Hello!

This is my writing blog. I will post writing on it, both fiction and nonfiction. By me, for preference.

As often as possible, I'll be posting 2000-word chapters of my serial novel Strike in the Shining City. I court feedback, especially at this early stage where it'll be easier to correct defects in plot and characterization.

This will also be a home for short stories, scripts, poems, etc. They'll likely have a science fiction or fantasy bent to them. Unless they don't.

The Spell of Vesperia (Nanowrimo 2010 Novel):
I, II, III.

Strike in the Shining City:
I, II, III, IV, V.

Short Stories:
50-Word Short Story #1, #2, #3, #4.
500-Word Short Story #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6.
A Brief History of Metal, Exhumed, The Goose Girl part I, II, Latitudes, Ogre, Share and Share Alike, The Taxman
Things in History You Should Know: Queen Crisantha, Things in History You Should Know: Hal Kolger.

Completed Longer Work:
Underground

Poetry:
BC Ferries Haiku #1.
Pedestrian Haiku #1
Translink Haiku #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6 and #7, #8, #9 and #10, #11 and #12, #13 and #14, #15 and #16, #17 and #18.
Sonnets: Machina, On Waiting.

Nonfiction:
John A. Macdonald and the Pacific Scandal, Pierre Trudeau, Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie, John Diefenbaker.

Also, here are most of my nonfiction history articles, as published in the University of Lethbridge's student newspaper, the Meliorist. Some drabbles are posted in the blog, but not listed here.

And, ahem, I have started to write some Doctor Who fanfiction, which is hosted elsewhere. Sue me, I love that show.

Thank you for visiting. Enjoy your stay.

Arr, there be travel blog!

Scurry over to Girl Vs. Kimchi for hard-hitting, documentary accounts of the most southern of Koreas.

Fiction will still be posted here. Because that's how I roll.

Have suitcase, will travel.

This is the news: I am going to Korea next month! For a year! To teach! This is exciting stuff, I tell you.

Should I do a blog of the experience? I think I should. Should it just be part of this blog? Maybe. Your thoughts are appreciated.

Translink Haiku #17 and #18

Man, escalators!
So many disdain manners.
Shove past anyhow.

~

Translink reps hover
By platform. “Tickets?” they ask.
Those jackbooted thugs!

Okay, so I've kvetched about rude escalator behaviour in the past. But seriously, if you're making an active effort to stretch across the whole width of it while ignoring my 'excuse me!'s while my skytrain's rolling in, I'm going to get shirty. And you're going to have to deal with a short woman wearing a bowler emerging from underneath your armpit. I'm pretty sure Lovecraft had nightmares about that sort of thing.

The Spell of Vesperia, Chapter III

See? I wasn’t lying about writing another chapter. This was a tough one to write. Sorry for the delay.

~

“I’ve got people over there,” she said, waving her hand at the purpling sunset. “Way over by the ocean. They’re good people, I guess, but I just had to get away, you know?”

~

The clock ticked unceasingly in the largest room of the Harlock-Glockner household, which served as a dining room, kitchen, and parlour. The circular table had been pushed out from the corner into the centre of it and upon it, five places were set. Not coincidentally, five bodies were seated in chairs before the places.

A plaid shirt and pair of trousers three sizes too large, boots so small they’d pinch Dot’s own feet, and a blue toque with a bobble on it – no one had a wig, or at least no one who’d fess up to it – should have been beneath Erasmus’ dignity, Dot thought. But if Erasmus thought so, or if he had a concept of ‘dignity’, he wasn’t saying and the specs of light in his sockets gave away nothing.

Ah, darkened spectacles, that was what she needed. But the chances of finding any pairs of any such things north of Englin were low to the point of laughable.

Said her father, in between chewing and swallowing forkfuls of his meat pie – the sort of meat being difficult to discern under the sheer amount of salt and spice – with the grim determination of a soldier on the march, “Blindfold it. Simplest way.”

“I don’t much fancy leading him by the hand all the way down to the city,” said Dot. Her pie was picked at and smushed about until it could only be grandfathered in to that category of pastry. “Or should I just put him on the back of a donkey and lead him that way?”

This did not amuse Evert Glockner and the way his fingers warped the cheap metal of his fork gave testimony to that.

“There’s that wide-brimmed hat I’ve got,” offered Agny Harlock, a taller, lankier, fairer, wearier version of her daughter. “You know, like those police on the frontier wear. That should shade its eyes enough that people won’t seem ‘em until they look, won’t it?” Like her husband, she was systematic in her eating, although she had opted to fully sublimate the crust into the filling.

Dot constructed a perfect pyramid the likes of which would meet the approval of any pharaoh should it have been made of stone, then sliced it down the ruthlessness of salvagers. “That’ll have to do, I guess. Though we’ll have to find better clothing for him. Gods’ grave, he looks like he’s wearing a tent.” Out of the corner of her eye, she spied Erasmus and Bill, both onto their second and both…

Bill Glockner muttered with all the rage at the unfairness of the universe he could muster.

~

The Harlock-Glockner family meals were always this happy. This is why they usually dined out at the beer hall.

~

Later – armed with the wide-brimmed hat, which was thankfully of too dark a material to be mistaken for the official model – Dot, Erasmus, and Bill crowded themselves in Bill’s cubby of a room. Dot had to stand on the bed and to her brother’s consternation, she did not remove her boots first. His chest was open, clothes strewn out for it, in preparation for Erasmus becoming a glorified dressing doll. The hat was placed upon his head for comparison’s sake.

“You haven’t told them yet,” said Bill, holding an ugly woollen sweater up to Erasmus’ torso for inspection. It failing to pass muster, he threw it behind him with a harrumph, an action to which his subject responded with tilt of his head. “About Kit.”

“Why would I?” asked Dot, in the manner of the superior elder sibling the world over. Her arms were crossed and her shoulder blades rested against the knotty planks that made up the wall, the effect being spoiled by the way she had to tilt her own head to prevent it from smacking the ceiling. “Think it would be kind to them? Any use? Oh, he saw her three years ago – which I might I remind you, wasn’t that long after we last saw her – does that tell them anything about where she is now and what she’s doing?”

Bill admitted that this did not. “But maybe with a little investigation…” Another sweater was tried, found wanting, and tossed into the incipient heap.

“Which is why we’re going. Both to find out where Erasmus came from and to find Kit’s trail. But I think you know why I didn’t say more than the first part. I mean, they’re fretting about me leaving enough as it is. I suppose I should keep my voice down.”

“Yep.” He continued his work with diligence. “What about you, Erasmus? Haven’t heard you speak much.”

The lights focused on Bill. “I have not much to contribute. My memories are unhelpful right now. They are damaged. By water? Heat? Pressure? I do not know. I wish I could tell you more marvellous things about Kit. She was kind to me. I recall that I had hair then, but they were not black curls like hers and yours.” As he spoke, more and more articles of clothing were held up to him, then thrown back in disgust.

Bill did not have a great deal of clothes, so it was not long at all before he only had one outfit left as an option – an off-white button shirt and a dark coat and slacks the exact same shade as the hat. The younger Glockner seemed to shake as he had his size double put them on to make sure of the fit, which was, of course, perfect.

He swore, with an even greater passion than his muttering at the dinner table. “It has to be my best, doesn’t it! The only thing that’ll work with that damned hat!” But there was nothing for it and in due course, the monstrous trousers and plaid shirt, along with the most whimsical toque, were returned to their owner, who seemed a touch disappointed to see them return.

~

In the morning, they set out – two hours after dawn had paid its call and just as Judge Holt was setting up court in the community of Arms of Gold. There was a matter of a burglary that the man had to sort out, along with an assault up in one of the camps; no murders or rapes or anything of that sort, gods be praised. Thus, in waiting for the correct authorities to call, the community distinguished itself from the Arms of Gold of a decade past, in which a suspected perpetrator would be strung up or elsewise abused, circuit judge or no. Evert and Agny made their gruff farewells to their daughter at the door; Bill followed Dot and Erasmus a mile down the road before he could finally be persuaded to clear off.

“Mind my clothes!” were his last words to them.

“I’ll send you up a new pair once we get to Englin, if I’ve got any money left!” In Dot’s wallet, tied with a multitude of clever knocks to her waist, there rested ten elderly dollars that she had earned with her own labours. Thus, she felt confident in her promise.

When they were left to the silence of the woods, Dot began to speak to Erasmus, in much the same manner as Kit before him. She told him all sorts of things, of the machines and of magic and how she knew a lot about the machines but not much at all about the magic and how she was going to learn it to figure him out yet…

Erasmus was so entranced – how much it was like the speeches of Kit in the times before! – that he forgot to tell her how his limbs were getting stiffer and his mind slower and how much harder it was becoming to keep with her pace.

By Dot’s reckoning, it would take a full day’s stroll to get to Poppertown, given that no one in Arms of Gold had charity that stretched far enough to lend them a steed. This Dot did not mind. She had made the journey before, even when she was much smaller than she was now, and the thought of a day’s walk filled her with not a whit of fear. It meant a change of pace, a chance to see something new, even if it weren’t quite as new as she’d like.

“I’ve only been to Englin once before,” she prattled on. “But I was too small to remember it. I was three I think, ha, and my family was just coming up from Abelia. They heard about gold, you see, but the gold was further north than they were willing to go, especially with me and Kit being as young as we were and Bill being just a baby. Think you come from the same part of the country as the gold?” Dot took in Erasmus’ impressively blank expression. “No, I shouldn’t think so. You said you travelled from the east. But where…?”

“I am sorry. I do not know.”

Her prattling continued anew and the sun made its course overhead, insofar as either of them could tell through the needles and branches and trunks that surrounded them.

As sunset arrived, Dot estimated that they were roughly an hour out from Poppertown. This was in accordance with both past experience and a particularly gnarled tree on the eastern side of the road, scratched and abused with the declarations of dozens of couples. Except, except, except…

That was with the whole family with her. And a cart that needed pulling. It was just her and Erasmus this time; shouldn’t they have gone a touch farther by this point?

She turned to Erasmus, no longer going on about whatever crossed her mind and plumbing him for answers he did not currently possess, and looked at him, really looked at him. She could not tell for certain, but his legs seemed to swing from his knees at a slower and jerkier gait than they had starting out in the morning and it was almost as if his knees were locking up for some moments with each pace…

“Erasmus?” she asked. “We can take a break, if you want.”

He shook his head, in the culturally accepted way of signifying ‘no.’ One pace, two paces, three paces, more.

“I wouldn’t mind. I could use the rest.” This was a lie and went ignored, even as its target ground ever to a halt.

He stood stock still in the middle of the dirt road. A faint sound of gears could be heard, along with a shudder in his hips, as he tried and failed to prod his limbs onwards to their destination. “I cannot, I cannot, I cannot…”

Erasmus slowly, but surely, buckled. First his toes bent over, then his knees, then his legs, his hips, his chest, then his skull, hitting the ground with a thump. His face was planted into the road, dirt shoved up into his eye sockets.

In the distance, birds and insects chirped. Dot breathed in, breathed out, then – hands shaking – slung her overloaded pack off of her back, turned Erasmus onto his own back, undid the buttons of the coat and shirt, and went to work. Around her, the sky reddened, then purpled, then blackened.

~

“You should know that we’re not exactly keen on you going,” said Agny, once night had well and truly fallen and all the meat pie had been placed into stomachs. The weak light of the lantern illuminated her, emphasised the lines of her face until she seemed a decade older than she was.

“I’ll send a letter, whenever I get to a new town.”

“That’s the only reason we’re letting you go.”

“I promise you, all right? But I’ve got to do this. You know I can’t stay here,” said Dot, said Kit.

Evert said nothing, but he never was a big talker.

On Waiting

 

The steam is wafting from my mug of tea.

My laptop’s screen glows brightly in the gloom.

Outside, the cold yet fails to slow the sea,

As the rain clouds o’er the city loom.

The promise of the new year still remains,

With its resolutions and well-thought schemes.

I jog, perspire, losses exceeding gains.

The French books are lonely; they haunt my dreams.

Yet the albatross, ‘round my neck he’s strung,

Waits for confirmation from a far off land.

The extensive wait is a load of dung,

And the blasted bird keeps biting my hand.

Until I know, I shan’t be a leader.

At least bring me my frickin’ ereader.

 

I’m gunning for you, Shakespeare. Chapter coming tomorrow, finally.

A Suggested Campaign Speech for the Conservative Party of Canada

An election will come eventually. As such, I have generously provided the Conservative Party with some rhetoric to use on the campaign trail. I expect a cheque in the mail.

My people! A storm gathers! Yea, I tell you all to heed my words and learn what will transpire should you fail in your moral duty come the Day of Decision that looms larger with every passing hour and colourful pamphlet.

That filthy, socialist organisation that deigns to call itself the ‘Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’ will convert your children – the fruit of your very loins! – to the false religions of communism and talking back to authorities.

The Americans will descend upon us from the South, the Chinese from the East, the East Indians from West. All these interlopers will gaze upon our natural bounty in a way that makes us extremely uncomfortable.

All your muskets, passed down from father to son for untold generations, will be swiped from your very hands, so that you shall no longer be able to hunt man nor beast in the manner which OUR LORD has intended.

A plague of locusts and terrorists will sweep o’er the land, bombing and devouring all in their path. Nothing shall stop them, for airport security checks will be swept away by socialists and perverts and pesticides will have been banned.

Yea, the corpse of Macdonald shall rise from his grave and none shall tell whether he is a drunkard or undead until his maw rends flesh from vulnerable necks. Thereupon, his strength renewed, he shall chide us all for the grievous error we have committed that has doomed our fair and fragile. But his instruments of speech will have rotted away and none will understand him.

Department stores will post confusing and contradictory hours and none shall tell when it is the appropriate time of day or night to purchase toilet paper or Triscuits.

All these and occurrences too dark and foul to speak of on this sanctified ground will come to pass if you do not deliver unto Harper his majority. Amen.

Translink Haiku #15 and #16

Gold for Canada!

Skytrain crowded and noisy.

Steer clear of the puke.

~

Surrey’s not a choice,

But the horror wrought by twins:

Wrong bus, sudden sleep.

 

I’m working on a new chapter of Spell of Vesperia right now, which is why you’ve been inflicted with haiku over the past couple of days. This must be what Jesus felt.

Pedestrian Haiku #1

Headphones in my ears,

Podcast over your catcalls.

Dude, shut the fuck up.

 

When this incident occurred, I was wearing a shapeless hoodie and baggy jeans. I don’t understand people.

Oh, updates every day of 2011, for your illumination.

Hello, again.

Long time, no see, eh? Here’s why.

These past few months have not been the easiest for me. First, there was the ennui brought on by unemployment, then the special kind of ennui brought on by a job I hated, then… my grandpa died. Then I went back to work at the job I hated and had to muddle through things, through hours substantially less than promised and a feeble bank account.

My writing was a casualty in this. For that, I apologise. This won’t go on.

I was presented with the means of leaving that detestable job and I took it. I still feel sad about my grandpa (and who wouldn’t? The man was awesome and I loved him to pieces), but now I’m in a place where I know that he’d want me to make the best of things, rather than be sad forever. I might be in Korea two months from now; I might not. But I’ll be in a different place mentally and probably physically as well.

Finally, I want to thank those who have stuck by me through all this – through all the past year – even though I was difficult (to put it mildly), even though it would be easier and justifiable for them to walk away. I promise that your faith in me won’t go unrewarded.

I love you all and all the words I write in this coming year are for you.

Well...

I've got to keep going, no matter what's happened. I'm not sure whether I'll manage to win Nanowrimo, but I'm going to try.

The Spell of Vesperia, Chapter II

The sun rose over the dark sea and as she did every sunrise, she stood just where the tide met the earth and allowed its swells to wash over her feet. The cold of it shot through her like lightning and she wrapped herself in her overlarge sweater – made overlarge under the old maxim, ‘she’ll grow into it’ – and stared with eyes so open that it almost hurt.

The day would be followed by work, work, work, followed by what little time with the books she could eke out before the light faded again. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner would consist of bread and fish. Everyone would be tired throughout. But always, if she just woke a little earlier than everyone else, she could have this bit of time that was all hers, where she could see the world turn from dead to living.
Then, once the sun was well and thoroughly up, she set immediately from home. They’d be getting up and work, work, work would start anew.

When she came back this time, however, they were not awake.

~

No one from the provinces came to Belsworth Factory because they wanted to. Built in the northernmost reaches of the Vesperia Territory, clinging to the cliffs alongside the Termina Sea, it struck the ‘provincials’ as these: cold, dark, remote, and desolate. They did not come for fortune, for there was none to be had. They did not come for glory or adventure – those types were weeded out before they could venture any further west than Rochilda.

They came because they had nowhere else to go, neither friends nor kin to object to their leaving, a professional attitude, and a special talent for killing things. All of this described Trillium Annsdottir. And yet, when the fall of her boots brought her close enough to Belsworth Factory’s stoutly built gate that she could touch it, she could feel her bones go cold.

A poet once said that “the northern lights have seen queer sights” and Trillium could well believe that they saw them while keeping watch over Belsworth Factory.
The marshal, Shipwright, gently shoved her to the side and back before craning her neck and shouting, “Hello, up there!”

Not that the two guards needed to have their attention drawn to seven souls below, having had their bayonets trained on them since the moment they could first hear them blundering out from the forest’s path. “Who’s this, then? State your name and business.”

Shipwright tutted under her breath and, much more loudly, said, “Marshal Elodie Shipwright, bringing in a gaggle of recruits from various and sundry points southeast. We request entrance and an immediate audience with Factor Dale Elshern, or whoever has replaced him in the position if he has departed from it.”

One of the guards – a lad of about a quarter of a century with a face that was a mess of freckles and scars – leaned over and squinted at Shipwright through the shadow cast by his cap. He hmmed. “Well, it’s you all right. I guess we ought to let you in, then. Come on, Tolly, let’s get to it...” After some sounds of scrambling and the grind of metal, the gate was pulled open. The insides weren’t any more promising than the outsides, although admittedly par with what Trillium had grown up with. Chances were she’d be fed better anyway.

They marched two abreast through the gate, as per Shipwright’s prior instructions – as for her, she took the lead, taking them directly to the small central building. Some men and women watched their procession with a sort of bored interest before returning to their tasks at hand, such as tending to the garden or washing or preparing something organic and foul over an open pit.

She exchanged glances with Clay, on her right, who seemed just as enthusiastic as she was. He was about to open his mouth to speak before he remembered himself and shut it again.

Shipwright knocked on the door before letting herself in. Five minutes passed before she returned to motion them all to follow.

~

They lay as if sleeping, though with eyes open with some unseen horror. They did not breathe, nor did their hearts beat. This was true of her mother and father, and of her four sibs.

She thought to herself, why did they not cry out? She would have heard them if they had. She would have come running, feet bleeding with the scratching of rocks, lungs bursting with their effort. It did not occur to her that perhaps that was the reason why they did not do so.

~

Trillium hadn’t known what the factor would be like – Shipwright had responded to every question about him with an infuriating shrug – but she was certain she never thought he’d be like Dale Elshern turned out to be.

He was a middle-aged man, perhaps in his mid-fifties, sad and regal. The closest he came to Trillium’s assorted imaginings was his manner of dress and grooming, which was practical and immaculate. A frontier post suggested someone who kept order with the manner of a martinet or a boisterous sort who didn’t much bother with discipline at all. Elshern was neither, reminding Trillium of nothing so much as her kindly, departed grandfather. Provided her grandfather was of a much higher social class and much better spoken, that is.

Elshern bowed his head towards the newcomers, pushing his spectacles back upon his nose as his head came back up. “I am gladdened that you have all arrived safely,” he said in a classical Spiran accent. “My name is Dale Elshern and I am the factor here. During the length of your stay, which will hopefully be the entire length of your contract, you will be expected to abide by the rules and regulations of the Ultima Thule Company and the special ones specific to Belsworth Factory. Copies of the latter will be made available to you, as will the former provided you have lost your previous copy during the course of your journey.”

Then he did something which astonished Trillium: he shook every one of the recruits by hand, firmly. “I cannot begin to describe my gratitude that you have chosen to carry out this treacherous undertaking. You have done a great service to Norland by this act and I wish the best of luck to you all. Nevertheless, I am honour bound to say this: if you have any hesitation or reluctance to carry out your duties here or desire to break with the previously agreed upon contract, please state so now so that I might release you from it.”

To a soul, the recruits refused to. They had come too far and they were too much like Trillium.

~

Not long later – they had arrived late, the sun was setting down, and the grand tour had to wait for the morrow – the six of them sat in the mess hall, devouring their soup and bread with an unseemly haste. But who could blame them? It was the first time in two months, with some notable exceptions, where their meal did not consist of pemmican with an extra helping of pemmican. Fresh and cooked meat and vegetables! Cooked competently, no less, and not a slapdash job at the end of hours and hours of canoeing or hiking! They made themselves as pigs at the trough.

Conversation was created, when it was recalled the necessity of breathing. “We’re here,” said Jordan with a sort of tone that almost put everyone off their soup.

“Why’d you go and remind us of that, eh?” said Thins, scowling. Jordan shrugged and the others, as one, privately thought to themselves that Shipwright had been too much of an influence on the man.

Genton licked the soup off her lips. “It needs to be said, though. And it’s going to be sooner than later before we see... one of them.” But still, they kept eating, for all of them came from the sort of lives that dictated you ate a meal when you got it.

“Yeah, you’re right enough. I hope it’s a later sort of sooner, though.”

“Hear, hear,” said Clay. He was he only one in their little band that had ever seen them in person before. No one knew the circumstances of it, not even Trillium. Maybe Shipwright did. Sometimes, when he woke with nightmares, she would whisper some unknown something in his ear and he would settle down, enough to regain his wits.

“I heard they eat the ones they grab a hold of. While they’re still alive.” Thins shivered. Clay didn’t contradict him.

Greenmountain said nothing, but then, she never did.

~

They sent her to live with her grandfather afterwards, after the bodies had been cast into the sea and there was no more to be said to them. Like them, grandfather worked, worked, worked and expected her to do so as well, but he smiled at her and played the fiddle for her and told her how strong she was becoming.

But storms happen and they especially happen to fishers and that is when her grandfather was lamed. Oh, she worked all the harder for him then, but still he tried to do so himself and he tried enough to kill himself and so it goes.

There was nowhere else to go then, with no orphanage opening its doors to her or elderly spinsters or bachelors eager to adopt her in exchange for an extra set of hands. Westwards she went, with the one skill she had learned in a life of odd jobs that was wanted anywhere: she could hunt and she could do it well. Even when the fear came.

~

There was a howling from somewhere which was certainly not from any wolf or coyote and a scratching noise. Trillium was up and out of her bunk with a start, as was everyone else.

This included Shipwright, already fully dressed provided she was ever undressed at all. “Yes, that is what you think it is,” she said as a matter-of-factly. “Get yourselves decent; you’re not getting any slack just because it’s your first night here.”

Within the space of a minute, they were all ready – Trillium, Genton, Clay, Thins, Jordan and Greenmountain. They followed Shipwright out again, like so much lambs or chicks.

~

Trillium was told that those things were once human and she couldn’t disagree with them. That’s what made her stomach turn so fiercely. Nevertheless, as she stared down from the palisade at it, she found that she could not turn away, not even to vomit.

It was man-shaped, certainly, travelling on two legs, with two arms clawing, clawing at the gate. Its hair hung in lank, colourless clumps from its scalp; its eyes appeared like nothing more than two pinpoints of light in the dark. Tracks of its papery, corpse pale skin had been torn off – clawed off? – exposing the bone and jerky-like muscle beneath. She’d been told that things increased in size with every feeding, so that they would never again feel their stomach sated – this one was twice the size of a grown man of average height, with genitals shrunk and shrivelled between its legs.

It howled and moaned at them all, thrashing and wailing at the gate with such ferocity and speed. If one listened closely, they could pick out something resembling words from the moans and if they spoke the right language, they could understand what it was saying.

“It’s saying, ‘feed me, feed me, oh, just give me something to eat, please,’” said a native woman standing beside Trillium. She had not noticed her before, and she regarded the scene before her with an almost blasé expression. On the side of her head turned to Trillium, there was a hole where her ear had been, as if it had been chewed off. “’Mercy, please.’”

The choice came to all the recruits then to let their hearts break or harden.

Trillium remembered the bodies of the sunrise and all the hardships of the road – how Clay would wake in cold sweats and the way Shipwright would breathe the beer and wine whenever they passed through a settlement – and her heart decided what to do. She took aim at the wendigo’s head with her bayonet and fired.

The Spell of Vesperia: Chapter I

Thus begins Nanowrimo. 2000 words a chapter, a chapter a day, until it's finished. If you're enjoying it, please consider donating via Paypal to advance the noble cause of groceries.

~

He had travelled so far, could see an ocean to the west through the trees, little faltering, little flagging, but the body was not everlasting and now it had to stop. It did.

~

Dot Harlock didn’t know what the thing was. In such situations, one might take it as an affront or as a challenge and Dot would choose the latter every time.

Here is what it looked like: mostly like a young man, a couple of years older than her own eighteen-year old self. Soft features, skin a uniform brown. Now, if that were the end of it, there wouldn’t be any mystery to it, would there?
But his hair, had he ever any at all, was shorn right off, even the eyebrows, even across the entire expanse of his remaining skin. That skin did not cover the whole of his frame, but left gaping holes on his cheek, on his bicep, on his stomach, through which could be seen mechanisms of such sophistication that was nearly beyond Dot’s grasp. Shining from his otherwise empty eye sockets could be seen two pinpoints of white light that danced and darted with all the fear that the rest of his husk did not show. If he was feeling anything at all, that is.

He neither breathed nor moved, save for those two pinpoints, but there was a sort of thrumming noise from deep within his chest and a certain tension to the exposed gears that seemed to Dot as though they desperately wanted to move.

“And you just found him wandering down the mountain road?” she asked the two respectably burly individuals that sat bolt upright in the remaining chairs in the workshop.

Arla coughed in the manner of one clearing her throat. “Not wandering, per se. Wandering would’ve been less odd. No, y’see, Daffyd and I had gone up it to go meet Judge Holt coming in and the road was clear as you’d expect, but on the way back...”

“We found this creature sprawled across it,” finished Daffyd with a dramatic shiver. “His honour’s horse nearly stepped on it.”

“How much time passed between coming and going? Where’s Judge Holt now?” asked Dot, prodding the thing with a screwdriver. A small shock rushed through her and the screwdriver was withdrawn.

“Maybe about ten minutes, give or take. In the mayor’s house. What do you make of it, Dot?”

What did she make of it? Well, that was the heart of the matter, wasn’t it?

~

She soon hurried Arla and Daffyd off, promising them all the while to tell them the moment some new revelation occurred to her. It took her ten minutes for her to remember why this was a terrible move.

Arms of Gold, New Spira was more of a village than a town and as such, news and gossip travelled across it with a speed that could put shame to the fastest locomotive. Already at that morning hour, anyone who had ventured out of doors or had even opened a door for someone else had heard and put to memory all the reports from the crew and passengers of the daily ferry and, of course, from Judge Holt himself. With Judge Holt’s account of the incident on the road, they already knew of the creature’s existence and hazarded a guess as to where the creature was relocated. With Arla and Daffyd entering the fray, their guesses were confirmed.

And then came the endless knocking on Dot’s workshop door. She locked it tight, jammed a vacated chair underneath its knob, and tried to ignore it. She only wished she could cut the lantern light and pretend she wasn’t there, but no one in Arms of Gold was that stupid. The knocking continued, then stopped, then to be replaced with conversation, shouts for her attention, and what increasingly sounded like a beer hall discussion.

The creature became ever more agitated at the constant interruptions – or at least, the lights in his eye sockets brightened and dimmed and spun about with far more speed than they had been doing. Dot sat down again in the chair in front of him, meeting what passed for his gaze.

“What could you possibly be?” she said, nearly a whisper. She did have a notion now, but it was ridiculous.

Nevertheless, Dot opened her mouth again and began to speak – not at him, but to him.

~

Once the land was cold and covered in ice and he did not know it then but he did know it in a time when it was warm and it was filled with people and every day had a thousand and one marvels for him to take in but that time was so short, wasn’t it, even though for him it was all he had and it filled up his entire world, and it had been replaced with a long, black darkness that only had one marvel for him and it was this, “Why is this?”

The darkness ended, though, as he knew it had to, just like the time in the warm had to, and it was replaced with a woman with black curls and brown eyes and that was the most confusing thing of all, for it was happening again with the same woman and like the first time, his entire self was pain and numbness.

~

“So that’s who I am. Dot Schultz Harlock – okay, Dorothy, but no one call me Dorothy except my dad when he’s cross. She who mucks about with machines and such, even though she doesn’t know a damned thing about chemistry or other matters magical that could probably help with things. And I bet there’s a bit of ether running you, eh? Can’t just be the standard electrical current.”

The lights had stilled and remained bright. Dot could swear that he was making eye contact with her.

“I read stories about things like you when I was knee-high. Creatures that looked like humans and could think sort of like humans, but had circuitry and gears and ether under their skin. Golems or machina. Automata. But those were fairy stories. I think.”

Minutes passed. Not in complete silence – “Yoohoo, Dot! Open up, already!” and the robust sounds of carousing put a stop to that – but not a sound came from inside the house.

Dot sighed. “This is stupid.” She got up, fetched the Widow Olny’s clock down from the shelf and set to fixing it, just as she had pledged to do before the morning’s interruption. The creature’s eyes darted about once again. The door remained locked.

~

The woman with the black curls and brown eyes went away again although he could tell that she did not go far, oh no, he could hear her move and sigh and swear and could hear others, many others, not far at all from here talking about a creature and he wondered if the woman with black curls knew that there was a creature about and whether she was safe and were the others there to protect them from the creature, and he wanted to move and speak so badly and he couldn’t, his body was so useless and pained, and he didn’t know what else he could do but sit and see and smell and oh, how familiar and unfamiliar it was!

He strained to move his jaw but it would not shift. Nothing would shift. He had been told by many people to keep trying, though, so he tried.

~

“You are Kit,” the creature said.

Dot nearly dropped the clock on the floor in the process of putting it back onto the shelf. She turned about on her heels and practically dived across the table in her haste and placed her fingers gingerly on his throat and jaw. “What did you say?”

“You are Kit. Kit Harlock. You found me again. This is marvellous!”

Dot trembled in her excitement, just as the creature’s throat did with every syllable he spoke. “I’m Dot. Not Kit.” Was it just her imagination, or had his voice been tinnier than it ought to be? Like it was coming through a pipe? Of course, everyone’s voice came through a pipe when it came down to it.

“But you look the same as Kit and you are the same age as her, so therefore, you must be her.” He hesitated. “Isn’t that so?” How was the sound being made? She could see enough of him to know that he didn’t have lungs in the proper sense, so how was it being done?

“I have a sister named Kit. She’s or was three years older than me. We haven’t seen her in three years. How do you know her?” His jaw worked like a human’s should, though, and his lips and what she could see of his tongue. Even if there was something mechanical about the motion.

“She woke me up and took me out of the black. You’re not her? You’re her... sister?” He hesitated again and Dot thought she could hear a whirring noise from somewhere within him. Within his skull? “I’ve heard of such things. Girl children with the same makers. No, ‘parents’ is the right word, ‘not makers.’ No wonder I was confused. You look the same as her. You sound the same as her. You smell a bit different, though.”

Dot felt her heartbeats increase in frequency and mind boil over with what he told her. “Where did you meet Kit?”

“East. I’ve walked very far from there. I’ve walked ever since I met her.”

“For three years.”

“Yes, for three years.” He added, with the apparent hope that it would explain, “There was no money for riding on trains and it’s wrong to steal horses.”

“So you walked.”

“I’m good at walking.”

A mechanical man who walked across a country that spanned a continent who knew his sister. Who knew where she’d been. This was... well, marvellous, to use his word. He could speak. Could she get him to move his arms? His legs?

“Do you have a name?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Well? What is it then?”

“Erasmus March.”

~

The door opened. The crowd quieted – that is, they allowed the volume of their conversations to descend to over-loud stage whispers. Dot stepped out into the warm afternoon air. The sun shone directly into her face and she squinted to avoid it.

“Now, then,” she announced, as loudly as she could in order to make herself heard over the noise. “The creature’s a ‘he’, he’s got a name, he can speak, and I don’t really know what he is yet. I’m going to fix him up and we’re to do some travelling to find out. Any questions?”

The noise exploded. “That’s too bad,” said Dot. “Because I don’t know anything else. If you’re not my mom or dad or Bill, you can scamper off now. Cheers, bye, etc.” She went back inside her workshop and shut the door hard behind her. Not slammed, mind – that would be rude.

Half a minute later, she opened it again. “Oh, and if anyone has a spare wig about their place that’s just taking up room or at least a decent hat, I could put it to use. Thanks!” And again, the door shut.

~

Dot hadn’t the faintest fathoming what his skin was made of yet and therefore couldn’t make anymore for him, but there was one thing she could do about it. It involved needles and thread, of which she had plenty. She found a spindle with brown thread not far off from the shade of Erasmus’ skin, cut a length, boiled it and a needle in boiling water atop the stove – she didn’t know whether the skin was human enough to get infected and didn’t wish to find out – and threaded the needle’s eye.

“I have to warn you,” Dot said. “This is going to hurt.”

Erasmus nodded. “That’s what Kit said.” The needle pierced the skin of his cheek and he whimpered. “Kit is very honest.”

Things in History You Should Know: John Diefenbaker

Here is the spooky Halloween special I promised. Make sure you stare at the above picture for at least five minutes before attempting to sleep this night.

Gather ‘round the fire, boys and girls, and huddle close together. You thought you heard something in the bushes, Timmy? Man up, little boy. Don’t you know the wind when you hear it?

Now then. It was a dark and stormy night. For decades, the Liberals under Mackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent ruled over Canada with iron fists. All across the nation, the people cried out for change. Little did they know the cost this ‘change’ would bring.

Election season, 1957. St. Laurent – called ‘Uncle Louis’ by the fear-gripped populace – felt his stranglehold on power weaken with his increasing age. A grandfatherly demeanour was no longer enough and it was his bad luck to be up against a wild-eyed madman from the godless west.

But who was this ‘madman’ who captured the hearts of the people with his promises of rainbows and ponies for every child? Raised in a land called Saskatchewan, he dreamed of the day he would rise to seize the office of prime minister – by force if necessary, preferably by gilded words. His mother attempted to dissuade him of these notions by telling him that it was impossible for a western lad to become PM, as she knew the havoc her spawn might unleash. But he would not hear of it.

His course decided upon, nothing could steer him from it. Even then-sitting Prime Minister Laurier – who, as a Liberal, sensed the dark future this lad might cause – tried to push him away from politics when the lad gained an audience from him whilst selling him a newspaper. Diefenbaker brushed him off like he was so much lint and went to sell more newspapers to bolster his war chest.

And though the heavens struggled mightily against him by inflicting a German last name upon him and having him move to safe Liberal ridings, Diefenbaker struggled even more mightily back, until he became a Member of Parliament in 1940. He continued much as he did in the seatless years, fighting battle after battle in periodic leadership races. Arthur Meighen was old and crotchety (and a bit of a dick). He would be put to pasture sooner than later. So this proved true, as it did for the failed John Drew.

Thus we return to 1957, with its red scares and pipeline debate and all that petty nonsense. St. Laurent was rather more in the mood to retire early with a glass of warm milk than fight an election, but Diefenbaker? Ah, he fought dirty. And he had a power that St. Laurent didn’t: the ability to take advantage of the West’s collective Napoleon complex with the mighty force of populism. Against all expectations, he won. A minority government, yes, but he did win.

And you know what? He didn’t do too badly that first year. This was aided by the fact that the Liberals were still trying to puzzle out this brave new world in which, oh my stars, they were the opposition and in which they had a leader that was well under sixty. So Diefenbaker called an election because that uppity bowtie-wearing egghead Lester Pearson was clearly trying to undermine him. The Governor General was like, why the hell not?

The year was 1958. That’s right; Diefenbaker couldn’t even let more than a frickin’ year pass without another damned election. Being Prime Minister wasn’t enough for the likes of him. He had to have a sweet, sweet majority. He achieved this handily by promising the world – one in which he, as the fabled ‘Chief’ would stand at the right hand of the J-Man in ability to grant grace to the hope-starved masses and the frozen north would be transformed into a land of milk and honey. Then the Dark Times came.

The Canadian dollar lost parity with its American counterpart. Darkness descended and a plague of locusts overran the land. The Bill of Rights was introduced, which was like the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms if the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was completely fucking useless. The thought of language rights for francophones made him chortle like a whiskeyed-up schoolgirl. To trick people into believing that his reign was not an unmitigated disaster, he brought forth a woman cabinet minister, a native senator, and native voting rights upon the nation. Admittedly, this was pretty awesome.

But then... he scrapped the Avro Arrow. Because the man loved his America and wished for nothing more to complete the perfection of his life than to be BFF with President Eisenhower. (Kennedy, now, he could piss up a rope.)

The Canadian people slowly began to awaken to the hellish reality they had summoned forth, knocking Diefenbaker back into a minority in 1962 and into the humiliation of being leader of the opposition once more in 1963. Lester Pearson became PM and the long national nightmare was largely over, if one ignored the fact that Diefenbaker refused to leave. Like a decrepit zombie whose jaw had long since rotted off, he stalked the chambers of the House of Commons, shouting incoherently in debates. Maple leaves and Oh Canada? Ha! A real Canadian would stick with the red ensign and God Save the Queen until hell froze over the land. Old age conspired to put a stop to him in 1979.

But even death was not enough to free Canada from ‘The Chief’s’ tyranny, for his corpse-stuffed coffin was dragged across the country by train at taxpayer expense with pomp and ceremony! To do less would be an insult to his majesty, he felt.

If you listen closely to the howling wind on chill prairie nights, you might pick out his everlasting moan of “Everyone is against me except the people!” Don’t try too hard to do so, though – hearing those words have been known to drive men mad as they became more and more obsessed with discerning the statement’s logic.

Timmy, seriously, you’re cutting off the circulation in Beth’s arm.

The Goose Girl, Part II

You thought I forgot to finish this one, didn't you? You were wrong. Donate, if you're inclined.

Where was I? Oh yes.

~

The journey to Isolder was peaceable enough. The roads were well-maintained and it was a pretty sort of scenery of the type birds and other forest creatures frolic in and in which the sort of soul who was inclined to such frippery might burst into song. ‘Velda’, so I had dubbed her, sulked in silence, too overcome with this inexplicable turn of events to say anything. Were it anyone else, I would say that she was too smart to attract any attention from me unless it were part of a plan. But had she had any brains at all, she wouldn’t have allowed me to trick her so easily in the first place.

The only trouble came from Falada. I counted myself as respectably skilled at the art of horsemanship, but the beast troubled itself to move roughly with every step and motion of its back. Neither carrot nor stick would cure it; soon I was sore enough as if I had travelled an entire day on the camp trail. Even focusing on the silence of it all did not alleviate my discomfort, for just on the edge of hearing, I could hear those damnable words.

“If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two.”

Was it directed to Velda or myself? I wondered.

~

Prince Belder of Isolder was more a boy than man – less coddled than Narthena, but with still many years of growing ahead of him. Given what our relationship was to be, though, I made the effort to discern his better qualities. A pleasant smile, a strong jaw. A frame that was just the right height, for his eyes could meet my own on the same level.

“And your handmaiden? How shall we accommodate her?”

I considered. The continued fact of her meant the possibility that she might find her courage or her pride and tell someone, anyone of the deception. Concocting some flimsy excuse for her execution, however, would arouse suspicion. Keeping her by my side would allow me to keep an eye on her, but increased the number of people of actual importance she might inform.

“She is a peasant that was hired to accompany in my journey; she is no longer needed. Please find a purpose for her elsewhere.” That was promptly agreed to. “But as for my steed... She has been a most unruly beast throughout the journey and I am afraid she is fit for nothing more than to be put down. Please see to it in the most swift and merciful manner possible.”

Velda was placed with a goose herder. I thought it appropriate.

~

Belder and I wed immediately. We enjoyed the wedding night, even though both of us were nervous despite ourselves. I shivered at his touch, he shivered at mine, and I whispered in his ear. After many long hours, he collapsed upon the mattress, exhausted. I followed not long afterwards. I am still human.

~

That night, I dreamed of my mother.

She was a handsome woman, strongly built but with the most beautiful eyes imaginable. (I had not inherited them.) She was a weaver by trade and all through the day and into the night, she would sit at her loom, weaving, weaving.

“I always knew, my daughter, that you would be strong,” she said, weaving a tapestry of fabulous patterns such as that the blessed king of Gamelin would not be ashamed to wear. I, sitting at her feet, nodded eagerly, beaming at her praise.

“That you would be strong enough to challenge princes, nations, gods, whatever your heart might set upon. And you would come out stronger still because you were my daughter and my daughter could do no less.”

Her tapestry grew ever more complex, with fields and forests and battles, moreso than any human could possibly create in reality. But this was a dream and dreams were not beholden to reality. “But this?” she asked.

My heart fell.

“Isn’t this beneath you?”

~

The days passed banally enough, the nights kindly. I allowed my brain to drown out the nonsense of the Isoldian court, it possessing no heart nor interest for me. But the nights? I allowed myself to see more than the strong jaw, but the way his breath pulsed and his lungs breathed in the whole of me. I grew to enjoy my prince’s company. I whispered in his ear every night, as per my duty, about the wicked ways of Cordelon and Tanefor and all the enemies of Gamelin and he dutifully repeated my suspicions to the High Council and to his lord father, the king.

Velda the goose girl did whatever a goose girl did during her days. I kept watch over her, because I refuse to be stupid, but she did nothing but drive the geese out every day with Conrad the herder.

I heard troubling rumours, though.

Of a horse head, hung over the gate where the goose herder and his girl passed through every morning and every night, that constantly spoke these words: “If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two.” I went to this gate many times, but the horse’s head was always gone by the time I arrived.

Of a girl who charms the wind so as to blow the loose strands of her hair away, so that the herder may not claim them. But when I went to see in secret, she was attending to her duties as suitable and the wind behaved as normal.

Of a herder who refused to work with the girl any longer and a king who grew suspicious and a girl who overcame her fear enough to tell her troubles to an iron stove. I whispered and whispered into the prince’s ear, but it was not enough.

~

I dreamed of my mother, night after night after night, always fluctuating between shame and pride and fear. I did not know what this constant dream meant, only that it was likely I was never to see her again.

~

Everything had gone wrong.

The prince – technically my husband, although I should not think he was of the same mind any longer – clutched the hilt of his sheathed sword as though it were a neck. The number of guards in the dining hall was just ever so slightly higher than normal and no longer kept to the perimeter. And in front of me was the one person in all the world I least wanted to see. Why did I not find some way of offing her instead of shoving her into honest labour? Ah, hindsight!

She looked very fine and composed, which was such a rare thing for her that I had to stop myself from marvelling at it and giving the game away. Not that, I suspected, that such efforts would last much longer.

“Good day, my lord,” I said, curtsying with my knees bent low and my skirts dressing the floors. “How might I serve you?”

But the king spoke first. “I have a query for you, my daughter. And I require you to answer truthfully.”

I nodded, knees still bent.

He related to me the situation of the Narthena, Velda, whomever, leaving out no detail whatsoever save for that of the name of the personages involved. I listened, nodding. Then he asked me, upon finishing, “What should be the punishment of such a blackguard?”

“Tear the clothes from her back,” I said without hesitation. “Shove her in a barrel lined with nails, and drag her throughout the city until she breathes no more.”
“So shall it be done,” said the king, as the guards rushed forward and seized my arms. I did not fight them. What was the point?

~

And yet, not long afterwards, the clothes stripped from my back – they were of the mind that the nakedness would shame me, little considering that the lack of warmth would pain me more – I was shoved in a windowless cell. Dark and bare. A cot would have been a luxury. Food and water? Ha!

I sat in the black for a long, long time. Doing nothing. Saying nothing.

But I was not Narthena. Torture? Certainly, they would like to drive my secrets and orders from my flesh with all the devices their mind could devise, whether true or false. But I refused to let that happen.

The punishment I described? A shameful thing, not fit for beasts! Certainly it would meet the needs of the bloodthirsty weaklings of Isolder and Cordelon, but they needed to create strength where they could.

But they would try and I was not certain that my strength as a soldier of Gamelin would sustain me. So I slept instead and thought.

~

In the morning – near as I could tell, as the cell had no windows and was lit by a guard’s lantern when there as light at all – they took me by the arms and carried me bodily to another dark chamber. They had many fine instruments there and they introduced me to every one of them, explaining their purpose in great detail. Then, they proceed to use them. I screamed. I refused to yield. And I tried my very level best to...

~

My vision faded. All turned black.

“If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two.”

I know not what I told them.

~

In the morning – near as I could tell, as the cell had no windows and was lit by a guard’s lantern when there was light at all – they dragged me out of the cell, pushing and shoving, hungry and thirsty, cold but still strong. They shoved me out into sun’s glare, crowds at my feet with an insatiable hunger ill-disguised.

The king stood before us all, explaining to the peasant and merchant and noble my ‘crimes’ in the name of my own king and country and nation, even though he knew nothing, really, as my once husband and his soon to be bride stood to the side in their grief and satisfaction. Could I detect a hint of grief on Belder’s face? Remembrances of private jests and kisses stolen when we were certain that most of the court had their gazes turned away?

Could that have been the product of my fevered imaginings as I faced my death?

It mattered not. Into the barrel they shoved me, nails all around. My breath shallowed and I am ashamed to say, I cried. But there was still more to be done.

The bottom was not lined with nails, nor the top. I braced myself against either end, allowing my breath to become ever the more shallow, lest they be pierced with the nails all around. I heard them as they tied the top of the barrel to the horses and braced myself against the top and the bottom, as they urged the horses along and the barrel tilted until it was sideways.

Hours passed. I refused to give up. Bled and scratched and pierced though I was, I did not allow myself to be driven through with every bump and turn, with every passing whimsy of an animal. I cried with the pain and I remembered my mother, at her spinning wheel, at her loom, shaking her head with every deviation from what she thought I ought to be.

The pain did not depart. But the minding of the pain! Ah, that did depart.

Hours passed. I kept my strength. I kept it until I was certain the ravenous crowds would become bored and depart and the streets would empty of all but their refuse. My arms felt like jelly, and still I held firm. As did my legs, but still I held firm. As did my will, but as an agent of Gamelin, I held firm.

It stopped. Horses could only go on forever. The good soldiers of Isolder broke the top of the barrel open again and dragged me out. They considered me. Give the public a show and admit defeat with the first go around or dispatch me then and there?

~

Which would you choose? They chose as I would have done.

Translink Haiku #13 and #14

I skooch around him
As he stands still – confused, mad.
“You're going to fall!”

Recall Olympics.
The endless crush of people,
Elbows in your boobs.

Things in History You Should Know: Hal Kolger

Along the lines of the Queen Crisantha piece, here's another 'Things in History You Should Know' article set in the same world as 'Strike in the Shining City' and the upcoming Nanowrimo work, 'The Spell of Vesperia.' Incidentally, if you wish to sponsor me for that, please regard the Paypal button on the right of the page.

If there’s one thing anyone has noticed about a map of Norland, it’s that it’s big. Really big. ‘Very nearly the largest country in the whole damned world’ big. The thing one must remember, though, is that the map didn’t get so large by itself, nor did all the fiddly little lines and other bits get in there by themselves either. Someone had to explore about, armed with sophisticated instruments, amenable guides, and stuff to write it all down with. One of these someones was Hal Kolger, gentleman of fortune.

‘Twas the year 1117. The mother country of Spira was off warring the other mother country of Langpald (again; it was kind of their thing.) As such, the colonies were warring with each other too, because as much as they would’ve like to keep their noses out of it, the powers that were wouldn’t let them. Ursalia was no exception, for it was a Shulmanian and Shulmania was allied with Spira, QED. Enter Kolger.

We don’t know much about Kolger’s early years. Tradition has it that he was born in the coastal township of Blauenburg in 1086, the son of mariner parents, although there are some tasty indications that by ‘mariner’, they meant ‘pirates of a most criminal and bloodthirsty bent.’ Young Hal grew up all right, though, and by the time 1117 rolled around, he is not on record as having keelhauled anyone.

Nevertheless, he was disinclined towards soldiering on sea or on land so the man described as a ‘giant with a bonfire for a beard’ sought other opportunities to assist the war effort. Such as filling in those tantalizingly blank portions of the map. Find a place, claim it and its resources for your lords and masters, profit as a proud patriot. So he set out into the wilderness, accompanied by a Dakala woman known to posterity as Benathidt.

He kept a journal throughout the journey, writing in it every day and so well that it is known as one of the classics of Shulmanian literature – odd when you consider that none of his previous writings, if they existed, were considered important enough to preserve. He wrote of canoeing to the very source of the Maximilien River, traversing the Giant’s Spine Mountains, legging it across the seemingly endless prairies of Mesopelagia – all and a thousand more feats before finally setting his eyes on the Eila Ocean, near the site of modern day Arms of Gold. When he did so, he writes, he fell to his knees and wept, overcome by it all.

The Nelurians who had set up shop nearby sheltered and fed him, Benathidt, and their three month old son Willem before allowing them to hitch a ship ride in the general direction of home. They were cool like that.

By the time Hal and Benathidt stepped foot in Blauenburg again, it was four years since their initial departure. The war had ended. Hochelaga was now a Spiran colony, along with their original set of Rochilda and Cabotia, leaving Laurentia the sole remaining Langrish colony in Deralea. Hal was hailed as a hero, his journals immediately published for a most respectable sum and financial awards and medals showered upon him by Governor Brauer. As witnessed by the journals which he continued to maintain, Kolger revelled in it. Another son, Erich, arrived in 1123. He and Benathidt wed in the Shulmanian fashion shortly thereafter.

He was happy, wealthy, and honoured. And as everyone with a sense of dramatic narrative knows, that’s when everything went to hell.

First came the death of Erich when he was but two years old. The reason why is uncertain – Kolger’s journals stop at this time. Then Benathidt, the love of his life and without whom his journey west would not have been possible, was found washed up on the shore after a stormy night. Whether her death was an accident or purposeful is, again, uncertain.

The journals never resume, although written accounts of Kolger do. Town records report him stumbling through the streets at all hours of the day, mumbling and sometimes sobbing, drunk to a sickening degree. The situation deteriorated to the extent that Benathidt’s sister was given custody of Willem and leave to spirit him off to her own people, never to see his father again.

Hal Kolger eventually became a ward of the state and he didn’t last long afterwards. He hanged himself in his room (or rather, cell) one morning in 1130, a letter addressed to the long-dead Benathidt the only thing he left behind to explain himself. It didn’t explain much, except how much he wished she would visit him again.

The consequences of his journey outlived the man, the first of these being that the Dakala Tribe became very rich off of his still respectable estate and the sales of his journals. The second of these was tied into the fact that he was Ursalian, or rather, Shulmanian.

Shulmania, after founding Ursalia, had little interest in branching out on the Deralean continent. Nevertheless, by the ‘laws’ of exploration so far as Estelians were concerned, most of it had been claimed by Kolger on their behalf. Neither Langpald nor Nelura were in a position to commandeer this territory and Spira had no desire to piss off a long-standing ally. Thus the hundreds of tribes in between the two coasts went virtually unmolested until Norrish Confederation (with added Ursalia!) in 1245. The individual treaties took decades to hammer out, including those allowing the Great Railway to be built, outlining the conditions for Estelian settlement, and ‘requiring’ assistance in hunting wendigos. This did not stop the occasional armed scuffle, but nothing ever does.

Prime Minister Lark downed several bottles of whiskey and acquired most of her grey hairs because of this Kolger. He likely wouldn’t have felt that much pity, though.

Translink Haiku #11 and #12

How curious, this stench!
It goes wherever I go
I sniff. It's not me.

~

Many empty seats,
Yet he sits down next to me.
Don't make eye contact.

Nanowrimo!

I am preparing myself for it. The tentative title is The Spell of Vesperia (a riff of of The Spell of the Yukon by the barely known Canadian poet Robert Service). It is set in the same universe as Strike in the Shining City, at about the same time period, and it involves girl adventurers, wendigo hunters and magically-powered automatons. Will it be awesome? Yes.

I humbly solicit donations at this time in order to shore up the scant funds I'll garner from two part-time jobs. The Paypal button is on the right; please regard it and donate what you feel what a 2000-word chapter a day is worth.

In addition, I will be posting new content every night until Nanowrimo actually starts. Translink haiku will come very shortly tonight, along with a Nano-related 'Things in History You Should Know'.

Until then.

Not dead.

I'm working on something; progress is much, much slower than anticipated. (The lack of stimulation due to the soon-to-be-ending-yet-still-long spell of unemployment is to blame more than anything else, I reckon.)

Stay tuned, etc.