Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING
ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more
speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective
eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..."
Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and
then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant,
nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see
fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them. Regarding Fantasy, this insight was
startling: “I see the fantasy genre as an ever-shifting metaphor for life in
this world, an innocuous medium that allows the author to examine difficult,
even controversial, subjects with impunity. Honor, religion, politics, nobility,
integrity, greed—we’ve an endless list of ideals to be dissected and explored. And
maybe learned from.” – Melissa McPhail.
Fantasy Trope: Low
Fantasy (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LowFantasy)
Somokene shielded
his eyes from the blood-red dome of the Sun as it set and said, “The new star
does not fade with day. You know what that means.”
Squatting on the
bare, rounded boulder, Bardinanda sniffed the air and said, “Yes. It means you
need to bathe.”
Somokene shook his
head, “Be serious, Sister!”
“I am always
serious, Servicer.”
He squatted as
well in the lee of the boulder. A cold wind blew from the south, off of the
glacier wall that fenced the entire equator of the World in. It was impossible
to go farther north or south without paying the exorbitant fees of the Ice
Lords. He said, “It means that the end is nigh.”
This time
Bardinanda laughed outright. “Which end is this, brother?”
“You know as well
as I do.”
“But I love to
hear you say it. It makes me appreciate history.”
He sighed as he
unfolded a heat cloth and anchored the four corners with the plutonium disks he
carried. They had decayed to inertness and he had carved and polished the
ancient reactor core slices himself. Incised on the surface were his logograph
and Bardinanda’s. He tapped the cloth and it glowed red. He held out his hand
and a moment later, she placed the aquapon
gently in it. Far heavier than it looked, it was a gate into their food trough
hidden on the other side of the World in Uluru. He set it on the cloth and
said, “This is the one thousand, four hundred and sixty-ninth End Time; one
million, three hundred and ninety-six thousand, four hundred and twenty-first
Year since the founding of Human civilization.”
Bardinanda sighed
and slithered down the boulder, flat, splayed feet gripping the rough surface.
Patting Somokene’s bare head, she said, “You know that despite the fact that
Endless Ending is a tenet of your faith, eventually it will be the Last End
Time.”
“There is a sect
that believes that, yes. I don’t belong to it, but I have studied it.”
She nodded,
running slender fingers over the sensitive skin of his head. They both
shuddered. Nodding, she turned her back on the setting Sun and said softly,
“Then perhaps you are the best one to judge me when I say that I believe the
Last End Time has come upon us and I am the Harbinger and you are my Prophet.”
Names: ♀ South American (Barbara, Diane, Fernanda);
♂ Chewa/Igbo
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