3rd: Write about a conversation your character overheard and wished they hadn’t.
Canon, pending worldbuilding?
The moon rose before Inshabel did, casting its silvery light over the Spreading Wastes. She collected the evening dew from the tarps that served as her roof. They stretched from the main trunk of her home tree to the anchoring limbs that supported the staggered platforms that made up her home. Inshabel washed herself, and hauled her bucket of greywater to the northernmost platform. She set it into the sink there.
She had covered the northern platform in solar panels to make the most of the sunlight. They powered the multitude of devices in that room. Among them was her shortwave oven. Inshabel had to empty it before she could make breakfast. She reached in and took out the tape recorder, still and silent, waiting on the rotating dais.
The tape rewound as she made breakfast, opening her first bottle of potable water for the evening. She carried them with her to her desk, porridge in one hand, glass bottle in the other, tape wedged between her elbow and her side.
Inshabel breathed the cooling air, trying to do the mental math on what time it was—not for her, but for her friends. They’d tell her, if she asked and they were up.
Well, not Tyra. Tyra’s reply was always the same: Nyght. ;)
But even she didn’t seem to be awake, or at least not actively using Twiggr. Too bad; Inshabel could have used the distraction.
She nudged the tape recorder away from the corner of her desk and pushed play. The first few hours were usually alright—the occasional bump and crash of her settling in for sleep before sunrise, and then the desert wind rustling the branches of the trees. The trees were special; her ancestor Mylonitas had planted them, a seam of green to hem the Wastes in. Other than Inshabel’s, they were not home trees.
On the ground level, other Sylvans farmed edible crops in the shade of Mylonitas’ trees. Even when they were not right below her, the tape caught their work songs echoing through the forest. Inshabel liked to listen to them; it made her nights less lonely.
She could hear the transition to morning on the tape: the brief, high cries of returning birds; the droning of insects. About an hour or two after bed, she would hear the arrival of the farmers.
Something was off about this recording, she thought: the timbre of the song was wrong. True, it was never that clear, since she recorded from inside a shortwave oven, but she got a sense of their voices. The foreman had a kind of reedy tone, and some of the women sang in octaves Inshabel wasn’t sure she could reach, but today’s choir was missing its foundation. One of the farmers sang in a low, bassy rumble, but not on this tape. Inch stirred her porridge, frowning.
Her friends woke up, said their hellos, went about their days. The tape played. The song floated, bereft of anchor.
The voices dwindled as the hours unfurled, heat and exhaustion taking breath from lungs until it was quitting time. Insects droned. Birds squabbled over the food they found, or stole from the cropfields. Nobody spoke.
Inshabel chewed at her lip, listening to the drone of another day on her tape recorder. The days with a dozen voices were bad enough—ghosts were, by definition, restless, but she had been called to bring them peace. The days where no one spoke at all were worse. The tape wound thicker and thicker around one reel, the tension strangling her heart.
She had obligated herself to listen: without spirits she would have no one to speak to, except for the friends at a remove that seemed greater than the veil of death sometimes.
She heard the hush of night come over the tape. The insects grew quiet, and the branches grew still.
“Inch,” said the tape, low and rumbly. It was quiet for several long minutes. “Bye, Inch.”
“Goodbye,” she said to the night, and found her eyelashes wet despite the desert heat.
"You're not tainted." - "You're not alone." - "You're beautiful." - "Do you have a home?" - "Why do you fight?"
Commissar Faulkner: "You're not tainted."
She adjusts her peaked cap, averting her gaze. “That’s good news,” she says softly, “assuming it is news, and not a platitude.”
Inshabel: "You're not alone."
“Never am. You know, the dead outnumber us six to one? I have more conversation partners than I know what to do with. Just … not the one I’ve been looking for.”
Ysanne: "You're beautiful."
The Factor presses a gloved hand to bronze skin. It glitters as her eyes close. “Did Lavinia put you up to this?” she murmurs, smiling.
Mitsuko: "Do you have a home?"
“I used to.”
Joss: "Why do you fight?"
“Well, the other option is givin’ up, an between tenacity and surrender, only one’s a virtue. The idea that things get better is somethin’ I tell myself, an’ maybe it’s a lie, but the harder I work the truer it gets. If I give up, I don’t know what happens to me.”
You just want me to do all the worldbuilding for you. =P
what they smell like
Inshabel smells like the sap of her tree, and the things that grow in its shadow: a fruiting tree, sweet and sticky, and another plant with broad leaves whose roots she eats. There grows there too small shrubs that bloom in white and dry out, spreading seeds as they tumble across the landscape. She keeps their leaves to burn when the dead grow angry.
what music they like
She’s not much for popular music, but when she goes to bed just after sunrise, the farmers who work the land around her have begun to sing, working songs to keep the rhythm, a call-and-response form older than the trees that lend them shade in the rainy seasons.
something they collect
There’s a room strung high in a canopy that’s just miles and miles of audiotape. Before bedtime, she heads up there to change out the tape in the recorder each day.
what their bedroom looks like
Her bedroom is slung on the south side of its host tree, to benefit from as much shade as possible during the day. It’s small, and she doesn’t do much there but sleep. The sides are open so that she can get a crossbreeze, but the roof is a slanting piece of oiled cloth, where night dew can run off into buckets for later grey-water usage.
their eating habits
While not strictly vegetarian, it’s much easier to come across roots and nuts—the Spreading Wastes offer little in the way of game, but for the occasional birds. There are insects, but she’d rather just steal their honey.
intellectual pursuits & other hobbies
Inch is less interested in reading than in oral histories, and there’s never a shortage of chatty ghosts willing to provide.
their most prized possession
A string of beads made of polished wood. At their end hangs an ampoule of clear water. The beads belonged to her ancestor, Mylonitas, and are one of the very few physical remembrances Inch has. She’s not sure that Myl was religious, but Inch has ascribed them some amount of mystical significance because of their connection to the person who planted the forest Inch grew up in.
