I think you might want to lay down some rules. Like post length or subject matter. You don't want anyone posting the first 10 chapters of their newest fanfic.
The Harbinger of Strange
Post length is not a HUGE issue, as long as you're not posting a novel. Let's make "Nothing that would hurt your finger scrolling through" the rule of thumb. There are no rules on subject matter either. Fanfics are welcome. It is, after all, the Write ANYTHING Thread.
You need an adult.
The time is now,
Scriblerian went from snoring to sitting upright instantly. He wiped the tepid water off his face. "That's police brutality."
"No, that's wunza brutality," said Hussar, withdrawing the hand holding the now empty glass through the drunk tank's bars. "As in 'One's a chain-smoking boorish drunk, and One's the only friend he has prepared to stump up three hundred and thirty sterling to pay the fine the next morning."
"Ha, wunza tight ass limey who doesn't know how to enjoy himself. A good freind bails you the next morning, a great friend wakes up in the same cellblock going 'that was a fantastic night, when shall we do it again!' What's three thirty sterling in real money?"
"About five hundred of your colonial bucks. Of course, if you'd prefer to rely on your new best friend forever..." Hussar indicated the three hundred pound guy covered in his own vomit, sleeping the sleep of the innocent on the concrete floor.
Scriblerian stood and rolled his neck, trying to work the kinks out from the vertibrae. "You've made me wet," he said, gesturing at his soaking shirt.
"It's July, we're in New Mexico, I think mummy's little bunny might survive the sniffles."
The jailer swung open the door and Scriblerian sloped out, sucking at the morning-after that was infecting his mouth. "Did someone crap in my mouth?"
Hussar shrugged. "I don't know. How much did you pay the pair of them?"
edited 27th Feb '13 5:57:44 PM by LastHussar
Do the job in front of you.
Madman
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Hmm, Scriblerian is a curious name. Mind if I ask if it comes from one of your stories?
Anyway, I love the concept behind this thread. Let me dig around for vignettes or aborted projects I could use for it...
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Apparition in the Woods
Drunk Scriblerian is a fellow writer-troper. He takes his name from the expression "scriblerian," which is a kind of jocular term for a writer (a scribbler) originally used in reference to an 18th century literary club (which wrote a famous satire under the collective pseudonym Martin Scriblerius).
...
Write anything? Well, let's see what we can do.
_/_/_/_/
"We have missed the last shuttle back to the residential wing, so it would seem that we have to walk back to the dormitories. As I step out of the library, I quickly regret not bringing a jacket, as the unexpectedly cold November wind carries its chill to my bone. It seems Naomi hasn't anticipated this kind of weather either, but she appears to be taking it much better than I do.
"'You don't like you are cold at all. I'd expect you to be shivering at least a tiny bit.'
"'Why is that? Were you hoping for an opportunity to play the gentleman and give me your coat?' She says, with a lilting voice.
"'You can clearly see I don't have a coat either.' I quickly add, with just a hint of defensiveness.
"'Steele, you should always bring a coat when you're on a date with girl, unless it's August. That way, you might get some major points if the girl complains about the cold.'
"'We are not on a date, Hen.'
"'Might be so. Still, let this be a lesson to you. If you have reason to suspect the girl fancies you, going for the sappy romantic stuff can smooth things over splendidly.' Great, now she is playing cupid. She has a habit of being playful with her adopted charges, which is usually endearing, but not when she is like this.
"'I will take that lesson to heart, then.'
"We walk for a while in silence, next to each other, but not really together. I don't quite have the nerve to look at her, so I mostly gaze at the stars, thinking about today, and yesterday. I can't quite find something to distract myself from my thoughts in the constellations, but I'm not brave enough to look down. For a moment - just a fleeting moment -, I feel like she is studying me with her dark eyes, but that moment quickly passes, and she sees no reason to pierce the quiet for a while.
"As we near the residential, she finally decides to speak up.
"'Thank you for sticking with the club. I know you're not really a book person, and I know it's more despite than because of me running things, but I'm still glad you haven't given up yet.'
"That's, strictly speaking, not true. It is true I joined the book club out of a desire to avoid any actual dedication, but the whole reading thing is strangely growing on me, and despite my earlier fears, Naomi hasn't turned out to be the tyrant or the busybody I thought she was. But I can't quite let her know that.
"'No problem. I have to join a club anyway, right? Might as well be this one. You don't ask for much, so it's an easy way to run away from responsibility.' I answer her without looking at her. If I do, I am afraid I'll inadvertently say something foolish.
"'Hm hm. At least you are honest. If nothing else, it is a way to meet people. That's why the Academy wants every student to be in a club. Companionship and socialization are the keys to graduating well, or so they say. The books are just a tool we use to reach that goal. It just so happens that if you give them a chance, they can be quite entertaining and helpful in their own right.'
"'You certainly don't lack for companionship and socialization, that's for sure. Though I don't know if I should feel glad or not about apparently being adopted into your circle of little chicks.'
"She lets out a laugh. It seems she didn't mean to, as she quickly and awkwardly stops it with a cough. 'You are not quite like the others, Steele.'
"'What do you mean?'
"'You are not a little chick. You don't really need me mothering you at every moment. In fact, for a Greenhill student, you are surprisingly well adjusted. Stable.' She says quite seriously. She waits just a moment before adding 'Not to say there is no room for improvement.' I don't know if she notices, but I feel my cheeks turning red, just a bit. I've come to expect this from Naomi, but even after all this time I don't know what to make of her sudden turns.
"Soon, we reach the Taring Building, where she skips ahead to the door before turning on her heels to face me. 'Well, this is my stop. Am I going to see you tomorrow, then?'
"'I don't see any reason why not. I mean, I might fall ill from all the wind, but otherwise we are going to see each other in class, right?'
"'That's right. Good night, Steele.' She says, but I don't return her parting words, casting my gaze anywhere but on her. It seems she noticed this, so she doesn't walk through the door just yet.
"'Steele, do you have something you want to ask me?' She asks, uncharacteristically sternly. Her tone makes me uncomfortable, and I feel like running away.
"'Nothing I can think of, no.'
"'Steele.' Her voice is even sterner this time, and I finally look at her for the first time since we left the library, and notice her eyes have a determination I haven't seen before.
"I don't know how she rises up on her feet to cover the distance between our heights, and I don't know how she does it so quickly, but before I know it I can feel her lips land on mine, softly, gently. It is not passionate, but I realize it is more out of affection than shyness. She parts and goes down on her heels before I have an opportunity to recover my wits and return the kiss. Her mouth curls up into a small smile.
"'Does that answer your question?'
"I mumble something that even I don't understand, as my brain is still processing what happened. Seemingly satisfied, Naomi quickly pulls my paralyzed self into a hug.
"'Good night, Steele.'
"She walks through the doors without another word, and without looking back. It is only after she goes up the stairs and disappears from my sight that I finally get a chance to respond.
"'Good night, Hen.'"
"..."
Reminds of an old romance novel.
It was a snowy afternoon.
Match set! 25 to 22; the champions are Redwood Junior High!
Hard to believe that happened only hours ago. Russell looked up at the orange sky and sighed, clouding the air with his breath. "It's... over." His lips trembled slightly.
He wanted to speak.
He wanted to apologize. In the end, we couldn't win.
edited 6th Mar '13 4:42:44 AM by fillerdude
Madman
Are they playing hockey? If it's a snowy day, I presume it's some winter sport.
Excerpt for the Day
Bjorn tilted his head back as he ran his gaze up the city wall of Wasepata. He held a hand over his blue eyes to shield them from the white plaster's burning glow. Not even two elephants stacked up together could match the mudbrick structure's inhuman height, which exceeded every other manmade building Bjorn ever saw. Only the rows of woody thorns sprouting from the wall's front side, no doubt for support, convinced him that humans rather than gods built it. And this wasn't even supposed to be the grandest or most famous example of Nubadian architecture.
If the wall would have choked the words out of any Northman, it seemed even more staggering to Bjorn after countless days of wandering through the wilds. Sweat beaded his sun-reddened brow and stained his fur tunic dark while dust coated his trousers. An oily yellow tangle of hair itched all over his face. Every time he breathed, his throat dried like the savanna behind him. Not even Bjorn's naturally stocky, muscular frame could hide his stomach's aching emptiness.
He reached into his pocket to clutch the warm ball of gold inside. Only the gods' fickle mercy, or perhaps dumb luck, had led him to this nugget out in the desert just north of Nubadi. In fact most Northmen would have brushed it off as simply another desert stone, but in his travels Bjorn had picked up on the southern races' strange love for the flimsy yellow metal. Bouncing the nugget off his hand's palm, he smirked. One fistful of this stuff could feed him for over a moon.
"You down there, what are you doing?"
Bjorn cocked his head back up. Atop the wall's gatehouse stood the tiny figures of two Nubadian bowmen, although he could only make out their outlines after squinting.
"Oh, I was just admiring your wall," Bjorn said. "It's quite a feast for the eyes, isn't it?"
"You must be new to Nubadi, then," one of the guard said. "You sure look the part. Now who are you, strange one?"
"I am Bjorn, a Northman from the village of Wolfheart...well, before it got razed to the ground. Now I live as a vagrant, and I seek rest and food in your fine city. I'll not stay longer than a few days."
“Northman, huh?” There was a pause. “It’s not common for your kind to come this far south, and this far inland. You must have really worn yourself out! Wait, what’s that glinting from behind your back?”
“Oh, this?” Bjorn slid his broadsword out from its scabbard. “A man’s got protect himself when he’s out alone in the bush, doesn’t he? Trust me, I mean no harm.”
The wind whistled and the savanna insects buzzed.
“All right, you’ll be in a crowded place anyway,” the guard said. “But if you cause the slightest trouble, piss-mane, odds are you’ll find yourself headless in no time. Let him in!”
As the great wooden doors opened, their grinding battered Bjorn’s eardrums. He stormed through the entrance with his face burning even redder than before. Southerners may have called his kind “piss-manes” many times before, yet the slur’s sting never wore off. Especially not since his father’s killer first growled it out among the roars of Wolfheart’s flames…
No, Bjorn could not relive that bloody winter yet again. He tightened his grip on the gold nugget. Whatever may have happened in his youth, the rest of his life still lay ahead of him. Better to enjoy what time he had left than dwell on what he left behind.
Not that he could slip slick into Wasepata’s population, if they would let him at all. They certainly wouldn’t now, for the crowds which bustled over the dirt streets always parted to make a wide berth for Bjorn. All the Nubadians he passed turned their heads to gawk or glare at him. Glaring men pulled their women back from him, and the women in turn shielded their children with their arms. The buzzing and chatter of daily gossip gave way to gasps and nervous murmurs. Bjorn drooped his head and sighed. Not even the world’s oldest and largest civilization could protect him from crushing loneliness.
Yet for all the Nubadians’ incredulity towards him, Bjorn found them every bit as alien to himself. By and large these black-skinned people stretched tall and lean, the opposite of his husky white Northfolk. Many had woven their frizzy hair in braids or sculpted it into elaborate crests. Bright warm colors dazzled on the Nubadians’ skirts, and gold and beads gleamed all over their necks and limbs. The richest jarl in all the Northlands could never adorn himself as these Nubadian commoners did.
Perhaps Bjorn had erred in bringing one little nugget to this urban gold mine.
The city itself glowed with the same radiance as the people who filled it. The mudbrick houses alone would dwarf any Northman’s stick hovel, to say nothing of the limestone obelisks, colossi, and temples that reached for the sky. Whether built from mud or rock, all these monuments wore murals and inscribed hieroglyphs all over their plaster. From the distant horizon rose the gold-capped peaks of bygone rulers’ tombs. The Great Hall of Bjorn’s gods would disappear into insignificance if placed within Wasepata.
Nothing could brutalize a Northman’s cultural pride more than this.
Wasepata’s main road opened into a bazaar choked up with even more citizenry than the rest of the city. The aromas of fruits, spices, and bread mingled with the stenches of fish and meats. Merchants’ shouting from their stalls fought with the street musicians’ throbbing drums and twanging kora.
One man actually ran out from his fruit stall to Bjorn and knelt at his feet. “Please, for the love of Nzambimun, give Djadao’s produce a chance!” he sobbed, holding his hands up together.
Bjorn groaned. “How much do you really depend on it, my good man?”
“Why, nothing less than my life is at stake. I shall starve to death by the day’s end if you don’t help!” Djadao rubbed his bulging belly. “Sure you will, judging by that figure.” Bjorn suppressed a snicker. “Speaking of starving, looks like someone else really is hungry today!”
A naked little boy plucked a couple of figs off Djadao’s stall. The merchant spun around and lunged at the child, who scurried away in an eye’s blink.
“Stop that thief, why don’t you?” Djadao roared. “Bring me his hand!”
Bjorn burst after the boy, but the bazaar’s forest of humanity slowed his initial sprint down. He found himself having to shove and squeeze his way through the townspeople. The urchin, on the other hand, could weave his way around them like a snake zipping through grass. Bjorn could never catch up to him, not unless he could somehow climb over everyone else.
Maybe he didn’t need to climb.
After squatting as far back down as he could, Bjorn thrust upward and vaulted over the next wall of Nubadians. He landed a foot behind the boy and snatched onto his shoulders.
“Got you!” Bjorn turned the child to face him. “What would your mother have to say about this?”
The scrawny little child said nothing. His eyes shone with tears which leaked down his cheeks. Bjorn’s heart melted.
“You don’t have a mother, do you?” Bjorn pulled out his gold nugget. For all the things it could buy him, none of those he needed as much as this boy needed to survive. “Give the seller this gold, and he won’t let you go hungry for a long time.”
Once Bjorn let him go, the boy skipped back towards the fruit-seller with both figs and nugget. Bjorn strutted away with a cozy warmth soothing his soul. He could always find some line of work in a city as big as Wasepata anyway.
A hand lunged out and dragged him into an alley.
edited 6th Mar '13 8:34:51 AM by Jabrosky
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Madman
Now here's a short I actually finished:
The Pharaoh and the Hot Comb
Holding a bronze mirror to her face, Sekhotep plowed an ivory comb through her hair. Over a season ago, only scattered peppercorn tufts remained once she shaved her head clean. Those tufts would soon grow into one thick black bush. That may have cushioned her scalp against her bed’s headrest or the many crowns she needed to wear as Pharaoh of Kemet, but dense woolly hair could also draw in swarms of head lice. Her comb must have caught hundreds of the tiny monsters by now judging from the dusty stuff between its teeth. Sekhotep grimaced from the thought.
“Preparing yourself for the hairdresser, Your Majesty?” Djadao, Sekhotep’s plump old Vizier, said as he waddled outside her boudoir.
Sekhotep put the comb and mirror down on a counter. “If only I didn’t have to keep him waiting so long,” Sekhotep said. “There’s no way I can get all the nits out of this jungle.”
“That’s why I keep telling you to let him take care of that. That’s his job in the first place! You shouldn’t burden yourself with his work.” “But I can make it easier for him. It must be tedious labor, combing and cutting other people’s hair all day.”
Djadao laughed. “No more tedious than all the peasants’ toiling on your tombs, my Pharaoh. Speaking of the hairdresser, I’m sorry to say he’s come down with a bad cough today.”
“How bad is it?” Fear for her old hairdresser chilled Sekhotep’s veins.
“I don’t know, but the good news is that I have found a substitute for the time being. You know the servant girl Zoe?”
Sekhotep knew she had employed a number of Greek servants at her palace grounds, but royalty like her couldn’t interrupt their many chores just to get to know them better. She shrugged. “What does she have to do with hairdressing?”
“She apparently has some skill at it, so I have entrusted her to take the job over.” Djadao’s weak smile reverted to a frown. “Is that all right with you, my liege?”
Sekhotep ran her fingers through her hair. “But she’s Greek! Greeks don’t have hair like our people do. She couldn’t possibly know how to style our kind of hair.”
“That’s what I thought at first too, but she claims to know a way around that. Speaking of whom, here she comes.”
Djadao left the boudoir to make way for a young olive-skinned girl who lugged with her a burning brazier. Firelight flickered on her raven hair’s loose curls which contrasted with the Pharaoh’s woolly bush.
“What’s that for?” Sekhotep asked.
Zoe set the brazier on the floor and whipped out her own comb, a bronze tool attached to a wooden handle unlike Sekhotep’s equivalent. “Do you know what a hot comb is, my lady?” she said.
“So that’s what your holding. I’ve never heard of it.” Sekhotep glanced down at the brazier again. “You’re not going to put it in that flame, are you?”
Zoe squattered and hovered the metal comb over the fire. Sekhotep’s heart drummed under her chest as perspiration beaded her brow. She recoiled against the wall away from the brazier.
“I’ve done this several times before,” Zoe said. “You’ve nothing to fear, Your Majesty. Sit still and promise me you won’t flinch.” “First tell me what on earth you’re doing!”
Zoe smiled. “Just smoothing out some kinks in your hair.” She yanked Sekhotep off the wall and shoved her onto a chair. “That’ll make it easier for me to work it.”
The Greek servant girl raised the hot comb towards the back of the Pharaoh’s hair. Though the approaching blade baked her neck’s nape like a noontime desert sun, Sekhotep banged her shivering shins together. She clenched her hands onto her seat’s edge to suppress her desire to sprint out of the boudoir.
The hot comb caught her hair in its burning teeth. The heat seared to her scalp as Zoe pushed and pulled with her tool. Sekhotep gnashed her teeth together, growling like a leopard in pain, as tears gushed from her eyes. With her other hand the Greek girl pinned her squirming mistress down on the shoulder.
“Stop it!” Sekhotep said. “I command you to stop!”
Zoe only pushed down on her harder while combing. “Promise me, you’ll like the results!” she shouted over the Pharaoh’s squealing.
Sekhotep thrust an elbow into her breast, knocking her off. The hot comb fell from Zoe’s grip onto her sandalled foot. The Greek youth screamed out a vulgar curse which echoed between the boudoir's walls as the comb’s blade singed her skin. While Zoe stamped around the room wailing, Sekhotep snatched the comb and tossed it into a nearby pot.
“Why did you do that?” Zoe said. She swung a fist at the Pharaoh.
Sekhotep dodged this attack. “What were you thinking? What did you do to my hair?”
She grabbed the mirror and held it up to her face. Her hair, once a frizzy ball, now hung straight down where Zoe had combed it, covering Sekhotep’s neck and ears. Her deep brown face flushed one shade paler.
“You straightened my hair,” Sekhotep said. “You made my hair straight as a baboon’s!”
“I thought it would make it easier for me to work with,” Zoe said. She knelt on the ground before her Pharaoh and broke down into sobbing. Her cheeks now glistened as wet with tears as Sekhotep’s. “I am so sorry, my lady. Please have mercy on me!”
Sekhotep took in several deep sighs to quell her inner fury. No matter what Zoe may have done to her hair, seeing the young Greek servant girl so distressed speared her heart with sympathy.
“I’ll give you one chance to right your wrong,” Sekhotep said. She picked up a shaving knife from the boudoir’s counter. “Take it all off. Hopefully it’ll grow back woolly as ever.”
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Organized Canine Bureau Special Agent
Trying on this since I have plans to do a post-cyberpunk law enforcement (novel, if I can get there) set in post-World War III Philippines.
Police Senior Inspector Mark Chen, ex-officer of the Philippine National Police Special Action Force and a current operator of a covert public security task force launched by the National Counter-Terrorism Action Group to investigate serious crimes, including cybercrimes, as a major priority after the country had spent a huge amount of money on reconstruction efforts.
Right now, his first job was to investigate the death of a young high school student accused of being a member of a hacker/terrorist group called "True Anonymous". The group has been dubbed to be the successor of the whistleblower group "Anonymous", although their tactics are suggesting that they act more like the hacker terror groups that emerged from the war.
This is too messy. It can't be TA's fault.
Mark had seen the corpse of the student. It was a clean and good job. Double tap to the chest and head. Someone clearly wanted him out of the way. Now the news is claiming that the student was killed due to a mistaken identity on the part of the assailant.
"Hey!"
A PNP uniformed officer spotted someone acting suspicious near the crime scene. When the public security officer saw this, the suspicious person started to run.
"OY!" Mark gave chase, but things escalated when he brought out a machine pistol and started to fire at him and at the PNP officers.
"Shit..." Mark drew out a pistol from his shoulder holster and opened fire. The 9mm bullet struck the armed person at his right shoulder. But the ex-SAF officer swore that it pinged off in a ricochet.
Is his arm a military-grade prosthetic arm? In Philippine law enforcement/military circles, only active soldiers and police officers are allowed to have prosthetic limbs as a part of their duties if their original limbs are not longer present.
For now, Mark intends to find out when he catches the assailant. Preferably alive.
"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"
Lawful neutral
"Goddamnit!" I was upside-down in the deepest part of the docking relay system, trying to pry a panel off. Unfortunately, the last asshole to do this hadn't replaced the solid film, and the contact had been too close; my screwdriver couldn't fit under the lip to pry it loose.
edited 26th Sep '13 4:18:35 AM by edgewalker22
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
Just a random passage from The Elphodian Files
The persistent cloud cast overhead provided all the creatures forged by the Divine Hand below it. No sound was heard from the town, except hollow whistle of wind blowing through abandoned and decaying structures. Between them, two shapes, outlined by camouflaged ammo jacket, swiftly moved along the edge of empty street like spectres. They kept their mouths shut, adding nothing to the desolute air but dust rising each time their boots tread the poisoned ground. The operators kept their muscles tensed, fingers prepared to pull the trigger. If it was not for occasional hand signals they exchanged, one might have mistook that they weren't even aware of each other's presence.
Soon they found themselves in the middle of the town, at a small fountain. The water was completely dried up and what must have been once white was stained green by time. Both soldiers looked around the place and saw nothing, just the way they like it.
"I don't think we should be exposing us like this, Brown. Snipers can take out us easily." Chief Warrant Officer Michael Strauss whispered to his partner, Master Sergeant Jacob Brown, as he looked around, checking windows with his infrared scope. The Delta operator, on the other hand, didn't seem to share the concern.
"I know when there is an ambush. I assure you, Chief, this time is empty as a skull."
"Skull, huh. From the reports, over 30,000 people used to live here. Now all I have is a faint whisper of dead in my ear and a smell of ashes in my nose."
"Feels like we are in Prypiat, huh? Hopefully we really are all alone in this place."
"If I see an enemy, I think it would actually be a relief."
"True that. Well, better get to work."
I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.
I am sorry for how stupid I was, for how I treated you and when it was too late, I was unable to accept that you're gone. I couldn't let go even if what I was clinging to was a corpse. But now I understand, even as I let go, you won't be gone. You may have fallen like many others, but as such, you are able to live on as an inspiration. We have looked forward to reaching our dream together and now with you here to give me strength, I won't let you down. Thank you...
edited 19th Oct '13 3:52:30 AM by PsychoFreaX
Help?.. please...
A black motorcar followed a winding road through the hills under a gray sky threatening to drown the grassy country. The motorcar was driven by Mr. Alexander Black, who was a well-off clerk working for the National Water Company; he was accompanied by his newly-wed wife, Mrs. Catherine Black, who was from a wealthier family from North Highwood. Mr. and Mrs. Black had been married no more than three months and Alexander had been working for Catherine's father - the president of the National Water Company - for less than a year. Mr. Black's mother, a widow by the name of Delia Black, had single-handedly brought the match into being - or so she would go on to tell her friends in South Highwood. Mr. Black was a tall, thin man with a rather beak-like nose; he had the habit of adjusting his spectacles when he was anxious - which meant that he had being adjusting them since his engagement to Mrs. Black, who was a curvaceous girl with long hair and a fondness for brightly colored dresses and gowns. (to be continued...?)
Level 3 Social Justice Necromancer. Chaotic Good.
Literally—anything.
I'm hoping this catches on. Got writer's block? Turn a simple idea into a short story, or a poem, or whatever. Alternatively, ask another to give you an idea. You can then write something completely different or continue the story. Whatever you want.
There are no rules—except HAVE FUN! And maybe give a little feedback to the last poster. The point is to stimulate new ideas and build our skills as writers.
I'll start.
The woman sits on the porch of a log cabin in the middle of a forest clearing, swinging her legs over the side. She’s wearing boxer shorts and an oversized shirt. The cottage-cheese dimples in her thighs deepen with every swing. She dangles a tacky flip-flop, patterned with the new Australian Colonies flag, on her big toe.
The cabin is suspended off the ground on metre-long stilts. It reminds her of something she read once, about jungle dwellers in Borneo who built tall huts to keep away from komodo dragons—which seem a pale threat in comparison to some of the native Thassalean life—back in the days when Earth still had rainforests.
In the sky, she can see the distant, luminous streaks made by Human spacecraft coming and going from the spaceport near the Thassalean moon. The moon is nearer to the planet than Earth’s, which makes the beach a difficult place to live. She knows the closeness of the spaceport to the moon is deceptive. The spaceport is actually nowhere near the moon, but her distance to it makes it seem like it is.
In her lap rests a plasma pistol.
She swings her legs, watching the treeline, until she hears the sound of something coming up behind her, then she carefully flexes a thumb to pull back the comically antiquated hammer on her pistol.
She relaxes when she realizes it’s only Axem. He must have realized she hadn’t been to bed yet.
“You know, they only come out during the day,” says Axem in his gravelly impression of Human language. He speaks French, even though the woman isn’t French. He says it’s the Human language closest to his native Thassal, or something. “Laamats are diurnal predators.”
“Well,” the woman replies, in English. “You know what they say... Once bitten, twice shy.”
“I don’t know what that means,” says Axem. He’s been very diligent in learning human customs and figures of speech, but there are still gaps in his knowledge.
“Never mind. It’s a human expression. It means I’m very careful.”
“You should be careful during the day,” Axem insists. “That’s when the laamats come out. That’s what ‘diurnal’ means.”
“I know what ‘diurnal’ means,” says the woman irritably. She is then silent again, and resumes her swinging. She lifts a muscular, but flab-burdened arm and scratches her forehead, just above her eyebrow, with a single glitter-coated acrylic nail.
Axem gets the impression the woman isn’t telling him something. He’s had that feeling about her for a while, ever since she was sent to him on some bizarre exercise in improving Human-Thassalean relations. The idea was to see if Humans and non-Humans could live together. Axem, for the most part, has no problem with sharing space with a Human, even though he finds them strange.
When it becomes clear the woman isn’t moving, Axem sits—or rather, squats next to her. Thassaleans don’t really sit. Their bodies aren’t designed that way. Instead, they just lower themselves into a more comfortable position.
“What are you thinking?” asks Axem, as he eyes the swaying shadows of the trees.
“I’m thinking about getting hamburgers for lunch tomorrow,” says the woman. “From that place with the Hedmak, who cooks for Humans. You know, imitation Thassalean stuff that Humans can eat. Isn’t that weird?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well...” The woman pauses as she thinks about how to best explain herself. “There were a lot of people who didn’t think we’d be here,” she says at length. “Naysayers. People who thought faster-than-light travel was impossible, or that there would be no intelligent life within our reach. Now that we are here, I’m surprised by how normal it all feels.”
She tugs lightly at her clothes to draw Axem’s attention to them. Axem is only marginally familiar with the logo on the shirt, which refers to a line of personal vehicles used by humans on their home world—HARLEY-DAVIDSON MOTORCYCLES.
“I dress like this at home... I mean, on Earth. Not when I’m working on the reservation. But at the end of the day, I come home to a comfortable house, a cup of coffee, a set of daggy pyjamas... And a big three-legged alien on my couch, watching sitcoms on TV. It’s like you’re my roommate. Or my cat.”
“We are... roommates,” replies Axem, hesitating on the unfamiliar word. “And I find it hard to believe you could mistake me for Cleo. The size discrepancy alone makes that obvious.”
“I know,” says the woman, chuckling. “But I don’t look at you any differently than I would a Human, is what I’m saying.”
“That’s good. It means the program is working.”
“I suppose.” The woman, apparently unconvinced, goes quiet again, and she and Axem share another silence. Their silences are reasonably comfortable, disturbed only by Axem’s feeling that the woman is holding something back.
“Come inside, Pilot,” says Axem. “It’s too cold to be out here, attired as you are.”
With one final wary look at the treeline, Pilot silently consents. She swings her legs up on to the porch and pushes herself to a stand. The pistol hangs like a kettlebell in her hand. She crosses the deck to the heavy wooden door and yanks sharply at the pullbar. The pullbars were implemented when it was discovered Thassaleans didn’t have the motor skills to work doorknobs.
She holds the door open for Axem, and then lets it swing shut. It sinks slowly, noiselessly, back into place in its frame, and the porch is empty once more.
edited 27th Feb '13 12:48:49 AM by Alma
You need an adult.