10,000th Post Gift

[Zarathustra]

Damn, nearly seven years here. 10,000 posts. I tried to think of what would be fitting to mark the occasion, and the more I considered it, the more I had to admit that only something personal and significant to myself would do. Something celebratory, and yet, something real.

So here's an update on the opening scene to my book, the one that's taking entirely too long to write. I've doubled the length of the entire novel since I've been on Kevin's Watch (not to mention the work on the other 5). It's now approaching 300,000 words, and keeps getting more complex. I've added a new character to the Quest, which necessitated going back and adding him into nearly every scene. But that was the final piece that was missing, his perspective. Now, I honestly think I'll be done next year.

Anyway, here's the first scene, revised and updated. It follows the same structure as before, but about half of it is entirely new. Enjoy, criticize, or ignore as you see fit. Constructive criticism is welcome.


CHAPTER 1 -- CELESTIAL UNCERTAINTY

No one else seemed to hear it. Behind the natural, mundane noises that animated the tavern, that rendered this room into a place of unquestioned familiarity, there was a different sound. An alien sound ... as if the echoes of the world didn’t match up. Or the winds outside weren’t blowing right. A storm was approaching in the distance, making it worse, but that didn’t explain why everything sounded wrong. The world had always been like this, as far as I could tell. For as long as I could remember, an underlying discord hovered on the edge of hearing. Whether lying in bed or drinking in the tavern, I was always aware of it. Like a ringing in my ears, it was both inescapable and indistinct. No matter how hard I tried to block it out, or how diligently I tried to decipher its meaning, it remained an incoherent mumbling in the background of things.

Most nights, however, I could at least muffle that voice with a few ales. In a blur of sweet amber, I could let my awareness slip loose from the moment. I could lose myself in pointless conversations. I could joke and laugh along with the rest of them, and for a brief time I’d almost be free of it.

Tonight was different. No amount of beer would have been enough. The murmuring madness was louder, more insistent. Its whisper was everywhere at once, like the world trying to speak. Something beyond the sky or beneath the earth struggling to get our attention. Even if it would have helped, I could not let myself get drunk. Tonight I had to be lucid.

This was the fall equinox of my twenty-third year, a day I had dreaded since I was a child. I’d carried this fear with me for so long, I could no longer remember when I first discovered it. My father was always predicting that I’d believe him one day—with your own eyes, he promised, you’ll see the proof—but I didn’t have a specific memory of him ever telling me the date. A cloud of dark aversion hung over our last words together, hiding the details of that pain, so that a general apprehension for the future seemed to well up naturally from the obscurity of the past. As this day approached, my predictive certainty felt more like superstition than memory, like family folklore that has become legendary.

I knew what I had to do, but I was scared that it was crazy.

Which is why I found myself here in the tavern, having a beer against my better judgment. I couldn’t go out and face the heavens without at least one ale. I had to build up my courage somehow. Outside through the bleary windows, I could see all the shadows stretching away from the sun, as though the earth itself was a great sundial whose sole pupose was to measure my procrastination. Every twig and trunk, every branch and limb, pointed like a warning toward the coming dark. The night’s first stars would soon be visible; I knew I’d have to leave soon. Nevertheless, I had two or three sips left, and I was determined to finish them. If Father’s warnings had any merit, this could be the last beer I drank before knowing the truth, the last savored drops of innocence. This was a moment I intended to delay as long as possible. Of course, it meant I’d be cutting it close, but for a little while longer I couldn’t stand the thought of being alone.

“Taking your time with that one, aren’t you? Isn’t that your first round?”

I looked up at Rakhael to search her face for signs of recognition, any indication of alarm, but the barmaid wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes were skimming the surface of the moment, casually scanning the view in search of empty glasses throughout the room. Duties in need of attendance. As she glanced back and forth, she balanced a tray of mugs with practiced indifference, so that each turn and dip was as natural and thoughtless as a shrug. Rakhael looked distracted, I thought, but not alarmed. She gave no sign that she noticed the growing wind or the meaning it concealed.

“Yeah, it’s my first round. I’m afraid you won’t get much coin from me tonight.”

In a flash of reflected firelight, her eyes turned away from her duties and settled upon me. A playful smirk tempered the boredom in her face. “Saving up for a trip to the southlands? You going to take me with you?”

I shook my head. “Just trying to keep my wits about me.”

“Wits? What in earth or sky makes you think you’d need those?” Another turn and dip of the tray as she shifted her balance to face me better. “You and I both know that a night with these folk never required any wits.” Her smile almost spread to her eyes, but they were too tired to share in the joke. “So,” she continued, “you should have another. As long as you’re here, you might as well be drunk.”

I sighed. She didn’t understand. And yet, I thought sullenly, she made a convincing argument nonetheless.

“Maybe one more. But don’t let me have another.”

“Don’t let you? Malik, do I look like your mother?” Her smiled deepened; this time her eyes joined in the expression.

But then a sudden memory snatched all the joy from her face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. What was I thinking?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said distantly. “I was barely a day old when it happened. I have no memory of her.” For Rakhael’s sake, I tried to put on a brave face. “Hell, for all I know, you could look exactly like her.”

That wasn’t entirely true. I had a good idea what my mother had looked like, despite never having seen her living face. Father had no drawings or paintings of her, and he refused to describe her. Yet somehow I knew this barmaid looked nothing like my mother. She was too distant and distracted.

Rakhael’s smile returned, though it was restrained by chagrin and pity. “I’ll be right back with your beer,” she muttered.

As she shuffled off toward the bar, I tried to suppress memories which I had no time to deal with right now. I forced my gaze outwards—away from images of a woman with no face, of embracing arms I could feel but not see—out to the faces and forms of the others gathered around me. More than twenty people had scattered themselves among the tables, forming little knots of mutual distraction. Listening to them speak, I could trace the edges of their thoughts where their attention trailed away into nothingness:

... time to mend my boots ...
... this godamn tooth won’t stop aching ...
... time for more ale ...
... dull the pain ...

Cheers and raised drinks at the prospect of dulled pain.

Their chatter wasn’t really an adequate distraction, but it was a consolation nonetheless. It was comforting to see how their daily routines completely defined the scope of their concern. They were free of the incoherent mumbling in the background of things. They didn’t notice how the wind framed their speech, how its voice filled the gaps in their conversations with a whispered account of all the things they left unspoken. All the things that mattered. All the things I desperately needed to know, but could not comprehend. For twenty-three years, I had tried in vain to resolve this voice into words, but either I lacked the ability to understand, or the world spoke gibberish beneath an illusion of sanity.

That illusion was seductive. Convincing. On the surface, everything seemed to make sense. The tavern’s common room was a haven of habit and familiarity. I could navigate these tables and chairs through the thickest fog of ale. I could enter and exit conversations without mishap. Around me, the others would nod and laugh, or scoff and insist. They carved meaning through the smoky air with sharp gestures and incisive looks. This was a place we understood, where we could ignore the vast swaths of unknown forest that isolated us here on the northern edge of the Kingdom. Though our town was far from the protection of King Raymound’s soldiers, here, at least, we felt safe.

Which is why I couldn’t bring myself to leave. Though none of them had any idea what I was about to do, or the stakes involved, their presence was reassuring nonetheless. There was comfort in company, in having others around me. Seeing and hearing them right here before me. Rakhael was right there across the room, filling up another glass. How could anything be wrong when so many were blissfully indifferent?

Just a few more minutes, I told myself. Just one more drink, then I’ll go out and test Father’s prediction.

And then what? Come back here and finish myself off? Drink myself into oblivion? Maybe Rakhael was right, maybe I should run away to the southlands, find a city large enough to have a Pleasure House and forget Father’s warning. Maybe if I let the wizards wrap me in their spells of sensory amusement, I’d finally be able to block out the world’s voice. I didn’t want to hear what it had to say. I was terrified that it was trying to warn me of a fundamental wrong, a transcendental flaw in the order of all things. Why else would it cry out?

Perhaps it was just nature’s way of letting me know I was going mad. After all, Father said, you have to be a little crazy to see the signs. Sane people, I chuckled to myself, worry about their teeth and their boots. Practical needs. Things that kept them alive and moving. They didn’t waste time watching the stars or listening to the wind for signs of corruption. In the course of their mundane tasks, they didn’t find themselves seized with a sense of dislocation, like waking up while sleepwalking through an unrecognizable forest. I felt as though some essential part of me was cracking. Breaking. This had to be the explanation for what I felt, what I heard, what he predicted I’d see. I was following his path into madness.

But I knew that wasn’t the whole truth. Whatever affliction lurked in my veins, he claimed it was part of the crack that ran through all of reality. Though I’d spent thirteen years pushing his words further back into my past, I could no longer ignore the warning in my gut. Tonight, I knew, I’d see that crack spread into the heavens.

“You, my son, have the look of someone consumed with his salvation.”

Startled, I realized Priest Balon had stopped beside my table. Though the sky blue robe which marked his station was stained with drink, he stood before me without any hint of his usual unsteadiness. On most nights our village priest was drunker than I was; he gave most of his sermons right here in this tavern. When the Lost Inn was not lucky enough to host talkative travelers, Priest Balon would often fill the void by assuming his place at the hearth, regaling us with nonsensical parables taken from the more colorful, obscure passages of the Book of Thualle. Silly stories with ambiguous moral points, made even more dubious by his slurred delivery.

“Have I finally gotten through to you? Are the temptations of flesh starting to lose their allure?”

I would have thought he was joking if he were not sober himself. No one took a drunken, flirting priest seriously when he scolded them for their debauchery. Tonight, however, he looked like he meant it. For the first time since I’d known him, he almost seemed to believe his own rhetoric.

Wishing desperately for my next round, I shook my head. “Not really. I’ve just ordered another.”

“Ah,” he said searchingly, his voice full of calculation. The incongruity between his usual demeanor and this probing sobriety was disconcerting. In a curious half-whisper, half-listening, he spoke to me as though the wind had momentarily stopped babbling, and it had picked this man to deliver its message.

“Thualle has a way of making his will known, Malik. Sometimes I like to think He speaks through the drunken rants of old, sinful men.” He gave himself a wry smile. “And sometimes He speaks in a more eloquent language. The trick to navigating between the absurd and the meaningful is knowing what to believe.”

His eyes simultaneously clarified with intention and clouded with ambiguity. Never in my life had he spoken to me so directly, and yet I had no idea what he meant.

“Have faith, my son.”

His words sent chills down my arms like ripples of alarm, as though invisible fingers were trying to point out the fallacy of faith on my skin.

When Balon turned to leave, he must have jostled into Rakhael as she brought my second round. A confusion of balance and beer wrenched me out of my thoughts, out of my hopes and fears. For a moment I forgot about the future. I forgot about prediction and prophesy. I simply watched as the shower of ale cascaded around them, down into the tangle of boots and chairs below the tables. I heard it hit the floor with a soft splash. I smelled the floral hop scent that it added to the stale tavern air. Tiny discrepancies in the way droplets scattered.

“What the hell?” Rakhael asked no one in particular.

“Forgive me,” the Priest answered. “I appear to have lost my way.”

The barmaid sighed. “I’m sure you remember where the bar is, Balon.”

He gave her a charitable smile, then reverently tipped his head in farewell.

As the Priest walked away he seemed to regain his unsteadiness, as if his lucidity had been an act. He caught himself on the shoulders of those he passed, uttering kind platitudes to transform his clutching gesture into a fatherly pat. Leaving a wake of blessed souls, he made his way to the bar.

“Clumsy fool.” Rakhael wiped her hands on her apron. “Sorry, Malik. I’ll get you another one.

For a moment longer my senses lingered on the drops seeping between the floorboards ... pooling in the cellar ... soaking into the dirt. Another sign, I thought sullenly. I wasn’t supposed to have a second drink. It was time to leave.

I shook my head. “No thanks. I should go.”

Whatever the outcome, it was time for me to face it.

“Go? Out there?” She gave the space beyond the tavern a small nod. “But it’s going to storm tonight.”

“I know. That’s why I have to leave.” I dug out a few coppers and dropped them on her tray. “Before I lose the sky.”

I gave her a sympathetic smile. I knew she didn’t understand me. But it wasn’t her fault—I must have sounded crazy.

Despite my fears, she didn’t look at me like I was crazy. For a moment her eyes lost their tired indifference; she actually looked worried about me. “The sky isn’t going anywhere, Malik. The only thing you’re going to lose is yourself.” She lowered her voice. “It’s going to be dark soon.”

Her concern made me nervous. It seemed to pierce the illusion between us, like an aperture of focused truth. Instinctively, I wanted to close up that hole, smooth it over with improvised falsehood. I didn’t want her to see the panic rising past the insufficient buzz I’d built against it.

I joked, “Don’t worry. I’ll be back soon. And I have a feeling I’ll need a lot more to drink. You’ll get more coin out of me yet.”

My forced humor worked. Her tensed recognition faded. She reverted back to the role of barmaid working for tips and got lost again in that distraction. The sounds of men drinking filled her eyes, and she laughed. “You don’t have to watch the stars to predict that.”

My smile soured as she walked away. No, she didn’t understand. I didn’t study the stars to predict the future. I watched them because I was finally ready to face my past.

[Worm of Despite]

Geez. 300,000 words? That's hundreds of pages; huge book. My novel is 101k and 400 pages on a paperback.

Is this something you're thinking of publishing or just an endless project? Either way it's good practice.

I'll read it soon. (Just being lazy since this is my one week off a year.)

[Avatar]

Congrats on 10K Z.

--A

[aliantha]

Congrats on 10K! We're talking about your achievement in the Hall of Gifts, y'know. Starts here:

kevinswatch.ihugny.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=862389#862389

[Linna Heartbooger]

lol ali, Summonsing you mean... I laugh cause I do that too..

Congrats, Z! Now, to find the time to really sit down and read what you wrote here...

[Linna Heartbooger]

I love this gem the most from what I've read so far:

Outside through the bleary windows, I could see all the shadows stretching away from the sun, as though the earth itself was a great sundial whose sole pupose was to measure my procrastination.

Isn't it just, sometimes?

No one else seemed to hear it. Behind the natural, mundane noises that animated the tavern, that rendered this room into a place of unquestioned familiarity, there was a different sound. An alien sound ... as if the echoes of the world didn’t match up. Or the winds outside weren’t blowing right. A storm was approaching in the distance, making it worse, but that didn’t explain why everything sounded wrong. The world had always been like this, as far as I could tell. For as long as I could remember, an underlying discord hovered on the edge of hearing. Whether lying in bed or drinking in the tavern, I was always aware of it. Like a ringing in my ears, it was both inescapable and indistinct. No matter how hard I tried to block it out, or how diligently I tried to decipher its meaning, it remained an incoherent mumbling in the background of things.

I love the introduction.
You reveal a lot of where you're coming from - at least to the reader who's wrestled with this type of thing about reality before - and it tells me, personally I'm likely to want to hear a lot of what you have to say.

Most nights, however, I could at least muffle that voice with a few ales. In a blur of sweet amber, I could let my awareness slip loose from the moment. I could lose myself in pointless conversations. I could joke and laugh along with the rest of them, and for a brief time I’d almost be free of it.

Very nice contrast.
The POV char is different from the people around him because they are numbed completely, but he has this same inclination within himself.

Tonight was different. No amount of beer would have been enough. The murmuring madness was louder, more insistent. Its whisper was everywhere at once, like the world trying to speak. Something beyond the sky or beneath the earth struggling to get our attention. Even if it would have helped, I could not let myself get drunk. Tonight I had to be lucid.

another contrast, but yet the struggle.

This was the fall equinox of my twenty-third year, a day I had dreaded since I was a child. I’d carried this fear with me for so long, I could no longer remember when I first discovered it. My father was always predicting that I’d believe him one day—with your own eyes, he promised, you’ll see the proof—but I didn’t have a specific memory of him ever telling me the date. A cloud of dark aversion hung over our last words together, hiding the details of that pain, so that a general apprehension for the future seemed to well up naturally from the obscurity of the past. As this day approached, my predictive certainty felt more like superstition than memory, like family folklore that has become legendary.

Constructive criticism: "This was the fall equinox..." <-- In that sentence I think you actually changed verb tenses. If not, you changed modes - it sounds more like a history, more third-person... most of this story is much more present.

I'm not an English major and slacked on remembering the many verb tenses (and types of tenses!) that exist in the English language... meh. You try to explain the unusual precision of remembering the timing data... but I am sure there was also a linguistic/narrative shift that's "unreal."

I knew what I had to do, but I was scared that it was crazy.

Which is why I found myself here in the tavern, having a beer against my better judgment. I couldn’t go out and face the heavens without at least one ale. I had to build up my courage somehow. Outside through the bleary windows, I could see all the shadows stretching away from the sun, as though the earth itself was a great sundial whose sole pupose was to measure my procrastination. Every twig and trunk, every branch and limb, pointed like a warning toward the coming dark. The night’s first stars would soon be visible; I knew I’d have to leave soon. Nevertheless, I had two or three sips left, and I was determined to finish them. If Father’s warnings had any merit, this could be the last beer I drank before knowing the truth, the last savored drops of innocence. This was a moment I intended to delay as long as possible. Of course, it meant I’d be cutting it close, but for a little while longer I couldn’t stand the thought of being alone.

Constructive criticism: this is kind of repetitive and verbose. we know why he's drinking already. we know he does not feel very courageous and there's "something out there, something ahead of him."

But maybe it brings the reader into the character's same frustrated procrastination? No, I don't think I find myself identifying with him more. Maybe I'm just being really impatient cause I'm reading this on an online forum instead of in a book.

I get wearied when you get to "If Father's warnings had any merit.." ... in that sentence you give away so many secrets I think; I'd hold them close if it were me. But then, my style [of sharing what I see] is showing (storytelling), not telling (analyzing, providing abstracts and general principles).

And that's about all I've read so far!