This morning I was writing part of a new piece. It's one of those "I won't know how I feel about this until I'm done with it," pieces. So for the blogfest I dipped into the files on my laptop that have arrived on this hard drive having survived two desktops, and two laptops to be shelved...But I just can't bring myself to delete it...The style of the following passage and what I was working on this morning is so insanely different, I'm shaking my head right now. And that has nothing to do with the rules, I'm certain you can spot tons that I'm breaking! Not to mention my public-school trained spelling and grammar :( A little toooooo apparent, I fear.
Background: Same world as other High Fantasy WIP, different era, different geographical region :( Was shelved about 6 years ago, and other than 50 pages of a rewrite that barely taps this draft (and itself was shelved for going nowhere right yet) it has not seen the screen in a good while.
Warning: spelling is atrocious. My roughs are a grammarian's nightmare. Just saying...a little too embarrassing to read all the way through and correct it :( So it is what is... Let me know what rules I'm breaking here :D
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There were three sisters, the gaurdian, the lady and the sorceress. Kessiry was the last, the eldest of the three and the first to have the necklace sear her throat and leave the tattoo...the mark of her heretige and destiny. Tellis, the youngest, lived in the city of Jeztor, a Culla-Korlatz, she was, a guardian Called to defend the city during its first years. Tellis watched the stones pile up and form a shape reflecting in every minute detail the city Tellis' mother had left so long ago. Pehryne's Call surprised everyone. She was a lady, born and raised in the courts of Tevric, she was to be the child spared. The normal, pampered, middle daughter. Then the Korlatz mark burned her too, and she was sent to the south, to Southern Ekliri. Her sisters knew that she likely went beyond, went into regions they could not imagine. That their sister could survive the Curse neither doubted verbally, but when the eldest and youngest met, a meloncholy shadowed their words, their faces...and the sorceress began to look for answers to elementry questions.
Kessiry was known to gather ancient works and every northern Kingdom at war gathered the texts in massive supplies, stacked high and high in their libraries. When Kessiry, her tattoo ablaze with Draden's Gold arrived to end the fighting, as was always the situation--the Kings attempted to sway the Korlatz with promise of the hidden volumes. She would not, could not, be swayed, for it was Draden's desire that Don-Yin be fully at peace. Whether Gold was needed, or swords or diplomacy, Kessiry always won out over the Kings and Queens of Aylerone. The texts they spent such time aquiring, those would vanish with Kessiry.
Between Calls she would sit with paper bound carefully into a book, so rare in those times, and carefully would she record whatever useful history, whatever clue hid in the ancient writings. However, she soon learned that the older the scroll or book, whatever it was she found, the harder it was to understand. Raised as a noble, and special even among that prized class, Kessiry was as well educated as she possibly could have been, and it was not that the language was so different from her mother's Rextian toungue--for that was what all the works were composed in--it was more as if the words would not stay in her mind. She could never remember it. Even after translating it into the modern trade-language, she could not understand it. She would frown and puzzle over herown script, which had the same effect on her as the old writtings.
Then, looking more closely at her surroundings when Called to the Northern shore, the Western and Southern Ekliri...she saw a resemblance the land had, the people had, all over the Kingdoms and even deep into the Cursed Land.
"Tellis," she told her sister when in Jeztor one day, "I do not know what I see, but the lands...it is more as if it is one realm than a dozen states and nomadic Eklirites and--"
"That is silly, 'Siry.How could that be?"
"I--I would not know. Sometimes it is like I am glimpsing the past, into a time I am not intended to see."
"The Jeztori believe that knowledge of the past is important, sister, they have preserved centuries and of centuries of histories, gathering them from these lands and some brought over from Kottia-RExtian. There is nothing--"
"I have the oldest volumes Tellis," Kessiry leaned forward in her chair, "not they." She set her cider mug atop the small table withn a loud thunk.
Tellis looked nervously at the mug, then back to her sister, her voice was a whisper. "Y-you would know better than I, then, Kessiry."
"What does it mean?" She mumbled, staring at some distant point, something beyond Tellis and which the younger woman knew did not exist.
"Maybe you weren' meant to know?"
"And who do I gather this for?" her arm swept the room, but indicating nothing in it. Clearly in reference to--
"Someone else?"
Kessiry stared at her. Tellis did not flinch under her sister's peircing gaze, but remembered how Pehryne always had..."Who else?"
"Do not think in the present, Siry. There were an uncountable number who lived before us and yet more to after. How can you possibly know?"
The sorceress smiled. "Tht is it then. The future. Thank you Tellis." She stood and strode quickly, distractedly almost, from the room.
"Si-Siry!" Tellis stood, bent to pick up the mug, the ran after her sister, "Kessiry! What do you--"
Kessiry paused by the entry door, a hand already on the carved wooden doorknob already. "The one word I remember the most, Tel, is 'Azoryn.'"
Convinced that a descendant would be able to comprehend thew knowledge she had so painstakingly copied, Kessiry finnished the diary and when time turned and her daughter Nevla was Called, the book and family necklace were given into her keeping. Time turns quickly yet, and Nevla passed booth to her son.
Wow. Those are some loaded first few paragraphs. So, much, information. And this is the first I've noticed someone using the stammer on words a few different times. But seems like there is a good idea somewhere in there. ;-)
ReplyDeletePaw...there's a bleeping history in there! haha...my problem has largely been focusing down onto "just a few characters" because I have the whole you-seriously-don't-need-to-know-it history and I am too big-picture minded. It's helped/hindered me in my non-writing life, too :( But I like to think over the past 6 years, I kinda figured out how to weed it down :D
ReplyDeleteReally hard to read. :(
ReplyDeleteI this in critique groups sometimes and just tell people to "choose a story" and write it. People like to write every idea that pops into their head.
But I think you can still extract something good from it.
lol, thanks :D But I am not even trying. :D I think it's a good example of info "for the writer" but does not need to be in an MS. Like... one big info dump... :P
ReplyDelete