Posts

Posted on

Introducing Jasper

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

Posted on

Turning Out the Lights

A swath of rain-spent clouds occludes the stars and these clouds glow below a high full moon.  It is night, but Yunil’s feet find the good paths despite.

Rain and mist dampened the plains for several days now.  Good for farmers, bad for travelers, worse for thieves.  While the soaked grasses bent quietly under Yunil’s cautious steps granting him unhearable passage, the damp or even muddy earth writes the indelible line of his course like a cartographer’s pen joining one city to another—joining predator to prey.  His boots are damp.  He moves quickly.

The darkness gives him time to consider his situation because it minimizes distractions.  He focuses his attention on the black and less black horizon or on the silhouette of a copse of trees.  These guide his body allowing his mind to figure things out—if he could only stop thinking how miserable and cold he’ll be in the morning.

Day 294

Posted on

The Owning of Sedge Street

I’m returning to something I wrote a ways back that got cut off sooner than I’d hoped.  Too soon I’m annoyed to say since re-reading it I discovered that I don’t completely recall some of secrets behind the mysteries I proposed.  Go read The Glyphs of Sedge Street then come back here.

Never mind, here’s the quote:

Sedge Street is the the oldest, longest, widest, and straightest street in [city].  Sedge remains the most obvious, but not only, symbol of an ancient time.  The historians told the architects who told me there was no reason for its length, no reason other than the seduction of space and the greed to consume it.  I think maybe the builders and craftsmen who constructed the first shops and stables along SSN wanted to market their wares in a primary spot—not one wanting to be even a convenient step or two off the main way.  Everyone wanted to be first so they lined up next to each other like children neatly arranging blocks for counting.

The width they know with a certainty to derive from the need to turn a horse team around on itself to exit town after dropping off goods.  The side streets have always been barely more than cart paths.

Its straightness is a cartographers joke or mistake.  The original planners listed shops, dwellings, liveries, stables, government buildings, and the like on a scroll of butcher’s paper.  Next to each entry, like a bulleted list, lay a large square.

Eesh, gonna have to let this idea simmer down in my head before I proceed.  Guess my week off left my brains weak and flabby.

Three corners of that square hold a number: upper left for the order of construction, upper right for the family, lower left for the type of building.  Each of these three is conspicuously indicated on the scroll in a legend or note.  The fourth corner, the lower right corner, holds a glyph.

Before I commence I should add that I don’t recall what the SSN (Sedge Street North?) means.  My explanation never got there, but it was supposed to draw a link between the bulleted list of squares having become the ‘blueprints’ for the buildings rather than just the list.  That gets lost—or just plain not said—in my zeal to add some mystery with the glyph thing.  That’s pretty much why I stopped short there.

I know this for certain, not from legend, from books, from architects, or from historians.  I know it for certain because I am holding that scroll.  I’ll leave that for a time and talk about how I got here.

Like the original landowners the current crop resisted giving up their prime spots to a competitor.  Without even knowing my intentions the whole line of them—many rabid competitors themselves—bonded to keep me out.  Not one would sell to me no matter the sum I offered.  Three maintained spots so seductive I offered them money that could keep any number of great-great grandchildren spoiled and useless all their lives.  Still they held.  Most of them I loath as individuals and will never come to call them friends, but as a group, as a brotherhood, as a cabal,  whatever word of solidarity you might choose I respect them deeply.  That’s because I have a hint of where that resolution comes from and its not from them.  It’s from the street.

I’m sure they would be despondent to learn that their united refusal led to my epiphany.  Had they just wrangled amongst each other jealous of the pointedly disparate offers I made to contiguous locations.  Had they just behaved in such a way as to let me think they would eventually crack—patience I have—I would never have discovered the better of all my attempts to purchase space on SSN.  Well, not some much on SSN.

Due to some carefully crafted taxation legislation the government was no longer making money on SSN.  They were holding even maybe going down even.  When I offered to purchase the street itself they…

This is why I don’t do NaNoWriMo.  I can’t just flow.  So to get it out there let me just cough it up in all it’s slimy yellowish glory:

Basically he bought the street and built a building on the street itself.  Among a few other restrictions the city required it not be more than 5% obstructive but as it turns out as a tourist attraction it near quadruples traffic population to the area.  He bought a 10 mile strip outright and got a 20 year moratorium on purchasing the 20 miles on either side of his block.  Essentially, he knows something about the glyphs that even I don’t—yet.

Day 293