I don't really care for this piece anymore: it was written prior to developing a fully-fleshed sense of the Minmatar and Vherokior in particular. I leave it as a reminder to keep practicing.
[spoiler]
I'm going to try some narrative mini-chronicles of Nisme's activities while her small fleet is in drydock. Please provide corrections to PF flubs, suggestions on better writing, or any other comments as you see fit. Thank you.
Fool's Paradise
She stepped out of the steam room onto the satiny slab flooring of her dark-walled bedchamber, relishing the pleasant coolness on her fevered feet. With a wave of the hand she extinguished the pale light of the bathing chamber before pacing to a squat storage chest whose lid was strewn with the flotsam of solitary living. Spying the environmental control device, narrow and cast in brushed metal, and lifted it and made a few sliding gestures on its surface with her thumb. There were
two soft chimes as the room’s lights faded out, leaving only the dull white glow of the NeoCom holoprojector reflecting off of her transnano desk. Heating panels under the floor sighed and eased into activity. She smiled faintly in the dark, placed the device back on the chest, and grabbed a sarong resting on the foot of the adjacent low bed.
On top of an
unassuming chiffonier in the corner of the room rested a finger-sized cylinder of mottled brown stone, a small white cloth tied in a neat bundle, and several tall candles of varied color. She wrapped herself in the sarong as she moved across the room and knotted its straps behind her neck, still damp from the cooling steam.
“Music archive… play personal sound recording, dunes zero nine,” her voice ordered.
There was another soft chime, and the faint sound of whipping wind crept in around her. She stepped up to the dresser and took the stone cylinder in hand, turning it over and tracing her thumb along its uneven surface until she found a small depression. Pressing her thumb therein, the cylinder produced a small jet of fire from one end, and with it she lit each candle in a slow sequence. She stared at the infant fire as it rose from nothingness, though its initial sputtering, as it flickered and grew into a steady feather of flame. She moved onto the next candle, repeating the contemplative token another six times. As she did so, the room was slowly filled with a
low drone which would occasionally tremble like the flickering of the candle flames. She closed her eyes.
In her mind’s eye there was the image of the voluval mark on her left shoulder blade: four tapered recurves, wide ends reaching up and away from her spine in an eccentric arc. Through its form she felt the heat of the candle fire, unforgiving sun, and ever-moving sand. Through its form she felt her breath like the undying wind, heard its call into the sky. Through its form she felt the will of a thousand generations reaching with the urgency of imperiled life, catapulting generations as yet unconceived to heights only they will know.
The droning of the dunes lingered in low, comforting steadiness, and her senses eventually returned to her makeshift shrine. By the dim candlelight, she opened the dresser’s top drawer, reached into the dark to remove a small urn, and cradled it in her palm as she turned to the squat block of dark hardwood next to the bed. The earthenware urn, with glaze cool and slicked with condensed vapor, defied the warming air of the room. Kneeling on the low bed, she placed the urn on the hardwood nightstand next to a pair of squarish clay pots, shadows dancing in tandem in the near darkness. From one pot she plucked a small, dusty cube, and put fire to it with the small cylinder still in hand. As one half began to glow a muted red, she extinguished the flame and set the brick in the empty of the two clay pots, where it began to exude a thick ribbon of aromatic smoke toward the ceiling, a filament swimming in the candlelight.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, she reached over to the wood block, taking the small urn back in hand before removing a small curved lid. With her fore and tall fingers she fished inside until she was able to clutch a miniature parcel of waxy vellum. Pinching it lightly between her digits, she closed the urn and set it on the floor beside her feet, then staring ahead, drew a long breath. She turned her eyes down to the little parcel, nestling it in her palm, and began in delicate movements to unfold the four leaves of paper comprising the parcel. She took another deep breath, and carefully grasped a button of eynlif, silhouetting it against the candlelight. The viscous fluid produced by its succulent flesh glistened in the smoky dun, and she thought how odd that its emerald hue was rendered colorless in the dusky room.
Another deep breath. Another. Her eyes fixed on the seven candles.
“Feather and flame,” she whispered, and placed the button on her tongue.
The sounds of the winds whistling on the sand seemed to dance over the impassive hum of the dunes, and she could feel herself swaying like the tall timbers of Tronhadar as her tongue became numb. She sensed herself falling, crashing backward at a glacial pace, her muscled back demolishing the peaks and valleys of the comforter below her. As she was swathed in the eiderdown, it seemed to liquify around her, and as she sank deeper, she dissolved into it with a surrender of awareness the total opposite of implanting in the capsule. With deliberate slowness, she opened her eyes, watching the streamer of white smoke ripple and expand into a formless sea of grey. The wind continued to whip through the sands and dry grasses, whose whines and warbles became a
singsong melody lulling her consciousness into a mesmeric whirl. Her vision darkened and she drifted gently into the elsewhere.
~
She observed a rhythmic plinking, at first hushed, distorted. It echoed into being like a well’s spout dripping into a pail at some distance, slowly growing in prominence until it cannot be ignored. She opened her eyes. The room was black and thick with a fragrant haze, through which the wan glow of the NeoCom pulsed. A message waited in The Singing Sands.
She rolled over and pushed herself onto her knees, unsteady, then planted a foot onto the floor. Cool and solid, her toes stretched and gripped it. She wasn’t sure how long she had been under, and still wasn’t used to the transition back to cognizance. She ran her fingers over the back of her neck, tracing the outline of a neural interface port before sitting to download the channel logs.
More of the same. CONCORD kill reports, wargame braggadocio, and ceaseless consultations on more effective bloodshed.
Blind serpents who strike at the first sign of movement. Unaware of why they strike. Unaware of who they serve, who they harm. Cold animals who have forgotten themselves in the act of murder.
“...and these are my people.”[/spoiler]
Author
Topic: Nissui Mini-Chronicle 01 (Read 544 times)