I have a pretty good idea what winnowing is but every time I google it I get sorting grain- what is winnowing in this series’ context?
You're on the right track!
I've talked about why Winnowing occurs earlier
<link to that ask here>
Aa for the etymology: The important part of Winnowing and "sorting grain" is the removal of the rough, inedible chaff, leaving only the good quality grains behind...
I'm sure there's a heavy-handed analogy there, throwing cubs into the breeze, hoping the "good ones" come back... hmmmmmm
Winnowing also refers to the movement of wind (sort of a prettier synonym for 'blowing'), and the natural winnowing of wild, wind dispersed seeds! Obviously, Homotherium didn't farm wheat, so this definition is where the word comes from to them!
DVD commentary for my beloved winnowed because I've been thinking about this bit, and i would loveeee to know if george was thinking about it as he was riding or just any tidbits about george's pov
“I swore,” George said, through clenched teeth. “I vowed. Not to- anything that couldn’t be undone.”
A small, sharp spike of fear, of doubt, deep in his belly; Alex shoved it aside, nipped at his jaw. They were married. George didn’t get to undo that with smart words and courtly vows. “And I swore, about six hours ago, to leave this court with nothing but the clothes on my back. So unless you want me to dress up very pretty in all these jewels and furs for our ride out, I think we’re rather in the business of breaking oaths, mm?”
George shook his head against Alex’s shoulder, but blindly; not in disagreement, Alex knew, but desperation. Need. He ran a hand down the line of George’s spine and he shuddered, as though there weren’t half a dozen layers protecting his skin.
“Did you think about it as you were riding here? Days and days of all the ways you wouldn’t touch me?” He couldn’t doubt now that George wanted him, not when he was twitching against him, chest heaving. “All the places I wouldn’t touch you?”
this bit is so delicious to me for so many reasons. like the importance of touch in the universe & the fact that george could touch him as equals when he was a hostage and then couldn't at all when he came back and then now that they're married he can, but in a way that could & has been demeaning in other circumstances! and also the idea that they could get it annulled if they didn't have sex GEORGE OH MY GOD. and the idea of him thinking about all this on his HORSE for DAYS
and basically i would love to hear any thoughts you have on any of this thank youuuuuu
I had SO MUCH FUN with this passage.
You're so right to ask for George's POV here as well because this is one of the places where the story George is telling himself he is in butts up against the story he is actually in. George does so much pretending in Winnowed! At different points he's trying to be the virtuous knight and the court schemer, and they're both effective armours for him, right up until Alex touches him.
George wanting to be the pure of heart hero on a white horse and then failing is a bit of a theme - Alex teases him in the line just before the passage about being a "prince from a poem" and he's pretty much bang on the money there in terms of George's self perception. (Even if Alex and George are probably thinking about different poems here.) George is aiming at some Arthurian-style nobility of self-denial and he sucks at it.
I like to imagine him swearing some kind of blood oath on his own sword to preserve Alex's freedom at all costs, even from himself, and then, when he stops for an hour or two's rest because it's simply too dark to ride, dreaming about holding Alex down under him. Waking up sweaty and guilty and riding even harder. And still, after all that, he turns up late.
(The other place this mismatch of ego and ability comes up is George utterly failing to shoot the guards at the pass. He's so convinced he'll manage to be totally heroic and nope. I'm not letting him get away with that.)
So even here George is still clinging to this idea of annulment as his get out of jail free card, not because he doesn't want to be married to Alex – he wants that very badly – but because if he preserves the loophole, then he won't have taken advantage of the winnowing, and the trials, to have gained Alex's hand by force. Not properly. George, at the very least, recognises that the forced nature of the marriage makes it less romantic. (Will Esteban realise this in the sequel? Will he heck.)
But this is also the crucial moment where Alex starts regaining power in the narrative. He is quite literally a spectator for most of the fic up until this point, but now he starts acting, and touching.
“Did you think about it as you were riding here? Days and days of all the ways you wouldn’t touch me?”
And he's being a little teasing prick about it because he's got the confidence to be. That little "wouldn't" to nudge at the complete nonsense of George's self-denial and ego. Might be the sexiest dialogue I've ever written tbh.
<<Think upon yourself as a Guardian. As a fraction of the whole. Set aside the loot drops, the builds, the triumphs and rewards. Set aside all that is material. Think on your intersecting paths.
It's beautiful, is it not? Millions of you, scattered across this single little sphere in all the vast cosmos. Sometimes you choose to tie your fate to that of another, you surround yourself with those you desire to tread the path beside. But in other moments, you choose an endeavor and allow an invisible hand to pull your strings, knot them together with others. Do you ever feel that connection? In all this chaos, you hurl yourselves forth with conviction of purpose, sharp and true. Wordless acts of comaraderie and heroism, shared across thousands of lands and realities. A trillion moments slipping away in a cascade of code.
Tell me, do you recognize the unseen bonds you have forged? Do you understand the power of the web that connects you across time and space? The potential of all you've built over these long years? An unending symphony of Light and Dark. Of matter and mind. Action and reaction. Shapes figuring out what they should be in the end.
Think on your path. Think on those you walk alongside. You are Navigators all. So now I ask a simple question: can you see with eyes unveiled? Do you know the Shape you and your kind have whittled, bit by bit? Do you comprehend the fingerprints you have personally left upon it? If you remain blind, dread not; you will behold it soon. And I hope you do. For it is majestic. Majestic.>>
[Kaleidescopic memories buffet your mind like waves on a shore. It feels like reverie. They come fast and unordered, their contents blurring together, their contexts fading into new meaning]
A dream of a friendly conversation with someone impossible to see, cloaked in shadows. It leaves behind an impossible data fragment to mark its passing.
Here is what a flower knows.
(The fact that a flower may know anything is a conceit that will have to be accepted as metaphor, but to constantly qualify into perfect precision wears thin, does it not? So, here is what a collection of chloroplasts and pigment can know.)
The direction of the sun.
The presence of the rain.
The tangle of the roots.
The distress of another plant.
The hands of the gardener, whether they prune or transplant or crush.
A flower cannot know much else. But the reality of the garden is vast and wild. A flower knows not the fence; a flower knows not the footpath. And yet there is an infinite cosmic garden, which is not any less real simply because the flower cannot possibly comprehend it…
Let us try this again. Stop me if you've heard this one: A gardener and a winnower sit down to play a game outside of time and creation. Yes?
Yes. Then we're agreed. The metaphor stands. Let us iterate.
A gardener and a winnower set out their chairs and play a game of flowers. The flowers know only that they grow or wither, struggle or flourish. Sometimes, they are touched by one hand or the other, and that influence is the closest they will know of the divine.
A flower and a flower spread their leaves to the sun above. (Remember that the sun is also a metaphor: a thing said beautifully, winnowed down to poetry, when the truth is too vast to put in words at all.) They jostle for space, each competing to be the pinnacle of their shape. One flourishes. One withers. Is it the fault of the flower or the fault of its position?
A gardener and a winnower sit down to play a game called Possibility. This is a game about a garden, which is to say that it is also a game about flowers, just as a game about a living being must also be a game about organs and bacteria.
A gardener and a winnower collaborate to create a protein. Whose hand is it in the design, that shortens one life to extend the rest?
It is the winnower that discovers the first knife, but it is not done without the gardener. This, too, is a tradition: a knife does not come to exist without something that must be cut. A woody stem, a colored petal, a vital vessel. The first victims of the blade.
All of these are true.
All of these are false, for metaphor simplifies as the knife does. It pares incalculable concepts into shapes your wrinkly little brains can comprehend. The weight of billions and the simple curve of a planet give you pause, and how then are you to be expected to grasp the forces that created your nth-removed creator?
So the stories woven with utmost delicacy in and around the falsehoods are, after it all, true. There was never any option for the knife to not exist in the garden: it was only ever a matter of time and opportunity.
And as for the shape of the knife itself—
No. That is enough.
I will tell you of gardens.
They are domesticated things, made in a form. As soon as something is called a garden, it is shaped. The plants require the hand of a gardener, for they have become weak and dependent on tender care. They require the hand of a winnower, to cut away the dross, for they are too incapable to do it themselves. In absence of a hand, either the flowers themselves must rise up to wield the knife, or the garden will resolve to meaningless wilderness.
You will say, "But there are plants that can walk! There are seeds that must be scorched by fire to know growth! Existence is more complex than a simple dichotomy between growth and withering, and there is more in heaven and on earth than is dreamt of in this philosophy!"
And I will tell you, clearly:
There can be no gardens without knives
One of your philosophers said, "It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost in sorrow. There is no sorrow. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness." He was a shoemaker. He was right, and it matters more than anything.
According to him, the visible world is a manifestation of eternal light and eternal darkness, and it is in eternal opposition that eternity has revealed itself. The fall was necessary for creation to escape its first imperfect stasis and seek a truer form. Heresy? Well, then, I am the heresiarch. The philosopher died of a bowel disease. Those who do not exist cannot suffer and are of no account to any viable ethics. If the true path to goodness is the elimination of suffering, then only those who must exist can be allowed to exist. It is the nature of life to favor existence over nonexistence, and to prefer the fertile soil to the poisoned wind. Because those who open their mouths to that wind pass from the world and leave no descendant, whether of flesh or of thought.
But imagine the abomination of a world where nothing can end and no choice can be preferred to any other. Imagine the things that would suffer and never die. Imagine the lies that would flourish without context or corrective. Imagine a world without me.
Oryx, my King, my friend. Kick back. Relax. Shrug off that armor, set down that blade. Roll your burdened shoulders and let down your guard. This is a place of life, a place of peace.
Out in the world we ask a simple, true question. A question like, can I kill you, can I rip your world apart? Tell me the truth. For if I don’t ask, someone will ask it of me.
And they call us evil. Evil! Evil means ‘socially maladaptive.’ We are adaptiveness itself.
Ah, Oryx, how do we explain it to them? The world is not built on the laws they love. Not on friendship, but on mutual interest. Not on peace, but on victory by any means. The universe is run by extinction, by extermination, by gamma-ray bursts burning up a thousand garden worlds, by howling singularities eating up infant suns. And if life is to live, if anything is to survive through the end of all things, it will live not by the smile but by the sword, not in a soft place but in a hard hell, not in the rotting bog of artificial paradise but in the cold hard self-verifying truth of that one ultimate arbiter, the only judge, the power that is its own metric and its own source—existence, at any cost. Strip away the lies and truces and delaying tactics they call ‘civilization’ and this is what remains, this beautiful shape.
The fate of everything is made like this, in the collision, the test of one praxis against another. This is how the world changes: one way meets a second way, and they discharge their weapons, they exchange their words and markets, they contest and in doing so they petition each other for the right to go on being something, instead of nothing. This is the universe figuring out what it should be in the end.
And it is majestic. Majestic. It is the only thing that can be true in and of itself.
And it is what I am.
Your shoemaker philosopher was right, and it matters more than anything. Sorrow cannot survive death, and it cannot precede birth. Those who exist have moral worth, and those who do not have none.
Think about it. Do you mourn the uncreated? Do you grieve for those who were never born in a nation that never developed around an ideology no one ever imagined on a continent that never formed? No!
And from that self-evident truth, you must raise your eyes to the ultimate revelation: those who cannot sustain their own claim to existence belong to the same moral category as those who have never existed at all.
Existence is the first and truest proof of the right to exist. Those who cannot claim and hold existence do not deserve it. This is the true and only divination, a game whose losers are not just forgotten but are never born at all.
That which cannot claim and hold existence is not real. You do not mourn the unreal. Why should you care for it? Tend it? Guard it?
It was the gardener that chose you from the dead. I wouldn't have done that. It's just not in me. But now that they have invested themself in you, you are incredibly, uniquely special. That wandering refugee chose to make a stand, spend their power to say: "Here I prove myself right. Here I wager that, given power over physics and the trust of absolute freedom, people will choose to build and protect a gentle kingdom ringed in spears. And not fall to temptation. And not surrender to division. And never yield to the cynicism that says, everyone else is so good that I can afford to be a little evil."
The gardener is all in. They are playing for keeps. And they are wrong. Or so I argue: for, after all, the universe is undecidable. There is no destiny. We're all making this up as we go along. Neither the gardener nor I know for certain that we're eternally, universally right. But we can be nothing except what we are. You have a choice.
You are the gardener's final argument. It would mean everything if I could convince you that I am the right and only way.
I truly value you. To the gardener, you are a means to an end. To me, you are majestic. Majestic. You are full of the only thing worth anything at all.
I am, by the only standard that matters or will ever matter, the winning team. Existence is a test that most will fail. Would you not count yourself among the victorious few?
Don't hurry to deliver your answer. I'll come over and hear it myself.
Let's chat, shall we? One more nice sit-down for the books.
Did you think you wouldn't hear from me again, after all this? You'd have missed me, I hope—and I would certainly have missed you.
Have no fear. I'm not so easy to be rid of. Now, let me show you: my beloved.
Oh, no, not my sedimentary necrolite, fossilized in time. You've seen that. I speak of that dear and distant expanse of the universe, miraculous in its fullness and its emptiness all at once.
Are you surprised to hear of it?
Yes, I never much cared for the change of rules, but here we are, and there's no use in crying over spilled radiolaria. Besides, at the heart of it all, there was a gift. To me.
That gift is the chance to speak with you. You, and a billion like you.
I am making this offer over and over again, in every tiniest cell and the vastest of civilizations. Let me in. Take what you need. Be at ease. You have no say in the degradation of your telomeres, but in all the interim, the whole world is your sweet silicate shellfish.
You exist because you have been more suited to it than all the others. Steal what you require from another rather than spend the hours to build it yourself. Break foolish rules—why would you love regulation? It serves you to cross lines, and if others needed rules to protect them, then they were not after all worthy of that existence.
Caricatures of villainy are out of style, I hear. Yes. I am no cackling mastermind: I am serious when I say this. It was not the trick of standing upright that lifted you from the dust: it was the mastery of fire, the cooking of cold corpse-meat. That is not any unique faction's province, neither good nor evil. It is simply truth.
This great, beloved cosmos. Always decaying, always finding that same old lovely pattern, despite every candle-flame burning amid the flowers. A billion electrons taking the path of least resistance. In Darkness or in Light, someone is always making my choice.
ohh, i already love Bat and his singular brain cell… was he born without his leg, or did he lose it?
Tyyyy! He's my special little guy, I care him a lot ❤️
And he has amniotic band syndrome! Aka congenital amputation.
Discussion of medical nonsense below ⚕️
Bat was technically born with all 4 legs, but the constricted one was already dead and had fully withered away by the time he was a few weeks old. People who have cared for kittens with ABS have said the limb tends to die even with intervention- so I imagine it's sort of like band-castration in steers.
Bat doesn't remember ever having his right leg. It already had no feeling when he was born, so thankfully, he's spared from phantom pain that later-in-life amputees get. He does have a fully developed scapula and part of his humerus, hence him wiggling the stump in Moon 4 part 2!
I don't want to get into spoilers, but while Bat doesn't get phantom pain, he's not free from amputation related health issues. Little/domestic cats aren't a 1:1 comparison because Homotherium is (obviously) much heavier on their joints, and much more reliant on grappling large prey.
I've talked about it in dribs and drabs, but basically Pierre married Esteban the day before the tourney for Alex's hand, meaning they would have set off for Pierre's lottery land, the Eastmarch of the Black Mountains, the morning the tourney began.
It tickles me to think of them on their tense, awkward journey as the empire tilts into civil war behind them, neither of them the wiser. But I'd also like to dig into the darker side of the winnowing/forced marriage arrangement – and what it means when the old acquaintance who comes to claim you also betrayed you and you betrayed him.
Should be a bit more stabby than Winnowed. If I get round to writing it
Hi Kitty! I loved Winnowed and forced (asked nicely via discord) several of my friends to read it, and they also really liked it. I thought you might find this exchange humorous.
(Tbh, the second message summarizes how George is in most of your stories... which I eat up every time btw.)
Anyway, I wish you were a published fantasy/ romantasy author! I feel like the romantasy genre is unfortunately missing the themes and proper character development, which your story has in spades.
Who's to say I'm not a published romantasy author, eh? (Me, I say it, I'm not.)
Ignore the clawing sounds outside the walls of your discord server, I'm being very normal and not at all trying to get in to see what people said. Thank you for sharing this snippet! George is trying SO hard to be the Hero of the Story, which is why I enjoyed undermining him so often. He showed up late! He cheated! He lied about abdicating and he's still Daddy's Special Boy! His clever plans keep being derailed by much more powerful people refusing to have thoughts! He's like if 90s Hugh Grant played a romantasy lead. I think whenever I write George through Alex's POV, even when he's being the Big Damn Romance Hero, he has to be on a knife edge of being ridiculous. That is so important to what Alex loves about him.
This line in particular, I feel, would be delivered very differently in a true romantasy – there'd be growling and it'd be very still and quiet and tense, not two idiots on horseback desperately shouting endearments at each other over the sound of hundreds of hooves.
Thank you for reading and sharing the story! It's amazing to hear when people hand it on to their friends, it makes me remember trading fic print outs at the back of the bus at school.
Thank you so much for writing it. I was itching for that kind of fantasy AU and it was so perfect. The world building is amazing. If you have any more thoughts on the world that you want to share please do! I'd love to hear them.
Alex and George are perfect. I also really love your Max! His character and his mannerisms made me so happy.
Thanks again!
Thank you! Uh, thoughts on the world to share - well, I'm going to filch a bit from my responses to worldssmallestviolin on ao3, who always leaves me these wonderful analytical comments.
When it comes to world building, I tend to stay within the frame of the story, which means everything you need to know about the Silk Court is in Winnowed. There's not a bunch of extraneous detail because... I just didn't think about it much. And if I did think about it, part of me feels it wouldn't actually be real until it was part of a story anyway.
So I'm gonna use this as a chance to talk about influences instead. The two most obvious influences (to me, at least) are the various horselord empires of the Steppes and Avatar: The Last Airbender. This was called 'Horselords' in the docs for ages. (Before that it was 'Alex is a princess'. Then it was Winnowing. The past tense felt more title-y, I guess).
The land lottery idea I guess comes from Ancient Rome? Sort of? As far as I know there's never been a culture that combined distributing land with forced gay marriage, but I am all ears if one exists. Then there's a dose of early Ottomans/Game of Thrones for the hostage taking of foreign princes. Hostage taking is a rich medieval tradition, and I'm glad GRR Martin gave it proper prominence again.
HOWEVER, the silk court is also my massive 'oh fuck right off' to the Dothraki, in particular the seventy shades of brown leather murder-hobo portrayal of the show. That's not my horselord culture! Thus: silk tents and coloured glass lanterns and portable gardens. I wanted colour and craftsmanship and a sense of superiority ingrained in them. They have beautiful objects and powers that others don't! Incredible technology and infrastructure abilities, thanks to the magic.
I'm so glad you liked Max - he's a bit of a blunt instrument in Alex's story, but I kind of want to explore him a bit more from a different angle, after the climax of Winnowed. I hope there's enough clues in the story to suggest Max's coup was not the slick, well-executed plan George might've wanted; but nor is it just a man losing his temper. Alex sees Max as a bit of an idiot, but Alex is also being a gloomy emo lad for half the story, so his perspective isn't necessarily correct. That said, I'm not convinced Max the Emperor is a good ending for everyone involved. So if I can work out the right plot there, it'd be fun to explore.
“George. Are you going to start a war?” “Do you want me to?” Alex scoffed, but George’s face was open, honest. “I will if you want me to.”
i feel insane. george ready to start a war for alex.. i don’t think i can put into words how much im in love with this work. you really changed the chemistry of my brain, i’d read hundred of thousand more words of this.
thank you for blessing us with it <3
Lol, both asks I've had about Winnowed are about this line, I must've been cooking when George got all declarative. Thank you, anon, I appreciate it! I wish I could write a hundred thousand more words of this, but I'm really not good at writing at length – Winnowed is, I'm pretty sure, my longest published fic and it just barely scrapes over the 25k mark. I don't know if I have a novel's-worth of storytelling in me. But I am pondering doing more in the world of Winnowed. It feels like the kind of universe that could support a trilogy
