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15minuteficlets exercise.
Feb. 17th, 2004 11:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynI ran over the time by about five minutes. This is because I was foolish enough to allow that bloody plotbunny a little extra time in my head. I ran with the idea that Middle-Earth developed into a world very like our own, but different in a few regards. Since Tolkien specifically ruled out the existence of Christianity or an incarnate God in Middle-Earth, I find it very hard to work the history enough to make it come out as our world, unless you want to say that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob came along afterwards and picked up where Eru Iluvatar left off... which I am not about to do.
Anyway. This is my twenty minutes or so, from one of the scientists most directly involved in the events of the plotbunny. The world in which she operates is about at the 1930's level of development, with tinges of pulp here and there to goose things along.
Today's word: disguise.
When I was a little girl, my father often took me to see the collections of Tiryat University's Museum of Antiquities. Not the ones that the public saw, usually - that was easy enough to see on my own, or on a school trip. My father was one of the Museum stewards. He had keys to the secret places of the Museum, vast silent rows of shelves with every kind of artifact there ever was. . . everything the University ever had, everything that they wanted to learn more of before putting out for the public to see. The Hallows, he called it. The place between the world of the living and the world of legend, where the oldest fragments of our world before the Grinding Ice could still be found.
I wonder if he ever knew what that kind of talk could do to a growing girl's mind? . . .No matter.
I remember those trips well, the more so because my father was as silent as stones. He said it was best to stay so, in the presence of things long gone. Little love for the chatter of the public, my father had. I think he took the position he did so that he might protect his beloved fragments from the visitors, instead of sharing them. he was like that sometimes.
We walked down this aisle or that, the lamps around us flickering quietly. Tiryat's power supply was never the best, but I didn't mind. There was something about the unsteady light of those decrepit bulbs that made the past seem more real somehow, as if the light were struggling to reach us from across thousands of years, through the walls of ice that scoured away the northern places of the world. When my father showed me a bit of sword-blade, forged by methods we still haven't figured out to this day, that feeble light meant I could all but see flames glittering coldly along its edges. The scroll-scraps I could never touch, nor could anyone else, but the ancient tingwah letters seemed very nearly alive under that light. Shards of Shireling crockery, bits of steelsilver that might've once been someone's corselet- all of it seemed more right in that dimness. None of it seemed quite the same after we left- memory fades swiftly in the bright light of day- but I knew it would still be there when we returned.
What I remember most, though, was the stone. That was the only name my father ever used for it: the stone. Poor name, if you ask me, since 'stone' implies ordinary rock and the thing was fashioned from some kind of smoky, unbreakable crystal, but that was what he called it. I think it had to do with the thing being supposedly a replica of the Erikston megalith. He always said that with a snort, as if he would've liked to tear that idea apart. Once, he told me that it was his belief that the stone was the original, and that the black sphere of rock at Erikston was the duplicate. He rested his hand on it- very strange, considering how reverent he was of the other artifacts- and smiled sadly.
"Sulen," he said then, "history is nothing but a name we put on what we think we know. Words are as much a disguise as any false face. Tiryat was more than we have ever made it, once. . ."
"Before the Ice, papa?"
"Yes." He looked down at the stone, and sighed. "But there are some things we can never say," he murmured. "The world has changed, and all the days of their lives are gone out of the memory of Men."
I didn't dare ask him more. He died without ever explaining, some months later. Maybe he foreknew his death; he certainly had his affairs in order. His last wish was that I find some way of using the money he left me to explore the Sea. The land changed under the hands of Men, he said; but the Sea did not forget, and would one day yield up all its secrets. If I truly loved the past he'd revealed to me, I should look there.
My first craft is to be dedicated today.
Disguises mean nothing in the Deep.
Anyway. This is my twenty minutes or so, from one of the scientists most directly involved in the events of the plotbunny. The world in which she operates is about at the 1930's level of development, with tinges of pulp here and there to goose things along.
Today's word: disguise.
When I was a little girl, my father often took me to see the collections of Tiryat University's Museum of Antiquities. Not the ones that the public saw, usually - that was easy enough to see on my own, or on a school trip. My father was one of the Museum stewards. He had keys to the secret places of the Museum, vast silent rows of shelves with every kind of artifact there ever was. . . everything the University ever had, everything that they wanted to learn more of before putting out for the public to see. The Hallows, he called it. The place between the world of the living and the world of legend, where the oldest fragments of our world before the Grinding Ice could still be found.
I wonder if he ever knew what that kind of talk could do to a growing girl's mind? . . .No matter.
I remember those trips well, the more so because my father was as silent as stones. He said it was best to stay so, in the presence of things long gone. Little love for the chatter of the public, my father had. I think he took the position he did so that he might protect his beloved fragments from the visitors, instead of sharing them. he was like that sometimes.
We walked down this aisle or that, the lamps around us flickering quietly. Tiryat's power supply was never the best, but I didn't mind. There was something about the unsteady light of those decrepit bulbs that made the past seem more real somehow, as if the light were struggling to reach us from across thousands of years, through the walls of ice that scoured away the northern places of the world. When my father showed me a bit of sword-blade, forged by methods we still haven't figured out to this day, that feeble light meant I could all but see flames glittering coldly along its edges. The scroll-scraps I could never touch, nor could anyone else, but the ancient tingwah letters seemed very nearly alive under that light. Shards of Shireling crockery, bits of steelsilver that might've once been someone's corselet- all of it seemed more right in that dimness. None of it seemed quite the same after we left- memory fades swiftly in the bright light of day- but I knew it would still be there when we returned.
What I remember most, though, was the stone. That was the only name my father ever used for it: the stone. Poor name, if you ask me, since 'stone' implies ordinary rock and the thing was fashioned from some kind of smoky, unbreakable crystal, but that was what he called it. I think it had to do with the thing being supposedly a replica of the Erikston megalith. He always said that with a snort, as if he would've liked to tear that idea apart. Once, he told me that it was his belief that the stone was the original, and that the black sphere of rock at Erikston was the duplicate. He rested his hand on it- very strange, considering how reverent he was of the other artifacts- and smiled sadly.
"Sulen," he said then, "history is nothing but a name we put on what we think we know. Words are as much a disguise as any false face. Tiryat was more than we have ever made it, once. . ."
"Before the Ice, papa?"
"Yes." He looked down at the stone, and sighed. "But there are some things we can never say," he murmured. "The world has changed, and all the days of their lives are gone out of the memory of Men."
I didn't dare ask him more. He died without ever explaining, some months later. Maybe he foreknew his death; he certainly had his affairs in order. His last wish was that I find some way of using the money he left me to explore the Sea. The land changed under the hands of Men, he said; but the Sea did not forget, and would one day yield up all its secrets. If I truly loved the past he'd revealed to me, I should look there.
My first craft is to be dedicated today.
Disguises mean nothing in the Deep.
