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How Much Food Do You Need

Recently you may have seen a round of ‘earth from above’ pictures looping around the Internet.  Seems like we get a new batch of these every six or nine months.  A couple made it to my ‘inspire’ tag in my reader.  This is one:

http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/efa_10_06/19_tt.jpg

I’ll serve up a bit of brainstorming for you rather than a disjointed ending-free story.

Unlike the Veleme, who are isolationistic, the people that live here are adventurous.  They could each live out their lives in complete solitude, but they choose to gather together to take advantage of each other.  Not in a survivalistic way but in a increasing our fortune kind of way.  It’s a gathering of striking individuals that suspend their individualism in this one place.  However, since they are such individuals the community could lose half it’s people and still survive because each one person is self sustaining.

For this reason they are perpetually misunderstood by other communities.  Other communities gather to give things up, to allow small groups within the community to perform tasks they are suited for.  Divers dive, soldiers protect, merchants sell, weavers weave.  These kinds of people—that kind that give things up to specialize—cannot understand a group that never needs to give things up to become a community.

Seasonally, probably Neap Tide, the sea level drops enough that only pockets of water remain surrounding the stilt houses.  At this time new houses grow and cleave to the existing ones while the existing ones get repaired.  This ought to either follow some very strict community rules or nearly none at all.  For these folks everything is either good or bad.  Done or not done might be a better way of putting it.  Actually maybe the best way to put it.  Here if you do something then it should have been done and if you don’t do a thing then it should not have been done.  That ought to make for some interesting perceptions on the part of neighbors.

OK so where’s the drama stem from then?  We’ll have to upset something.  Put someone in the community that cannot be an individual?  Someone so dependent on others it drags the rest down, cramps their style so to speak?  But what could do such a thing in a community of individuals existing in a rather relaxed anarchy?  How could one person’s desire/need/requirement for dependency be met with anything but bemused indifference?  Some kind of doomsday situation: if Bill dies, we all die.  So, what?  Bill explodes?  Has some magical disease?  Maybe Bill represents an unexpected dependency the people of this place hadn’t realized existed before.

I’m going to have to learn about equipment free diving and the ocean and living in and near salt water for this one.  Plus survival in an unusual niche.  Where do they get water and food and power?  How much technology does a place like this require (or disdain)?  If you show up with a propane stove will you be derided as some anti-traditionalist or a hero?  Begrudging respect?  Something like that could be a sign of dependence on others for propane.

What do these folks do for entertainment?  Are their lives so full of activity eking out a living that they crash in bed at the end of the day?  Wake early to get enough time to feed their family?  Thus there is no need for entertainment—no down time?  Or is food in the form of fish so abundant that they loaf around all day after a busy morning of fishing?  How many fish do you need to catch to support your family.

Day 301

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Watching the Wiz

Nodding off watching The Wizard of Oz I realized the Tritti/Johnka meeting and story thus far is quite like the Dorothy/Fortune Teller scene early in the movie.  I’ve not read the books, so I have no idea how it matches up that way.

It struck me that unlike the Fortune Teller, Johnka doesn’t make the slightest attempt to persuade Tritti to return home.  This realization bothers me for several reasons.  It makes Tritti appear old enough to be out on her own and I didn’t really want that appearance.  It reveals the author’s intent in the story of propelling Tritti toward Ah’Taconscientee rather than obscuring it.  And it apes the fantasy trope of gathering fellows for a journey to a prize.

Let me start with the least of my worries first: the aping thing.  My primary goal is to write a good book, but I’m sure I’d be somewhat satisfied with just a book.  I could do worse than to write an entire novel that aped fantasy tropes left and right.  The fact that it’s taken me so long to notice means that it is not as obvious as it feels or that I’m so hopelessly deluded I’m not likely to ever recognize my own short comings.  In any case, I’m not worried enough to stop.  I am glad I noticed.

Continuing to work backwards through my original order and upwardly through my increasing concerns brings me to Tritti’s age characterization.  I know when I initially wrote this I intentionally avoided starting scenes.  Tritti meeting Johnka in the middle of a desert already halfway to where she’s going wouldn’t make much sense.  Except it feels right.  I’ve leapfrogged the adolescent angst of running away and all the characterization to make it look plausible for her to survive.  If she’s there she must have run away and she must have been capable.  I guess the rest falls out as carefully done backstory.  Maybe it’s not so jarring that Johnka accepts her for who she’s becoming rather than turn her away for who she still is.  She’s earned the right.  In that case, I have some insight into what the two will need to discuss along the way.

And now the persuasion part.  Despite accepting her for who she’s becoming wouldn’t it be prudent for Johnka to at least try to turn her around?  Suggest comrade caravans headed back to where Tritti was coming from?  He could still help her out but only by making her life safer.  Which begs the question have I characterized ah’Taconscientee well enough (at all) as a place of ill repute?  As well as am I as an author being too transparent about Johnka’s role in this story.  Do his action need a little more realness to keep him from being an agent of the author?

Day 300

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One Sunrise Coming Up Soon

Johnka’s loose schedule and plodding pace left Tritti unconvinced hitching a ride with him saved her any more time than traveling alone, on foot, with no provisions.  He rose each morning at the hour when late sleeping early risers woke.  He heated a brass basin of water and shaved his whole round face vigorously, but without incident.  Then he asked—to no one in particular Tritti eventually realized—”Let us see what we have for breakfast this morning, yes?”.  At which point the same rasher of bacon appeared from the cool-cupboard and was relieved of half a dozen strips with the razor lately employed on Johnka’s double chin and rotund cheeks.  Next he would say, “I’ve rinsed that of course, of course.”

This morning he surprised her by waking early.  So early, in fact, it was still night time.  “The desert is cold tonight.  Bring your blanket up to the cockpit after you get dressed.”

“What’s the hour?”

“Not sure dear Tritti.  It’s one of the ones neither of us sees very often…anymore.” Johnka answered and left.

Tritti wanted to be angry.  After all she’d been woken not long after retiring to her bunk.  But he didn’t sound like he was being purposefully mysterious, just uncertain about the hour.

She stretched and groaned awake as best she could in the short bunk.  When her exertions dangled her legs over the edge more than on she slipped the rest of her weight over the rail and stood naked on the floor.  Immediately curiosity fueled her speedy dressing.  Panties, tank, socks.  Tritti reached for her pants but thought better of it.  She’d worn them for five days in a run so far.  She wrapped the blanket around her body and shuffled out the door.

The earthy smell of roasted coffee greeted her for the first time since coming aboard.  She  continued shuffling to the bow of the sledge and the cockpit.  At the end of the hallway the three-step ladder posed a brief problem because she didn’t want to loose her arms from the warm blanket.  Instead of climbing, she sat backwards on the upper part of the ladder and maneuvered around in a half circle with her feet. Eventually she stood back up.

She flopped in her usual perch—the co-pilot’s chair—but said nothing.

The outside air drifted in cooling the cockpit.  After a while her body adjusted to the difference.  She wriggled an arm out to pick up the warm mug Johnka placed on the dash for her.  She acknowledged his thoughtfulness with a still wordless toast.  He didn’t speak either.  The starry night provided all the conversation necessary.

Tritti set the empty mug back down after drinking all the hot liquid and siphoning off the last dregs of warmth from the mug.  She retrieved her arm to the warmth of the blanket like a rabbit going to ground.  Johnka pointed to the empty mug and raised his head as a question.  Tritti silently shook her head.  Johnka broke their silence, “I know it’s bitter.  I don’t make it much any more.”

“Good that way.”  Tritti rubbed a drop of it from her lips with the blanket.  “I just can’t drink it much.”

 

Did a tiny bit of cleanup in the quoted stuff from yesterday.  You may or may not notice.

Day 299