Rule: Share a scene (or write it) where one of your POV characters sees another for the first time!
Thanks again @thelimeonade for the tag! (Btw I like JUST realized the double meaning behind your url, very clever!)
I’m still trying to work out the details of how this will end up happening, but the way my MC meets the woman who only after like 150 years eventually becomes her best friend is a critical plot point. The following is by no means a final version of how this scene is going to play out, but I could use the practice so here goes nothing!
---oOo---
Papil spiraled.
Mom...
Choking back another sob she ran for her life. Ran down side passages and forgotten alleys through the heart of the capital, farther and farther away from the scorching inferno that was once her training center. Legs racing, heart racing faster, mind racing too fast—
“—Papil it’s over, they’re coming for you—”
“—Ketterpüll has fallen, we’re all doomed—”
“—meine Heiligen, die Katzesdotter—”
“—if they destroy the Chrysalis—”
“—trophy execution along with die Marienkäfermonarchin—”
“—rounding up all the books and burn—”
“—meine Heiligen, die Katzesdotter—”
“—Jaiet du Coeur died a hero’s death, you should be proud—”
“—but who will be our new Monarchin?—”
“Oh meine Heiligen, die Katzesdotter!”
The real life voice smashed through Papil’s spiraling mind and she stumbled out of her blind run.
“Please stop, I can help you!”
Gasping for breath, Papil skidded to a stop in the shadow of a seedy canvas overhang, the loose ends of her partially bound wraps fluttering down to her half-naked sides. With wild eyes she searched for the source of the voice.
A plump, olive-skinned young woman in a navy blue hijab hurried over to her from a side doorway. “Meine Heiligen, oh it really is you. Oh my dear, I’m so sorry—”
“Steady.” The woman placed her hands firmly on Papil’s shoulders, and despite her short-circuiting mind she felt herself calm somewhat. “My name is Marijam. I’m an archaeologist. You said the invaders are after you?”
Papil gulped and nodded.
“They’re after me too. Or at least, after my museum collection. I had to abandon it and I’m staying with my cousin until the fuss dies down.” Marijam sized her up. “You’re small, so we should be able to hide you away. And I’m sure we can get you a niqab just in case. Now come inside, quickly.”
Wary but too exhausted to care, Papil gratefully followed her inside.
---oOo---
Tagging @stephrawlingwrites, @eloquenceandemphasis, @that-chibi-writer, @prettylittlelyres, and @b-rainlet
I needed a break so I drew something simpler today. This is from my story WIP and represents all four of the main threats my main character faces, left intentionally vague as to what those exact threats entail.
My first year doing Inktober! I started sketching again recently and figured there was no time like the present to participate. The idea I came up with accidentally combined the first two days so I rolled with it, this is one of my OCs fitfully trying to sleep while trapped in a giant spiderweb. Wonder what she's dreaming about...?
Sometime around three o’clock based on the sun’s position, someone in the fields made the shout.
Marijam and I jerked our heads up from our grapevine pruning and pricked up our ears, straining to make out what was being shouted. As was custom, more and more laborers took up the shout to pass it along, until it finally made its way to us:
“Raupelarven! Raupelarven!”
Caterpillar larvae. Someone had found the first batch of hatched caterpillars among the vines. Which meant caterpillar season would soon be upon us.
Yay.
Marijam made a face. “I sure hope Giohan doesn’t find out about this.”
I glanced at her in surprise. “I thought you didn’t mind the caterpillars?”
“That was before last year. Hubby wanted to try out a new recipe and had me sneak home a whole bundle of live caterpillars to roast.” She shuddered. “Normally I love his cooking, but after that, I can’t look at caterpillars without getting queasy.”
“You have my sympathy.” I bit my lip and opted not to mention to her that I’d often eaten caterpillars for my supper in the past. If my wages were late, my father was out spending his money on alcohol instead of groceries, and if I didn’t want to kill one of our chickens, then stir-fried caterpillars and eggs was often my best alternative. The only hard part was carrying all their gross, writhing, living bodies home.
For both our sakes, I changed the subject. “Find any new bullets or arrowheads lately?”
Marijam perked up. “Nah, not recently. The ground is still hard and it hasn’t rained in awhile, so I’ve been spending my evenings organizing my artifacts collection instead of hunting for more.” She picked up her flint pruning knife and began sawing at a new section of vine. “What do you normally do in the evenings anyhow?”
I chuckled. “It’s been awhile since you asked me that.”
“It’s taken awhile for you to open up to me, Papil.”
“Fair point.” One hundred and fifty years, to be exact. I wasn’t sure when exactly I started to trust her with more than just my safety, but it was hard to last a century and a half without ever opening up to anyone, and Marijam was of course even better at listening than she was at talking. “Well, most of the time I do household chores or go climbing up the mountain face, then when it gets dark and no one can see me, I try to practice archery . Sometimes I go into town and clean up around Vati’s butcher shop, other times I need to wind down so I’ll play a song or two on my theorbo—”
“Your what?” Marijam dropped her knife.
“My...theorbo?”
Her jaw had dropped and her eyes bulged larger than saucers. “You never told me you played a musical instrument!”
Her voice was brimming with excitement.
Uh-oh.
She leaned in and her voice dropped. “Oh my saints, do you know what this means???”
I eyed her warily. “Do I want to?”
“You need to hold a public concert!” she squealed.
“No, I really don’t.”
“C’mon, you totally do! I bet you’re so talented after decades of practicing.”
“I’m really not.”
Marijam shoved my shoulder playfully. “Don’t be silly, people will love hearing you, even the aucelais soldiers!”
“Not interested, thank you.”
“Well too bad, because I’m interested.” She reached over and turned my chin, forcing me to make eye contact with her. “The least you can do is play something for me and me only. Then if I like it—and I bet I will!—you can leave all the planning to me.”
“I still don’t—”
“Ah ah ah! You’re not the type for performance anxiety, so you aren’t backing out of this! Now tell me, is your father home tonight?”
I sighed. “No, not till late. His friend Gino said he’d be treating him to a boy’s night out tonight.”
“Perfect! Then it’s settled, I’ll come home with you after work and you can show me what you got!”
In 2018 I did the entirety of the Fictober prompt list, in 2019 I did none of the Fictober prompt list, and this year it looks like I’ll just be doing a few of the prompts now and then. As with before, these prompts are my excuse to work on the first draft of my original fiction WIP, Conquering the Chrysalis, which is why this one doesn’t seem to have a beginning to it --- I’m looking at using Day 3 for the scene beforehand, but we’ll see.
CW: Blood, gore, death, mentions of paternal abuse
The next two seconds took an hour to pass.
I watched, dumbstruck, frozen in my crouch on the floor, my swelling forehead forgotten as my father raised his arms up and brandished the theorbo which he clutched by its neck high above his head.
My theorbo, a gift that Vati himself had given me.
My theorbo, which Mom had coaxed him into buying from the traveling musician who’d passed through Gespinst when I was half the height I was now.
My theorbo, its strings vibrating with that warm, mesmerizing timbre which first swept me up as a four-year-old child who could barely hold a bow staff, let alone a giant string instrument.
My theorbo.
My theorbo, kept intact by Vati for when I returned home after the fall of Ketterpüll.
My theorbo, with which I played songs of mourning for my dead mother, songs of soothing for my traumatized father, songs of softness for myself when everything around me had hardened.
My theorbo, which I’d only just played in front of a cheering crowd minutes before.
Vati yanked his arms downward.
A scream ripped out of my throat as, too late, I thrust out a hand.
SMASH!
I shielded my face with my arms. Tiny pinprick splinters lodged in my skin, my clothes, my hair.
Silence.
There was a thud, and I heard Vati let out a trembling, growling wail.
I lowered my arms
My theorbo.
My theorbo, its remains clutched in my father’s large, shaking hands.
I watched him open his fists and let the pieces fall to the floor, dotted with drops of red from his bleeding hands.
Then he looked up at me, and I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing. His face was that of a broken man, haunted by the loss of his wife and the century and a half of abuse he’d inflicted on his only daughter. A man who knew what he’d done, but had lost all control of the power to stop it. I didn’t know whether I was looking at him in one of his rare sane moments or one of his frequent alcohol-possessed moments.
No, it wasn’t one or the other. It was both, but at the same time.
He swallowed, and I watched as a tear ran down his bloodied cheek. “Papil, I...” he rasped.
I didn’t know what I felt. Horror? Grief? Fear?
“Please...you...have to...”
I wanted to punch him. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to heal him. The adrenaline coursing through my veins froze my body, allowing none of those things.
“Meine dotter...papillon...”
I gasped. He hadn’t called me that in decades. The little Franccitan word broke the spell and I crawled forward until we were both crouching over the wooden shards that had once been my theorbo. “What do you want from me?” I whispered.
“I want you to kill me.”
A cold hand gripped my heart.
No. No, he couldn’t be asking...
Wasn’t this what a part of me had secretly been wishing for?
First my mother, now my father?
As if reading my thoughts, he shook his head. “I haven’t been a father in...in a long time...”
I found my voice. “Vati, I’m not going to kill you.”
“Yes!” A sob wrenched its way out of his throat. “Don’t you get it? Papil, I...I will...it will only continue if you...if you don’t. I have no peace...and neither...neither do you.”
Release him to join Mom, or turn me into an orphan and a murderer?
Suddenly his eyes flashed and he grabbed my face between his hands. “I hold you back. You can save them all. Jaiet always knew you were meant for the Chrysalis, you’re the reason time stopped for 150 years, and I didn’t do a fucking thing about it!”
“Vati stop, please!” I cried, trying to pry his hands off my head.
He only squeezed tighter, his thumbs finding their way to my neck. Black spots appeared in my vision. Everything hurt. “Well, now I’m doing something. Kill me, Papil, please!” he sobbed.
I choked the words out, struggling to breathe. “You’re—still my—father!”
“That didn’t stop you before!”
Under the fingernails of my scrabbling hands, I could still see the blood from when I’d raked them through his cheeks as he’d thrown me to the ground before he grabbed the theorbo. But hadn’t that been different, since I was defending myself? “Va—Vati—”
“Do it! NOW!”
Slash!
And just like that, his hands fell away. I collapsed to my hands and knees, heaving giant gulps of air into my starving lungs. A few of my braids fell forward over my shoulder and their singed tips dangled in the wood and blood.
Wait.
Blood.
There shouldn’t be that much blood from only a few...splinters…
Bits of pink foam splattered onto my hands.
I looked up.
Joseppe Dännis looked calm, his eyes dim, his mouth curved upward into a serene smile. I might’ve thought he actually looked happy.
Then I saw the frothy red waterfall gushing out the side of his neck.
I looked down at my fingernails, sharpened from decades of rock climbing and theorbo playing, and back up at his severed carotid artery in disbelief.
His mouth moved, but no sound came out. Thank you, it said.
Then his eyes closed and his body pitched forward, his lifeless head thunking against the floor.
I scrambled backward to my feet up and out of the way, mind reeling with the enormity of what I’d done. I looked down at my hands. The undersides of my fingernails were very, very red, but I could see none of the thick, hot blood caking my dark skin. Even my dark orange sweat-soaked wraps revealed nothing.
I cast one last look at my dead father, love and grief quickly bubbling up inside me.
I was tagged by @eloquenceandemphasis who is back from the dead!!! This excerpt I just finished writing about an hour before I got tagged, it's from what will hopefully be the second book in the Conquering the Chrysalis trilogy. Moissette is trying to convince her best friend Emilet to climb the Cathedral Palace after dark, which I modeled after the Great Mosque of Djenné.
“Well, if you’re sure...”
“Sure I’m sure! It’ll be just like when we climb trees in the orchards, only easier!”
Emilet smiled. “I do miss climbing trees.” She chuckled. “Alright, let’s do it tonight.”
Moissette pumped her fist triumphantly. “Yay! I knew you’d agree!”
“But,” she went on, “if there’s any sign of rain, we go inside alright?”
“Fine, fine, but I’m telling you that’s not gonna happen,” Moissette insisted. “Tomorrow you’re gonna thank me for giving you the time of your life. It’ll be so much fun, trust me!”
ooOoo
Lightning flashed and thunder cracked as torrents of rain gushed down from the dark clouds.
“I told you this was a bad idea!” Emilet shouted over the din, clinging tightly to the beam next to Moissette.
“Okay okay fine, I was wrong!” Moissette yelled back, pushing her wet mass of hair out of her face for the umpteenth time.
