unfinishedtales | Recent Entries

Daxutlan flew with her to the edge of astatl, where the water lapped and vanished into the consuming blackness. Izi built a steamship there. "Can you play for them?" Izi asked the bard. "Something they'll hear. Tell them it's safe."

"I will try." Daxutlan began to play, a haunting melody that carried over the water -- and into the void, Izi hoped. The music was full of sorrow and regret, but the bard did not sing; the message remained unspoken.

Minutes passed. Izi yelled, "Tristan! Come back! I need you!"

More minutes trickled by. Izi was about to move the boat and check somewhere else along the wall of darkness, when a naked man stumbled out of the void and onto the deck of her craft. "Finally. Have to -- " Izi started to say. Then vines rose from the sea, dripping over the rail to engulf Tris's body.

The human yelped and struggled in the vines. "Izi!" One dark-skinned hand reached out of the green net of tangling plants and towards her. Izi jumped for it -- but her fingers closed on air.

"Tris!" Izi screamed, as the net of vines collapsed around nothing.

Daxutlan's eyebrows rose. "She really did need him quickly."

Izi whirled on him. "What have you done to my brother?"

"Nothing, my First." Daxutlan raised his hands in a gesture of placation. "Lady Summer -- "

A massive ball of clay struck the Goi bard squarely in the chest, interrupting him and knocking him into the rail. He doubled over, wheezing.

"Bring him back." Mayswaul stood nude at the prow of the ship, her mouth twisted in a snarl. She gestured with one hand, and a giant clay cage formed around Daxutlan. "Bring him back now."

Daxutlan slid to his knees inside the cage, fighting for breath and raising a hand for patience.

"Don't think he took him," Izi said.

"Then who did? Nehwaul? I swear I'll make her pay. Was not casting us out enough?" Mayswaul advanced on Daxutlan like an angel of War.

Daxutlan shook his head vehemently. "Lady Summer," he wheezed. "Took him to the World."

Mayswaul looked at Izi. Izi shrugged.

"Same way ... Weaver went." Daxutlan drew a deep breath, wincing. "Remember?"

Mayswaul covered her mouth. "You did go back to the World?" she asked Izi.

Izi nodded.

Mayswaul's red-brown skin darkened in a flush. She waved a hand, and the ceramic cage collapsed to either side of Daxutlan. "I'm sorry. I -- just -- I thought -- "

The Goi bard put a hand on the rail and pulled himself to his feet, waving off Mayswaul's apology. She rushed over to help him to one of the ship's benches.

"What do we do now?" Izi asked.

Daxutlan sat down heavily and gave an elaborate shrug. "I have no idea. Normally that would be up to you, First."

"Why'd you keep calling me that?"

Daxutlan managed a smile, recovering his wind. "You are Summer's First-Chosen. She picked you to return to the World to aid her. Aloi is clearly gone from her service. So. You are First now."

Izi exchanged glances with Mayswaul. The Goi girl shrugged too, then sat down with her knees drawn up to her chest and her ankles crossed, by way of modesty.

"Could you explain that more?" Izi asked.

The bard nodded. He shrugged out of his vest and handed it wordlessly to Mayswaul, then leaned back with his eyes closed. He rested his head against the steel wall of the steamboat's engine room. "Aloi was the first mortal whom Lady Summer ever Chose for her service. She also selected him, typically, for service in the World. We agreed, long ago, that this made him First among those of us in astatl. From time to time, he would return to astatl, that another might serve the Lady in the World. But he was still her first-chosen. When Lady Summer took you into the World, we argued over what had happened. Some doubted the evidence of their own eyes. They thought Lady Summer must have destroyed you, because they could not believe that Aloi had been banished, as he must have been else he would have returned to astatl when another was taken to the World. Or perhaps they could not accept that Lady Summer might Choose a human to represent her in the World. Whatever the case, the Lady's will is clear enough now."

"Oh." Izi thought about that. She took a seat on the bench against the engine compartment, next to Daxutlan. The water lapped at the ship's hull, sending it drifting closer to the Void. "Is it? I thought she just picked me as the right person for that moment. I don't think it means she wants me in charge." The idea that someone, never mind a goddess, might put her in charge was disturbing.

Daxutlan blinked, turning his head to look at Izi. After a moment, he said, "No. It had better be you in charge. If it's anyone else -- say, Yuanastlon -- we're headed straight back to war."

"Why can't it be you?" Izi complained. "You don't want to fight."

"Because most of the humans will not trust me." Daxutlan produced a lap harp, and began to strum. "Shall we get back to shore, or did you want to tour the Void for yourself?" The hull on the port side brushed against the wall of darkness, and began to dissolve.

Izi jumped to her feet, reinforcing the ship with a thought. "All right, fine, let's go back. But nobody trusts me."

Jack didn't get a significant lead on the youths. Instead, he ducked and weaved to stay just out of their grasp -- always within reach but not actually siezed. He gabbled apologies as he fled, but the Goi youths were only further inflamed by their inability to capture "one old lame beggar". He lead them two blocks over and one down, to a busier street with a vendor selling crushed ice drinks to a crowd of mostly Goi children and their mothers. Jack hobbled off the curb to dodge around the crowd, with his pursuers right behind him. The kids turned to watch while their mothers clutched them to keep them from the fray. None of the ones by the flavored ice vendor moved to intervene, but as Jack ran past a heavyset Goi matron herding a half-dozen children, the woman gave a bellow that made even Jack hesitate. "Oy! Just what do you young men think you're doing?" She stepped deliberately into the street between Jack and his pursuers, throwing out an arm to intervene.

One drew up short, and one ducked beneath her arm to lunge for Jack, and Roiwlo crashed into her. The matron grunted but did not yield ground as the other Goi glared at her. "Stay out of this, old woman! This isn't your business."

She drew herself erect and huffed at him, turning half a circle to follow as Jack darted out of reach of the Goi nearest him by putting the matron between them. "Old woman, am I? Well, young man, seems we old folks best stick together. What's your problem, sonny? Did your poor ol' grandpa not give you enought 'presents' and now you're going to beat your due out of his poor hide?"

"Hey!" The second Goi protested. "He attacked us!"

Jack cowered at the matron's side, gabbling another apology between panting breaths as he ducked a grab. "Din't do nothin', so sorry, please don' hurt me, sorry, sorry."

Most of the mothers were keeping their kids back, but some of the older ones who were without parental supervision drew close to get a better view. The kids from the matron's group watched wide-eyed, and giggled at the newcomer's assertion.

"Don't believe him!" Roiwlo pointed an accusatory finger at Jack, who cringed back in fear. "He did! Walked right up to me and knocked me down!"

The Goi Matron looked Roiwlo -- a tall, healthy Goi man -- up and down. She twisted to look at Jack, who appeared to be a ragged, hunched, limping, and exhausted old Goi. The giggles from the children grew louder. "You should be ashamed of yourselves!" she said, slapping back one of the other Goi's attempts to grab Jack. "All of you! 'Attacked you' indeed! A little old beggar! You leave him be, you hear?"

Roiwlo lifted a fist to menace the Goi woman. "And I'm telling you one more time, stay out of our business, old woman!"

The matron glared back at him, uncowed. Across the street, another Goi man emerged from one of the buildings. "Mother! Is there a problem out here?"

The matron swept the Goi around her with her gaze, her hands on her hips. "I don't know," she said to them. "Is there?"

Roiwlo looked ready to take a swing at someone, but one of his companions caught his arm. "Look, just leave it."

"But he -- "

"I know! It's not worth it, though. This isn't what we're here for. C'mon."

Roiwlo glowered at Jack, who cowered further. "I won't forget this, grandpa. Don't think I will!" With that, he and the others retreated to the snickering of children.

The last few days have involved considerably more sleep and less running from one place to the next than Saturday did. Which is fine by me, as I needed more relaxation time. Sunday, John and I slept late and lazed around for a few hours until

moonwolf came over around 3PM. Then we all chatted for a bit before driving off to meet

elusivetiger,

haikujaguar and

hellesfarne. Elusive Tiger and Hellesfarne don't really use their LJs, but it's the most convenient handle I have for them, so I'll go with it.

I know ElusiveTiger is Haikujaguar's husband. Hellesfarne is a mutual friend that I know from the +terrible butterflies+ game.

It's a two hour drive to Tampa, and I took the opportunity to share my current favorite album, Matthew Ebel's "Beer and Coffee" with Moonwolf and John. John actually introduced me to Matthew Ebel's music by giving me a song he'd done called "In the MUCK", which is about FurryMUCK. The FurryMUCK song isn't available for sale anywhere that I know of, but he has two albums available on iTunes. I love "Beer and Coffee". Will have to get the other album some time soon.

So we chattered our way to Tampa; the drive down was quite pleasant. We arrived twenty or more minutes early, but Hellesfarne spotted us from the plaza so we got to talk to him for a while before dinner.

Dinner was great, with conversation mostly alternating between butterflies and WoW. I felt sorry for Moonwolf, who isn't involved in either, but she seemed content with the company. She introduced us to heretofore unknown fondue customs. For example, when you drop food into the fondue pot by mistake, you must either buy someone a drink, or kiss someone. I picked the kissing option, and we abided by it for the rest of the night. Hellesfarne, who was sitting between ElusiveTiger and John, was very careful not to drop his food. :)

After dinner, we bid the tiger and the jaguar good night, and headed over to a Barnes and Noble to lounge about, draw, and chat some more with Hellesfarne. We finally headed for home around 11PM, meaning we didn't make it back to Orlando until 1AM. Then we hung out at Moonwolf's house for a while, where we met one of her cool roommates, Mattie. He was a lot of fun, and let me braid his hair after watching me zip through braiding my own.

We finally made it home at about 3AM. We were so tired we went straight to bed, not even checking the butterfly list.

Monday, we woke up even later, around noonish. It was another lazy day around the house. In early afternoon, we made our way to the Borders where Moonwolf works. We hung out there, drinking various interesting concoctions and enjoying Moonwolf's company on her break. I found a cool book of photo references for drawing and ended up buying it. I started a picture of Nice 'n Easy, the my character and John's from Greywolf's tabletop WoW game. It's coming along all right, and an unusually complex picture for me.

We left for home around 9PM, went grocery shopping until 10, spent a lot of time hanging out and then butterflying, and went to sleep at 2:30 or so. Tonight, we have to do better -- we need to leave the house at 6:30 to get me to the conference center in a timely fashion. Alas: work tomorrow. Still, an interesting sort of work for me.

This should be posted to my regular journal, but I can't actually remember the password for

rowyn, and the password-recoovery email would go to my home email, which I also can't get to. So I'll post it here for now and repost it later.

The flight to Orlando went fine and landed on time at 10:40. John and I went back to his house, where we talked and I posted to the +terrible butterflies+ list and we talked some more, and finally went to sleep at 2AM. Which would've been more reasonable if we hadn't needed to get up at 7AM the next morning to meet the Blooms and

ladyperegrine for breakfast.

John set the stereo alarm for 6:30 the next day, but left the stereo turned off at night so it didn't go off. We woke on time anyway, although it was dark enough that we didn't realize how late it was until we'd already been lazing in bed for fifteen or twenty minutes. So we scrambled to get out the door.

We were to meet them at a Denny's near Peregrine's house, and as it turned out, we were early. They were a bit delayed because the Blooms had just found out that their noon flight had been cancelled due to bad weather in New York, and they were scrambling to sort out when they would be leaving. My first thought: "Yes! I'll get to see them for more than two hours!" Second thought: "Uh ... yeah. Sorry to hear about that trouble. Must be a real pain for you. Right." When Peregrine and showed up at Denny's and I expressed these thoughts to them, Peregrine laughed and said she'd thought the same thing.

They were switched to a 6PM flight, that was later pushed back to 7:50PM.

beetiger said, "It's great except for the part where we get into New York at midnight and have to shovel out our car. But we'd've booked the later flight anyway if we'd know about your trip when we booked ours, so it actually worked out well."

So we ate breakfast and talked, then went back to Peregrine's house to hang out and talk more. We spent time with the kids, too -- Rhys who's three years old, and Peregrine's two kids, Ellie and Daniel. The kids were a lot of fun; very active and friendly. Rhys at one point made a circuit of hugs, running from one adult to the next to collect hugs. Ellie and Rhys and Bard and I played catch together. Rhys, despite being three, is slightly better at catch than his father is. :) We spent most of our time pcking the baseball back up off the ground. "This is why Koosh balls were invented."

We also did lots of grown-up talk: exchanging "How we met" stories with Bard and Vicki, (Vicki's had the best line: "One of our friends wanted to set us up, and she told me, "I think you should meet Bard. He has a bunch of personality flaws that you'll probably consider features."), swapping old roleplay stories, talking about tributes to other systems tucked into World Tree (a 'construction' line of spells: "The Ethereal Saw", "The Ethereal Drill", "The Ethereal Plane"), talking about Ideas to Go,

jordangreywolf's workplace. Peregrine and John first met there, which resulted in Peregrine's introduction to FurryMUCK and LiveJournal and is therefore, in a roundabout way, how she met the Blooms. Beetiger's interested in being a Creative Consumer, too -- hey, Greywolf, is there a New York/New Jersey office? Are they looking for people? :)

And we marvelled as Rhys fixed the tape player on Peregrine's stereo (it works better if you switch the amplifier the tape setting.)

John and I have both been playing in Bard's +Terrible Butterflies+ PBEM, and we were dying to talk to him about it. Beetiger's been refraining from learning anything about it because she's going to play in the tabletop version. So John and I were initially thinking "Gah! We're gonna have to stop ourselves every two minutes from talking about the game!" But it turned out not to be a problem. Not only did we have lots of other things to talk about, but as we were leaving Denny's, John arranged for Bard to ride back with us. When I realized what that meant, I said, "All right! You got the Bard!" We drove slowly, stopped at two different gas stations for gas (the first was way overpriced, honest), and chattered butterflies nonstop. :) We ended up staying until nearly 4PM, and a few more opportunities arose to chat butterflies while no one else happened to be around, so that was cool too. I'm looking forward to hearing about how the tabletop TB game goes -- it's starting tomorrow.

Overall, it was an awesome visit. I had a great time. Only a few things marred it. Peregrine was just recovering from the flu, with the result that she felt guilty for not being a better hostess, and we felt guilty for hanging out at her house while she wasn't feeling well and had every reason to think she'd be alone for the afternoon with a guest-free house. I think we managed to resolve the twin guilts without too much harm. :) I was exhausted from only five hours of sleep (I'm still kinda tired this morning, and I had more like ten last night). And I felt guilty because we were supposed to meet Jordan around 1-2PM for gaming, and we didn't get over there until 4:30 or so. But I really did want to visit with the Blooms while they were still in town, and I'll get at least one more chance to see Jordan, next Saturday. Hopefully more than that!

So we called Jordan to let him know about the delay, and then again to let him know when we were leaving.

I'd been expecting to play board games, but

mach was the only person who was there when we arrived, and Jordan was running the World of Warcraft tabletop RPG for him. So we joined in on that, with John playing his regular character, Easy. I had a guest NPC Jordan had written up for me.

Easy's character concept is that he used to work with a female partner, Nice. Nice had been the brains of the operation, but she'd died in a magical backlash some years ago, and Easy had been somewhat unbalanced ever since. He often thought she was still around, and would consult her for advice.

John's told me a lot about the character and about Nice. So when Jordan asked me a few weeks ago, "Would you like to play Nice's ghost?" I said "OH YES!"

It was awesome. I had so much fun with the character, and even managed to swing one creative and effective use of her spells. She and Easy are both Lawful Neutral, and she's not the kind of character I would make up to play myself. I almost always play good-guy cooperative characters when left to my own devices. So I had a lot of fun playing a character who naturally took charge and regarded everyone else with a sort of casual superiority. I gave her a vampy, hissing, Germanic sort of accent, which I enjoyed doing and John liked. I'm very glad I got to play her last night and am looking forward to playing her again next weekend. I'm only sorry that I was so tired I'd pretty much run out of steam even before the game ended at 8:30PM.

Today, we're lazing around the house for a while before going to meet

haikujaguar,

moonwolf,

elusivetiger, and one person from the +terrible butterflies+ game who I don't know if he has an LJ handle. We're having dinner tonight at the Melting Pot. Should be great.

Having a blast so far. And I've got lots of trip left to enjoy! =)

I don't think this snippet is going to go anywhere. But Unfinished Tales has a real dearth of random snippets that don't go anywhere. So here goes! (Nowhere.)

"I want to frolic," Kalena said, rolling onto her scaled back. Precious metals and gems shifted beneath her weight, clinking together, coins skittering over gilded objects. She twisted her head to fix one eye upon me.

"Frolic?" I looked up from the jeweled cup I'd been polishing. "You can't frolic."

"Why not?" She arched her serpentine spine to pull her wings free, unfurling them. More coins slid off the hoard, tinkling as they struck the stone floor.

"Because you're a dragon. Dragons do not frolic."

Kalena snapped her wings to her sides and rolled onto her stomach, stretching her forelegs before her. Foot-long talons carved furrows through the front of her hoard. "I thought dragons could do whatever they want," she purred, still watching me.

"Well ... all right," I conceded. I dipped my rag into the jar of polish while she smiled at me, baring a mouthful of long pointy teeth. "So you can't want to frolic."

She snorted. A puff of smoke drifted from her nostrils. "But I do want to frolic."

"You don't even know how to frolic."

"Yes I do!"

I buffed the edge of the cup before setting it down. "Then show me." I folded my arms, looking at her. "Go on," I said, encouragingly. "Frolic!"

"All right! I will!" Kalena turned to face the mouth of her cave. She half-lifted her wings, and set one foot forward delicately. She gave her body an undulating shake, then raised her neck into a question mark shape. She shook out her wings again.

"Come on, now," I said. "I'm waiting."

The dragon glared at me, curling one forefoot into a fist. An unfortunate platter crumpled within her grip. She snorted out a thin jet of flame.

"Very fierce," I said, approvingly. "But not frolicsome."

Kalena sighed and flopped back onto her hoard, creating a small wave of gold and silver away from her. "So I don't know how to frolic," she admitted. "But I could learn, I'm sure."

"Look, sweetheart, dragons don't frolic. Unicorns frolic. Fairies frolic. Dragons brood and hoard and toast villages."

"But I'm tired of brooding and hording. What's the good in being awesome and powerful if I can't do what I want?"

I sighed, and started to buff a tarnished silver statue that was lying on its side. "Why don't you find a nice village to toast? Make you feel better."

She glared at me with swirling eyes. "This must be some new definition of 'good' I'm not familiar with."

"You're not supposed to be good! You're a dragon."

Kalena gave a fiery sigh, blackening the cavern wall nearest her. The hoard gleamed in the burst of firelight. "But I want to frolic." After a pause, she added, "And gambol."

Exasperated, I threw up my hands and went to get a fresh rag. Whoever heard of a gamboling dragon?

Unfinished Tales is

rowyn's journal of unfinished bits and pieces. Some of these bits are longer than others, but most of them (yes, even Silver Scales) are not neatly-plotted stories with beginnings and endings that I knew at the outset. This journal was intended to take the place of an offline journal I used to use for whatever fictionlets popped into my head.

This journal is not public, and I never intend to make it public. This is partly for legal reasons (in theory, I cannot sell "first publication" rights to a work that has already been made publicly available online, and it's possible that I'll some day sell one or more of the stories that have started out here.) But it's mostly for psychological reasons. I want to know who my audience is. I can't adequately explain why this is important to me. If I'd sold a story to a magazine or a novel to a publisher, I would be delighted to have hundreds of thousands of total strangers buying and reading it.

But, for some reason, this is different to me. I want to know who's reading here.

To that end, I'm asking for a roll call here: If you are on the UT friends list, and you wish to stay on it, please leave a note on this entry. (Yes, obviously, I already know that some of you are following along quite eagerly, but to avoid singling people out I'm not going to list off names one way or the other here.) :) If you've not left many comments on the journal so far, I'd appreciate hearing why you want to stay on -- ie, if you're reading along quietly, or reading only certain kinds of stories, or waiting for that elusive day when you have enough free time to catch up, or you're worried it'll hurt my feelings if you drop the journal, or whatever reason you might have. :)

In a week or two, I'll purge off the list any one who hasn't left a note. I'll leave this entry public, so if you've been removed and want back on, you can still leave a note.

Please note: my feelings will not be hurt if you're not reading the journal or if you don't want to stay on the list. I'm not dropping anyone off my own reading list based on this. Believe me, I've had my own share of mental blocks for not reading someone else's fiction -- often even fiction that I knew was good and that I'd enjoy. I would be the worst sort of hypocrite if I held not reading against anyone else.

And, as I note above, this isn't a requirement that you read all or any of the entries. I just want to know that you're out there. :)

On a related note, prompted by the whole "Friendsditto" flap: please do not share the entries here with anyone who's not on the UT friends list.

Last: if you're reading this and not on the UT friends list, but would like to be added, please let me know. However, please be aware that if I don't already know you or read your journal, I probably won't add you. Nothing against you and no insult intended -- it's just that this is private for me. Ironically, more private than my journal about my life is.

Also, if you wish to email me privately rather than leaving a note, for some reason, feel free to do so. My email is rowyn AT liveREMOVEthisPARTjournal.com