|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Sat May 16, 2015 4:00 pm
 |
|
|
 |
● Even the Brightest Stars ●
[ Burn Out ]
When Damissan opened his eyes, the world tilted on its axis. He shut them again.
One sweep of his hand to the left tells him several things. The bed is empty. The red silk there is warm, like fine wine left out in the sun at midday. The room is not his own, and whoever had been occupying the space beside him has just vacated it.
Damissan ran his tongue—
—too dry—
—over his lips, also too dry, and grimaced.
Cracked. Hot. His lips, like the rest of him, stung and burned to move, itching and caked with sand, grit and filth. They tasted like the desert — and dried manure. His exhale skirted out from between them, stirring up a puff of clay dust beneath his mouth. When he forced his eyes open again, the world was orange-red, then white-yellow bright, piercingly sharp. He shut them again, squeezing them that way as light danced behind his lids, and his body sank back towards the hard, overheated earth.
Where was he?
Footsteps swish, soft, over polished floorboards and then ornate carpets, but Damis does not turn his head to look. Instead, he shifts his weight atop the mattress, bare chest grazing the silk of the comforter under him, and he draws his fingers up the edge of the pillow beneath his head, tracing the corded gold-rope border. Tightly woven. Smooth.
“Did you bring me anything?” he asks.
“I am not your maid.”
“Only my harlot?”
Damissan lost track of how long he lay sprawled on the hot earth with the sun beating down on his back, his thoughts and memories shifting back and forth through his mind like sand through a sieve. Weighty while there, but slipping away by the moment and gone again soon after they came. He dipped into and out of consciousness, became aware at several points that he was gnawingly hungry, but too weak to move. At some point, around when night fell, he concluded that he was going to die.
Here. Wherever ‘here’ was.
Alone. Because surely, if there was anyone to see, someone would have…done…what?
When he woke again, it was to a boot nudging at his side, to which he didn’t respond, followed by a greater show of force and pressure, rolling him onto his back, at which point some sort of noise clawed its way up his throat. Followed immediately after by empty, dry retching. Under any other circumstances, he would have found himself pathetic, but his mind did not at that point have the processing power to form such a conclusion.
He only barely registered voices. Surprise. Oh, he’s alive…whoever he is, and some other things which did not sink in.
“You should watch what you say, Damissan…one day your tongue will get you into more trouble than you can handle.”
Damis laughs. The sound bubbles out, like softened thunder pitched upwards, and he turns, rolling onto his back as he does, arching his hips up a fraction in a stretch to situate himself, and then pinning his company with a casual, amused, red-eyed stare. “So far my tongue has brought me only the sorts of trouble I enjoy. Like you…most of the time. Besides…” He leans, stretching a hand up to thread back through his loose, wine-colored hair, “…there is nothing I cannot handle, mm?”
Something clinks to the small tabletop beside the bed, and Damissan’s gaze flicks to follow his company as the mattress dips under her weight. Her hips settle atop his, a knee to either side of his waist, and her fingers alight, perching on his chest.
“You would be surprised how many men think that, and then…” She tilted her head, fingertip tracing up the edge of his collarbone, “…they die.”
The next sound from her lips is choked. Damissan is upright, one hand caught around her throat and a thumb pressing — not damagingly hard, but hard enough — to the front. “Do you know…” he says, ignoring the rigid, poised tension in her posture, “…I do like your neck…” He leans in, brushing his nose up the column of her throat and pausing to press a kiss to where her pulse beat like the wings of a wild kinfa. “But do not think that means I would hesitate to break it if you threaten me…”
When he relaxes his grip, her posture is still stiff and brittle. He regards her for a moment, then notches his head to the side, towards the door, and taps her thigh.
“Go. Fetch me a drink. And don’t loiter.” As she slips off of him, he leans back, tilting his head towards the ceiling and shutting his eyes. “Something strong and chilled. And a smoke, while you are at it. No, wait…”
Her footsteps pause.
“Have Adaj deliver them. Do whatever you please with the rest of the evening, but do not return here.”
The next time Damissan awoke, he was no longer on the dirt. The sounds of the outside were gone, and beneath him, a cot. Thin. Hard. A single threaded sheet of low quality fabric over a bed that felt little softer than a set of wooden planks. But he was no longer burning, no longer suffocating. He had only long enough to wonder how it had happened that he arrived there — and where there was — before his consciousness slipped between his fingers again.
He spent a day or more within the space of that room, drinking water brought to him and eventually food. In any other set of circumstances, he would have had many complaints — why no one knew who he was, where was he, what was this, the food was bland, the bed hard, and his head still hurt — but he found that none of those came to his tongue and only a few skirted around the edges of his mind.
Most of his focus was distracted by other musings. How had he come to this? How had he fallen so low? Who had turned on him to put him here, sat in a poor man’s cot in some unknown location? Did he really deserve, after all, to even be breathing?
The last one was a new thought.
Damissan rejected it at first. Of course he did. He deserved everything that had been given to him. He had earned it. His intelligence, his skill, his family line, all of it amounted to him deserving all.
But why, then, the other voice countered, had it come to this? Why was he here? If he, in all his magnificence — spending his parents’ coin and falling so far from what they once expected of him — deserved all by some birthright, then why did he barely have the strength to sit up, and why were there those out there who hated him enough to put him in such a place to begin with? It seemed a miracle, when he thought about it, that he was alive at all. Unsettling as the thought was, evidently someone had wanted — and expected — him to die and left him for it in sandy ditch in the desert sun. His initial instinct was anger and accusations, his mind tossing and turning over who he might pin the blame for it all on.
The more time passed, however, the more a nagging sensation prickled in the back of his mind: this was his fault, and it had happened for a reason. He did not appreciate the idea, but nor could he honestly say he was proud of himself over the years of late. Despite managing, on some level, not to make a complete and utter fool of himself, he knew — rationally — that he was and had been in a downward spiral, falling progressively further out of control of his life. This was simply, in some ways, hitting bottom.
Damissan shut his eyes, splayed his fingers out to the side of him so that his fingertips traced the texture of threadbare sheets, and he frowned. Followed to its logical conclusion, he ought to have died. Someone, something, had stopped that. Questions of who, what, and why lingered pervasively on his mind from there forward.
When persons entered the room again, he was coherent enough to sit up and speak. He learned he was in Orrod and had been left for dead on the outskirts of the city to the side of a traveler’s road in. After some discussion and explanations, his return home was arranged for, and the family that had taken him in was paid well with coin for their efforts. Damissan’s thoughts, however, never strayed far from their previous, persistent train of focus.
Upon arriving home and after being bathed and tended to properly, Damissan headed immediately for his family’s library.
Word Count: 1,497 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun May 17, 2015 12:26 pm
|
|
|
|
● A Tale of Gods ●
[ And Monsters ]
The church of Nerad smelled of heavy incense. Rich. Pungent. And mingled with the interwoven scents of bodies and all the smells they brought with them: oils and perfumes, sweat, the desert, meat, spices, livestock and more. Damissan walked through the entryway alone at an hour late enough where no one but the occasional scattered priest or altar boy shared the space, slipping in and out, and dim candles sent flickering shadows to dance along the marbled walls.
It was a wealthy church, as churches went, visited all but exclusively by the more prosperous of the city’s citizens. Immaculately clean. Decorated with ornate statues. Well tended. Stocked with hand-carved and polished wooden pews that sported plush cushions and books of song leather-bound and neatly scribed.
Damis could not remember the last time he had stepped into a place of worship.
“Again.”
Summer is hotter in Oban than anywhere else in the world, or so Damis certainly assumes. The occasional gust breezes through the open courtyard, bringing with it the sound of windchimes, distant chatter and laughter, but it is never quite enough and Damis, at nine-years-old is hot and tired. He scowls at his tutor. An Oban swordsman, ‘the best’ there was to be had, but so far as he can tell, the man is little above the other slaves that serve their family. Regardless of whether he is paid coin or serves out of necessity by birthright, it is still his place to serve.
“I’ve done it already twenty tim—”
“You’ve done it seven times,” the swordmaster says, “and you’ll do it another hundred and seven if that is how many it takes. I thought you enjoyed swordplay, aye? Your favorite subject? ‘Best in all the land’ you were going to be? I’d like to hear how you plan that without practice. Pick up your blade.”
“I enjoy it when it’s interesting,” Damis quips. “I don’t enjoy doing the same basic move over and over. It’s boring. I know it already. And how will I be the best if I don’t learn anything more complicated? I want to do something fun and difficult.”
“Everyone starts at the beginning, boy. Building blocks are crucial to—”
“I am not everyone, and perhaps I learn faster than they do.”
“Pick up your sword.”
Damis touched a hand to the back of a pew bench, sliding the pads of his fingers along the wood, over the smooth, polished curve of its shape. After his eyes landed briefly on one of the texts beside it, he moved to sit, and opened the book in his lap. Nerad, king of gods, and supreme exerciser of judgment over the peoples of the many lands of Tendaji. He seemed, of all places, the best source to start with when grappling with what — beyond the wills and whims of man — had judged and found him not wanting, but worthy of more than the fate others intended for him.
Even in the books of Nerad, however, there were intwined the tales and roles of the other deities. Damissan moved from Nerad, who might have been said to pass judgement to spare him from his follies, to Essd, who could have spared his life for her purposes, and on to On’os, whose blessing may have given him just the fortune he needed to live another day. Or even Jonal, who ordained the fates of men and their affairs. As Damis moved, however, from one to the next, he became only progressively more dissatisfied and torn.
Surely, it was not a committee of gods which had come together to decide his fate, each squabbling about their own portion of say in the matter. What Damissan had felt, what had spared him, was a cohesive energy. A single, decisive eminence that had stayed with him and kept him breathing. Lead company to him, even, for the more he thought on it, the more convinced he became that that, too, was not coincidence. All of it was too precise, taking him so close to the brink of death before drawing him back.
It was a lesson.
He simply had to find out who, or what, was teaching it to him and what all the message entailed.
•••
A cry echoes out into the bone-dry night, the sound as brittle and sharp as fractured glass. It is followed, and accompanied by another — CRACK! — of a whip, not designed for beasts but men, and the action draws out a second, more strangled scream.
Damissan, eleven years old, shifts his weight as his brow furrows, lingering at the edge of the courtyard with a book clasped in his left hand. His eyes, however, are locked on the slave. A man, full-grown, late twenties to early thirties in years, bent over and bound, his blue back mottled red-black with smears of blood and lines of welts. When the whipmaster raises his arm again, Damis looks away and reaches to pull at the silk of his father’s vest.
“Father—” A cry cuts in between his words, but he continues immediately in the space after, “—Master Rithiri said—”
“Damis.” His father frowns when he looks down. “You should not be here.”
“I wanted speak with—”
His father’s hand moves, catching at his shoulder, guiding him around and then pushing carefully — but firmly — at his back in order to get him walking as another CRACK sounds behind them. He pushes despite Damis’ objections, and it does not take much for Damis to give up his fussing and begin what it is he intended to say to start with, complaining about his tutor and apparent ‘inconsistencies’ in the text. It is not until he finishes and has been lead fully to his room that he hesitates, and stops his father from leaving.
“You have more?” his father asks, pausing.
“Why were they whipping him?”
A pause stretches between them, empty in the long hall, and for a moment, Damis thinks his father will not answer. Then, he speaks. “Does it matter? He had a lesson to learn, Damissan. If they are not punished, they do not behave.”
Damissan frowns. “You don’t whip me when you think I’ve a lesson to learn.”
His father opens his mouth.
“I wouldn’t learn at all if someone did. And I wouldn’t obey. It would only make me angry and hate them and do everything I thought they didn’t want me to do.”
His father blinks, and then laughs, reaching out and ruffling a hand through his hair, to Damissan’s mild irritation. “You would think that, wouldn’t you mm? And that is why you will never be treated so. You know better. We know better. Slaves, however…they are not people like us. They do not think like us. The gods designed them to be servile, and so it is in their nature to obey. It is their purpose. But occasionally they require…guidance, and need to be trained.”
“Like animals?”
“Like animals.”
“But we don’t whip our animals like that…it only injures them and makes them afraid.”
His father’s gaze is, for a moment, sharp and assessing. At length, however, it relaxes. “You are a clever boy. You are right, we do not, and…it is possible the treatment was rougher than necessary. But slaves…they are not the same as animals either, you know. While they are created for servitude and do not think as we do, they are capable of great intelligence. If you beat a farm animal, you ruin it and the others do not learn. If you whip a slave…even if that slave is ruined, the lesson is taught to all the others, and they remember. Does that make sense?”
Damissan hesitates, but eventually nods. “Yes, father.”
Word Count: 1,304 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon May 18, 2015 9:21 pm
|
|
|
|
● Start A Fire ●
[ Underneath My Skin ]
Damissan is ten when he shares his first kiss with Izarah Brehma whose name he will not be able to spell a half-decade later.
He is thirteen when he first kisses a boy.
Not yet fourteen when he learns what it means to share someone’s bed.
Not yet sixteen when he learns how it feels to share someone’s bed.
He is fifteen years and ninety-three days — not that he knows or counted — on the first evening that someone says he ‘couldn’t’ slip wine from the main banquet table and consume it himself. ‘You can’t’ becomes the easiest way to get Damissan to do anything. And alcohol warms his gut. It coils, like a red snake, through him and down with a welcome poison that leaves him giddy, alive, and, if possible, more dauntless than he usually tends towards being.
“I was spared by God.”
A pause filled the room, stretching between Damissan and his parents. The yellow light of evening spilled in from the broad paned windows to his left, between the spread curtains and down over the red-gold carpet protecting the wood of the polished floor. His father did not lift his attention from what he was writing. His mother gave him a look that only feigned patience.
“Which of the gods, Damissan?” she asked.
“Need we buy you a personal priest, then, to assure that you do not die in infamy in a ditch and be brought before us rotting and smelling of sand and fish?” his father asked, the question intermingled with a small, sharp sound from his mother and a tap from her to his father’s shoulder. His eyes remained on his writing, quill scritching across the paper.
“Ra’amand. Do not say such thi—”
“The God,” Damissan said. His mother’s gaze lifted from his father over to him, her expression shifting to include a pinch of confused curiosity. “I was spared by the God of all things. It is His will that kept me from death, Him that I have to thank, and Him that I am indebted to. My fall was a lesson.”
For the first time, his father looked up from his desk. “What is this. There are multiple gods, Damissan. Do you think this is a game? This house worships—”
“No game, Father,” Damis said. “I have thought long on this—”
“‘Long,’” his father repeated. “You soak your mind and body in spirits for two years, burn the gods only know what in your lungs, speak of whatever pleases you in the moment, spew nonsense, do as you like, force us to try catching sand on the wind keeping your name — our family reputation — clear and preserve your dignity, and after coming within spitting distance of the world beyond in a ditch in Orrod and a turning of the moon spent in a hermit’s isolation, you—”
“Ra’amand…”
“—think you have thought long and come to a prophet’s epiphany? You have been walking a line of sand, boy, and if you think—”
“I do not think it, Father, I know it.”
His father opened his mouth, but was stilled by a hand at his shoulder. After a glance to his wife and some silent pass of communication there, his stiff fingers tapped the surface of his desk. “We will find you ministers of each of the leading gods of this house…they will speak to you. I did not take you for a religious boy, Damis, but if it is a spiritual touch you want, we can provide—”
“I will listen to them, if that is what will please you, but it will not change what I have seen and felt. It was not a committee of deities that squabbled over my fate, each arguing a right to decide it—”
“The gods do not squabble.”
“—it was a single energy, Father. I have read the books of Nerad, Essd, On’os, and Jonal, but my God was not but one—”
“‘But’ one.” His father shook his head. “What you speak of is blasphemy.”
“What I speak is the truth.”
“This is silliness, Damis,” his mother said. “Think on what you are saying. There is too much to this world to be managed in such a manner. Even the greatest of all of them, the king of gods, needs to spread his duties, as with any king…”
“As with any mortal king,” Damis said. “His will is infinite and His energy boundless. Why ought any god worthy of worship be bound by the faults and frailties of men? Why ought powers so greatly beyond us be construed and restrained by the limits of our own conception?”
“Damis—” his mother began.
“Go,” his father said. “I will find holy men and women for you. They will speak with you, talk some sense into you, and you will be better in a fortnight. For now, we have nothing further to discuss.”
“After, I will be leaving from here.”
His father’s posture stiffened, gaze flicking up to focus on him again.
“As the first to hear His message, or the first that I am aware of, it is my place to spread His word—”
“You cannot possibly be serious.”
“I think…” his mother cut in, “…we could all do with some time to think on these things.”
Damis could not have said in all honesty that he expected any different from his parents. He had grappled with the concept himself fairly extensively even after the idea began piecing itself together. It was nothing he had learned before, to say the least. It was a concept no one had presented to him, and — so far as he knew — one alien to all the earthling races, at least in the manner he conceived it. Though the Alkidike’s focussed faith in a single creator goddess toyed with the concept, it was not the same, and while the leaf tribe’s concept of energy that existed in all things was similar in certain ways, it still did not fit precisely.
The more he challenged it, however, the more his belief cemented itself, and with it, his conviction grew. He made the choice to speak before his parents to warn them, to inform them, and to ease them into the inevitable truth: he would not stay here. Eventually, he knew this building concept would leave him wandering, learning, and sharing.
With his conviction, he read ever more of the existing religious texts, studying the ones he already knew anew and digging into those he didn’t. He researched the names and faiths of those culture systems outside of Oba, beyond his people — or what of it he could — visiting all the libraries of Sulburi and spending many a late night and early morning weighed down with texts. When he was finally ready, he began the process of piecing out those parts that spoke to him. With parchment and ink, he took notes, jotted thoughts, outlined ideas, and eventually began writing up passages. The God that spoke to him, he was convinced, was not wholly alien to the peoples of Tendaji, He was simply not properly conceptualized. Each of all the races had something correct, and many came very close in some respects, but all were imperfect.
The God was something above and beyond all that those before him had imagined. He encompassed all their power and exercised judgement and reach so infinite that it broke past the limits of mortal conception. Damissan, however, resigned himself to attempting the impossible.
Word Count: 1,279 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2016 10:17 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jan 20, 2016 7:51 am
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2016 10:59 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 12:20 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2016 11:32 am
|
|
|
|
● He Who Defends ●
[ Must Merely Survive ]
Sunlight filtered like gold dust down from the arching sky, between the great, stacked buildings of the city proper and the palace itself, and into the open courtyard of the Mataou family estate. Damissan stood with one shoulder to the carved stone of one of the many marbled columns that surrounded said space. He remembered so many things, memories bound to and enshrined in that courtyard.
His first lessons with a blade started there, engaging many long hours in his youth wherein the great sun beat down on him with such heat as to dare him to quit. Much as he had complained then, however, his lessons with a blade were always among his favorite. Perhaps his single favorite, of all that he was tutored in.
His father had also disciplined slaves in the courtyard.
Even when not outside, the rectangle of open ground was visible from many angles, including his second story room, and if his windows were open at the time — while he studied, or read, or rested with them spread to let the winds circle through — he would hear the sharp CRACK of a whip’s lash, as well as the cries that sometimes followed. Thinking on it, contrasted with the easy chatter of the young Matori he had encountered and spoken with in the open market, he frowned, and tucked the thought aside.
More relevant now was his immediate concern: each time he had gone out to speak, his words had rallied dissent. He had anticipated that, and could continue to—but to continue to do so unarmed, when blades had been pulled on him already even when dealing only with his own people, seemed foolish without excuse. He crossed the courtyard, over the planted grass and under the spilling sun, to the opposite side and the door there. Bolted shut as it was, he withdrew a key from his waist pocket, fit it into the deadlock, and fiddled until it clicked. With that removed, it opened with a clack and a creak at his pull.
The room inside smelled of dust and the sort of pervasive stillness characteristic of disuse. A sense that went beyond the dull brown of gathered particles or the long shadows and quiet of the space and became an attribute that could be felt like a memory more than anything physical. Damissan stepped through, and in.
Weapons lined the walls. Swords of all shapes and sizes, long blades and cutlasses to rapiers and broad swords. Daggers were also aplenty, alongside javelins and horse cutters, longbows and crossbow. A small army could have been weaponized from this space alone without a one going entirely empty-handed.
It wasn’t that his parents were no longer involved in any conflict, thus putting the armory into disuse, but after the war—the war against their people and king at the time, not that of the alien women’s ‘extremism’ and flurry against the world—things had calmed at least some, no longer necessitating a relative standing army for their own defense. These days the palace guards, for the most part, sufficed, and their weapons were provided for largely by the crown.
Though he still practiced on occasion, after the conclusion of that engagement and into his teenaged years, his lack of direct involvement in anything directly related to the military had meant that the frequency of his personal training endeavors had dropped substantially. It had become a habit left similarly untouched as the room itself. Still, in his youth he had been practiced at it. His pride, almost surely, clouded at least some of his ‘honest’ assessment of his own skill, but he had at the time performed well — at least in swordplay — against those ‘equally’ suited to him: noble youth, fully trained as he. Some variety of magical defense might have been arguably better suited to his new direction in life, but, despite his passing scholastic interest in it, he did not seem to have a magic-oriented bone in his body, and showed zero affinity for it in early attempts.
Pausing before a set of dual blades, he reached, drew a tip of his finger along the shape of its handle, and then gripped, and pulled. The dim light of the room still glinted on its surface. Simple, and in need of sharpening no doubt, but familiar. Pulling out the second, he gripped both, stepped back and shifted his stance, testing their weight in his hands and their balance.
What all did he remember?
He spent the afternoon in the otherwise empty room, cycling through what he remembered of his lessons—the training routines, the exercises, the stances. All of it tested muscle that he had been using, but not in this manner or to this degree in many long periods. His exercise routines had become instead more for physical maintenance: a morning set of push ups, pulls, stretches, and a brisk run—rather than combat specific.
The blades, though, reminded him of all the ways muscles could tire that he hadn’t tested. When he finished, the sun hung low in the sky, weary at the hemisphere’s edge and dipping ever closer towards being extinguished by the far horizon. His shoulders ached, and his body sported a thorough coating of salt sweat.
But, much as he would likely feel the sting even more pressingly come the next day, it felt satisfying—and encouraging. Refreshing, even, as exercise often was for him, and he realized that during it, his mind had cleared itself, at least temporarily, of the tumultuous sea of concerns previously plaguing it. So, while he had no intention of practicing violence in his travels, the blades, he thought, would be a welcome addition, not only for the practical benefit of self defense — which, regrettably, seemed to be a very real and pertinent concern — but also for his own health and mental clarity.
It seemed that an old habit, in this case at least, could become again a welcome ‘new’ routine.
He left the armory with the twin blades and their sheathes in tow, re-bolted the room behind him, and set out to put them away, before preparing a bath.
Word Count: 1,045 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Feb 28, 2016 9:01 pm
|
|
|
|
● Children of the Sun ●
“No, I wanna be the general. You’re the alkidike.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, you’re the girl. You should be the alkidike!”
“The general is a girl! And I came up with the game, so I make the rules.”
Mid-afternoon sunlight spilled gold-yellow onto the tiles of Mataou estate’s southwest patio, still hot, but tempered by gauzy canopies overhead and an evening breeze. Misiri and Bato were the daughter and son of Damissan’s father’s nephew. A spitting example of what Damissan could be producing in a year or two if he got his priorities in order, as his father made no subtle show of telling him from time to time. Damissan sat at the dining table in the patio’s center. Accompanying him were his father, mother, uncle, and cousin — the father of the children — and his wife, all sitting and holding easy conversation while the children played. The table was set for a late lunch, and Damissan picked at his food, carefully slicing it apart and segmenting it out into its various components—a habit he had developed as a child but never broken himself of.
The conversation around him all but washed past, as easily ignored as the summer breezes. He ate in quiet, contributing little and lost in his thoughts. When a servant appeared from the main house, carrying in a fresh tray of appetizers and clearing away what wasn’t being used before refilling his glass, Damissan’s musings turned to his experiences as of late, and he eyed the woman’s face, realizing for the first time: he did not know her name. He knew the names of very few of their servants because he didn’t need to. They were only servants.
Much as they had once been ‘only’ slaves.
He frowned, and shifted his utensil, pushing a shred of meat to the side and eyeing it before eating. He had thought genuinely that the common people would listen to him, at least to hear his message. After his multiple forays into that, however, and the slew of negative reactions he’d faced, he couldn’t help but grapple in retrospect with the reasons why he had failed. ‘They are not like us,’ his father had used to say of the slaves to explain why they were not constantly in rebellion, but perhaps, Damissan thought, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. They simply had different burdens to bear.
Burdens which Damissan knew nothing of. And if he knew nothing of them, if he could not even be bothered to learn the names of his family’s own servants, how could he expect to convince them of anything? Still frowning, he took one last bite of his meal before setting his plate and utensil aside as he stood, and moved out from the table.
Bato chose that moment to come dashing in front of him, Misiri directly on his heels with a cry of, “You can’t run forever, bug scum!” and answered by squealing on her brother’s part. After one pass, Bato came scrambling back around, this time latching to Damissan’s calf as he passed and clinging to the pant leg there.
“Uncle is on my side!” he said. “He’s the chief of the alki—alkadi, and—”
“Al-ki-die-ke,” Misiri said. “And he can’t be their leader, he’s a boy. Stop hiding!”
“You said I was an alkidie and I’m a boy!” Bato squeaked as Misiri lunged for him, spinning to shield himself to the side of Damis’ leg instead of behind it. “Unclllle! Help, the Oban general is attacking!”
Damissan glanced between them, the corner of his lip curved up with amusement in spite of himself. “Have you tried reasoning with her?” he asked. “Perhaps she’ll talk sense if we offer a peace treaty.”
“No peace! No peace!” Bato insisted. “She killed our amazons!”
“I suppose, then,” Damis said, eyebrows rising, “we have no choice but to—” He crouched as Misiri came back for her brother to launch another ‘attack,’ “—declare war.” Reaching out, he snagged her, earning impassioned squeals of, ‘Cheater, that’s cheating! Nooooo—!’ between giggles as he tickle-wrestled the girl, and enthusiastic encouragement from Bato on the sidelines. When he released her, Misiri’s cheeks were a flushed red-brown as she caught her breath and shot her brother a Look.
“That was cheating, Uncle’s too big.”
After brief bit more banter back and forth between them on the subject of whether or not Damissan really could play with them and it be fair, he chuckled and stood, excusing himself regardless, despite Bato’s objections. He made it into the main building, and partway down the hall before noting the sound of footsteps behind him. His mother’s face greeted him when he turned, pausing in the hall still close enough to the exit onto the patio that the evening’s light lit the hall carpet.
“Finished already?” she asked. “You barely spoke a word, or ate. It’s unlike you.”
“I was distracted,” Damissan said.
She waited, as though hoping for more, and when he didn’t add anything, she hummed. “Perhaps you will find your appetite more at supper,” she said. Then, after just enough pause for a subject change: “Did you know Misiri is nearly seven already? It is amazing how quickly children grow.” She eyed him. “Before you know it, they’ve all grown up, and you don’t know what to do with them anymore.”
He raised one eyebrow, and folded his arms behind his back.
“They are so lovely at that age, though,” she continued. “Just beginning to come into themselves…and you did so well with them. You could have been mistaken for their father.”
“Their father is nearly ten years older than me, mother,” Damis said.
“Yes, well.” She brushed it off. “In a few years.”
A number of things lingered on his tongue to say. ‘Not you, too.’ ‘Please don’t give me father’s lecture.’ ‘Just because I don’t dislike children doesn’t mean I want any of my own.’ She spoke again, though, before he got any of them out.
“Would it be so terrible, do you think?” In the pause that followed her question, she stepped forward, touching a hand lightly to his shoulder on her way past. “Perhaps it is at least worth considering what repels you, and in those hours you spend meditating or writing to this God of yours, you might ask yourself what it is you want this world to give you in exchange for all your days spent here, before we are reclaimed by the heavens.”
Damissan blinked. But after, his mother only stepped past, moving down the hall and greeting someone there on their way out. Left with the thought, an exhale slipped from his lips dangerously close to a sigh, and he finished his trek towards his bedroom.
‘Research’ littered his desk, hiding the wood of it beneath scattered papers, books, scrolls, and notes. Religious tomes and scripts and his jottings that had come from them. Despite looking like a lot when stacked messily and spread about, however, it was mostly an illusion, and one that Damissan felt oddly discomforted by. For the first time since his ‘epiphany,’ he had a serious, niggling feeling in his gut, and the question plagued him: what was he doing? Truthfully? What divine knowledge had he uncovered so far? What had he learned?
What had changed, since the day he woke in the gutters of Orrod?
Turning away from his desk, Damissan shut his door behind him, and strode into his personal washroom, starting the water on hot to draw a bath. He believed earnestly that something had shaken in him that day. The threat of death, and the reality of where his recklessness could take him had sparked a need for change and inspired a will to adjust his habits that hadn’t ever seemed possible before. So much so, that had felt external. Divine.
After testing the water and finding it suitable, Damissan shed his clothes, folded them, and slipped into the tub, eyes dipping shut as the heat enveloped him. Almost burning, but not enough to damage his skin. The issue, now, after he had made his initial expeditions out into the public to spread his message was more than the fact that others were not taking him seriously. That could be expected to an extent. But looking back, even when directly asked if he were a priest, he had denied it. He didn’t feel like one. Dedicated, yes, but not holy or spiritual in the way he thought of the ‘true’ priests of Oba’s temples, and half the time, his own words of well-wishing and ‘blessing’ had been used as he used many of his words: argumentatively, as bait into a dispute.
God be with you.
He scrubbed up his arms, behind his neck, and around the crystals at his back, carefully, frowning as he did. Surely, someone truly devout would not use the words of their Almighty in such a fashion. Unfortunately, he wasn’t even sure, on his own, in the private of his own space, if he could resolve to always do differently in the future, which begged the question: was he even taking himself seriously?
His mother’s words returned to him, and stayed stubbornly with him as he ran soap over himself and then bathing oils in his hair. If what he wanted — truly, in the end — was a break from the life he had been living, an escape, and an excuse to ‘mend’ his ways, perhaps she was right in that he—as ‘usual’—was taking things too far, to an experimental extreme. Despite all his moves to avoid it previously, there were at least some things that weren’t completely unappealing about the idea of moving in some normal direction with his life.
How terrible would it be? To court a beautiful woman, take her as his wife, have children, learn the names of his servants, and perhaps one day use that station in a positive way…
He suppressed the urge to grimace and sank beneath the water to rinse himself before pulling up from the tub and stepping out. Stifling is what it sounded like. Boring. Painfully, dreadfully, achingly normal and unexciting, unadventurous, and dull. That was what repelled him, he supposed. Eventually, perhaps, he could settle for something like that—perhaps. He enjoyed children, and the thought of adding a bit of himself to the future generations of the world was pleasant, for later.
But it did not feel like what he wanted to ‘do’ with his life.
Certainly not now.
He wanted to do something worth noticing, and remembering. Something meaningful not only to himself, but to enough others that the story of it outlived him. He wouldn’t get that by staying behind palace walls, marrying young, and siring a litter of children. After drying, he wrapped the towel around his waist, fastened it off, stepped out from the washroom, and—
There was someone on his bed.
“So I heard…” The speaker shifted his weight, propping himself up onto his elbows and then arching his eyebrows, making no secret of dragging his eyes down Damis’ figure. “Well, well, then, I am relieved to see that your rude, hermitish seclusion hasn’t done anything yet to harm your figure. I could forgive a lot for that b—”
Damissan stepped back into the washroom, pulling door firmly shut again with a frown. From the direction of his bed, he heard the muffled objections, and pursed his lips. He dried his hair, set the towel aside, dressed, and then exited again. His company was still on his bed, pouting.
“You know, Dami, you are lucky that I like you—”
“What are you doing here, Akachi?” Damis asked. “How did you get in?”
Akachi stared for a moment, then rolled his eyes, fingers flicking dismissively along the comforter. “Does it matter, really? You know you didn’t have to dress on my behalf…” He tipped his head. “In fact, I think I preferred—”
“Who let you into my bedroom?”
Akachi pouted. “You know, I’m sure it’s not intentional, but…” He pushed up, shifting until his long legs slipped over the edge of the mattress, and he pushed to a stand, approaching, “…you’re almost making it sound as though you don’t want me he—”
“Akachi—”
“I told them you were expecting me.”
“I was not,” Damissan clipped, and Akachi clicked his tongue.
“No, of course not, but can you blame them for believing me?” He slipped in as he said it, crowding the space at Damissan’s front and slipping his fingers up to Damis’ chest, and the fastenings of his shirt. When Damis batted them away, Akachi shifted their position, settling them at his hips instead. “I’ve heard terrible things about you while you’ve been gone, you know…”
“I haven’t been g—you never told me what you were doing here.”
“I thought that much was obvious…” Akachi’s fingertips skimmed up, initiating the beginnings of plucking the hem of Damissan’s shirt from his belt, but Damis locked his grip on the man’s wrists before he got far, stalling them and preventing the action. “I was bored,” Akachi said, continuing as though nothing had happened, “and is it so difficult to believe I missed you? That I might even have been worried about you? A week or two…” He gave a dismissive sashay of his head, “…surely just you playing one of your stupid little games. But a month? More?” He tisked. “Something must be wrong…”
When Akachi shifted his hands, as though to pull from Damis’ grip, Damissan tightened his enough to get the barest hiss of surprise and a glance. Then, Akachi tipped his head—stepped, stepped, and turned, ‘guiding’ Damissan along until his back was to a wall with Damis before him. There, he lifted his arms, touching his wrists back so that he was ‘pinned’ there. Damis narrowed his eyes.
“Akachi, are you high?”
One corner of the man’s mouth edged up. Slow at first and then spreading, as though contagious. His laugh started small, barely audible, though his chest shook with it, and then it gained in volume. Damis frowned and released his grip, pulling back, but immediately Akachi’s hands moved out, catching at his shoulders and looping behind his neck as his body pivoted forward.
“No, no, no, shhhhhhh, shhh-shhhhhh, shhh,” he said, barely making the sounds out around snickering. He leaned in, pressing, and making it until his lips were scant inches from Damis’ ear. “I will give you two guesses,” he said, “as to whether I am or not, hmmmmm?”
Damissan shut his eyes.
“I hear…” Akachi said, “…little birds sing-songing that you found yourself a god, Dami…a god all your own, aren’t you a special boy?” When Damis pushed, Akachi’s back hit the wall again easily, and his grin was broad and unfaltering beneath him, half a head shorter than Damis himself. “You’ve already started a riot, been out in those dirty streets, and the rest of the time nosed up in your books. You know some people think you’re serious and have gone quite out of your mind, but I know—I know you better than that…”
“I have found God,” Damis said. “And I will be leaving Sulburi to spread word of Him.”
Akachi clicked his tongue. “It certainly sounds like a fun game to play, doesn’t it? ‘Oh, I have been reformed and gone mad in the process…’ Such a wonderful way to get attention for yourself, and that is what gets you off isn’t it? Eeeveryone’s attention on Daaamissan, beautiful black sheep of his otherwise proud family. But you know games can only be fun for so long, and you won’t actually do it. You couldn’t bare to stick with one idea for more than a week or two, and come…do you really think you could stand to live long outside of here? Without your segmented food, and servants, and so much bedspace? There are savages out there. Besides, you’ve had your fun, so…” His fingertips skimmed Damis’ waistline. “Since you don’t believe it, and I don’t believe it…”
When Akachi pulled, Damissan let himself, for a moment, be tugged forward. Akachi’s teeth pinched his lower lip, and Damissan’s hands, which had at some point quite without his instruction found their way to Akachi’s hips, gripped.
It would have been so. Easy. And as Akachi’s mouth opened under his there was a moment — a long, embarrassingly protracted moment — where he considered it.
He hadn’t gotten anywhere with what he was doing so far, after all, and he did not want, yet, to go the idle, steady route of settling himself down to what his parents wanted for him. He knew all the places to go and all the people to open his doors to for this—the press of Akachi’s body, or anyone like him, towards him like a needy feline and a sea of distraction within which to lose himself.
And drown.
Damissan pushed back, separating himself from his company and shaking his head. “You’re wrong.”
Akachi gave a sharp grunt of a whine at the loss of contact, and shot him a very sour look in the first half second before he smoothed it over. “Damissan—”
“You’re wrong,” Damis repeated. “I am serious. I am not doing this anymore. I have found something else to do with my life, and I am leaving.”
“Guided by your god?” Akachi spat, dubious. “Please—”
“Yes,” Damis said. “Guided by God.” He was relieved to find that the words sounded more convinced than he, and there was more he could have said to Akachi then: ‘Even if I do not know precisely what yet, something changed the day I awoke in Orrod. Whether I changed or something changed me matters little as compared to this: I cannot go back to where I was and expect any good to come of it.’ But all of that was too much, and not all of it was even anything he was ready to admit to. So he settled for less. “I have a path to walk, and I fully intend to see where it leads me. This isn’t part of it. Get out of my room.”
Akachi stared, waiting as though anticipating the punch line. When none came, he shook his head. “You are out of your mind.”
“Get out of my room, Akachi.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“I will pray for you,” Damis said, stepping to open his door and gesture the way out.
“You are out of your mind!” Akachi moved this time as he said it, though, heading out and through the door, thoroughly miffed.
“And God be with you!”
“You’re full of sh—t, Damissan!”
Damis closed the door on the sight of Akachi staggering down the hall. He turned, shutting his eyes, and touched his back to the closed door, throwing the bolt. This, he concluded, had the potential to be infinitely more complicated than he’d originally given it credit for. But at least now, he was committed. This decided, he stepped away from the door.
He returned to his washroom, eyeing his reflection once more. A noble’s face stared back. He reached, and filled a small basin with water. He fetched scissors, cream, a razor, and a drying cloth—and got to work. First untying the bulk of his long, red locks and taking scissors to them, shearing as close to his skull as he could get and setting them in a pile. Then, with the cream and razor, he worked at his head as he would with his face or the rest of him, cutting close as a shave until all the fine fuzz of red was gone.
It was a shocking difference to behold. Dramatic, and almost unnerving at first. But the longer he stared himself down, the more accustomed to it he became. Damissan. Just Damissan. Not Mataou to the people he would speak to, but simply an Oban man with a message.
“Surely,” he murmured to himself, eyeing the reflection that stared him down, “it can’t be that hard.”
Word Count: 3,492
Quote: Summary: After playing with his niece and nephew at a small family brunch, Damissan is confronted by his mother, who 'subtly' suggests that he does well with children and is nearing an age where he should perhaps consider what he wants out of life and tone down his gimmicks to start a family. Damissan considers, but dismisses this as he is not yet ready for that in his life. In the process of this, he seriously questions his newfound faith for the first time. He is then confronted by a 'ghost' from his past, one of his party-goer friends, who approaches him in the manner he used to be accustomed to. With a little more difficulty, he eventually turns this down too, and finalizes his decision to leave home and begin his path forward as a travelling missionary.
Plot Points
Demonstrate that Damissan is good with/enjoys children, setting the stage for possible far later plots.
Develop the relationship with his mother/parents and the conflict between what they expect of him (duty) and what he wants (freedom).
Internal conflict as it relates to his religion/what he wants from life.
The final step in his ‘life as nobility’ arch, moving him out of his cushy houseshold, lifestyle, and city, and into the world at large.
Character Development/Growth
While Damissan has always been an act first, think later sort who chases wild hair ideas and never follows through with them, this solo is meant to show him grappling with some serious life choices, and making decisions that before, he would have avoided or not followed through on.
Damissan seriously considers (possibly for the first time) the idea of a family, and though he’s not ready for it yet, he admits to himself that there are certain parts to it that have appeal.
Damissan seriously questions his faith for the first time, and perseveres, for once sticking with something and going forward.
Damissan faces up against serious temptation to go the ‘easy’ ‘fun’ route which has always been his preference, and though it is still difficult for him, he makes the choice to pass up immediate satisfaction in exchange for trying to do something more meaningful with his life.
Damissan cutting his hair represents finality and conviction to his cause that he hadn’t fully gotten to yet before now.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2016 12:57 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2016 9:51 am
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 5:07 am
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 8:59 am
|
|
|
|
● Words On A Wing ●
Second-largest of Oba’s cities, Jatine was not unlike Sulburi in its raw density and wealth of activity. Loud, busy, alive, and hot—all things Damissan considered attributes of ‘home,’ having been raised under them since his birth, and thus, familiar. In addition to its mass and population, however, it also housed the bulk of the desert nation’s access to drinkable water, and was within easy travel distance of the open ocean, both factors that, combined, gave it a distinctly different set-up, primary focus of business, and smell.
Of fish.
From either side of him, vendors touted their wares derived from marine sources. Fish wraps, fish grilled, seasoned or fried fish, fish scale ornaments, fishbone combs or knives or trinkets. Pearls. Seashell necklaces. Seaweed nets and clam bowls. The air smelled of desert heat but also repugnant and thick with the unmistakable odors of the sea, worsened by the height of day.
Damissan immensely prefered Sulburi.
This, though, would have to do for now. Aside from being the largest familiar stop on the list of locations he intended to speak in — with ‘familiar’ meaning little more than ‘within the boundaries of his homeland’ — it was also expansive enough that he knew he could trust it to have open lines of communication with the capitol. It was only a matter of finding someone to ask who knew where he could find the local birdkeeper.
And, of course, of actually writing his parents.
It might not necessarily have been something in his nature generally. Until his latest change of tune and character, he had done whatever it was that pleased him without a moment’s thought spared to his parents or informing thereof. The world had been his to take, and he hadn’t felt any special need to inform them of anything. They were likely to find out regardless, if they cared enough to investigate.
This felt different. He was far from home—and further each day. The surroundings were new and foreign from the streets to the people to the food, and he had not even yet left the security of Oba itself. Further, and perhaps most importantly of all, though he liked to imagine himself independent and out on a new stride, he wasn’t quite enough of a fool not to recognize that they were still providing for his every livelihood. From the clothes on his back, to his quhar, to all the supplies in his cart, the food in his belly, and even Xilarn himself, all the things making Damissan’s current trip possible were provided for and possible only by the grace of his parents’ coin.
One day, he hoped to remedy that. For now, however, he owed them at least the time, ink, and parchment it took to send a missive and keep them informed of his whereabouts and well-being. After making it through market to attain the necessary supplies and gathering information on where to look for the fowler when it came time to send his note, he returned to the relative quiet of his rented room and sat.
It was harder to begin than anticipated.
To The Attention of Lord and Lady Mataou:
Frowning, he scrapped the sheet and began again.
Mother and Father,
You will be pleased to hear…
He crumpled the sheet.
Mother and Father,
I write from the safety of an inn in Jatine. The air smells of fish here and is most unpleasant. I catch myself thinking of home and hope that you are well. Xilarn Attlee was a pleasant surprise when he found me at the border of Sulburi. Though I did not anticipate the company, I find myself thankful for your foresight in that regard more than once. He is proving himself to be a capable, personable man with much to teach me. I appreciate the thought you must have put into selecting him. His raptrix is an adjustment for me, but I think we are coming to an understanding.
I have spoken with the people of Jatine at every opportunity presented to me. I find that new ideas are an adjustment for most, and my process of presentation is a work in progress as I learn better how make my message palatable to them. Some ears are friendlier than others. Xilarn in particular has been a great aid in encouraging adjustments to my procedure. His help is priceless.
Despite minor setbacks, I am as encouraged as ever and intend to proceed forward to Tivrod within a day’s time. If all goes according to plan, we will be stepping into the jungles of Jauhar some week or two from the day I write this. I cannot express my anticipation in pen for seeing if the trees live up to their description in texts. Speaking with the wild people will be a new lesson all its own. I hope the Amazons do not have a taste for flesh.
Being that this must fit on a bird-leg I will keep it brief, but I hope this letter finds you well. God be with you.
ȿincereℓy and Ӻorever Your ȿon,
Damissan Mataou
After reading it twice over to satisfy himself, Damis blew on the ink to assure its dryness before carefully rolling the parchment and tucking it into his waistbelt. Fortunately, finding the birdkeeper was no extra hassle, and after securing the intended location and paying the requested fee, his missive was off, setting out into the sky.
As he watched the bird’s small, dark wings stretch and recede, an ever-shrinking blotch against the great sky, he wondered under what circumstances the letter would find his parents. And how long before he had opportunity again to communicate with them.
Soon, though, the thought was lost to the other, more immediately pressing tasks of the day, and he retreated into the crowds of the city, his messenger bird making the path home—a trip that would only grow longer by the day, the further he strayed.
Word Count: 1,026 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 10:02 am
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu May 05, 2016 1:50 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
