(In honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d share one of the holidays celebrated in Coronella!)
What is Tasmane?
Beyond Coronella, the settlements, and the eastern bounds of the continent Sapeeri; across the treacherous waters of The Honeycomb Ocean, The Federal Republic of Tasmane stretches from shore to shore, spanning forests and mountains and countless cities. Tasmane was united during the decades of The Fallout. The long war had drained its resources and manpower, and with its glorious end came a period of calm to the infant nation.
Requiem
After a long strain, the war was won and the enemy decimated, and the soldiers and generals of Tasmane were finally allowed distance and solitude. The chants of triumph and glory were gone from the streets, a memory in the flags and banners that remained, and the recruitment posters glued to the walls. It was time for night winds to howl and footsteps to echo. It was time for a Requiem of the lost and, in the coming years, a time for Sandra Owen’s voice to permeate the streets as she sung her mournful tune over the radio. A song of love, grief, and broken pride.
The 34th of Tar, the day the final troops were sent home, became known as The Day of Requiem, a time of peace and quiet, of family and comfort, across all of Tasmane.
The Coronellian Integration
For centuries the tradition continued, modernized and economized by the Tasmanian people, and as their presence and culture in Coronella became more and more prominent, Requiem was officially declared a holiday by the Coronellian government.
Though its core remains the union of family, the patriotic roots of the Coronellian way warped that into a competition among the settlement’s Founding Families, turning Requiem into a large scale reminder of their greatness. Competitions are held, hunting races, and festivals all throughout Coronella.
There are those who remember the somber roots of The Day of Requiem, a day of remembrance and gratitude, but as the modern take goes, it’s merely a festival of annual contests, disguised under the virtues of family and love.
This is how it happens. This is how families fall apart! Everyone keeps waiting for everyone else to take initiative, and nobody does! They all just sit around in their little corners and rot because not a single one of them is brave enough to turn around and reach out! Nobody cares enough to address the problem, they all meander and laugh empty laughs and share empty smiles and then they’re lost from each other!
“She’s... Practical.” Benjamin answered, struggling to find words to describe his daughter.
“Very intelligent!” Elijah replied with a grin that vanished soon after. “Although she does lecture me from time to time... Well, not lecture, exactly. She keeps me grounded.”
When asked about her cousin, Iris shrugged and muttered,
“I don’t see her much.”
Josephine ignored all questions about her granddaughter with vigorous shaking of her head and a decisive slam of the door.
When asked about herself, Raven chuckled.
“What words can possibly equate a valid answer to that question?”
Raven comes from a lower-middle class family. She lives alone with her father, and both of them work to sustain themselves as well as her grandmother and her young cousin, Iris. Raven dropped out of school for work after finishing Delta Education. Raven’s grandparents migrated from the chaos of Surnia to the more elegant and orderly Coronella, but her family hadn’t been able to integrate fully ever since.
Under the stress of constant financial pressure and a harsh, disapproving mother, Benjamin was flustered and his attention was not dedicated to his daughter, so Raven grew up in solitude.
She was a bright child, very analytical and deeply thoughtful of herself and her surroundings. She had many dreams of leaving Coronella, and she always found herself studying people’s behaviors and mannerisms because it was all fascinating. Her dreams were crushed by her reality, however and her life fell into a grey monotone, but she never quite gave up the habit of people-watching.
But The Almenders had skeletons in the closet, old bones bare and unburied. If Raven was to search and pry, what would her family’s past have to divulge?
She gazed across the empty space in the shop. Dusk was reflected in the glass front of a display, and her image was faint. She stared as the question echoed in her mind. Was she the next brilliant mind of her time, or the next mind to be triumphed by its own ego? She frowned at the thought, and another one followed: what was the standard? Was she a person worth being known and remembered? For what?
It’s Apathy. At least, it’s something similar. They lose the sense that there’s more to the world than faces that have grown familiar, people that have become dull, and places that fade into the background. They forget anything beyond the red roofs of Coronella and their routine lives… They forget there’s a world beyond the sky.
"A good liar can weave their fallacies into a coherent whole, but to be able to manipulate, to mold another’s thoughts and actions, requires a mind powerful enough to benefit from the truth."
Centuries into the future of a post-apocalyptic world, society has recovered from what was, or at least that’s what appears on the surface. New countries have risen, new leaders and cultures and rules, and the age of technology is upon us once again, but old prejudice and rivalries have not yet settled, and the mark of The Fallout has not yet vanished.
Mayor Anton Presley of Coronella must navigate his way through the rising tensions between two old foes, Maraud and Haven, as the two countries grapple for Coronella’s support – but Anton’s means and in fact his very intentions are almost nothing but sinister.
Amid this conflict and on a much smaller scale, Raven Almender, a Coronellian girl leading a mundane life, discovers her family was connected to The Fallout, and she begins to investigate.
Are the two stories really that separate, or are they the consequence of the same events? Will Raven and Anton ever meet in terms of their goals, or will time run out as the threat of another war approaches?
In the mean time, both the mayor and the girl know this: every action has a reaction, seen and unforeseen.
Hello everybody and welcome to the wonderful world of Corruptive! Corruptive's a YA sci-fi story I'm very passionate about! I've been writing it for the past 5 years! Stay tuned for daily posts, and feel free to contact me!
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