1000 Days

http://zulu-eos.deviantart.com/art/Take-to-the-sky-74685129

Grasping a wad of high grasses in his left hand and wrapping it back around his wrist Jasper acted quickly. That would have to do, he knew it probably would not. He scuffed the dry prarie soil with the toe of his sandle enough to draw in with his fingertip. He traced a near-perfect circle, added two sinuous lines that might have been wings, and poked a dot into the center of it all.

Jasper liquified the breeze and draped it around himself. It did not take long.

Air rushed to him from all sides bending the green grass like penitents at prayer. The air then swirled upward into a vortex with Jasper at the hub. Solid circle shapes and other bursts sprung from the markings he’d traced in the dirt and rose with the air. Mostly they were the color of the prarie: green, green-yellow, and green-teal. Some, of course, were starkly white or deeply black.

Jasper hoped the grasses he held were well rooted to the earth, but didn’t look. It wouldn’t matter now. He strengthened his grip for what came next.

The two wings he’d drawn on the circle flowed along the surface of the prarie winding among the grasses growing there as crinkle of his vision. They seemed like eager beasts waiting on chance. They were desperate to fly.

Jasper needed his attachment to the earth to hold. If the roots tore free too soon he’d spin into the initial vortex and bounce in a painful arc along the ground before going up. It happened before; he held no interest in repeating the experience.

The wings popped and snapped along the surface of the prairies battering the gentle plant life and raising more bursts as they came fully to life. Each lively crinkle became a white ribbon expanding into a sheet and then a sail. One split partway out and formed a third anxious beast. The bursts ran freely to the center and rushed upward. The speed at which they formed disallowed them full solidity so nearly all of them were outlines or double outlines.

Jasper waited for the bursts to be incomplete arcs and wilder half-shapes. They signaled his leap.

A neatly drawn plus sign ran up from the leftward wing. Jasper had never seen one of those before. He hoped it good. The point of each wing ripped free of his tracing. They alternated between losing the rest of themselves and trying to encircle Jasper. One twined his leg and popped him off balance. He nearly lost his grip. When he looked up he saw the unsplit wing’s distal end billow up like a sail catching the wind. Then the split one broke free and lept into the air with it’s fellow.

Jasper caught hold of the wing still encircling his leg. He’d been taught he couldn’t force his will on these things; he could only coax them. He watched the billowing ends disentangle from the earth. Their freedom rippled back toward him.

“Please let me time this right.”

Each wing stripped completely free of the earth and rattled into the sky. The wider far ends wafted high and back toward the center. Good. He’d go up first—no arm breaking. A cascade of bursts erupted around him: stars, octagons, circles, hoops, a curious harp shape, more plusses. The wings went up without him. Distracted, he missed his moment.

“No I didn’t!”

He loosed his grip on the grass and grabbed a pair of plusses clawing at the air like it was a ladder. He stuffed his toes into a hoop on one side and stepped on a solid green circle on the other. He kicked and pushed his way up the flock of bursts till he closed in on the nearer tendrils of the wings. They did exactly as he expected—hoped—they twined his body and rooted there.

Jasper launched above the prarie pulled by three wind filled sheets. Bursts orbited him or rested near his shoulders. Sometimes running up the wings; sometimes trickling back down.

Day 295

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I was hoping to veer out of the conversations The Driver and Olsen were having about sexuality, but all I could come up with was the front half of a convo about dipping Copenhagen.  If you thought I was talking out of my ass when covering homosexuality then you’d have been in for a treat with my snuff chat.

Here’s the gist of where that would have gone…

Olsen pulls out a can of Copenhagen and offers some to The Driver.  The Driver refuses on the grounds that it’s nasty.  An argument ensues about the use of Copenhagen.  At the end The Driver proclaims himself a Skoal man.

I just wasn’t sure that I could fake out the audience long enough to make it seem like The Driver was against tobacco use when really he just despised Copenhagen specifically.  As I understand it things can get pretty Coke and Pepsi between these two main tobacco brands.

That’s what I didn’t do.

Continueing in the vein of talking about things I haven’t written, won’t be writing, or would like to write but wont be writing right now, let’s talk about giants.

For some time now I’ve wanted to write about giants.  From my experience they are a staple of Fantasy that doesn’t see near enough airtime.  Maybe I’m reading the wrong stuff and you can point me to a whole sub-genre of Fantasy writing I have never run across–it’s entirely possible.  At this moment giants are rare for me.

As far as size goes, I never wanted mini-giants.  I never wanted to write about some guys that were just really big and for whom normal human doorways were a problem but not a complete hinderance.  I wanted to write about giants of a scale that made it troubling for them to enter the city.  So big they couldn’t fit down narrow streets or so big that even if they fit down the street–barely–they still incited riots in the populace.  All of which makes me concerned that I need an explanation for their size.

Most fantasy gets away with very little in the way of practical explanation for the improbable creatures and situations it creates.  As a reader this lack is not a problem.  As a writer I’d like to have a way to cover my ass with regards to such things though because I know that gravity and bone structure and heat dissipation and fluid dynamics all pose real and immediate problems for unbridled scaling.

You can’t have a monster ant, because chitin just doesn’t do that.  You can’t have a 12 story giant because he’d crush his own legs under his weight and he’d get really hot and I’m pretty sure he’d need a couple hearts to pump the blood around.

My explanation wasn’t going to be wildly along the lines of hard science fiction.  I mainly just planned to have magic support them and maybe some big heat dumping ears and an extra heart or two.  But mostly magic.

Once I overcame that high hurdle I immediately collapse with slender logic I could explore the troubles of a gang of questers including a giant in their group.

Gentle giants.  Dumb giants.  Angry giants.  Lone giants.  Misunderstood giants.

Day 257

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“Thus far this semester we’ve focused on magic as it applies to an individual.  Starting with various incandescents and aurals.  Then blessings, charms, and something else.  And finally, last week, with shields.  For the remainder of the course we’ll be looking at group magic.”  The room thrummed with excited talk.  The course catalog abstract promised an introduction to group magic.  The instructor’s syllabus scheduled it for the second Monday of November–today.  And the assigned reading from this past Friday explored the historical aspects if not the practical application.  It wasn’t a surprise, yet friends raised eyebrows and excited faces to friends, acquaintances turned to each other to nod, and the loner in the back said…

“Sweet.  This class rocks.”

“Thank-you Mr. Samuels.  It is sweet.  And this class does, indeed, rock.”  While the easy laughter died down.  Prof. Nonchal arranged a number of objects in a row on his demonstration table.

“Miss Callendill.  Would you please?”  He beckoned the smallish blonde girl to come forward.  While she stowed her notebook and pen he clipped the [magicometer sensor] to his lapel and flipped it on.  It boomed an almost physical tremor through the class and then self-adjusted to inaudibility.  All eyes went to the overhead display to make sure it calibrated to neutral.

“Good?”  Prof. Nonchal waited for a reply, “Good?”  Nods and other positive responses came.  “Thank-you.  I’ll run a quick baseline.”

The [magicometer] spiked and faded to a flatline when the professor light a candle.  It wavered sinusoidally when he made a golf ball spin.

Word count: 253
Day 196

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