Boo

[genlisae]

Greetings interweb!!

I poofed again. And I am probably going to do it again. Maybe not for so long, but it is prolly going to happen.

I tried the NaNoMo thing, it went about as well as you would expect from me. 4800 words in I realized I was not writing the story I thought I was and was actually writing a much larger story that I was not prepared for. It was not a total disaster though! I can now, very highly recommend Scrivener! If I hadn't been using it I would have got lost before I even started and wouldn't be able to keep plugging away at what I have as time permits.

Now, because I wouldn't dream of being gone this long and come back empty handed, have a snippet from the Not-So-NaNoMo project:

Candle light flickered and sent shadows dancing, plunging the freshly scrawled words on the parchment into darkness. The old woman clutched tightly to her worn quill and paid them no attention. The candle was not for her. Age had long since claimed her vision. Her sight now was of a different sort.

“Ill,” she murmured to the silent room, “Ill, ill tidings this one brings. Mustn’t trust that one, but is it too late? Already it is started.”

The guard at the door stared down at the toe of his boot. This posting unnerved him. Standing watch over the crone as she mumbled to herself, staring off at some point only she could see, her quill forever scratching against the parchment on the desk. The old hag was plainly mad. Anyone with eyes and half a mind could see that. Day after day she sat here in this room scratching out gibberish and mumbling under her breath. The stone walls of the room were lined with shelves holding hundreds upon hundreds of scrolls each filled with her spidery scrawl of random words and half phrases. None of it ever made any sense and what good was a seer who could not be understood?

“Boy!”

The old woman’s sharp bark interrupted his musing and the guard looked up, startled, “Ma’am?”

“Fetch the king,” she demanded, her claw-like hand now moving frantically over the parchment, “He must be warned.”

“But, ma’am …” the guard hesitated.

She hissed through her teeth, the sound meant to be both disapproving as well as warning, “I am well aware the king is attending his own wedding, boy! I am not the fool you think I am. Fetch him at once before the bells toll and we are all doomed.”

The guard was not the brightest man, nor was he an idiot. One did not go rushing off to pull a man, especially the king, away from marrying the woman of his dreams particularly when that woman was also the patron deity of the kingdom.

“I’m sorry, it will simply have to wait …,”

The old woman cut him off, “If you value your life, boy, and the life of your king, you will go now.”

Her white, sightless eyes turned on him, pinning him with a stare which seemed to pierce right through him. A chill settled around his heart.

“Ma’am,” the guard snapped to attention, “Yes, ma’am.”

Listening to the retreating click of the guard’s boots against the polished stone floor, the old woman reached out a hand for the candle. The words needed to be made safe. She touched the flame of the candle to the corner of the parchment. Flame sprang up, smoke rising, curling through the vent in the ceiling. The fool boy playing dress-up as a palace guard should not have hesitated, he had cost them too much time. Already she could see the thread of fate winding out before her mind’s eye. What had been seen would come to pass and may the gods save them all.

“Oh, no,” a lyrical voice echoed through the room, “I do not think your gods will save you.”

The old woman set the candle down as the last of the parchment turned to ash. Her eyes narrowed at the unseen intruder, “You.”

A musical laugh rang out as a shadow formed on the opposite side of the table, “Who else, my dear?”

With a murmured incantation, the old woman waved her hand over the pile of ash on the table. A neatly rolled scroll bearing the seal of the King’s Seer, able to be opened only by the king himself replaced the ash.

“Your words will not save them, hag,” the shadow stated, “It is far too late for that.”

“No,” the old woman agreed, leaning back against the worn chair, “This is beyond me now, I have done what I can. Do your worst.”

The shadow grew, stretching along the table, “My worst is yet to come, you are just the first course.”

Bells rang out, announcing to the joy of all that King Aldrend had married his chosen queen. The old woman slumped, lifeless, against the table.

 

On a sims front, I am currently working on the long overdue update to RBPV and fiddling with textures for more terrain types to go with the farm fields.

On a health front I am doing great. For serious. I haven't felt this ... 'alive' is really the only word I can think of that fits ... in decades. It's good. I'm good. Everything is good. I hope everything is good for all of you as well.