Journey to Faded City (Work in Progress)

Entry 1 to the post-for-post with my friend Patrick: his post can be found here. This is the start of a short story that ties into my unfinished NaNoWriMo from 2007.

Journey to Faded City

“Down here,” hissed the ratfox and dove headfirst into the rocky hillside.

Soon stifled a cry of shock as her guide vanished, then crept closer. If she unfocused her eyes slightly, she could see, swimming in the rock before her, a tiny hole. She had grown used to such strangeness on her journey, but her senses still balked at recognizing it entirely. Still, the hole was clearly there and that was where the ratfox must have gone. She took off her pack and began to squeeze through. The rocks tore at her already ragged tunic and for a second the space was too narrow; the hard rock clamped down on her small, human body. She fought for breath; she could see nothing but she had to keep going down.

The tunnel entrance seemed to be alive, some malicious purpose clutching at her, squeezing the air out of her lungs and threatening to break her ribs. She would have cried out if there were any air to spare. Closing her eyes, she gave it one last squeeze. The pressure of the rocky tunnel vanished. She was through.

Gorki stood before her, his red eyes glowing in the dim light of the entranceway. “You made it,” he said, his voice a soft growl. “The passage doesn’t like humans much.”

“I gathered,” she said, after her breath had slowed. She didn’t have it in her to be cross at him for not warning her ahead of time, not after weeks on the road together. She shouldered her pack again. “Onward?”

“Onward,” he agreed. “Keep close to me. There are things in the tunnels that are not known in the daylight worlds and they are not all content to let us pass.”

He turned and plunged on. She followed close behind, letting the tip of his bushy tail brush against her chest. She could see nothing, but so long as she felt that soft touch, she knew she was on track. If she had been foolish, she would have been inclined to grab hold of it, to have a solid anchor between her fingertips; but she was not foolish, so she contented herself with that small reassurance that he would not abandon her in the tunnels below Argnot.

She did not know how long they walked, black tunnels giving way to more black. Every once in a while, she felt the cold air of an opening in the tunnel to her right or left, but Gorki plunged them unerringly onward. She could hear whispers in some of the other branches of the tunnels and they turned her spine to ice. Eventually, though, light began to filter into her vision, showing the grey on grey stone making up the roof and walls of the tunnel. When she could see everything clearly, albeit without colour yet, Gorki turned around and motioned for her to stop. She did, perplexed. This part of the tunnel looked no different from anything else they had walked through.

“Take this,” said the ratfox. In his open paw he held a small white capsule. Soon picked it up and raised her eyebrows at him. On its side, in a clear, institutional font was written 20 MG.

“Drugs?” she asked.

“Faded City is not only a place; it is a perception. You need to have the right filters to get there. If you don’t… I don’t know what you will see, but it won’t be Faded.” He paused. “Your perceptions are nearly right,” he said, once she’d nodded. “So I’m giving you the smallest doze.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a mind-altering drug made from the powdered bark of the tsokin tree,” Gorki said. His tone made it clear that he was humouring her and did not expect her to know what the drug was. “My people back home use it in a recreational capacity. Here, you can think of it as a slight adjustment. The only difference you will notice is that you can see Faded.”

Soon sighed and accepted the pill. She had not come this far to get squeamish now. Uncorking her waterskin, she popped the capsule into her mouth and drank it down. Then she recorked the skin. “And now?”

Gorki took off his own pack and sat down. “Now, we wait.”

“For what?”

“For it to kick in.”

Soon licked her lips nervously, but sat, her back against the cold stone of the tunnel. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes; there had not been much time to rest the past few days. She was glad of the chance to sit down.

After a moment, she opened her eyes again and dug in her pack for a piece of waybread. She chewed it for a bit, then washed it down with just a little more water from her waterskin. After that, she took down her waist-length hair from its bun and began brushing it. She was dimly aware that she had grown unused to having free time while on her journey. It was certainly nice to have a rest, but she kept trying to find ways to fill the time.

After some time (after she’d finished brushing her hair and put it back up in its severe braid), she noticed that she could see colour again. Her guide’s reddish fur with its golden highlights became clear and her own skin no longer looked grey-white in the half light. The walls of the tunnel, too, were not simply grey-on-grey; another look revealed many earthen shades among the rock.

“Has it grown lighter?” she wondered aloud.

“You’re seeing colour?” Gorki asked.

“Yeah,” Soon said. “But I haven’t seen the light grow.”

“It means the pill has worked. We are very near the border now and that affects things.” He leapt lightly to his hind legs, grabbing his rucksack as he did so. “Time to go.”

Soon rose, massaging her tired thighs as she did so. “Great,” she said, her voice warm. She was nearly there.

Belated Political Post and a brief story excerpt

So, I'm a bit of a blog delinquent. And I kept thinking: all this stuff going on in the country... I should blog about it. But then I didn't.

So all I can say right now is that I am ridiculously happy that Barack Obama won. That all the hard work I and all the other people who volunteered and called and persuaded and cajoled and raised money and so on and so forth has finally paid off. Now I'm just hoping that he will continue to be the intelligent, thoughtful, forward-thinking person he has shown himself to be all throughout this campaign, and that the cabinet he chooses for himself will be a similarly intelligent, thoughtful, and forward-thinking one. His choice of Vice President, of course, was awesome. I liked Joe Biden back when he was running in the primaries and I think he's a terribly good choice.

The damper on all this is Florida's and California's marriage bans. I don't know. I thought that this country, riding the wave of progressivism, would stomp all bigotry and intolerance underfoot. Or something similarly idealistic. I don't know what I was expecting from Florida. But California, at least! I thought that Proposition 8 would be hit with a resounding slap and then torn into little pieces from which it could never re-awaken. The result disappointed me. I'm terribly disappointed, but also not quite believing that it's happened. Riding on the wave of joy from Obama's election, this sudden plunge downwards is so shocking I don't quite feel it.

And also, I'm still hopeful. I do believe, most sincerely, that America is on the right path. That we can make the right decisions that will lead to more equality and more tolerance and acceptance. And gay marriage is on the way to that. I do believe that.

~*~

In other news, I am doing NaNoWriMo this month and this is an excerpt from my prologue.

Three hundred twenty seven years prior to the events laid out in the previous section, Ayala Manasdaughter and Sarrkhan Yanasson, antelope Astartians sick of being hunted when in their animal form and shunned in their human form, left their homeland in the country of Marren and went looking for a place to call their own. They traveled on main highways and country roads, through forests and plains, eventually leaving Marren and entering Ancaria. In the holy city of Ci Seii (so called because of all the temples within its walls), they left offerings to the goddess Time and the antelope god Colven, and continued traveling.

It is not known what path they took, but it is known that after two and a half years of traveling, burdened by exhaustion and Ayala’s swelling belly, they came very suddenly upon a valley surrounded entirely by mountains. On one side of the valley was a sheer cliff wall; on the other, a few hillocks and a mountain pass. There were two creeks, one on each side, in the valley. The hillocks were entirely forested, though the rest of the valley was not. There was man sign in the valley, but it was more than a month old. It was perfect. Sarrkhan and Ayala decided to make their homestead there.

Over the years, other shapeshifters fleeing the same kind of trouble that the couple had fled found out about their discovery and followed in their footsteps. The homestead became two homesteads, then three. Then it became a village. The village needed a name. They named it Ci Zarna in the Ancarian style. Ci Zarna was a village of shapeshifters; there was not a single person in the entire village who kept one shape the entire time.

Here a note about shapeshifters would not be amiss. No one knows how shapeshifting works. The trait seems to be hereditary. Shapeshifters of different species can interbreed if they are in a similar form, but not enough studies have been done on what kind of children they produce. There are shapeshifters whose primary form is human and who can change into a single other creature. There are Astartians, whose primary form is that of an animal and who can change into human form. And then, there are those shifters who can change into many different creatures and whose primary form is unknown. There are also shapeshifters who can change into inanimate objects, though these are rare. The one form all these shapeshifters have in common is the humanoid one, so the Ci Zarna villagers spent roughly equal amounts of time in human and animal form.

It is noteworthy that predator and prey animals lived peacefully in Ci Zarna, though the first several years of the village’s existence there were incidents that caused some worry about whether or not they could live together. Nowadays, the children of the Ci Zarnans play hunting games with each other. These games help to improve their instincts and their capabilities, but are not taken seriously. Those shifters whose forms required the consumption of meat were very careful about communicating their hunting intentions so that no shapeshifters were in the area where they would hunt in their animal forms. It is true that shapeshifters have a distinct scent from either humans or animals, but when the bloodlust is upon the hunters, they are susceptoble to mistakes. Other shapeshifters learned to stay out of the way on those occasions.

After many years, Ci Zarna was almost completely forgotten by the outside. The villagers traded infrequently with people on the outside, but they were largely self-sufficient, surrounded as they were by fertile and bountiful land. The first few generations of Ci Zarnans were wary of attack and kept their weapons knowledge and their battle skills well-honed. As the years passed and the world seemed content to leave them alone, the worries of the older generations were forgotten. New people trickled in every once in a while, bringing their skills and whatever supplies they could bring; these assimilated into the culture of the village.

Ayala Manasdaughter and Sarrkhan Yanasson spoke Marrenan. Others of the first settlers spoke other languages, Ancarian Common, and dialects of smaller locales. The first settlers spoke to each other in an argot comprised of different aspects of all the different languages. In time, it became a language of its own, similar to its parent languages, but different in many ways as well. By the time of the events related in the previous section, Ci Zarnan was its own language, and those who came to live there had to learn it as though they were moving to another country. They could communicate without language barriers in animal forms, but Ci Zarnans lived in both human and animal forms. In humanoid form, language became necessary, so the newcomers learned.

~*~

It was a massacre.

Too few people remembered how to fight in humanoid form. The skills that the wildcat shapeshifters used to hunt their prey did not translate into fighting human raiders who rode horses and used weapons. The wolf shifters fought in pack formation and did the most damage to the raiders, bringing down their animals (with murmured apologies in their own tongue) and tearing into their throats. It wasn’t enough, though the whole village turned out to fight them. There were more than the fifteen that Guillette had seen on her mad dash back to the village. There were more even than thirty. It was less like a band of raiders and more like a small company. They were attracted by the fertility and prosperity of the village and could tell that the village had known peace for many generations. They slaughtered those who stayed to fight and looted the whole village. Then, they fanned out into the forest and went looking for those who had escaped. They were very thorough, but they did not know the land as well as the Ci Zarnans did and they did not find most of the survivors. Unfortunately, most of the survivors did not find each other, either. They survived in small, separate groups, scattered by the sudden horror.

What is surprising and strange about the story of Ci Zarna is that each of the small groups of survivors returned to the village at least once, each time staying very briefly. This is known because over a period of a few weeks they ate the bodies of their deceased and buried the bones in individual graves, leaving markers identifying whom each body belonged to. They did this separately, without ever seeing each other, and without ever banding together. When the business of burying the dead was complete, they departed from the village without attempting to rebuild, deciding to attempt to survive in an outside world whose language and culture they did not know.

The reason for this is unknown.

Jasper and Eilidhe Laine returned to the village, buried their parents, and ate a few parts of the bodies lying in the square. Jasper saw Gidion’s large black body, horse-shaped at the end and reverently tore large chunks out of one of his legs. Gidion had fought as a human, but when he lost his sword he must have changed into his horse shape. His hooves were brown with dried blood. Jasper brought a few of the chunks to Eilidhe and offered them to her. Thus they honoured their dead. Then, they gathered what supplies they could find and departed that fertile valley, never to return.

Four weeks to the day after the massacre there was not a single body left aboveground in the village. The houses stood abandoned; the wheat grew unharvested; the village was dotted with grave markers.

~*~

So that's that. I realize the quality is not so good, since the purpose of NaNoWriMo is to finish the whole thing and then edit it in the year that follows. Still, I'm happy that I'm doing it.


Love and hugs,
Penny