AutumnalWalker

Writes as a hobby. Currently working on a serialized fiction project called Empty Names Wrote The Archivist's Journal. Open to asks and tag games.

[autumnalwalker]

Writeblr Intro v3

Updating the pinned intro now that it's been a year and my (now previously) main WIP is complete as it's going to be.

Me:

I write as a hobby. It's something I do for fun and first and foremost for myself. But if other people happen to actually like what I write, that's pretty cool too.

I try to keep this main blog primarily writing-focused. I've set up the side-blog @traversedmiscellany for reblogging/posting any other random stuff that happens to catch my interest.

I tend to prefer to keep my online and offline lives separate so I rarely say much about personal details aside from what inevitably winds up leaking into talking about my writing.

I am open to tag games and ask games. Or just general writing-related asks.

If anyone would like to be added to a tag list (whether for WIP updates or tag games), please feel free to send me a message or reply to this post, specifying what you want to be on the tag list for.

My WIPs:

Completed (Is it still a "WIP" at this point? Either way, it's fully online and available to read for free.):

The Archivist's Journal:

A slice-of-life story about waking up on a fantasy tropical island told over the course of a year in the form of daily journal updates. Mostly fairly chill, just living life one day at a time, but with some occasional angst, social anxiety, and supernatural spookiness.

The whole story (just over 330,000 words) is posted on my side blog @thearchivistsjournal. Or if you want to read from the beginning, here's the chronological posting. Or if you prefer to read in a format other than Tumblr posts, it's mirrored over on my ScribbleHub.

Also, here's the post I made when the project was completed for some more meta background on it and what I mean when I call it "complete."

I may eventually make additional scattered journal entries as a sort of periodic epilogue, but Day 380 should be considered the end of the "main story," so to speak.

Ongoing:

Empty Names:

My current main project. Also freely available to read in full as chapters go up.

A bit of an episodic urban fantasy moster-of-the-week sort of deal that's mostly an excuse to have a cast of OCs that I like interact with eachother. The basic premise is a world-hopping adventurer attempts to set up a sword-and-sorcery style adventurer's guild in a modern world where "adventurer" isn't considered a legitimate profession. Has what I suppose one might call "genre-typical violence" with fighting monsters and such, and individual chapters are tagged with more specific content warnings where necessary.

Here's the masterpost for it with links to chapters and to several standalone side stories set in the same world/setting.

I'm much more casual with my update schedule on this project, but it seems to be coming out to posting weekly chapter updates for a month or two at a time and then taking a month or two off from posting while I rebuild my buffer queue for the next batch of chapters.

Also, while it's not exactly a focus, the five characters of the core cast are all some flavor or another of LGBTA+, if that's a selling point for you.

The Witches' Testaments:

A prequel to the currently-hiatused "Solarpunk Witch Story" below that I wrote the loose framework and beginnings of in a sudden fit of inspiration that I may return to sporadically.

The idea was to focus a bit more on the "punk" side of Solarpunk and paint a picture of the effort and rebellion that went into how that world transitioned from Cyberpunk dystopia to Solarpunk... well, not utopia exactly, but something better than it was and striving toward that dream.

And because that sort of thing is bigger than any one person and I had multiple worldbuilding concepts I wanted to touch on, I landed on the idea of writing it in the form of a series of interviews with various characters who lived through that period of change.

Here's the masterpost for it.

Indefinite Hiatus:

Untitled Solarpunk Witch Story:

A project that I absolutely intend to return to one day once Empty Names is finished, but that's going to be a good long while yet.

The story of a freshly-minted "witch" and her AI familiar traveling from town to town in an ecologically-recovering post-capitalism future, providing highly-specialized tech support and environmental consulting wrapped up in enough mysticism and aesthetics to blur the line between what's purely technology and what might possibly be some kind of magic. I only ever wrote a prologue and five chapters worth of an initial arc/town/problem to solve, but I liked what I wrote well enough to share all that online. Ultimately this project going on hold was a matter of it being one project too many for me to handle simultaneously on the time combined with a desire to get more experience at traditional prose writing (as opposed to the epistolary format of The Archivist's Journal) so that I could better do the concept justice when I do one day revisit it.

In the meantime, those initial rough chapter drafts are all up online here: Solarpunk Witch Masterpost

Miscellaneous other writing:

On most Thursdays I'll post small (couple hundred words at most) pieces based on various interesting dreams that I've had. Being based on dreams, the content is a mixed bag. Those are tagged under #my dreams. These now have a compilation Masterpost that I'll do my best to keep updated.

Alternatively, if you just want to browse semi-random excerpts and snippets from the above works, I post a lot of that under #tag game.

Some Standalone Short Stories:

(Stories that were either written to be standalone pieces, or appear within something else but worked well enough by themselves that I gave them their own separate posts.)

The Tale of the Merchant and the Blacksmith's Daughter: A sapphic fairy tale (and, in retrospect after writing, possible trans allegory).

The Melts: An attempt to shift what would normally be body horror into the genre of slice-of-life. "What if your body slowly melting over the course of the day were treated as no more serious than the common cold and you still had to go to work?"

Kindly Basilisk: A human mech pilot who wants to be a machine, an AI who wants to be human, and the relationship they form.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About Displacement

I am making preparations to leave my home, along with the rest of my family.  I get into an argument with my father about it.  He seems convinced that this is all a passing storm that will blow over soon and we'll all move back in like nothing happened.  I don't know how to make him see otherwise.  Every day, a border is moving closer to us, and even in the unlikely event that he can survive on the other side of it, I certainly can't.  The house may remain intact a year from now and there may be a family there, but it won't be mine.

He somehow turns the argument into blaming things on me for being too picky about looking for employment.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About Symbiotic Renewal

I am standing at the edge of a long, deep pit, recently unearthed in our excavation.  Once it had a lid and we called it a coffin for its shape and burial, although it dwarfed any mere human casket.  There is a machine inside the titanic coffin and I help my girlfriend into it.

A rebirth is at hand.

I watch her integration for a time – flesh and nerves intertwining with metal and cables until I cannot say where one ends and the other begins – until I seal the cockpit/heart.  Soon she will awake anew.

In the meantime I turn to the surrounding forest and call to the great beasts within.

I have my own symbiosis to attend to.

Soon we will both be something new, something wondrous, together.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About Inheritance Of Rust

I am moving into the house that once belonged to my grandparents.  My niece excitedly offers to refresh the wards around it.  I've done my own checks and they shouldn't be needing that for another decade yet – my grandparents knew their magic well – but encouraging her newfound pursuit of the craft is worth the extra upkeep that will come with an inexperienced warding.

At each exterior corner of the old house we dig up a sealed mason jar from the dark, damp soil.  In each jar are seven rusted nails, the focal points of the house's wards.  Proper replacements are hard to find.  Genuine rust from exposure to the world is the key, and these days everything is stainless steel; useful in its own right but not for these old rites.  In each jar we leave one of the old nails so that the new ones my niece and I imbue and bury can learn from them.

Looking at them in just the right state of mind, those elder anchors carry a whisp of blue that warms the rest.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About Nostalgia And Sunlight

I am at my family's home when someone I care for calls me over to the stream in the backyard that divides the property in half.  The stream has been dry and filled with overgrowth and fallen branches for years, but now shallow water as clear as I've ever seen flows over a smooth sandy streambed.  Strange creatures somewhere between sea cucumbers and soft corals slowly scoot about the sand, dappled with refracted sunlight and unperturbed by our presence.

I become aware that my dog and my cat are nearby.  They died years ago.  I know this.  I say nothing about the matter nor do I think too hard on it, lest the moment be ruined.

The one I care for calls to me again, guiding me over to a hollow tree stump where a litter of kittens had been hidden away.  Their mother is nowhere to be found.  The kittens bite and claw and hiss when I reach my hand in, but they do not let go once they start clinging to my clothes.  If they are to be socialized and tamed, the first step will be to rid them of their flees.

As I consider the prospect of their care, I begin to worry.  I have always – in the end – failed to take care of any other living thing.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About An Arena

I find myself in the holding cell of a gladiatorial arena, along with a number of others with whom I am acquainted with to varying degrees of companionship.  The cell opens and we walk out into a stadium of cheering and jeering crows.  The beasts are released and the fighting begins.

All my more athletically inclined companions split off to engage with the beasts or other gladiators, leaving me alone with a foppish gentleman with a face far too young for his snow white hair.  For the sake of putting on a show, I make a gesture to conjure a wall of ice between us to little effect and then grab the fop's face and slam him to the ground.

He mumbles through my hand asking what type of spell this is supposed to be and I tell him to pick something and go along with it.  It is unclear whether I have actual powers that are failing me or if I am awkwardly roleplaying in a way that no one else is really going along with.

The white-haird fop and I wind up picking up tiny scraps of cardboard and ineffectually flailing at one another while the gladiatorial carnage unfolds around us.  The audience laughs at the comedic contrast our antics.

Just when the fighting winds down with all others in the arena either lie fallen or stand exhausted, a great gate opens up, through which enters a giant nightmare beast; all gleaming black horns, wicked talons, and writhing tendrils.  With barely a backwards glance over my shoulder at it, I thrust out a hand and conjure a floating spear of light twice as long as I am tall that flies forth and skewers the nightmare beast, felling it in one blow.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About Absorbent Scales

I am watching members of the best-known family in the city go by in open-topped convertibles as part of a parade.  They are, one and all, draconic in aspect, yet friendly enough to look upon as they wave to the gathered crowds.

"They say their scales absorb the sins of the people the way that the blacktop of the road absorbs the sun's heat," a nearby bystander comments as we watch.  "Sure, they're a crime family and everyone knows it, but better for all the city's wrongdoing to be concentrated in them so that the rest of us can bask in the warmth of their misdeeds while remaining innocent."

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About Skateboard Modification

I am wandering through the desert at night, annoyed because I lost cellphone signal for directions, but knowing I'm not yet too far off from where I was going yet and seeing the lights of some sort of refinery/factory/power plant in the distance.  I begin going towards that as a point of reference and come across a bunch of people racing old-timey race cars.  There's a certain junkyard charm to the way the cars have been assembled.

By sheer coincidence my mother happens to be among the race's spectators.  We are surprised to see one another, but she suggests that it would be neat if I participated in said race to get some sort of souvenir of the occasion.  A medal or plaque would look good on the wall back home

I agree that seems like a neat idea, so I grab a skateboard that happens to be laying around, and strap an engine to it for show so that it can be counted as a legitimate vehicle to enter into the race. 

Modifying a skateboard to go fast enough to compete with junkyard cars is a simple matter, really.  It's basically the same principles for making a broom fly: Acceleration glyphs, kinetic redirection for making air flow around instead of over to reduce drag, friction reduction on points of environmental contact, friction increase at points of rider contact combined with inertial dampening to actual stay on and upright while moving at high speeds, etc.

It's admittedly a rush job and I need to keep making modifications on the fly to keep it functional, but the ensuing joy of high-speed motion is worth it.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About Sharing Traditions

I am fussing over my nieces and making sure that they all have the black drawstring pouches I provided them with and that said pouches are properly stocked with esoteric tokens and knick-knacks.

They've come a long way to visit me, but their timing leaves something to be desired.  The Night Market is in town, and as much as I'd like to take them sight-seeing we have to be careful about getting back home before sundown.  The trinket pouches are insurance just in case we don't make that deadline.  The Night Market and its merchants are… idiosyncratic…about what is and isn't considered currency.  And - even worse - what is and isn't considered a transaction.  Better to have them lose a few bone-carved dice or chips of crystalized blood than their voices or names.

I'd be lying though if I said a part of me didn't want to "accidentally" get caught out at night and introduce these children to my world.  Their parents aren't witches and I only became one later in life, but I suspect at least one of these kids would take well to it.

It's probably for the best that they're here with me tonight.  It's a good excuse to be responsible and not purchase a certain dark grimoire I've had my eye on.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About Cliff Watching

I am standing atop a cliff at the edge of a plateau overlooking a vast bay.  The water is clear and pristine, despite the settlements along its shores.  I am not the only one here.  It is a well known enough scenic vista to attract tourists, complete with guard railings and pole-mounted binoculars.

I spot two great serpents swimming eel-like through the bay.  I point them out and someone else notes that they are not serpents, but lizards, and I can indeed see their legs at their sides once I know to look for them.

The lizards – those wingless dragons – turn back around and begin swimming towards us.  I take the opportunity to get a better look through the binoculars and see that among the moss and rocky mineral buildup atop one of the beasts' backs is a small, antique village.  Most of the buildings seem empty, but a few people in clothes bleached by sun and sea stoically continue with their daily chores.

I wonder how many generations went by on what must have been a quaint little island or seaside village before the earth beneath their feet woke up and went for a swim.  I wonder what that day must have been like.  I wonder why these few remain when all others are gone.

What must such a life be like, knowing that at any moment the whims of a beast could choose to dive beneath the waves and drown you all.

I realize that I have lost track of the second leviathan.  I step back from the binoculars for a wider view of the bay once more, but still cannot find it.  Not until its head of midnight scales suddenly rises up along the cliffside, momentarily blocking out the sun.  Time seems to stand still as it catches a woman who was standing too close to the edge in its maw.  Not swallowed whole, despite it being large enough  to swallow all of us whole.  Merely a leg, or perhaps an arm stuck between its teeth.

Time resumes, gravity takes hold, and we catch a last flutter of blue and white dress before the sound of unbelievable mass hitting water far below.

I wonder if it even realized she was there.  Surely something so meager as a human being could not possibly feed the vast appetite of such a god among reptiles.  Was it hunting a snack, or did she merely happen to be too close when it took a breath?  Or, in the way of gods, was she yet another sacrifice for sacrifice's sake?

The crowd of spectators are too stunned to panic.  What would one even do in the face of such impossible might?  What good to panic when the event is already over and done before anyone even realized it started?

I flee that place with a newfound fear of even this plateau's shallow streams and ponds.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About A Late Night Conversation

I am in bed with my girlfriend, having just woken up in the middle of the night.  We talk softly, unable to properly see one another but feeling one another's closeness.  All the soft warm words of endearment and encouragement that we normally share.

I become aware of my girlfriend's breathing on the pillow next to me.  The sound of her breath does not align with the position of the voice I've been talking to.

We continue our conversation as if nothing has changed, but there's a shift in tone and phrasing of her words that feels subtly wrong in a way that I can't quite put my finger on.

I continue to hear her breathing, lying down next to me, at the same time that I hear her voice as if she were sitting upright.

My eyes further adjust to the darkness and I can just make out my girlfriend sleeping next to me while her doppelganger – warped and twisted like a projection of mist disturbed by a breeze – curls over her, gaping maw slowly approaching her face.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About First Flight

I am helping a friend get suited up to test a potentially revolutionary invention.  They've just recently figured out airfoils around here and just the other night my friend and his compatriots recovered a novel glyph sequence from a fallen piece of orbital debris that I may or may not have accidentally brought down in the process of my most recent return.  If this test works, it could pave the way for individual powered flight.

I point out to my friend that he'd probably be better off with his arms free instead of stuffed inside the rigid silver wings that I've just finished securing the harness for.  He scoffs and says that the birds fly with wings and legs but no arms, so the scientific thing to do is copy what we know works and then make adjustments from there.

Once I finish laughing at him and the ridiculous looking glow-in-the-dark safety goggles that I've affixed to his face I step back, take a look at the city stretching far below the balcony of his tower workshop, and wish him luck.

I tell him that I'll be quite interested to see the state of this world's transportation a hundred years from now.

Or perhaps two to three hundred, if he falls to his death in the next ten minutes.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About Large Bees

I am watching a news story about the recent phenomenon of genetically engineered bees as large as chinchillas and just about as fluffy.  The video zooms in on a scientist in a white labcoat reaching her hand into a glass enclosure for a yellow-and-black striped fuzzball on puffy legs to trundle up and nuzzle into her hand.  The large bee settles comfortably into her palm and she holds it up to show off.  Its wings and stinger are entirely vestigial.

These large bees have become popular pets lately, although there is an ongoing debate on when best to adopt.  Some say that if you truly care about the bees, then you'd be love them just as much when they're still squirming hairless larvae and be willing to put in the extra effort of caring for them at that stage.  Others say that it is irresponsible to adopt that young and separate them from their mother queens without proper training for their care and an adequate creche setup.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About A Dubious Drowning

I am on a boardwalk or dock on a lake in the middle of some manner of amusement park.  There is an empty rowboat floating in the murky water near the dock that the park workers – when asked – tell us is cursed so no one uses it.  We can tell they are joking but they don't seem to have a real answer for its presence and disuse either.  Some man in the crowd decides to show off his lack of fear by jumping off the dock into the allegedly cursed boat, but then falls off the boat into the water.  He is underwater for over a minute and I get worried, trying to get the park workers to send for help for him.

I begin to smell a strong stench of rotting meat coming from the water that most people in the crowd don't seem to notice.  I can rarely smell anything so this is especially distressing.

Emergency medical services arrive on the scene just as the man resurfaces.  The rotting smell goes away.  The official story that I overhear is that the man hit his head on a rock when he went underwater and lost consciousness, which is why it took him so long to come back up.  That doesn't explain how he's still alive though, and as he is taken away on a gurney I notice a circle of bubbling ripples on the water and a faint wisp of that rotting smell.

I wonder what found him down there.

I wonder if that is him that resurfaced.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About A Farm And A Storm

I am on a tour of a farm with a good friend of mine.  It is not a permanent solution by any means, but we intend to be staying here for the foreseeable future.  There are few moments during the tour which would have been awkward if not for our ability to find the humor in our own unfamiliarity with the dirty, messy realities of daily life in such a place.  Which is to say we all had a laugh at one of us tripping and falling in manure.  Fortunately, our hostess finds us more entertaining than anything else.

Somehow, this ends up being one of the best days I've had in a long time.

Much later, we find ourselves on the cobblestone Main Street of the nearby small town.  At the sounds of shouting, we look up and see a building several blocks down disassembled and lifted into the air.  For a moment, it almost looks like a suspended cutaway view of the building's interior.

We begin running, as does everyone else.  Such storms – these uncannily dustless tornados – have become more common as of late, and as destructive as they are, they are hyper-localized enough that running is an option if you get lucky and go the right way.

We do not get lucky.

I push my friend away to safety without touching her and let the strange winds take me.  Or rather, I use being taken by the storm as a cover for the growing powers I came here to hide.  I cannot control the storm, but I can fly under my own power well enough to steer my own direction and can push people and objects at a distance to help keep them safe.

When a spark on a gas line gets pulled by the storm and spun into a vortex of flames I can do nothing to stop it.

In the morning there is little left standing of the town.  My… abilities… remain unknown to the residents.  I roll up my sleeves and get to work helping with the rebuilding.  That help is of the mundane sort with hammer and nail, but when I find myself back on the farm and sure there are no witnesses I reach out with my mind and plow entire fields in minutes.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About Ghost Rain

I am in a sprawling house with a spacious, high ceilinged central room.  It is a rental that my family is staying in on vacation.

It is raining indoors and yet I am the only one getting soaked; the carpet and furniture remain dry.

Eventually I become fed up with my sodden state and go looking for something to do about it, or failing that, a dry spot.  I find my way onto a moonlit outer balcony with a tall clay vase.  A raincatcher.

The raincatcher vase begins speaking to me, telling me of how it has come to have a spirit of its own after centuries, as has the water it has caught.  It is the spirit of that rainwater that has been raining on me.  The term "tsukumogami" comes to mind.  The vase tells me that if I pour it out, then the rain will cease, at least in parts of the house.  For most of the house, including that central room, I will need to find the larger raincatcher in another courtyard or balcony

I thank the vase, pour it out, and begin my search.

The house has had many additions over the years, becoming something of a labyrinth, and the newer wings are not old enough to be haunted.  I somehow find my way into these newer wings, full of modern amenities just as my family begins to wake for the morning.  None of them seem to understand what I'm going on about or are otherwise caught up in their own conversations and concerns.

One of my nieces asks to join me though, and I am happy to let her tag along.  She is young enough that she still has the sense of wonder and whimsy for this quest.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About A Mockery

I am at a funeral.  The funeral home my family normally makes use of is unavailable for the next month due to renovations, so we're handling the service through a local church.

As the service goes on, the priest increasingly uses my family member's death as an excuse to put words in his mouth and preach beliefs he would have found insulting and offensive.  We suffer through it for the sake of decorum.

The service takes on an almost gameshow-like air and suddenly the doors open and the church's regular congregation streams in to gawk.  A crowd of strangers our family did not invite.

I reach the limits of my patience, stand up, shout about what an obscene farce this all is and storm out of the church, already making plans to find a shovel and a truck so I can do the burial myself.