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Yrolg

Posts: 25,296 Sapphire Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

It is a competition against your peers, so if you fail to complete a week you have merely broken your promise to the Center and let your peers get ahead. I will say -- and I mean this -- that you are still expected to give feedback to the compositions that are written.
I hope you find some time on Sunday to write. 2100 words really isn't that much, and if worst comes to worst you can simply go with stream of consciousness writing.

11-Jul-2012 05:26:03

Chuk

Posts: 14,177 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Daily writing day two (Tuesday):
One winter, in the last year of the war, we got stuck up in the passes. We were crossing the Dagger's Edge, trying to get over the Tower Walls, but a blizzard blew up during the night, and stopped us in our tracks. The storm didn't break up for more than two days, and when we finally saw sun again, more than five feet of snow had piled up. We spent some time trying to dig our way out before we trees enough to make some good snowshoes, and runners to go under the wheels of our carts. After that, we made good time, and we got back to the lowlands only five days later than originally planned.
Those five days were enough, though. Without support, our allies had lost the field. Only a few stragglers had escaped death or captivity, and the fear in their eyes when they spoke of Stormwalker's Army was enough to turn us around without thought of hurling a single spear. So back into the hills we went, then back up Dagger's Edge, with our numbers slightly increased by those stragglers. This time through, the storm was worse.
The snow started late in the morning, a couple hours after we began the day's march. It was light enough at first, a few flakes, certainly nothing to worry about. An hour later, when our commanders called the halt, it was falling and blowing so thickly that I could hardly see the fellow ahead of me in line. We tried to make camp in that, but it was impossible. Pretty soon we gave it up and resorted to digging caves in the snow. Some guys couldn't dig fast enough, and some guys forgot to keep their air chimneys uncovered. We lost almost a quarter of our force overnight, and more men in the coming days while we waited for the blizzard to disappear.

11-Jul-2012 08:44:03 - Last edited on 11-Jul-2012 08:44:45 by Chuk

Chuk

Posts: 14,177 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Finally it dissipated. How long it took, I still don't know. But when we got out, some of us started muttering that we should've stayed, that we should've stood against Stormwalker's Army rather than face another mountain crossing in the depths of winter. That's when the stragglers, the survivors of the battle spoke up. They said they'd rather face a hundred mountain crossings than stand against the Storm Warriors again.
Two months later, I found out why.
-- -- -- -- -- -- --
387 words -- 688 words this week

11-Jul-2012 08:45:17 - Last edited on 11-Jul-2012 08:46:15 by Chuk

Dec

2023

Poller5

Posts: 11,421 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

I am going to tell you a story.
Gods it sounds simple, put that way. But it won’t be. It can’t be.
There is something inherently trivial about stories. Taking the time to tell one. To listen to one, or to read it. After all, it’s just a diversion, a distraction. Something from outside of our world. Within them, we seek escape. From strange characters in their distant worlds, we ask surcease of sorrow. We do not venture after truth; we require nothing real.
This one will want for that triviality.
Likely, it will also want for quality. It seems to me that this story will not be very good. The world I will tell of is no good for escape. The characters have no capacity to help you. I cannot promise that I will entertain your thoughts, nor engage your mind. It will be centred on truth, not fancy. It will be real.
You see, I am going to tell you my story.
At the risk of sounding trite, I will start at the beginning.
*~*~*~*
I was born in one of those villages that never seem to appear on the maps. Blautan, it was called, by the fifty odd people who called it home. Men rarely had cause to come or go. Even had it been on one of the trade routes, there would have been no reason for the traders to come. No one could grow any more than they needed to survive. For us, the world was as big as the village, the future as big as tomorrow.

11-Jul-2012 12:08:53

Dec

2023

Poller5

Posts: 11,421 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

There is no town called Blautan anymore.
Perhaps an outlaw band razed it in one of their uprisings during the Succession. The innocent village destroyed by a game it never took part in. That would make for a good story, were it true. It might be, of course. More likely, an early winter and a poor harvest drove those who could to seek warmth and shelter in Lansdau, and those who couldn’t to a wasted, icy grave. At least the wolves would not have starved that winter.
If it had ever warranted a place on a map, perhaps I would visit it again. As is, I doubt I could find it. Like as not, a new town was raised from the ashes in some spring of plenty. The spirit of Blautan lives on, if that is true. It would make for a romantic truth, were that the case. In the absence of an actual truth, many men would accept the romantic notion as the true one. Such is the way of the world.
---
435 words that are kind of like an autobiography, and not much like anything I've ever written before. It's ended almost mid-thought, so tomorrow we'll be right back here with more.
It feels really good to get back on the proverbial horse.

11-Jul-2012 12:11:53

Yrolg

Posts: 25,296 Sapphire Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

It's great to see you both actively participating! I'll work on getting feedback to what you've posted after final exams are over on Thursday. I hope to also be able to post some writing of my own at this time.
I know that I will have a difficult time adjusting to the theme, but that's the very reason I picked it. Remember that either of you are free to suggest a theme for next week.

11-Jul-2012 17:29:14

Dec

2023

Poller5

Posts: 11,421 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Alright, just because I know it'll be absolute hell for me (and likely Chuk as well), how about this:
Your story must be set on Earth, somewhere in the temporal vicinity of present day.
EDIT: Alright, here's today's labours.
---
I was the eighth child of a simple farming couple, though one of only six when I was born, and by my third birthday one of five. My sister’s birth predated mine by only a year, while my brothers were varyingly older, the youngest four years my elder, the oldest ten. I loved my sister better than any of my brothers, and, few as they are, my happy memories of youth all include her.
There is little enough luxury in the life of a farmer, then as now, and the same holds true for their children. By the time I was old enough to form memories, my brothers were all conscripted into my father’s service, learning the ways of the land and the farm. My father left it up to them to make use of me, but youth and patience are not oft held in the same vessel, and they made for poor instructors. Regularly, I was rapidly relieved of my station, my bumbling efforts frustrating my more capable colleagues. I was dispossessed, even then.
My mother was a practical woman, and a loving one, but not a warm one. My sister was her only company in the house, but she found that sufficient. I, certainly, was not welcome. As soon as I was done nursing, she was done with me. She had a daughter she must shape into a woman, and a raft of household chores as exhausting as her husband’s, in their own way. She had no time for me. And besides, I was a boy. The house was not my place.
So I lived, without toils to labour me or warmth to welcome me. A stranger in my own land. I spent much time making the acquaintance of the cats that lived in the barn. Solitary souls, all of us, their feline lifestyle I immersed myself in. There was an older cat, an orange tom, missing one ear, who was as close to a leader as they had.

12-Jul-2012 01:49:23 - Last edited on 12-Jul-2012 05:33:42 by Poller5

Dec

2023

Poller5

Posts: 11,421 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Well, all the others feared him, at least. I did too. There was a black look in his eye, and the scarred base of his missing ear was a gruesome sight to my five-year old eyes.
How he lost that ear, I did not know, and there was a horror in that mystery. The cats knew. That, I was sure of. Something had happened to him, to give him that terrible scar, those terrifying eyes. To make him an object of fear. To make him something more than the others, and less. I asked, once, but cats do not speak the tongue of man.
The scream of a cat is a terrible thing. To call it animalistic would be obvious, pleonastic. But it’s true. It’s a primal, animal sound; primeval, nothing human. I awoke to it, one night, and no demon of my own dreaming could have been more fearful. My brothers did not wake. They worked harder than I did, and I suppose they slept harder, too. But it seems to me that, even had they woke, they would not have felt anything untoward. They were strangers to the black magic of the night. To the terror of the whispered invocations of the wind in the trees. In the darkness, all the world’s a dream, with nothing to protect us from the creatures beyond the wall of sleep.
I got no more sleep that night. My sister heard it too, I think. We did not speak of it, but in her eyes that day was the same haunted look that must have filled my own. No one else noticed, but then, no one else would. I started the day’s work at the butter churn, but my drowsy efforts soon earned me a dismissive shove. My dismissal from the day’s work. The dismissal of the sham that I was fit for farm labour. I went, naturally, to the barn.
The orange tom was dead.
---
655 new words. I have no idea where any of this is going, but it's very fun to try and figure it out.

12-Jul-2012 05:34:46

Chuk

Posts: 14,177 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

"Alright, just because I know it'll be absolute hell for me (and likely Chuk as well), how about this:
Your story must be set on Earth, somewhere in the temporal vicinity of present day."
No. No thank you. NO THANK YOU.
... Sorry. I lost control a bit there. But that would certainly be a hell of a challenge at any rate.
I like what you've written thus far. Pretty solid stuff; it flows well, and certainly fits together. That is, I like the style, and think it fits.
However, a couple things seem to break it up a bit -- namely a few overlarge words, that seem out of place in a tale of a simple village. It also could be polished up a bit, but I'm assuming you did little to no editing, as that's how I'm treating my daily writing, and for unedited work, it's pretty dang good.
Then in, your second day's entry, it seemed odd that you mentioned the sister as being present in all the (few) happy memories, but then go on to tell one that doesn't seem so happy. There was a little bit of a disconnect there, for me.
Other than that, I don't have too much to say. It's surely caught my interest, though.

12-Jul-2012 06:54:02

Chuk

Posts: 14,177 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

And time for the daily writing. Little longer today, and might still get added to.
---
We spent the winter camped in the foothills of the Walls, waiting. When the Storm Warriors didn't come, some of us dared to hope, dared to think that maybe they were content. Maybe they only wanted the land east of the Tower Walls. Talked turned to our homes, to returning to a normal life. And though I was wary of such talk, thoughts of my family came unbidden to my mind. My dear wife's beautiful face swam into view every time I closed my eyes, and I could hear my daughter's laughter in the stream flowing through camp.
When the snow began to retreat back up the peaks, people began to convince themselves the danger was past, that their homes were safe. Some talked, still in whispers, of going home, whether orders came through or no. I clenched my eyes and closed my ears, whenever I heard a hint of the topic, trying to cling to my sense of duty, but I couldn't avoid it. And when the new shoots put their heads above ground, and buds began to form on bare branches, I began to consider going home. It shames me to admit it, even now, years in the future. My sense of duty failed, and I though desertion was a viable option. What's even more shameful is that now, in hindsight, I wish I had followed through.
On the day I saw my first flower of the spring, one of our scouts came back, terror written in his eyes. I was out on the camp's edges, doing some washing. I was perhaps the first to see him, and that image will stick with me, lined up alongside the memories that came after.
I looked up, soap on my hands, saw him crest the ridge. He was on foot, his horse gone. That was the first clue, and by the time he made it down the slope, I'd left my laundry, and I met him at the fences. His chest was heaving as if he'd run a marathon, his tongue almost lolling like a dog's. Even in the cool air, his face was red and drenched with sweat.

12-Jul-2012 08:01:11

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