The Boys are Back in Town
Peace of mind dictated I make another Afflicted Lands episode to recover from recent burnout over figuring out videos and YouTube. Basically this is an illustration accompanied by a brief written tale.
I haven’t numbered the episodes because I may not write them in order and am attempting to create short stories that hold up without exposition or context. Reading more stories might hint at a backstory and reveal world secrets. Depending on how good I am at this . . .
That said, read on for Literate Monsters!
Sometimes a new building would be built, and the distinction between it and the older buildings would be so impactful I would have to react. Not by asking questions but by going out, and finding out. I was no longer so young the explanation that the old buildings just grew into existence in the exact state they were in, satisfied me. There had to have been something here before, before me, before everyone.
An odd genre of fairytales attesting to a flat-faced people with fur atop their heads was so lore-heavy it occurred to me I might be looking at something that was, at least at some point, very real indeed. A good source for information had always been the old school, it was almost as if any record of anything had been carried in from the old neighborhoods and collected there.
Carried in by what, should have been obvious.
It was hard however, to see the powdery, luminescent, frilled things, with their tangled limbs and habit of not ever moving when it was possible to see them do it, as beings with any agency. I’d found the fishers so terrifying as a child that Father could end our arguments instantly by asking if I’d rather talk to them.
Other things out there in the world, were far more ornery but there was something about fishers that always sent me running home when a crowd of them blocked the lonely roads at dusk. Though they walked the halls of the school, I crept past them in search of books, files, DVDs, VHS, and unexpectedly - internet! They would cut the old building’s power eventually and drag me out of the mildewed offices after silently moving the furniture I’d piled in the doorways. That these old buildings had power did not seem odd at the time. I knew wires as dangerous weeds in need of control, not infrastructure to be manufactured and installed. As much as the thought of being caught and carried home by the things brought terror, there were secrets in the school I was sure were important.
The old ledgers with their facts and figures stored in bins made of plastic were the last thing I had investigated because they seemed so prestigiously dull, yet the effect of my inquiries that day were profound, for this was the first time any of the fisher had spoken, or rather written, to me. A piece of chalk met the old green board - a thing whose final lessons hadn’t been disturbed even by the winds blasting through broken windows - and wrote. “Come back when you’re older.”
After that, it had not been possible to return, not until I was well out of apprenticeship and had almost forgotten about my childhood haunts. I saw the words it had written were still on the board in the room where I had found the ledgers. Time was a very different thing in this place.
They gathered around me, one holding some ledgers. It seemed they had interpreted my boredom and nosiness decades ago for a deep care and interest in the ledgers, which they seemed to value highly. Assuming I hadn’t really cared that much about the old record books, it was with a very different mind that I looked at those words on the lichen covered green board in a room that was worse for wear but still had pipes humming and yellowed monitors glowing their strange un-death. The weight of my lived years crashed down. The fishers were patient, terrifyingly so, and there was something here they really, really, really wanted me to see.
I wanted to elaborate on the Crow-based mounts I’ve been slowly ruminating on. Basically, they are dinosaurs. And their presence in the hinterlands indicates the miasma is very old and has been active in our world for a long time - though birds and dinosaurs are immune to it so - it probably didn’t kill the dinosaurs. (I made birds immune to it to give crows a special status in a goth-themed universe.) Surely someone or something was controlling the miasma long before humans came into the picture - or is it just that the miasma knows better than to drive its prey items into total extinction? Who knows, the hinterlands and their plague-masked inhabitants are full of secrets. You can enjoy my character sheet or delve deeper into the mind of a Terra-Corvus in -
Quoth the Corvus
Zephyr had been living by the yellow house three days before he saw the builder. Not the builder of the house so much as one of the things of the type that had built it. It gave him a name, and he had given it a name. For the time being that name would simply be - Builder. Builder was very ill. But that wasn’t unusual. All the creatures of the type that built and lived in buildings were always very ill when one first encountered them. Very ill, and very, very afraid. Builders were useful, but they needed work before they could start, well, building, yet it was good to maintain one’s environs. Environs needed buildings and builders either made them or had something else to do with them.
Not all houses had large living rooms but this one did. Zephyr preferred a room in which he could comfortably fit without needing to abide the clutter of the smaller compartments. There wasn’t much he could do save keep his patient warm and oversee occasional inspections by other builders as they gestured about their companion like ants.
“Tolerance?” He inquired when the feverish little thing propped against his side seemed restless. It would probably make a more fitting name than Builder. “I’m - trying - not - to - offend - you. Is that what you mean by tolerance?”
Zephyr was glad to be sitting down, puzzling out the longer strings of sounds builders produced was difficult. They required so much context. It was often assumed more verbal creatures would be more observant, understanding the greater implications of a situation that made all of those extra words unnecessary. “Offend.” Zephyr replied. “So I can leave?” Builder quickly stood up and fled to the kitchen. Slowly, it was learning to understand plain English, a language it theoretically already spoke. There seemed a bell curve where the complexity of sentences eventually resulted in functional incoherence.
Finally able to move with out risk of stepping on a limb, Zephyr stood carefully, mindful of a floor not meant for heavy, clawed quadrupeds. His back legs were the greater concern, for his front rested on thick knuckle pads that supported a folded array of defensive digits useful for driving predators away from foals and the vulnerable builders who were either suicidal due their constant suffering or assumed everything was a pet.
With his beak, he took an overcoat from a couch set against the wall and offered it to his charge. “Temperature!” he enunciated clearly despite the object in his mouth. Builders were often bad at pronouncing things despite their far greater dependence on language. It appeared that “Intelligence” was a severe disability that required constant supervision but rewarded those who could properly care for the builders. For builders made towns and tamed lightning. Having many of them was power and comfort itself but you had to keep them alive.
So many times just tossing back one’s head and snorting, “nevermore” seemed easier but circumstances always kept one coming back, for there was a need to immediately get in builder’s faces and take control of them before they started using words like “animals.”
