained at the French court while her mother returned to Navarre. This was largely on account of her mother’s religious convictions. Margaret of Angoulême had meddled too closely with Protestantism, so her brother the king had seen fit to deprive her of her daughter and raise her a Catholic princess.

His successor had likewise stolen Henry from Joan, for despite the king’s best efforts she was as Protestant as her mother. Yet unlike Margaret, Joan had gone back for her child. Two years ago, she had secretly swept Henry away from Paris on horseback. She’d galloped the horses nearly to death, but she’d gotten him to the armed force waiting at the border, and then at last home to Navarre. Sometimes, Joan wondered why her own mother had not gone to such lengths to rescue her. But Margaret’s best weapons had been tears, it was said, and tears could not do the work of sharp swords.

The Navarre party arrived at La Rochelle just before dusk on the twenty-eighth of September. The heat had faltered a little, to everyone’s great relief, but the air by the sea was still heavy with moisture. The tightness in Joan’s chest persisted.

“There will be much celebration now that you have come, Your Majesty,” said the boy seeing to her accommodations. “There’s talk of giving you the key to the city, and more besides.”

Sure enough, Joan was greeted with applause when she entered the Huguenot council. “I and my son are here to promote the success of our great cause or to share in its disaster,” she said when the council quieted. “I have been reproached for leaving my lands open to invasion by Spain, but I put my confidence in God who will not suffer a hair of our heads to perish. How could I stay while my fellow believers were being massacred? To let a man drown is to commit murder.”

Sometimes it seemed that the men only played at war. The Duke of Conde, who led the Huguenot forces, treated it as a game of chivalry between gentlemen. Others, like Monluc, regarded it as a business; the mercenaries he hired robbed and raped and brutalized, and though be bemoaned the cruelty he did nothing to curtail it.

There were sixty-thousand refugees pouring into the city. Joan was not playing at war. When she rose in the mornings, she put poultices on her chest, then went to her office after breaking her fast. There was much to do. She administered the city, attended councils of war, and advised the synod. In addition, she was still queen of Navarre, and was required to govern her own kingdom from afar.

In the afternoons, she often met with Beza to discuss matters of the church, or else with Conde, to discuss military matters. Joan worked on the city’s fortifications, and in the evenings she would ride out to observe them. Henry often joined her on these rides; he was learning the art of war, and he seemed to have a knack for it.

“A knack is not sufficient,” Joan told him. “Anyone can learn to fortify a port. I have learned, and I am a woman.”

“I know it is not sufficient,” the boy replied. “I must commit myself entirely to the cause of our people, and of Our Lord. Is that not what you were going to tell me?”

“Ah, Henry, you know me too well. I am glad of it. I am glad to see you bear with strength the great and terrible charge which sits upon your shoulders.”

“How can I help being strong? I have you for a mother.”

At night, Joan fell into bed too exhausted for dreams.

Yet one night, she woke once again to find her chest loose and her breathing comfortable. She stood in a hallway which she recognized at once. She was at the Château de Fontainebleau, the place of her birth, just beyond the door to the king’s private chambers.

“Oh please, Francis, please. You cannot really mean to send him to the stake!” The voice on the other side of the door was female, and it did not belong to the queen.

A heavy sigh answered it. “I mean to do just that, ma mignonne. He is a damned heretic, and a rabble-rouser besides. Now, sister, don’t cry. If there’s one thing I cannot bear, it is your weeping.”

At those words, a surge of giddiness, like lightning, came over Joan’s whole body. It was her own mother speaking to the king. She was but a few steps away and they were separated only by a single wooden door.

“He is my friend, Francis. Do you say I should not weep for my friends?”

A loud harumph. “A strange thing, Margaret. Your own companions told me that you have never met the man.”

“Does such a triviality preclude friendship? He is my brother in Our Lord.”

“And I am your true brother, and your king besides.”

“And as you are my brother—” here, Margaret’s voice cracked with overburdening emotion. She was crying again, Joan was certain. “As you are my brother, you must grant me this boon. Do not harm those I love, Francis.”

The king did not respond, so Joan drew nearer to the door. A minute later, she leapt backwards when it opened. There stood her mother, not old and sick as Joan had last seen her twenty years before, but younger even than Joan herself.

“If you’ve time to stand about listening at doors, then you are not otherwise employed,” Margaret said, wiping her tears from her face with the back of her hand. “I am going to visit a friend. You shall accompany me.”

Looking down at herself, Joan realized that her mother must have mistaken her for one of Fountainbleu’s many ladies-in-waiting. She was in her night clothes, which was really a simple day dress such as a woman might wear to a provincial market. Joan did not sleep in anything which would hinder her from acting immediately, should the city be attacked in the middle of the night.

“As you wish, Majesty,” Joan replied with a curtsey. Margaret raised an eyebrow, and instantly Joan corrected herself: “Your Highness.”

Margaret stopped at her own rooms to wrap herself in a plain, hooded cloak. “What is your name?” she asked.

“Joan, your Highness.”

“Well, Joan. As penance for eavesdropping, you shall keep your own counsel with regards to our errand. Is that clear?”

“Yes, your Highness,” Joan replied stiffly. Any fool could see what friend Margaret intended to visit, and Joan wished she could think of a way to cut through the pretense.

When Margaret arrived at the jail with Joan in tow, the warden greeted her almost like a friend. “You are here to see the heretic, Princess? Shall I fetch you a chair?”

“Yes, Phillip. And a lantern, if you would.”

The cell was nearly identical to the one which Joan had dreamed on the road to La Rochelle. Inside sat a man with sparse gray hair covering his chin. Margaret’s chair was placed just outside the cell, but she brushed past it. She handed the lantern to Joan and knelt down in the cell beside the prisoner.

“I was told that I had a secret friend in the court,” he said. “I see now that she is an angel.”

“No angel, monsieur Faber. I am Margaret, and this is my lady, Joan. I have come to see to your welfare, as best I am able.”

Now, Margaret’s hood fell back, and all at once she looked every inch the Princess of France. Yet her voice was small and choked when she said, “Will you do me the honor of praying with me?”

Margaret was already on her knees, but she lowered herself further. She rested one hand lightly on Faber’s knee, and after a moment, he took it. Her eyes fluttered closed. In the dim light, Joan thought she saw tears starting down her mother’s cheek.

When she woke in the morning, Joan could still remember her mother’s face. There were tears in her hazelnut eyes, and a weeping quiver in her voice.

Winter came, and Joan’s coughing grew worse. There was blood in it now, and occasionally bits of feathery flesh that got caught in her throat and made her gag. She hid it in her handkerchief.

“Winter battles are ugly,” Conde remarked one morning as Christmas was drawing near. “If the enemy is anything like gentlemen, they will not attack until spring. And yet, I think, we must stand at readiness.”

“By all means,” Joan replied. “Anything less than readiness would be negligence.”

Conde chuckled, not unkindly. “For all your strength and skill, madame, it is obvious that you were not bred for command. No force can be always at readiness. It would kill the men as surely as the sword. ‘Tis not negligence to celebrate the birth of Our Lord, for instance.”

Joan nodded curtly, but did not reply.

As the new year began, the city was increasingly on edge. There was frequent unrest among the refugees, and the soldiers Joan met when she rode the fortifications nearly always remarked that an attack would come soon.

Then, as February melted into March, word came from Admiral Coligny that his position along the Guirlande Stream had been compromised. The Catholic vanguard was swift approaching, and more Huguenot forces were needed. By the time word reached Joan in the form of a breathless young page outside her office, Conde was already assembling the cavalry. Joan made for the Navarre quarter at once, as fast as her lungs and her skirts would let her.

The battle was an unmitigated disaster. The Huguenots arrived late, and in insufficient numbers. Their horses were scattered and their infantry routed, and the bulk of their force was forced back to Cognac to regroup. As wounded came pouring in, Joan went to the surgical tents to make herself useful.

The commander La Noue’s left arm had been shattered and required amputation. Steeling herself, Joan thought of Margaret’s tearstained cheeks as she knelt beside Faber. “Commander La Noue,” she murmured, “Would it comfort you if I held your other hand?”

“That it would, Your Majesty,” the commander replied. So, as the surgeon brandished his saw, Joan gripped the commander’s hand tight and began to pray. She let go only once, to cover her mouth as she hacked blood into her palm. It blended in easily with the carnage of the field hospital.

Yet it was not till after the battle was over that Joan learned the worst of it. “His Grace, General Conde is dead,” her captain told her in her tent that evening. “He was unseated in the battle. They took him captive, and then they shot him. Unarmed and under guard! Why, as I speak these words, they are parading his corpse through the streets of Jarnac.”

“So much for chivalry,” murmured Joan, trying to ignore the memories of Conde’s pleasant face chuckling, calling her skilled and strong.

“We will need to find another Prince of the Blood to champion our cause,” her captain continued. “Else the army will crumble. If there’s to be any hope for Protestantism in France, we had better produce one with haste. Admiral Coligny will not serve. He’s tried to rally the men, to no avail. In fact, he has bid me request that you make an attempt on the morn.”

“Henry will lead.”

“Henry? Why, he’s only a boy!”

Joan shook her head. “He is nearly a man, Captain, and he’s a keen knack for military matters. He trained with Conde himself, and he saw to the fortification of La Rochelle at my side. He is strong, which matters most of all. If it’s a Prince of the Blood the army requires, Henry will serve.”

“As you say, Majesty,” said her captain with a bow. “But it’s not me you will have to convince.”

Joan settled in for a sleepless night. Her captain was correct that she would need to persuade the Huguenot forces well, if they were to swear themselves to Henry. So, she would speak. Joan would rally their courage, and then she would present them with her son and see if they would follow him.

Page after page she wrote, none of it any good. Eloquence alone would not suffice; Joan’s words had to burn in men’s chests. She needed such words as she had never spoken before, and she needed them by morning.

By three o’clock, Joan’s pages were painted with blood. Her lungs were tearing themselves to shreds in her chest, and the proof was there on the paper beside all her insufficient words. She almost hated herself then. Now, when circumstance required of her greater strength than ever before, all Joan’s frame was weakness and frailty.

An hour later, she fell asleep.

When Joan’s eyes fluttered open, she knew at once where she was. Why, these were her own rooms at home in Navarre! Sunlight flooded through her own open windows and drew ladders of light across Joan’s very own floor. Her bed sat in the corner, curtains open. Her dressing room and closet were just there, and her own writing desk—

There was a figure at Joan’s writing desk. Margaret. She looked up.

“My Joan,” she said. It started as a sigh, but it turned into a sob by the end. “My very own Joan, all grown up. How tired you look.”

The words seemed larger than themselves somehow. They were Truth and Beauty in capital letters, illuminated red and gold. Something in Joan’s chest seized; something other than her lungs.

“How do you know me, mother?”

“How could I not? I have been parted from you of late, yet your face is more precious to me than all the kingdoms of the earth.”

“Oh.” And then, because she could not think of anything else to say, Joan asked, “What were you writing, before I came in?”’

“Poetry.” Joan made a noise in her throat. “You disapprove?” asked her mother.

“No, not at all. Would that I had time for such sweet pursuits. I have worn myself out this night writing a war speech. It cannot be poetry, mother. It must be wine. It must–” then, without preamble, Joan collapsed into a fit of coughing. At once, her mother was on her feet, handkerchief in hand. She pressed it to Joan’s mouth, all the while rubbing circles on her back as she coughed and gagged. When the handkerchief came away at last, it was stained red.

“What a courageous woman you are,” Margaret whispered into her hair. “Words like wine for the soldiers, and yourself spitting blood. Will you wear pearls or armor when you address them?”

“I will address them on horseback in the field,” answered Joan with a rasp. “I would have them see my strength.”

Her mother’s dark eyes flickered then. Margaret looked at her daughter, come miraculously home to her against the will of the king and the very flow of time itself. She was not a large woman, but she held herself well. She stood brave and tall, though no one had asked it of her.

Her own dear daughter did not have time for poetry. Margaret regretted that small fact so much that it came welling up in her eyes. “And what of your weakness, child? Will you let anyone see that?”

Joan reached out and caught her mother’s tears. Her fingertips were harder than Margaret’s were. They scratched across the sensitive skin below her eyes.

“Did I not meet you like this once before? You are the same Joan who came with me to the jail in Paris once. I did not know you then. I had not yet borne you.”

“Yes, the very same. We visited a Monsieur Faber, I believe. What became of that poor man?”

Margaret sighed. She crossed back over to the desk to fall back into her seat, and in a smaller voice she said, “My brother released him, for a time. And then, when I was next absent from Paris, he was arrested again and sent to the stake before I could return.”

“I saw you save another man, once. I do not know his name. How many prisoners did you save, mother?”

“Many. Not near enough. Not as many as those with whom I wept by lantern light.”

“Did the weeping do any good, I wonder.”

“Those who lived were saved by weeping. Those who died may have been comforted by it. It was the only thing I could give them, and so I must believe that Our Lord made good use of it.”

Joan shook her head. She almost wanted to cry too, then. The feeling surprised her. Joan detested crying.

“All those men freed from prison, yet you never came for me. Why?”

“Francis was determined. A choice between following Christ and keeping you near was no choice at all, though it broke my heart to make it.”

If Joan shut her eyes, she could still remember the terror of the night she had rescued Henry. “You could have come with soldiers. You could have stolen me away in the night.”

Margaret did not answer. The tears came faster now and her fair, queenly skin blossomed red. So many years would pass between the dear little girl she’d left in Paris and the stalwart woman now before her. She did not have time for poetry, but if Margaret had been allowed to keep her that would have been different. Joan should have had every poem under the sun.

“Will you read it?” she asked, taking the parchment from her desk and pressing it into her daughter’s hands. “Will you grant me that boon?”

Slowly, almost numbly, Joan nodded. To Margaret’s surprise, she read aloud.

“God has predestined His own

That they should be sons and heirs.

Drawn by gentle constraint

A zeal consuming is theirs.

They shall inherit the earth

Clad in justice and worth.”

“Clad in justice and worth,” she repeated, handing back the parchment. “It’s a good poem.”

“It isn’t finished,” replied her mother.

Joan laughed. “Neither is my speech. It must be almost morning now.”

As loving arms closed around her again, Joan wished to God that she could remain in Navarre with her mother. She knew that she and Margaret did not share a heart: her mother was tender like Joan could never be. Yet all the same, she wanted to believe that they had been forged by the same Christian hope and conviction. She wanted to believe that she, Joan, could free the prisoners too.

She shut her eyes against her mother’s shoulder. When she opened them, she was back in her tent, with morning sun streaming in.

She came before the army mounted on a horse with Henry beside her. Her words were like wine when she spoke.

“When I, the queen, hope still, is it for you to fear? Because Conde is dead, is all therefore lost? Does our cause cease to be just and holy? No; God, who has already rescued you from perils innumerable, has raised up brothers-in-arms to succeed Conde.

Soldiers, I offer you everything in my power to bestow–my dominions, my treasures, my life, and that which is dearer to me than all, my son. I make here a solemn oath before you all, and you know me too well to doubt my word: I swear to defend to my last sigh the holy cause which now unites us, which is that of honor and truth.”

When she finished speaking, Joan coughed red into her hands. There was quiet for a long moment, and then a loud hurrah! went up along the lines. Joan looked out at the soldiers, and from the front she saw her mother standing there, with tears in her eyes.

#inklingschallenge #inklings challenge #team tolkien #genre: time travel #theme: visiting the imprisoned #with a tiny little hint of #theme: visiting the sick #story: complete #so i like to read about the reformation in october when i can #when the teams were announced i was burning through a book on the women of the reformation and these two really reached out and grabbed me #Jeanne in particular. i was like 'it is so insane that this person is not more widely known.'#Protestantism has its very own badass Jeanne/Joan. as far as i'm concerned she should be as famous as Joan of Arc #so that was the basis for this story #somewhere along the line it evolved into a study on different kinds of feminine power #and also illness worked itself in there. go me #anyway. hopefully my catholic friends will give me a shot here in spite of the protestantism inherant in the premise #i didn't necessarily mean to go with something this strongly protestant as a result of the Catholic works of mercy themes #but i'm rather tickled that it worked out that way #on the other hand i know that i have people following me that know way more about the French Wars of Religion and the Huguenots than i do #hopefully there's enough verisimilitude here that it won't irritate you when i inevitably get things wrong #i think that covers all my bases #i am still not 100% content with how this turned out but i am at least happy enough to post it #and get in right under the wire. it's a couple hours before midnight still in my time zone #pontifications and creations #leah stories #i enjoy being a girl #the unquenchable fire

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ettawritesnstudies · 6 months

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Death's Promise

My entry for @inklings-challenge on Team Tolkien! This story comes from my world of Laoche, which recently got rehauled (yet again) with a new pantheon and more depth to the religious worldbuilding.

In this world the First god is the Artist, who created all of the others to rule over different parts of creation, and the counterpart to the Artist is Death, who isn't an antagonist force but more of a celestial clean up duty. Her role is to be a storykeeper and guardian of souls, then break down the physical remains so the Artist can repurpose the materials. She's often met with dread, sorrow, or fear, but she is fundamentally, kind, and a caretaker of the Artist's creations when their lives are done. In this story, a young gravedigger meets her, and she gives him a promise.

The complete story is under the read more! I'll also be posting it to my blog so it can be found there in case tumblr's search function gives up on me.

Thud. Thud. Thud. The rhythmic falling of hammer on chisel chipped blocks from the stone wall in the crevasse where Martten worked. Dust swirled in the air and made his candles sputter. He stepped back from his work and coughed, assessing the progress. Almost deep enough. The niche needed a few more inches before it would fit Elanor’s body. Maybe a couple more inches after that. She was a large woman, and she ought to be comfortable. It was long enough now—Elanor was also a short woman—and he should finish before the dawn. His arms ached as he picked up the hammer and the chisel which he wrapped in fabric to dampen the clinking noise of his carving.

It had been a busy week. With all the unrest in the city, the devout were bringing down new bodies every day, and they’d run out of empty loculi. He longed for his bed and a shower to wash the dust from his hair, but he needed to finish this work first. He couldn’t sleep in good conscience, knowing Elanor didn’t have a place to rest. The candles kept the place warm, at least. Dozens of them burned around the small alcove, casting a soft glow around the small space. This deep underground, it always stayed cold, even during the day.

It was not day, though you couldn’t tell at this depth, except by the ice deep set in his bones.

He was just about to raise his arm to strike again when a flicker caught in the corner of his eye. A bent figure moved down the corridor, sending long shadows over his work. The newcomer was an old woman, ancient even. She used a cane to support herself and wore a black veil over her black robes. This must have been a superior he hadn’t met yet. He only joined the Siblings since the riots started a month ago, and he hadn’t yet met every follower of the Artist in Dazar. He lowered his tools and gave her a respectful head nod.

“Evening. Do you need something?”

“May I ask whose body will lie there?” She asked. Her raspy voice sounded like a rustle of dead leaves.

“A woman named Elanor Cernall. She was a weaver who died in the most recent attack on the market.”

“What was she like?”

“I didn’t know her myself, but from what I heard, she was a good woman. Pessimistic at times. Slow to forgive or forget if someone wronged her and her kin, but she had a strong sense of duty. Loyal to the Artist and his people. Skilled at her trade, too. The Siblings preparing her body said that she made and donated the cloth for a good number of our habits.”

Martten kept his head bowed as he spoke, but as he finished his story, he turned to the wall again. Night was getting on, and he wanted to sleep a bit, at least. “Did you know her?” he asked as his first stroke fell.

The old woman hums in the affirmative. “I did. She was a good woman indeed.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“A life well lived is never a loss, but another shining craft to add to the collection of the Artist,” the old woman responded sagely. It was a response Martten heard before, but it didn’t seem like a platitude for her. When she said the words, she gave them weight, and the truth of the saying settled over his shoulders like a shroud.

It added meaning to his work. The followers of the Artist didn’t bury their dead in the traditional way. They hid them underground in catacombs so nobody could disturb them, but they didn’t cover the bodies with dirt or cremate them to get rid of the bodies. They let them decompose on their own, laid out on shelves and adorned with spices to mask the smell. The followers of the Artist remembered and visited - their cemetery was a collection of finished works who kept each other company in the dark. It seemed fitting that they should also have nicely finished graves in which to rest, places befitting the masterpieces. He angled his chisel and gave it a few gentle taps to smooth out a piece of jutting stone.

“It is kind of you to learn her story,” the woman said, interrupting his silence.

“I know them all,” Martten said proudly, then lowered his voice again. “Is that odd, that I talk to them sometimes? Isso the fisherman, a cheerful friend. Aikaterina the scholar, a persuasive orator and wise teacher. Eula, the singer, leading the Siblings in worship. Her poor boy Alex helps me sometimes. He doesn’t have anyone else left.” He paused his carving to gesture to each of their niches. “They keep me company. They’re almost like friends.”

The old woman made the symbol of storge to him, the middle three fingers of the hand held over her lips. It put him at ease, knowing he enjoyed her good company as well. “It’s not odd at all,” she reassured him, setting herself onto one of the empty ledges from earlier in the night to sit for a while.

“The other Siblings appreciate the sentiment, but the rest of the city…” Martten trailed off, a wistful feeling overtook him as his mind wandered. “I was telling Monica the other day—that mother in the niche under Isso. I was telling her about this baker girl, Emalee. I pass her stall after work and she always gives me the leftover bread and pastries from the day. She’s sweeter than her treats, but we don’t talk at all. I’m afraid she’d think I’m crazy for confiding in the dead.”

Martten realized what he was saying too late, after the confession already left his mouth. He talked to the shrouds often enough, but here he was almost treating this old woman the same way. It was wrong, but somehow, she didn’t feel like another human presence; her form so slight and so shadowed, just another ghosts.

“Apologies. I’m rambling. Monica was a grandmother of twenty-seven little ones when she passed, and I think she would understand another lovesick boy whinging about his crush while she’s just trying to rest. I don’t mean to trouble you with my cares.”

The old lady laughed, and it sounded to him a little like the cawing of a murder of crows, the sounds overlapping unnaturally as they echoed off the close stone walls of the catacombs. “I’m not troubled. I’m pleased to find a follower who loves the stories as much as I do. The dead like to be remembered; they enjoy the company too. Monica especially. Only two of her twenty-seven grandchildren visit anymore, and even then, not regularly.”

Martten frowned at that news and struck his hammer especially hard in response. A sizeable chunk fell out of the niche, splitting cleanly along the pins that he drove into the stone. He stooped and set it to the side, then returned to his tapping, working methodically left to right so the surface would come out flat and smooth.

“Do you carve all these loculi?” The woman asked.

“All since I joined the Siblings a month ago.”

“Who assigned you this task?”

“No one. It needed to be done, and so I volunteered. I’m a mason, when I’m not with the Siblings, so I have the skills for it. It’s fitting, giving our crafts back to the Artist and all, and the work means more than breaking blocks for the Atilan buildings all day.”

“You must be weary.”

Martten sighs. “Yes.” He won’t complain, though. It’s worthwhile, and no ache in his bones can change the satisfaction that comes with the effort. A few more strokes and the last chunk came out of the niche. He set it aside on the small pile of rubble for one of the other Siblings to collect, then returned his tools to their own cubby. “But as weary as I am, it’s these old bones that deserve the rest.”

The old woman raised herself from the ledge where she was sitting. Her cane caught the light as she moved, and he realized it was made of bone. A large bone, yellowed with its ancient age—maybe the leg of a stegodon. Part of him wondered if the strange woman collected it herself. It had carvings along the length with symbols that he couldn’t read. “These old bones appreciate a moment to rest and chat with such a charitable young man,” she said cheerfully.

“I hope your old bones walk the world a while yet,” he said, and offered her an arm to steady her as they walked out of the catacombs. She placed her hand on his arm, and Martten realized it was strong, but cold as a corpse.

“They will,” she responds, completely confident. She stopped, took her other hand off her cane, and it stayed standing upright on the point, on its own. She pulled back her veil to reveal a grinning skull beneath, then took her cane in hand again. Martten took a sharp breath as she showed her true form, but didn’t pull away, eyes fixed completely into her empty eye sockets, which had a soft flicker of orange glow within, like distant candle flames.

“You will have a good death,” she promised. “It will be peaceful and painless after a long and well lived life. Your loved ones will surround you, including the sweet wife of which you spoke. Your children and grandchildren will outnumber even Monica’s. One of them will carve your niche with as much care as you carved Elanor’s tonight, and they will tell your memories, and they will pass down your example of kindness to their children. It will be sorrowful, but only in equal measure to how much they loved you.”

Martten didn’t realize he was crying until she brushed the tears from his cheek with a cold and bony finger. He found no words of thanks, question, or response, before she returned her veil, and continued their march towards the exit of the Catacombs. As they walked, the weight on his arm grew less and less, and when he emerged into the light of dawn, he was alone.

#etta rambles #the inklings challenge #inklings challenge #team tolkien #story: complete #laoche #the laoche chronicles

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larissa-the-scribe · 7 months

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Worldbuilding!

Santa Juliana Files is a world where Eldritch Beings, Fae, and Superheroes all exist. How?

Well. Uh. Still figuring out a lot of it, but the general gist of it is:

God created the Eldritch Beings (official names still pending) as essentially the forces of nature Personified (but like also a bit to the left), and were given the task of regulating the universe (they exist beyond Earth).

The Fae were created and assigned as their servants, to help them in their task of keeping order, in particular in the phases where they were asleep (they operate on a Different Time—days for an Eldritch Being can be anywhere from an actual day to 1000 years per 24 hours).

The world still belonged to the Children of God, though. The Eldritch Beings and the Fae were supposed to work with them to create a beautiful universe. And these humans had powers, too.

How the superpowers were supposed to work isn't known. Some theologians speculate that it may have been intended that certain humans could be gifted powers by a Being to further curate the Earth.

But no one really knows. The Fall happened first, and there were no humans with powers before then. So, some people treat the powers themselves as also the work of the Fall. Others say that it was God's way of equipping humans to protect themselves after the Fall.

It isn't really known, and there are a lot of records that have been lost over the years, so if there is a cycle, a pattern, no one can tell. All that's left is a few obscure Scripture references and a lot of mythology.

#worldbuilding #not on sunday this time #shocking #inklings challenge #inklings challenge prep #I don't know what the story will be named yet smh #the santa juliana files #salt and light #scribe talks

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ladyphlogiston · 7 months

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I don't have a title for this yet. Also it is entirely unedited. Usually I make my husband edit my writing, but he's sick.

Anyway, this is the first part of my @inklings-challenge story. I have the next bit mostly written in my head and some of the rest sort of plotted? Honestly I don't know. It might be Terrible. We'll see.

"Where should we be next, Zillah?" Vesta asked.

Zillah straightened up, shook her long brown braid back, and surveyed the ruins of the village of Cubrickton. The survivors of the fire had been relocated to the remaining homes, and wounded were being treated in the Home's infirmary. Hestia was helping to rebuild some of the houses, but high summer meant there would be plenty of time and available hands to rebuild before the harvest. They could probably move on.

"How is Eden doing?" she asked.

Vesta shrugged. "She's okay. Getting tired, but everyone has been treated so the heavy triage is over."

Zillah nodded. She closed her eyes and pressed her palms together, focusing inwards on her Gift. She opened her eyes again. "We're still supposed to be here," she said, frowning.

Vesta looked around. "Why? Did we miss someone?"

Zillah shrugged. "Don't know. Maybe there's something else coming and they need our help building?"

"Might as well." Vesta moved towards the nearest burned-out shell. She picked up a half-burned board, tucked it under her arm, and began sifting through the rubble for others.

Zillah worked her way along the side of the ruined wall, collecting china plates that must have fallen from an interior shelf. Some of them were intact.

A purple light formed in the air between them, rippling oddly in the air. Both the sisters turned to look at it, then look at each other in consternation.

"Or maybe we're here for that?" Zillah suggested.

"Any idea what it is?" Vesta asked, backing away carefully.

"My Gift just says it's a portal, which is less helpful than you'd think," Zillah replied.

"Is it dangerous?"

"Don't know."

The sisters waited as it got larger and brighter. Then, as suddenly as it had started, it vanished, leaving a young man in strange clothing behind. He dropped hard against the stone and rolled over to slam against the foundation of the house, as if he'd fallen from a height.

"Well." Zillah looked at him, then bent over to check his pulse. "Still alive. Better make a stretcher for him, in case that fall rattled something."

"What's his name?" Vesta asked. She laid one of her boards on the street, then pulled a length of twine from her pocket and began tying shorter sticks to the top and bottom. Under her hands, the air shimmered as her Gift turned the boards into a full stretcher.

"Paul," Zillah replied. "I can't see his home. It's very far away. For now he belongs with us, I think."

They carefully loaded him onto the stretcher and carried him towards Home. The big egg-shaped structure, apparently woven from willow branches, was on the edge of the town, and they passed through a hole in the side into the clay-lined infirmary inside.

Eden looked up as they entered. She helped Zillah transfer the young man to an empty bed, then unwrapped the orange band that wrapped over her curls and covered her ears. "What's his name?" she asked.

"Paul," Zillah answered. "He was unconscious when he....appeared."

Kaylee looked Paul over, focusing intently with her hands hovering over his body. "Just bruised, I think," she said. Briskly she refastened her headband and grabbed a pot of salve from the workbench, then rolled him over and began peeling his short tunic away from his back so he could apply the salve to his back and shoulders.

Vesta allowed the stretcher to fall back into pieces of wood and twine, and put the twine back into her pocket. She headed back towards the entrance to throw the pieces of wood away, and met her twin sister coming in.

"Another?" Hestia asked, seeing Paul on the bed.

"He's not a villager. He just appeared. Like a Major Gift, but there wasn't anyone there to use it," Vesta explained.

Hestia raised her eyebrows. "A True Miracle, then?"

Zillah joined them. "I think so. He's from far away."

"Well, there's not much to do until he wakes up," Hestia decided. "Does he need to stay here or can we get moving?"

"He belongs with us, so probably we can go. Did you say our goodbyes?" Zillah asked

Hestia nodded.

"Good."

They made their way through the clay-lined rooms of Home to the driving bench at the front, where a woven window opened into the streaming sunlight. A map of Gasardia was pinned to the wall, covered with careful annotations in colored ink.

Hestia found Cubrickton, on the road between Thire and Philomel. She added a purple X and the date to the map, tracking their journey so far. Zillah would update the logbook with details of their work while they traveled.

Zillah sat on the bench, facing the map, and pressed her palms together. She allowed her eyes to unfocus, looking at what her Gift was saying rather than at the map itself.

Finally she looked up, puzzled. "We're supposed to be in Acoda Keep."

"We can't get to Acoda Keep!" Hestia objected.

"I know that and you know that," Zillah replied. "But apparently my Gift thinks we can."

Hestia sighed, and traced the road south. "Acoda Point is at least a three day journey," she said. "I guess we could start in that direction. If we end up having to stop, we'll figure it out from there."

Zillah nodded. "Thanks. We'll pass through Lorton tomorrow, so I'll check our stores. We can stop at the market."

#Inklings Challenge #Inklingschallenge #Team lewis #Portal fantasy #fiction

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bytes-and-blessings · 6 months

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Smuggling Hope - Inklings Challenge 2023

So I signed up to do a little writing challenge this year called the @inklings-challenge! Which you can read more about here: https://inklings-challenge.tumblr.com/about Basically, I've had story ideas in my head for as long as I can remember. Now I finally found something to give me a kick in the pants to write. Maybe this is the first draft to the first chapter of my first novel ever. Maybe I never touch this story again. Who knows? not me.... But without further ado, welcome to the first installment of what I currently call "The Beacon Universe" (Actual name TBD) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Captain Nia Twig woke up at the wheel her ship to the sound of a proximity alarm.

BEEP EEP EEP!

There was message from an incoming ship.

“This is gate border checkpoint Theta-Sigma-Alpha-5, please prepare for boarding with your itinerary, ship registration, and passenger manifest. Failure to cooperate with border patrol will be reported to Zytharian authorities and may result in fines or arrest. Thank you, and Glory to the Emperor.”

Nia groaned and scrambled out of her pilots chair to prepare for the inspection. As she walked through the ship she stashed away a box of stuff from back home and placed it under her bed, with a menstrual garment and some pain pills on top to keep any searchers from touching it. Looking around the area, there was a torn piece of paper that she though she had drunkenly thrown in the incinerator months ago:

The oath and way of the Beacons are as THE LORD once declared: “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lamp stand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shin-”

Nia was interrupted in her distracted readings by the ship’s alarm system again:

~~~~~WARNING ~~~~ AIRLOCK ENGAGED ~~~~ INTRUDER ALERT~~~~~

“Computer! Stall’em!” She yelled out. The ship’s AI wasn’t anything fancy, but it could pretend to have just enough dysfunction to slow down anyone trying to board. (Or with any luck, kill anyone in a rush via asphyxiation so she could claim it was an accident. Technology sucks, right?)

She stuffed the paper in her pocked and climbed down to the hold. At the bottom, she reached behind the ladder and flipped a leaver.

A few of the crates started to lower into a hidden compartment beneath.

“Come on, come on, move you stupid thing” Nia slammed her foot against the floor.

Suddenly the mechanism squeaked to a halt.

She could hear the boarder ship’s airlock finish connecting to The Night’s Reverie. She’d have to greet the Inspector at any minute, or else the rest of his people’s fleet would show up and blow them both out of the sky.

She dove below the boxes, and started to hunt around. In the tangled mess of wires, there was a stray piece of jerky stuck between the gears. Nia couldn’t quite reach through the gap to catch it.

BANG BANG BANG

Someone was knocking on the other end of the airlock doors, trying to gain entry. If she didn’t let them it, it was going to be a firefight, but if the fuzz caught sight was what was in these crates, well, she’d have bigger problems.

The Captain pulled out a lighter with the symbol of a white bird in flight carved into it.

A small flame springs out with a flick of the flint, she barely has a moment to enjoy the feeling of the flames dancing in her control before she shoots it to knock the jerky out of place. She immediately threw the lighter up onto the main deck, then turned herself into a small flame and landed on the deck as the boxes almost crash into their compartment, crushing the area where she had just been an instant ago. The false floor slid over the contraband as the captain punched in the code to open the airlock for her unwanted guests.

“Still not going to be a Beacon, but Uncle’s old lighter trick is handy in a pinch.” She thought to herself as she punched the intercom button to speak to the visitor waiting in the airlock. “This is the Captain of the ship speaking, who is there?”

A posh voice responded, “Captain Glory Ashwell, are you in there? This is Inspector Zimri Klerk, of the His Greatness’s Most Noble and Important Hyperlane Border Inspections Agency. I am here to proceed with a random inspection of your ship. I assume you have your paperwork in order and are ready for inspection, Captain?” a

From the voice, Nia expected someone much taller on the other side of the airlock. Instead standing there was an short and fat man in a faded but finely pressed dress uniform. He stood proud before her not a piece of his balding silver hair was out of place. His mustache was curled perfectly at the ends, looking at it was almost like looking at a second pair of eyes. At his left side he held a bright red cane with the Empire dragon snarling at it’s head, like forgotten Celtic letterhead come to life. In his right hand he somehow managed to hold both a clipboard and a lit cigar.

Nia cleared her throat, and then addressed the man. “Ah yes Sir, as you can see here on my manifest, my ship, The Kobold is just on a routine courier run to the middle systems of the Empire. If we could make this quick, my clients are very important people with urgent business, Captain. They’ve waited long enough for these goods.”

“Very well Captain. Let’s keep this quick shall we.” He took a puff of the cigar and stormed past her onto the ship.

It may have been the longest inspection she had lived through in her entire life.

He poked in the flight room.

He tapped his cane all around her living quarters.

He crawled under the sink.

He licked the dust between the crates.

He even accidentally knocked out a fake wall Nia didn’t know the ship had.

By the end of it, he looked less like a man to her, and more like some cross between a relentless hound dog, and a relentless hound dog breathing tobacco smoke from his lungs. An evil, fire-breathing dog of war armed with a clipboard of wrath and health code violations.

Finally, it was almost over. Inspector Zimiri stood right next to the holds ladder and put away his pen.

“Well, everything looks fine here, as long as you don’t have any rebel contraband under here then I’ll be on my way.”

With a single motion, he flipped the hidden switch with his cane and stepped aside to reveal the contraband crates.

A moment pasted, then a second as the crates were slowly lifted by the traitorous mechanism. Neither person seamed to move or breath for a second. Finally Nia let out a long sigh, and pulled out a wad of bills from her inner coat pocket.

She faked a smile, and tried to approach the Inspector congenially,“Look here friend, there’s nothing harmful here. It’s just some luxury goods I need to keep extra protected for a client in Casino Monte. Some rich dude wants camping supplies to reenact some ancient survivalist U-tuber. Bear Gorillas or something? I don’t know man, can’t we just figure this out? It’s not like it’s weapons or anything, you know, right?” She said, holding out the bribe money.

The Inspector let out a deep sigh. He leaned his cane against the wall. Then he removed his glasses and began to methodically clean them. For a moment Nia could swear he tapped a button on his jacket. The little man straighten up to glare at her. The cigar smoke began to fog up his glasses once more and reflect the dim light of the ship. The Captain began to back away from the twin burning suns staring at her from his glasses.

“Do you take me for a fool?”

He walked over and opened the first crate to find a stack of water bottles, blankets, and food with single stuffed goose sat on top of the pile of goods.

“We both know that there’s no way a ship of this size has the fuel to get to the destination on your manifest.” He waved the faked papers in the air, “You’re more likely to drop out of the hyperlane somewhere above the Miser-Cordia system. Right where his Greatness’s Military has currently blockaded a group of those traitorous followers of the Beacon’s Path and the foolish civilians roped up in their little games. Do you think I didn’t realize from the moment your little star skipper left the hyperbridge that figured out that you were carrying the most dangerous weapon known to man inside?”

He dropped the cigar and waved the stuffed goose in the air, as if demonstrating his point.

“My good captain, it appears to me that you are smuggling hope.”

Nia whipped out her pistol and pointed it at him. “Listen, buddy, I don’t know who you are. And I don’t care. As I was saying, I’m not smuggling weapons, or drugs, or slaves, or any of the other fucked up shit that all of your friends turn a blind eye to every day for a couple of creds. So unless your sanctimonious pride and your thin wallet is more important than your life, maybe grow some brains out of that mustache. I’m not a Rebel. I just see a demand and I fill it. I don’t care about your stupid wars, buddy. This is just business. Just take your cut of creds like every other self serving sleaze bag in the galaxy, and let me go.” She insisted, probably too firmly. But Nia didn’t care, her pulse was in her throat and she could feel fire aching at her fingertips for the first time in years. This was about to go south, fast.

Still brandishing her pistol, Nia took in the sight of the little inspector. She had to keep her gun arm pointed down at an awkward angle to place the muzzle beneath his nose. When he wasn’t running around her ship, it was easier to see that this man only reached her shoulder. His mustache barely twitched at the sensation of cold metal. He dropped the goose back into it’s box. With it fell the clipboard. His fingers twitched for the cigar that had once been in his hand. Suddenly, the man before her wasn’t a robotic inspector of a dictator anymore. The cold glare in his eyes had softened into something still determined, but also seemingly defeated. Like the last blue flame of a dying fire. He reached down to pick up the cigar again.

“I have to say, I am quite disappointed in you, Miss Philomena Bryne.” He said, letting the smoke blow into Nia’s face. He grabbed onto a pin on his lapel, and broke it. Nia could see a few ripped wires leaving what she could now see had been a wiretap. “We both know you don’t need that toy to turn me to ash, so let’s drop the pretense, hm?”

“That’s not my name, that girl is dead. Who are you, and how do you know her?” She backed off, but kept the pistol high.

“Ah my mistake Captain,” He said, reaching up to scratch his lip. “Here I was, under the impression that I had caught up with a great Beacon of Old: A mythical group of people who could take flight in the stars without a ship, a Peace Keeper, a great Defender of the innocent, a living flame in the galaxy’s eternal night. I thought I was tracking a relic of a forgotten era of Crusades and Caped Heroes; one who was stuck in a universe that has progressed beyond, or perhaps, sunken below religion. And now l see that I have found a jaded business woman looking to profit off another’s misfortune, no? I had hoped that anyone with your flame, who could incurs such wrath of my employees and countrymen, could be nothing less than a saint. But if it’s business you want, then it’s business you’ll get I suppose. You can come out now, my dear.”

Zimiri Klerk tapped his cigar against the wall of the ship, and out of the embers emerged a young girl who could almost have been Philomena's cousin. But her hair soon changed from fire red to pale blonde. She was even shorter and thinner than the man next to her. Nia quickly realized that this was most likely the Inspector’s daughter. Her eyes were the same jet engine blue as his, and just as sharp.

“I will make a deal with you Captain. Get my daughter out of reach of the Empire's ashy dogs, and anyone else who would make her a living weapon. Then consider your bribe to be paid. Now I must go, my colleges will be looking for me. I’ll buy you what time I can. Good luck, my dear.” Then Zimiri Klerk walked to door of the Night’s Reverie.

“And remember Captain, even if you do not think of yourself a hero, to my daughter, and all of those people trapped on Miser-Cordia, you are the last light of hope.”

#inklings challenge #team lewis #genre: space travel #theme: food #theme: drink #theme: shelter #Bytes Writes

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allisonreader · 3 months

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I honestly hadn't expected to actually get anything done for the four loves challenge this year. But a few days ago something just clicked about The Little Mermaid part of The Selkie Story that I had started and this is what I have for that. It's short. It's vague. There's no names used in it at all. There's zero to a quick run through for editing. This has been another one of those fairly quick written stories where if I look at it for another second, I just can't. I might go back at a later date and properly edit, but not now. I can't currently. I don't even know how well this part even works as a Little Mermaid retelling. Anyways, here it is @inklings-challenge my Selkie Story - The Little Mermaid Part, for the four loves challenge.

He had always found stories of the human world to be fascinating. Enough so that he eagerly awaited the day that he could go ashore and explore.

He was the youngest of his siblings though, so he had a long wait.

His sisters' stories always enthralled him, hearing of their adventures and sometimes close calls with humans and their coats. How there had been a couple of times where a couple of them hadn’t been as cautious as they should be and nearly had their coats stolen or taken.

He longed for the day where he could go up and see the human world outside of the form of a seal.

He wasted little time in going ashore when it was finally his day. There was so much that he wanted to do. So much that he wanted to see.

What ended up happening was that he befriended a prince, who had been swept out to sea. He had saved the young man who was about his age. The prince was so grateful that the prince invited him back to the castle with him.

It was a great adventure and he ended up meeting another Selkie on land. She didn’t seem to fully understand her heritage though and was trying to find where her coat had gone. Something that he had found only after she had left. It was also something he had hoped to keep from the prince. Though he had been there when they found the small trunk it was in.

The prince didn’t know what it was, but he did instinctively. He just knew it was her coat and that she’d need it back.

He ran into her a few times after that initial encounter. Not always when he was with the prince either.

He liked her a lot. She was smart, kind and knew so much about this world, as she had grown up in it as much as the prince had.

She knew little about the Selkie world though. If only he could tell her outright about everything that he knew. But if he was wrong about her… it was too dangerous. He needed to wait. For now he would continue to meet with her and get to know her. Especially as the prince became more busy with preparations for something called a ball.

He’d never been to anything like that. He was excited to see what it was. When the day came, he learned that a ball was a large formal party and that this one had the intention of trying to help the prince find a bride.

He was pretty lucky that with being the prince's best friend, that he got to remain close to him and see everything from the prince's perspective. So he saw when the possible Selkie girl who was missing her coat came in. She was enthralled by everything as much as he was. It was good to know that this was different to her as well.

He managed to get one dance in with her, before the prince whisked her away for the rest of the evening. He was left to handle the rest of the girls who weren’t here to see him, the prince's strange friend.

He didn’t see either the prince or the Selkie girl until she was rushing through the ball, running like her coat was in danger. The prince following after. No one able to get her to stop.

The ball took on a very different feeling after that. The prince was listless and wouldn’t pay attention to anyone, and wouldn’t even talk to him.

All of the girls had completely lost interest in him now that the prince was available again, though he was ignoring all of them. Instead he was talking to the guards about finding the girl who ran.

Over the next few hours he was left in the dark. Those hours turned into the next couple of days. The prince had no time for him and the Selkie girl hadn’t been around either. There was only so much he was willing to explore on his own.

Then finally, the prince was back… with the Selkie girl. The pair of them were claiming that they were going to get married. He was rather stunned by this revelation.

He and the Selkie girl had more in common than the prince had with her. But as he watched the two of them prepare for their wedding over the next few weeks he realized that they really did care about each other. In a way that he didn’t necessarily understand. She had an interest in the prince that she had never shown him.

So he knew that he would be returning to the sea once the pair married. It wouldn’t be fair to them for him to remain and pine after someone who wouldn’t return his affection.

He left the night of their wedding heavy hearted.

His siblings welcomed him home with open arms, having worried that his coat had been stolen and had been prepared to try and search for it. Even though it meant risking their coats again.

#the selkie story #inklings challenge #inklingschallenge #story: complete #theme: philia #the little mermaid #this is really just kind of a loose idea of what the story would be in full #there's more pining for other people that needs to be added for the full effect #but what's here works for what it is

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