Why Does Love Do This To Me

For a variety of reasons, I've never been a fan of Valentine's Day. Partly it's connected to my birthday, which was yesterday; as you might have gathered from the entry yesterday, I spent most of the day wishing I was dead. Valentine's doesn't tend to help this feeling at all. Still, on Sunday I went to Isengard, as you can see above, and that cheered me up even before I went into the deep dark hell of birthday!depression. Mostly because I went by horse. I like riding horses. I also got to see the tree that Bean!Boromir died most dramatically under, as Sean Bean is wont to do. WILL THAT MAN EVER LIVE THROUGH ANYTHING, I ASK YOU.

At any rate, I had a terrible morning and was only cheered up when I got home and discovered that the three Valentine's commissions I'd ordered at the start of the month were waiting for me over at deviantart. I had sworn at the time I'd write some drabbles to go with them, so I've spent the last couple of hours writing them. I have three couples, and because I'm all for the Equal Opportunity Pairing, we have the pairings today in three flavours -- one male/female, one male/male, and one female/female. Although the male in the m/f pairing is admittedly bisexual leaning towards gay, not to mention one of the girls in the f/f pairing is probably by default straight, but is totally IT'S OKAY IF IT'S YOU for her partner. D'aw. (Actually, one of the males in the m/m pairing probably qualifies as something dangerously close to a Depraved Bisexual, while the other is actually functionally asexual. I never claimed this was a simple fluffy Valentine's thing, did I...?)

Now, all these pictures were done by the awesomely talented Kayla, who goes by the handle ThePlanPony at deviantart. Go and tell her how awesome she is, would you? BECAUSE SHE TOTALLY IS. Besides, she's still taking on more couple commissions for Valentine's this month. I'm tempted to get another few myself, so...if you have any characters of mine you'd like to see in a fluffy picture and drabble, gimme your suggestions. In the meantime, here's the story so far:

Ever Afters

Aleksandr still felt guilt for a lot of things. Key amongst them were the way he’d left his sister, and then he was constantly troubled by the way he couldn’t be sure he’d ever be able to love the paladin the way he knew the other man loved him. But as he stood in the window of their latest inn, his thoughts drifted to another, to a woman he so very rarely allowed himself to remember.

The silver moon was probably the reason why, he thought with dim melancholy. Its pale orb reminded him of her pallid colouring, of the way she had always seemed a shimmering silhouette against the dull reality of the world she’d been forced to live within. Though he’d not known of her true form for so long, he’d realised from the beginning that she was something different. Something more. A dream, perhaps. And all dreams by their very nature were fleeting.

His hand rose, the tips of his fingers pressing to his lips. For all he tried not to think of her often, he could so easily conjure up the memory of her kiss. Those pale lips had tasted of saltwater; had it been the remnants of her lost ocean home, or simply her tears? Aleksandr had never quite decided. And he’d never been given the opportunity to find out again. In the end he’d never even been able to hold her, not properly, not the way people did in stories. Though they’d been of a height, even with the effects of his own illness upon his body he’d known she’d have been light in his arms. She would have floated there, silent and perfect and real.

Aleksandr closed his eyes, pressed his forehead against the cool glass. It was perhaps better to remember her as she had been at the beginning, not at the end. The first night they’d met she had descended the stairs in the darkness, and then stepped out into the rain. Freshwater had dripped all over him from where it beaded upon her hair like pearls, and her long fingers had been so light as they’d traced the blue veins just below the surface of his skin.

He is dying, she had whispered, but now she was dead and he was alive, and he opened his eyes. The sword of the water-god hung limply in his hand. As he looked down at its iridescent weight his lips twisted into a grim smile. What kind of a hero could he ever claim to be, when he had left the maiden fair to die?

If he closed his eyes again, he could imagine instead the difference of their lives, if it had ended like the stories he’d loved as a child. In those legends the prince always saved the princess – and so often at the last minute, just as things seemed their most hopeless. He wouldn’t have just saved her life, either. In the prince’s house Alyria had been little more than a wraith, a lost lingering shadow. But if Aleksandr had been a true hero, he’d have found her scales, he’d have given them back to her. Then those pale eyes would have danced with the knowing mischief of a siren, and her lips would have pursed with promise and pleasure. She’d have been happy, the sea-song upon her lips spilling forth from deep within a heart that beat with the rhythm of the waves.

“We’d have been happy,” he whispered, and imagined his arms around her shoulders, her pale hair spiralling about his fingers. “I’d have saved you, and we would have been happy.”

His hand tightened about the sword, unknowing; with a sigh, he opened his eyes. The silver blade glinted in the moonlight, cool and smooth. It reminded him of the ice that had broken all across the lake the night she had died. The night her water-god had taken her home, and all because he hadn’t been enough of a prince to save her.

Turning from the window he slid the blade back into its invisible sheath, both winking from view. His paladin would be waiting for him below, and for all night had fallen Aleksandr knew the time for dreaming this evening was over.

He cast one look back to the lake, found it shimmering and silver and silent. Then, he nodded, and walked towards the door. That sad little story had finished, and there was another one yet to be written. He could but hope he’d learned enough to find this story the happy ending it deserved.

In Media Res

It might have been a difficult prospect, to find him – the reticent seneschal had been unable to tell Ryennkar anything more than “the youngest son is somewhere on the back of the estate.” Said estate comprised several hundred acres of both forested and open land. Yet as he exited the back gardens via one of the heavy gates in the high stone walls, he caught a flash of red up on the ridge and smiled.

While not an unobservant person by nature, Arosek had become so involved in his work that once he’d climbed the hill, Ryennkar found it all too easy to sneak up on him. Childish games were not generally his favoured indulgence, but with scarcely a second thought he went to his knees behind his oldest friend and placed his hands over his eyes.

Arosek stiffened, charcoal stopping dead halfway through the arc of one rich curve. Then, his hand relaxed; Ryennkar could feel a smile pressing his cheeks upward. “Ryenn?”

He raised an eyebrow, though he’d effectively blinded the other man. “How did you know it was me?” Pressing closer, his next words were a scarce whisper dropped into one ear. “I could have been anyone.”

Arosek gave a half-snort, far more amused than it was exasperated. “You’re not just anyone.”

Only just suppressing the flash of pleasure this proclamation brought with it, Ryennkar leaned over Arosek’s shoulder and gave his work a curious look. “I thought you’d stopped painting.”

“I’m not painting. I’m drawing.”

With a chuckle, Ryennkar arched deeper into the natural curvature of his friend’s spine. It had been too long, since the last time he’d allowed this. “Drawing so often leads to painting,” he murmured, and he felt Arosek’s smile dim, just a little.

“Not always.” He paused, and when he spoke again Ryennkar could remember the sadness he’d last seen in those dark eyes, all those months ago. “Just…sometimes. Maybe.”

The silence that fell between them was broken only by birdsong, by the soft rustle of the wind through the leaves of the Aekar Forest below. But they were up on the ridge, the forest and the house and entire world held at a distance. Pressed against Arosek’s back, Ryennkar’s chest rose and fell in rhythm with the other man’s shallow breathing. He still did not remove his hands from his eyes. “You didn’t even know I was coming,” he said, soft, and Arosek nodded.

“No.” Something like a smile felt to be returning to his wide mouth. “I’m glad to see you.”

“But you can’t see a thing.”

“I see enough.” Gently he pulled back, angling his body around. Ryennkar let him go, but before he could drop his right arm Arosek leaned back upon it. One hand rose to rest upon his chest, just over Ryennkar’s heart.

“I see you now,” Arosek whispered, sketchbook and charcoal slipping from his lap to vanish into the long fronds of the scented grass.

“So do I,” he murmured, and leaned forward to capture his lips. Sometimes a kiss was only always that. But as Ryennkar steadied himself, palm gathering charcoal dust while his fingertips brushed the sun-warmed grass, he thought that kissing could become something more. He’d always been good at talking Arosek into taking up his brush even after he’d laid it aside with the admonition that this was the very last time.

Best-Laid Plans

“I don’t see why we have to stay in a place like this.” Nan surveyed their surroundings with a critical eye, her brightly-coloured lips pressed into a plump and inviting frown. “Can’t we just stay in a little alehouse or something?”

Alara had to smother an entirely unlady-like grin. The other woman might insist her liking for the smaller and more intimate lodgings to be just because she enjoyed the easy camaraderie she could strike up with the owners, but Alara knew it was more that Nan had never felt the slightest bit comfortable with the trappings of the so-called higher classes. While she was content enough to watch Alara dress up – and had proved rather adept at getting Alara both in and out of even the most complicated high society gowns – she’d never accompanied her to any of those types of events without a great deal of cajoling. Occasionally it had even degenerated into outright bribery, though Alara had to ruefully admit she’d enjoyed those moments just as much as Nan herself clearly did.

“I wanted something a bit more relaxing, tonight,” she said instead, quite mild. “So I felt that these…charming…surroundings were entirely in order.”

Nan screwed up her small nose as she peered around the opulent room, noting the rich sofas and the ottoman set before the great picture window that faced the west. “I thought you had a dinner party, you said?” she asked, and crossed her arms; Alara had to regret the obstacle this presented to an otherwise quite lovely view. “Look, if it’s all the same to you, I might just go take a room in that little inn we saw back near the city walls. You can swing by and pick me up in the morning, yeah?”

After allowing the woman to get as far as the door, she spoke just one word. “Nan.”

“What?”

Ignoring Nan’s half-suspicious question, Alara crossed the room with an elegant stride, halting only when stood before the great red upholstered couch. Dropping her riding cloak, letting it pool upon the floor in a lazy fashion she rarely indulged in, she turned to take her seat. Beneath the cloak she still wore her preferred riding outfit. When she stood, the panels of the dress hung in demure lines from the wide belt, giving the illusion of a proper skirt. But when she reclined back in this way, crossing one long leg over the other, it split up both sides. Nan’s eyes widened, then focused upon the expanse of skin revealed between the mid-thigh height of her boots and her hip. Alara smiled, propped one hand behind her head; Nan’s eyes immediately leapt to her chest. Though her mouth opened, no sound came out. Alara chuckled, soft and knowing, and Nan gave her an accusing look.

“I…you said you had a very important dinner tonight.”

“Be a dear and lock the door, would you, Nan?” she asked, and licked her lips. “I do believe that dinner? Is already served.”

*****

So, that's me for the day. I suppose I should go and get some sleep before work in the morning. Joy! And I have to admit with some shame that these days, whenever I think of Nan and Alara? All I get in my head is this. Oh, dear...

Slow and Steady...?

Ah, racing turtles -- although calling my NaNo progress "turtling" rather depends on how you look at it, considering the wordcount. But I have become an absolute rebel and am still not writing The Juniper Bones like I'm supposed to be; rather I'm about 13k into the sequel of Greywater, which seems to have titled itself Kaverlen Falls even though a) I wasn't aware there WAS a waterfall at Kaverlen and b) I haven't got a clue why the characters would end up there anyway. So go figure.

I'm having a right ol' interesting time with this, mind you. Mostly it's because I haven't a clue where the story is going...well, I do, that's a slight lie. I wrote a YA adult recently called The Neverboy, and Kaverlen Falls involves that storyline to some extent as Cira, the main character of KF, is a companion of the main character of Nb. Meaning I now get to tell certain parts of Nb from an entirely different point of view. This is going to b fun. It also mixes up the story a bit, because Cira isn't present for the first twelve chapters of Nb anyway, and they also part ways towards the end for a bit. So, it's not like KF tells the same story only from Cira's viewpoint. It's her own story entirely, and I am not entirely sure where it begins and ends.

...well, okay, another lie: I know where it starts. Or I do now, anyway. I started writing a short story the other day for my own amusement about blood fae for no good reason, and as it turns out...it's the prologue to KF. And in the first chapter of KF a legendary character who was offhandedly mentioned maybe twice is now apparently a major influence on Cira's early life at Greywater. So now I am all O_o WTF OTZ because...I did not expect that. At all. Not to mention Cydrac Agrane strolled into the first chapter waving his hands about something I didn't know about, and now Nan Jerikak has announced she wants to play My Little Cavy with Alara, and I...what. What.

I love NaNo. Although sometimes I get the feeling it kind of hates my guts. Here, have a .gif that explains my relationship with NaNoWriMo a thousand times better than I ever could with words:

Speaking of writing things from other POVs, I also had a strange experience while writing the scene between Nan and Cira. I'll actually put a snippet of it here so you can see what I mean upfront.

*****

At first she was silent, and Círa glanced back to see she had furrowed her brow. It might have been a mistake to ask Nantya; she was young and no real ranking magian – but she had already been given in service to the Attorney-General of Lonan at least once. Another moment of thought later and Nantya shook her head, the dark curls of her hair dancing beneath the scarf she had tied over half her head.

“I don’t know what it is, if that’s what you wanna know.” She peered at Círa, pale eyes very curious. “Is your Lady Maiden worried about him? ‘cause I don’t think she should be, really. I doubt Mister Wolf is gonna bother her again, after the flak he copped from the First Consul over it all.”

“What flak?”

Nantya blinked at her sharp tone. “Oh, it was flak, all right. I mean, it’s not like I saw anything, but I heard some of it. He summoned Lord Rendran to him at the beginning of the winter, after the mourning-month for his little girl. I got a call up there myself, ‘cause I was with him in Aran Nomese when it all went to pot. It was all very civilised, mind, or at least it was supposed to be – just a discussion about how things would be, what with Mister Wolf’s privileges at the palace being revoked. But…”

Círa frowned. Not one word of this had ever reached her ears before now. “But what?”

Nantya shrugged, but it seemed more bewildered than nonchalant. “I don’t rightly know, not for sure. But I was down in the glasshouse, these huge big offices under the First Consul’s chambers where all his pages and assistants and things work. There were raised voices, then thumping, and this huge crash…and then they really started yelling at each other.”

“The First Consul was shouting?”

“He was really angry. Not that any of us could really hear what he was saying.” She seemed just as disbelieving as Círa herself. “The Attorney-General came out first. You could see he was furious, too, but he wasn’t shouting anymore. He just came down those stairs and stood there, looking at all of us like not a one of us was really there.” Shaking her head, she had to take an audible breath before continuing. “Then Lord Consul Asfiye came down. You could tell he was upset, but he was…not like he usually is. He was just…pale as a ghost, but he could have been made of marble. I’ve never seen him like it. No smiles, eyes dull as dishwater.”

Círa didn’t bother to hide her shudder. “I can’t imagine it.”

“Me neither -- if I hadn’t seen it.” Again she shook her head, like she was trying to clear it of a mountain of llama wool, and Círa began to understand why no word of this strange discussion had ever reached her ears. “He asked Lord Rendran, polite as you please, to come back with him. And they went up. No-one heard anything else strange upstairs, and when they came back the First Consul was all smiles and the Attorney-General charmed his way through the whole office, but…I’ll never forget it, the way they looked then.” Her small fingers, hidden in her black kid gloves, clenched into sudden fists. “They said the great window was what smashed. Someone had put a paperweight through it.”

“The Attorney-General, surely,” Círa said, faint, and Nantya only shook her head.

“I dunno. I just...I dunno.”

The clear reluctance to commit to anything sent a shiver down Círa’s spine, but she covered it with a blithe smile. “So you haven’t talked about this to anyone, have you?”

Nantya’s eyes, coloured that strange pale green more common to those born of the fire-lady, held more solemnity than a grave. “No. I haven’t.”

Círa swallowed hard. More secrets had risen to wind their coils about the life of the First Consul, and she did not like it at all. Arosek, what are you doing? she thought, but all she had before her was the troubled small face of the magian.   

*****

Now, it probably seems quite pedestrian, I know, but the point is -- I had to know exactly what the argument between Ryennkar and Arosek was. Do other people do this a lot? I do it upon occasion; for instance in The Neverboy Cira and Otho quite obviously have a history they are not going to discuss in front of Kit, who is a thirteen year old boy. So I went and wrote out the scene where they thrash out some out demons (and yes, it involved sex, but even that wasn't why it couldn't ever be in the main body of the story). As it so happens this scene will now end up in Kaverlen Falls, but...yeah. Roughly 2.5k later I had an "extra" scene I called Close Every Door for a lark (damn you, Andrew Lloyd Webber!). It can't ever fit in Kaverlen Falls given the POV, but...I had to write it, because I really needed to know exactly what passed between them. But then again I did the same again in Greywater because I knew that Arosek and Ryenn had also had an "altercation" of a sort between the time when Otho first returned from Alkirn and then when Otho returned to Greywater. Again, neither Cira nor Otho could possibly have been privy to these conversations, but they have a major impact on their lives, and...yeah. Dammit. I hate having all these lovely words AND NO-WHERE TO PUT THEM.

...and I would snippet part of the scene here, but it's dodgy as hell. So I won't. I'll just go back to sulking and writing some more. In closing, here's another .gif; once again it explains the relationship between me and NaNo in very succinct terms. But I'll let you guess which of us is which. ^_~



The Beat Goes On

November is still here, and my brain is...mostly still present as well, so I thought I probably ought to update on the NaNo-progress. I am being very contrary mary in my writing right now, although I am still going on with it. Just...not the way I planned. Ha. But then NaNo seems to be very much about grabbing the seat of your pants and holding tight as you run along with it, so here we go.

Technically I am still supposed to be working on The Juniper Bones; it's probably not that far from a complete first draft (say, maybe twenty thousand words) but my brain is just not co-operating with me. It's a complex ending, of course, but I just can't seem to concentrate on it. Whenever I do I just procrastinate worse than ever before, and after a less than productive week I finally surrendered on Thursday night.

The first novel I had been working on after getting here was Greywater, and while writing both Hibernaculum and The Juniper Bones I ended up missing the characters in that dreadfully. On Thursday night I was particularly troubled by the loss of Arosek and Ryennkar, and was reminded that while in airports from New Zealand to the US to Canada to London to Turkey and then on a wee boat upon the Med, I had been writing a couple of stories detailing a very important chance in their relationship when they were teenagers. I'd started typing it out sometime in London and never got around to finishing it, even though I had typed out other stuff I'd written in a couple of different coffeeshops in York. So, I decided if I was just going to sit and stare at The Juniper Bones and not type anything I might as well get my shit together and type out stuff I'd already written for a .doc I'd called Night of the Long Grass.

The story was never finished in longhand, despite the long hours in airports and those beautiful days in Turkey (although in the case of Turkey this may be because I was often distracted by delicious food and the lure of swimming in beautiful blue waters filled with ANCHORFISH!). After I finished typing out what did exist, I ended up finishing it. And of course it didn't kill my fascination with the characters, it only made it worse. So while yesterday very little writing was done -- I had to drive to Perth, which was an experience; I've never driven a freeway in my life and spent most of it wanting to scream out the window I DRIVE BETTER THAN YOU AND I'VE NEVER EVEN DONE THIS BEFORE! -- today I ended up opening a file that contained a few scribbles of the direct sequel to Greywater. Roughly seven thousand words later...

So, yes, it's been an odd few days. I've also been sketching out the bones of two other short stories to the tune of three or four thousand words I haven't counted towards NaNo yet, and one of those stories is actually most likely the prologue of Kaverlen Falls. So, I am keeping on keeping on, despite a rather unproductive week. I did manage to reward myself for the first couple of weeks, at least; I went horse-riding on Tuesday and got wrapped in seaweed on Wednesday. The horse-riding was an absolutely wonderful experience; I did it partly because I'd been on a camel and a donkey in Egypt and had forgotten what a horse felt like, and also because a lot of my fantasy-tilted writing involves riding horses which I remember so little about. But despite the terrible weather of the last few weeks in Bunbury, it was a beautiful sunny day for us to ride through the fields and see kangaroos, emus...AND COWS. I like cows. Go the research, I say. ^_~

At any rate, I should go spend a few more hours with the kids. <3 But just for amusement, here's one of my favourite places in York. I wrote about Arosek and Ryenn in this most beautiful of beautiful cities, and this place in particular inspired me to commission of drawing of the pair of them. It's all good.

Hate This And I'll Love You

I haven't really been able to write much of anything the last week or so, as my brain had gone on indefinate hiatus. But with that said...I often have trouble with the mechanical aspect of writing, i.e. actually writing things down. But the stories are always writing themselves whether I am doing anything about it or not, so...yes. It's both frustrating and wonderful, that little knack of mine.

I don't dream very much -- or at least, not that I remember. I've always been quite jealous of people who dream of their characters, because I almost never do. Yet you can tell my brain is doing odd things right now, because the other day I was half-dreaming, which is what happens when I am not asleep but not awake, and it is the time my characters are most likely to come wandering in to mess with my mind while it is partially out of my control. I was saying the other day that I had been picturing some of my characters trying to give me comfort; well, the other morning, I had quite an odd experience in which Arosek was the one who basically just gathered me up in his arms and hugged me until I gave up and just let him.

It probably says something for my sanity, that I take comfort in half-dreams of the voices in my head offering me tactile support, but it was an odd experience in that at the time I knew him -- his scent, his strength, the rumble of his voice in his chest when he laughed, the wryness of his brightest grin when he told me I had to stop being so silly all the time, of course you're not wrong, but then no-one has to be right all the time! I do know my characters well, you see, in terms of what they look and think and behave like, but this was on a whole 'nother level. Damn you, Arosek. ...it also made me feel guilty anyway, because Arosek is basically the nicest damn character I write (although people like Geenie come close; I'm fairly convinced that Aleksandr became involved with Geenie because she reminded him so much of everything he'd ever read about Arosek). But even though Arosek is lovely, I constantly write horrible angsty things about him. Poor sod. So, this evening I've been working on a bit of fluff; it was supposed to be maybe a thousand words long, but right now I have the structure and it's thirteen hundred already. Crap.

Still, it's odd to see how my mood really affects my writing. I've always known that it does, but...well. Like I said, I haven't been able to write properly until tonight, but I've spent the last couple of days scribbling furiously in one of my notebooks in an attempt to work out the ending of The Juniper Bones, and it's...proving interesting. But then the ending involves Eliot having to confront himself and his deepest desire, which is to simply stop. It's not so much a need to die, although being properly dead will achieve that for him. He just doesn't want to be anything anymore. That had personal resonance for me, because when I am this low I am just so tired. I don't want to actively harm myself, but I wouldn't turn away from it, if that makes any sense? Eliot is the same, though he can't actually kill himself anyway. But towards the end of the story he is given a way to achieving this goal, and not only does it distress the hell out of poor Tess, it also means having to lie to someone he cares for. And to someone he owes a lot to. So...yeah. When I consider it, it's all a way of exploring how truly selfish and screwed up and sad this entire process is. Which is why I only tend to write this sort of thing when my brain has already wandered off onto paths best not walked alone.

Thankfully Arosek seems to be following me around.

Trying to write something fluffy seems to be helping, at least a little. I actually feel quite ill tonight -- I ate too much dinner, and then I slept really oddly last night anyway because I nodded off twice over my laptop, and then woke up at five in the morning to discover I still hadn't put it away and had in fact gone to sleep with it sitting beside my head. Er. Maybe I need to take a step back, but then...fluff. Fluff is good for the soul. And my soul could certainly use a whole lot of goodness right now. I have to admit that it is a little bit scary to have Arosek offering me comfort, though. Because Ryenn just sits in the back of my mind while Arosek does it and...well, he doesn't glower, exactly. He's not the glowering sort. Rather, he just sits there and stares.

So there you have it. Not only is one voice in my head trying to make me feel better about myself, one of the other ones is silently plotting ways to have me beaten senseless for daring to accept it. In the end, it's probably no wonder at all that I am this messed up...

"...hail to those who have come from the sunlight that surrounds you..."

I'm prone to low moods. It's nothing unusual. But today...it's bad. Really bad. I wish I could write, but I can't do even that. Still, I can always read. I was going through the blogs I follow, and ran across an interesting post at All The World's Our Page about learning about your characters through love scenes. I thought it ironic enough, as I've been dallying with Arosek and Ryenn the last couple of weeks because their fraught relationship? Is the best path towards understanding them, and it's helped considerably with my understanding of the events of Greywater. Kristen did ask for people to post up little snippets at her blog, but I'm too shy and so out of sorts that I decided against it. Still, the story I thought of...it's the one I started writing in Australia, and I finished it some time last week. I haven't shown it to anyone, and I keep thinking this is one of my problems. I pour my heart into my writing, but then I am so unsure of the worth of my own self that I am becoming more and more reluctant about sharing it. Sometimes I can, but in times like this...I just want to delete everything I've ever written and accept my fate as just another space monkey.

But I did learn something about these two characters, I did, and I suppose it might do my broken mind some good to show anyone who happens to be out there just a little of their broken hearts. It's something, I guess.

And maybe, then, I can go back to Greywater, and to the story of the demi-goddess and her Major. Because that'll cheer me up. Ha ha ha. At least those two get something like a happy ending...if we ignore the fact that he is mortal while she is not. It brings to mind, actually, the note that Wills Penrose passed with something like terrible pity of purpose to Eliot Tennyson via his daughter, Tessera:

Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi

in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:

Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; respondebat illa: ἀποθανεῖν θέλω.

*****

“I must go back to Ilke,” Ryennkar said, but Arosek had known him for forty years and could hear tiny telltale cracks spreading like spiderthreads beneath the smooth façade.

“Will you stay with me?” He raised his face, bit his lip. “Just until I fall asleep?”

Those cool eyes, as silver and distant as the web of stars long since concealed by the cloak of day beyond the window, softened. A moment later they closed, as if he was afraid of what he saw reflected in Arosek’s own eyes, and pressed his forehead against his. “Is this what you want?” he asked, a mere whisper.

“I want it.” Again Arosek raised his hands to his collar, working on the torc. Ryennkar made no objection as it was removed, set gently aside. He only watched, wordless and weary. He had nothing to say even as Arosek pushed the heavy cassock from his shoulders, leaving him in the shirt and trousers beneath. With an ease born of long practise, Arosek made quick work of the laces of both and then pushed the silk from his broad shoulders. Only then did Ryennkar look to the window again, the cool light of morning bright over his pale skin.

“There’s time enough,” Arosek said, soft, drawing his attention back. He then moved his hands to his own waist, loosed the belt he found there. A shrug of his shoulders split the collar and he shed the robe like a second skin. Nude before Ryennkar, who was dressed now only in the opened trousers, he shivered, and the other man shook his head again.

“Arosek—”

“Isn’t this what you wanted, too?”

The question could be nothing but rhetorical. All he had to do was look down to see it was very clear that Ryennkar wanted him. And so, with a smile both tremulous and sensual, Arosek took his hand and turned towards the open door of his bedchamber. He did not let go until they reached the bed on its platform, the thick curtains already pulled back. With his heat beating hard he leaned back against the pillows. Relief flooded him to see that Ryennkar had not left him, and he opened his arms with a smile as involuntary as it was perfect.

“I don’t want to be alone.”

The quiet words seemed to hurt the other man, somehow; he closed his eyes, inclined his face to the heavens. If Arosek hadn’t known better, might have thought he was offering up a prayer to the earth-father. But for all his birth and early childhood in the cradle of Janerin’s home, there was little care for the immortals in one as vitally mortal as Ryennkar Vassidenel. 

 *****

For I myself saw the Sibyl indeed at Cumae with my own eyes

hanging in a jar, and when the boys used to say to her:

              “Sibyl, what do you want?” she replied: “I want to die.”

Living As A Moon

So, the last few entries I've talked a bit about the workshops I've been to recently, and it brought to mind one Owen Marshall. I went to a couple of workshops with him back in...oh, it must have been 2009, as I remember I had planned only to do the one on the Saturday, but it was so fantastic I spent the night frantically sorting out my packing and travel arrangements and turned up on Sunday, too; then on Monday I got up at five in the morning and flew to Japan for two weeks. Good times! I think some of my original reticience had arisen because although Owen Marshall is a very well-known New Zealand author, I had never encountered him either at high school or university (in fact, I did almost no study of New Zealand works during my proper education; Heavenly Creatures and Broken English are as close as we got; both, incidentally, are films well worth the watching). The only time I'd read one of his stories was during a slightly infamous SIT pilot course in...2008, it must have been, because I think it was that course that inspired me to enrol as an extramural student at Massey in 2009. But yes, I didn't much enjoy this course, and that in turn slightly coloured my impressions of Owen Marshall's work.

Then I met him, and promptly fell in love.

...I should probably explain that by adding that I fall in love with people like this on a regular basis. I mean, when I was ten years old I went to see Jurassic Park with my form one class and I'm in love with Sam Neill to this day. (Yes, occasionally I lean on the breakwall around Lake Wakatipu and wonder why he can't just appear at that moment, like in a movie. Not that I'd even talk to him, I'd just stare and giggle and generally act like I'd just escaped from Charenton, or something.) But Owen Marshall was just...wonderful. He inspired me greatly, and was generally an all around awesome guy, so...I went out and bought one of his books. Living As A Moon. And I am deeply ashamed to admit that I only decided to actually read it the other day.

Reading this book proves to me again his general awesomeness, it must be said, but I'm finding that reading these short stories? Makes me think again about my own. I was planning to spend this weekend working on the first three chapters of Greywater so I could finally start sharing the story with people (most of the really complete draft stuff is from about chapter four onwards, unfortunately), but instead I've been messing about with short stories. One of them was my own damn fault; Becs asked me to act as a pinch-hitter for a group project of the Southern Scribes, as I haven't been going to the meetings regularly enough to have been a part of it in the first instance. It's a fascinating little experiment, which I'll tell you about another day when I've actually read the end result of the first draft (which is currently sitting in my inbox, along with half a dozen other things I really ought to read/reply to). But I had dragged my heels on it a bit, and at the dinner on Thursday I promised her profusely I'd email her my contribution either late Friday or early Saturday. Some drama later, it was sent by 2pm on Saturday afternoon. We're talking about a piece of flash fiction less than a thousand words long, here. My usual modus operandi rarely permits me to drop below ten thousand. Maybe that was the problem? Oh, well, at any rate Owen Marshall sustained me through my struggles. ...did I already tell you that this man is bloody awesome? ^_~

So, you'd figure that after this, I could go back to the novel. Apparently not. I'd been chatting via deviantart to one of the wonderful artists I've been commissioning, and she'd asked me about Ryenn and Arosek. I decided, rather than explaining some of their complicated history, I'd just show her by giving her a draft of The Simple Story. But then I realised this "short" story (it's far closer to a novella, at 22k) wasn't really in a fit state, so I spent yesterday putting it back together. And I ended up fascinated by those two all over again, and so today I returned to poking at the story I started in Australia last month. Just...what even is this thing. O_o It's not finished yet, but it's getting there. I'm going to work on it a little more in a bit, but...yeah. Gah. I'm also feeling the urge to return to the story I had intended last year to write for the long-since published anthology A Foreign Country, but I never finished the damn thing. It still fascinates me to this day, and...yeah. There's also the fact I should start writing properly for both the Dan Davin and Katherine Mansfield short story competitions, and...here I am, obsessing dreadfully over two characters who just make me horribly, horribly sad.

I've always had a habit of being cruel to my characters, I have to admit, but these two remind me of my overall reaction to the anime Death Note. I won't go into detail, because it's a long story best viewed on your own terms, but essentially the end result of the actions of the various protagonists is just...waste. Terrible, horrible, pointless waste. I once saw an AMV made of the show to Imogen Heap's Hide and Seek, and it summed it up perfectly for me. Just...so much pride, and so far to fall. I get that same feeling with Arosek and Ryenn, in that Ryenn just wasted Arosek's life. But with that said, Arosek chose that path just as much as Ryenn guided him towards it, and...I don't know. It just makes me cry.

It's interesting, though, because I've wandered back into reading histories of Alexander the Great again. Partially it's because I need to drum up interest in military history in order to make sense of Otho's position as a Major in the Sarinian army, but it was Alexander and then reading novels along the lines of The Other Boleyn Girl that first led me to develop these characters. It's that sense of never knowing what really happened, you know? We can imagine what Mary Boleyn did in the last days of her more famous sister, and we can draw conclusions about the relationship of Alexander and Hephastion from the ancient sources that remain, but we'll never know. And that's why I created Arosek and Ryenn. No-one knows why they did what they did.

...well, except for them. And now, as I dig deeper into their minds and hearts and pasts, I'm starting to see why too. And it's breaking my heart. Ah, stories, why can't I quit you? ;_;

Focus

So, I am back in New Zealand and writing-wise? I didn't accomplish as much as I would have liked while I was on holiday, but with that said I was on holiday more or less because I am in the midst of a nervous breakdown and the fact that I have managed to go back to work for the last two days and not run screaming all over again, well. It's a victory? Ha.

But while I was away, I did do some writing and a lot of thinking, and it mostly all came down to that little elusive bugger of focus. I am easily distracted. I write many things simultaneously, both novel-length fiction and short stories, and as a consequence I rarely finish and submit anything. Because I've been in a bad place mentally these last few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about two very ill-starred characters, but Arosek and Ryenn have ended up inspiring a lot of short fiction as well as their own novel-length epistolary thing. But while I was wandering the mangrove reserve in Bunbury every day it occured to me that both characters are now a firm part of the forevergirl, and because of this I've been thinking again about Greywater, and...yeah.

What did I manage to write in the end? A thousand words or so of Greywater, roughly five thousand words of a short story between Arosek and Ryenn called (as a placeholder) In Our Bedroom, After The War, and then I wrote out bits and pieces of four or five other short stories that came to mind. You see what I mean about focus? Some of it was inspired by news of a couple of competitions closing at the end of the month, so...yes. I don't know.

Still, in two days time? It is Easter. I should have had four days in the clear but I offered to come act as second pharmacist on Saturday morning, but it's only three and a half hours out of the long weekend. But what I have decided to do? Is use it to just write. I want twenty thousand more words in Greywater, and I want to finish both A Statue of Us (for the Wily Writer's superheroes competition) and Dream On (for the CONText competition). I'd also like to finish In Our Bedroom, too, mostly because it's a fairly telling moment in the relationship between Arosek and Ryenn. The reason why I like to write them when I'm depressed, I think, is because it just does not end well. But then, it's a bit debatable whether it ever went well one way or another anyway. And yet...they genuinely care about one another, and they need one another. They don't actually spend all that much time around each other once they leave school, and I think that contributes to my fascination with their interactions in later life. Every moment is charged with things unsaid, and it just fascinates me.

I've also been commissioning again, and when I got back from Australia I was delighted to find in my deviantart note box a message that Círa and Otho were done. And it's gorgeous; Neme-chan is unbelievably talent. <3 I have a version printed out and stuck on my wall already, though I will have to get a proper poster version done through snapfish at some point. And today, I got home from work to find that Ryenn and Arosek are done, too. So, to celebrate, I think I'll find a little snippet of the pair of them.


This little bit is from the novella that originally bore the title The Simple Story. It's actually told from the viewpoint of Aleksandr Zaloyo, a former Kearnian noble; he's telling his companion, a former Leiceynan hierophant, what he knows of Ryenn and Arosek, who lived about a hundred years before they did. Aleksandr's understanding of the convoluted history is interspersed with the real story, as the point of the novella? Was to show how the truth and the legends match and diverge. It's a mess, even though the first draft stands finished at twenty-two thousand words (!), but here's a little bit of it anyway. As I said, Arosek and Ryenn? Intrigue me because they are very different people. Arosek loves too much, whereas Ryenn doesn't love at all. But then the tragic thing is that each to each, they are the only ones who can draw the other from one another, if that makes any sense. Arosek can teach Ryenn how to love, but the flip side of that coin is the simple fact that only Ryenn can teach Arosek how to hate.

Though Ryennkar had been the one to be away for three weeks, he offered no explanation. When Arosek looked up to find him standing before him, a ghost come back to haunt the place of its birth, the silence had to be broken first by his strangled demand.

“Where were you?”

Ryennkar did not blink, taking his habitual place across from his friend; it was three hours beyond the time of the meeting Arosek had called upon his return to Erindel, yet he seemed relaxed, incurious in regards to Arosek’s growing agitation. “I apologise for my lateness, as well as for my unexpected absence. I was attending a funeral.”

“A…funeral.” The tense lines of his face deepened, but his dark eyes had widened with curiosity. He knew as well as anyone that the man had almost no family to speak of. “Whose funeral was it?”

“My wife’s.”

“She’s dead?!” Arosek found himself on his feet, directionless and bewildered. “You…why didn’t you say so earlier? I wouldn’t have called you back if I’d known!”

“There is work to be done,” he said smoothly, waving his hand at the abandoned seat, the stacks of paper at every place. “It’s not your concern.”

Arosek did not sit. For long moments of dim silence, lit only by guttering candles and punctuated by the sound of their breaths, he stared from the window of the meeting-room. The others he had called were long since gone, their business conducted without the benefit of Ryennkar Vassidenel, and Arosek Asfiye had never felt so alone.

“Why won’t you talk to me about her?” he whispered to the window.

“You didn’t need to know.” The chair creaked as he leaned backward, the dark robes rustling with a sound too agonisingly familiar. Arosek did not look back at him, not even when he added thoughtfully: “Not that it matters, not now. It is done.”

The coolness of those words made him turn, the words flying from his lips before he had even thought them. “Did you love her?”

Ryennkar’s smooth brow furrowed. “I don’t follow.”

“It’s a simple question.”He stalked across the room, his compact form all muscle and motion. He didn’t even know what she had looked like, not exactly – he’d never even met the unfortunate woman! – but he held a picture of her face in his head all the same. Knights and princes were not just the stuff of legend, though Arosek had never needed a white horse, only his hands and his voice. He slammed those same strong hands down on the table on Ryennkar’s right and demanded: “Did you love her?”

He blinked, looked down at the spectacle, but the bang had not made him so much as flinch. “Why are we discussing this?”

“Because I’m your friend. Your best friend.” He found himself shaking, his weight barely supported by his hands, but his voice was as strong and clear as it had ever been. “And I’ve never met your wife even though you’ve been married to her for four years, and now she’s dead and I never will! Does none of that strike you as strange?”

“No.” He arched an eyebrow at Arosek’s answering frown. “To both questions.”

Like a marionette whose strings had been rudely cut mid-performance, Arosek slid to the floor at Ryennkar’s side. His head was aching again. He’d thought three weeks of the rolling hills and great lake at Wendar would have been enough to erase the memory of the three dead men, but then he hadn’t reckoned with the sudden addition of Ryennkar Vassidenel’s poor dead wife.

He spoke only when a hand dropped to his shoulder, though he kept his eyes upon the faded pattern of the rug beneath his knees. “Why did you marry her?”

“It doesn’t matter.” The hand tightened, his touch of the other man’s skin cool even through their clothing. “You didn’t need to meet her.”

“How do you know that?”

“I didn’t want you to meet her.” In one easy movement Ryennkar left his chair, dropping to one knee at his side. The long fingers moved upward, tilting Arosek’s face so that the grey eyes sought his, held them steady. “She’s gone now, Arosek. There’s no need to speak of her again.”And then he stood, a flurry of black and silver, and bowed his head. “I see that the meeting is already concluded. I apologise for my late appearance, but perhaps tomorrow would be a better time for us to discuss the matter in question. I will come to you upon the ninth hour.”

Arosek didn’t stand, pretending to admire the elaborate woodwork of the table leg. He didn’t want to watch the other man go, but a moment later he couldn’t bear not to.

“Ryenn?”

He turned from the door. “Yes?”

Looking at the other man, Arosek found himself wondering again how he could picture the face of a dead woman he’d never even known. “Did she love you?”

Ryennkar blinked. “I don’t know.” The slim shoulders rose and fell. “I never asked.” He closed the door then, and was gone.

The above picture is the commission of the two of them, done by the wonderful RaraHoWa; Arosek is the golden-blonde, Ryenn is the platinum blonde. As I said, it's about the fact that one loves, and the other does not...except when it comes to one another. Poor bastards. I really do love this picture; it actually reminds me a lot of this terrible letter exchange in the same story, where Arosek writes Ryenn a happy, casual, cheerful letter and gets the shortest, curtest, most formal note back in return. Honestly, the things I put my characters through...! And on that note I suppose I ought to get back to writing more of their story -- although to be honest, tonight I think I'll work on Greywater for a bit. The current wordcount is 44,294; I'm sure I can kick it well over forty-five thousand. ...well, once I've done some Zumba for the evening, anyway. I've also promised myself there will be NO BUYING OF PORTAL 2.

...yeah, we'll see how long THAT lasts...

Your Ex-Lover Remains Dead

I can't speak for other writers, obviously, but I tend to find myself that there are bits and pieces of my own personality inherent in all the of the characters I write. Partly it's just a way of getting into their heads; I mean, I do find it ironic that one of my characters, by turns one of the most sane and insane of them all, is basically my sense of sarcasm run amok. (Hi, Morgan!!!) But then, it also comes through in other ways.

Yesterday I spent a good chunk of both my morning and my afternoon out walking. Some of those walks involved me wearing weights around my wrists; they're not particularly heavy weights, incidentally, but they are noticeable. And what they reminded me of? Was Círa DeCameiron, a character of mine who wanders in and out of various novels and short stories. Círa is an elemental of the old order, being that she was around in one form or another before the age of the four cardinal gods of my other world, but one of these gods imprisoned her in what would become the judicial city of Aran Nomese. He thought it was particularly amusing because he essentially made her into a god of death, when Círa's adoptive god-father is as pacifist as can be. But one symbol of her imprisonment are the three tone woven-metal bracelets that she always wears; gold and silver and bronze, all metals from the great mines of the North. You can't always see them, and to everyone else they don't feel or look particularly heavy -- they're in a Celtic-inspired pattern, finely wrought and very light. Except to Círa, they feel like lead weights. I think most of the time it's not obvious, but when she is actually tired they will drag on her...physically, mentally, spiritually. This is likely to become an issue in latter parts of Greywater, but first I really need to finish the first half of the damn novel...


I was thinking of Círa before the weights, mind you -- because one of my walks involved roaming around the largest park in the city, and it made me consider the details of the palace of Greywater. This is where Círa "lives" in Aran Nomese, but again it's a bad joke on Janerin's part; it's actually the deteriorating remains of a palace from the largest city of the water-god's sunken kingdom. Of course it doesn't sit properly in the earth-god's realm, not least of all because it was designed to run off massive aqueducts and be in harmony with the sea around it, but...walking amongst the tall pines in the park, wrapped in the alpaca shawl I found in my mother's closet, I thought of Círa walking in the overgrown gardens of the displaced palace. So...yeah. I have her on my mind right now. I'm not sure if that means I will really get to writing more of her novel, but we'll see.


As I said the other day, though, I also have Ryenn and Arosek on my mind. It's got to the point where I am working on getting a commission of the two of them, though I can't quite work out how I want to see them portrayed. It's not so much their appearances, because I know what they look like. I've draw both of them myself, although only Ryenn ever really came out the way I wanted him to; Arosek's a bit trickier, as while Ryenn's very much a strong and silent watchful type, Arosek's a creature of constant motion. Ryenn's beautiful because of how he is made; Arosek's beauty is much more dependant on the personality animating the person, if that makes any sense. He's nothing special just to look at, but the spirit behind his otherwise very plain and ordinary eyes? Makes him a force of nature. Whereas Ryenn is just...Ryenn, really. In my mind he's like the marble statues in the various annexes of the Louvre; beautiful, bold, and completely beyond the scope of ordinary mortals.


I did come to the conclusion while looking for reference pictures, mind you, that Ryenn reminds me somewhat of Benedict Cumberbatch. I drew that conclusion because I was looking for pictures of Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law from Sherlock Holmes, because there's a no-personal-space buddy-bromance vibe there and I thought that might give me ideas, but then I remembered Sherlock as done by the Beeb, looked up some pictures, and was amused by the fact that the physical contrast between Cumberbatch and Freeman? ...is how I see the physical contrast between Ryenn and Arosek. It's reversed, though, in the sense Arosek, the smaller and plainer of the two, is the forefront and animating force of the pairing. So, it didn't much help except for the fact I've developed a fascination with Benedict Cumberbatch. Although I had already kind of started down that road when I watched Sherlock the last time I was in Australia. Ha.

Still, there was one reference picture I'd saved to my harddrive for god knows what reason months back that I sent the artist, along with some others, and she's latched onto it. Which pleases me, in that I have long been fascinated by this particular picture. We'll see what comes of it eventually, I suppose. In the meantime I really ought to work on writing something. Ryenn and Arosek offer me several writing opportunities; both of them have their parts to play in Greywater, which would also allow me to play with Otho and Círa. Then I could work on The Forevergirl instead, which is the sequel to The Neverboy; I am not really sure how they play into that one, but certainly from what little I've been told already by Tara, Arosek's involved in this far more deeply than I realised at first.


And then, I suppose, there's The Simple Story. This is an interesting concept, for me, and I haven't really decided how to play it. Basically it's the tale of Ryenn and Arosek's messed up attempt at living their lives, but they're not really the ones telling it. Instead it's a collection of short stories, vignettes and outright novellas that act as a sort of...complex history, I guess. It's different characters relating what they know about these historical figures, and it's come about because I tend to write short stories about those two from varying points of view. And then I realised I could draw them together into a kind of compilation. I'm still debating how to do this, but I already have several stories in progress -- there's Círa and Otho after the execution, Aleksandr telling Araben about his country's most infamous traitors, the thrice-great grand-daughter finding the pictures (and toys) in the attic of her grand old family, Kit and what he saw the day he found Ryenn in the Chamber of Mirrors beneath the palace at Greywater...yeah. And over the last two days, my long walks have yielded two more ideas -- the hedgehog story, and then the superheroes story which I will also partly blame on Regina Spektor.

...speaking of songs, there's another one I keep thinking of whenever these two come to mind. Stars, with Your Ex-Lover Is Dead. I think this is twofold; firstly it's the refrain at the beginning. When there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire. And then, the first verses...it's a man talking of how he runs into an old girlfriend when they're unwittingly "introduced" by a friend of a friend. He speaks of how they catch a taxi for an awkward silent drive across the city...it's just how it ends: and all of that time you thought I was sad/I was trying to remember your name.

Just...ouch. I suppose it doesn't help that the song also does a neat thing later, where you can take something two ways. I'm not sorry I met you/I'm not sorry it's over/I'm not sorry/There's nothing to say. You could do that last bit two ways, as I said, and the song does both: I'm not sorry it's over, there's nothing to say as opposed to I'm not sorry it's over; there's nothing to say. Ah, the little tricks grammar can play on our emotions, yes? And I keep thinking of Arosek and Ryenn in their last moments, and I wonder which way it went for each of them. I think it's also because I realised at last why they fit together so well, and yet can't ever remain anywhere near one other. They're poles, really: Ryenn is the cliché in that he's not the kind of man who loves anyone, but Arosek is his polar opposite...he's incapable of not loving someone. And that's another story I know I need to write...Anja's recognition of this. Because I know Anja saw it...Ryenn didn't know how to love Arosek his whole life. And at the end, Arosek didn't know how not to love Ryenn, despite everything that happened.

And as they say, when there's nothing left to burn...