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From Roundmartin’s Point of View

I’m forcing something on the Benhá story. Unfortunately I can’t place exactly what. So right now, I’m waiting around for it to ease into place.

Allow me to don the villain’s POV for a moment here. Since the villain or the actions of the villain are what I’d expect Charming to overcome, maybe it makes sense to find out what the villain would do to achieve his goal.

Roundmartin is Charming’s uncle. He’s performed some heinous act|crime around|slightly prior to|because of her birth. I’ve presumed killed a lot of people. He’s punished for the crime and done his time, but is still labeled by it. He can’t get work; can’t get respect; can’t catch a break. This pisses him off because he feels not only contrite but also mother-fucking paid up. Why can’t shit be back the way it used to be before I massacred all those people? No, really?

To some degree he’s looking for acceptance. He’s got it in his head that Charming will understand because they share the same affliction: dermatographia. Or maybe just because she’s family.

Released from prison—or maybe escaped—he seeks her out. For some reason the mechanism he uses to find her produces more victims than a simple phone call might.

Just when he locates her that bastard monk Gane, who had some involvement with his original imprisonment or crime, locates her and whisks her away to a secure site.

Now, Roundmartin has to hack away at that security. He does so via dermatographic entreaties to Charming as well as outright attacks on the monastery which together cast suspicion on Gane or other monks. When this finally drives Charming out into the open he’s got to figure out where she’ll go. It’s not hard to guess she’d go back to Benhá. But that’s pretty fuckin’ easy for anyone to figure out.

Eek! Brainstorming something else must get pen and paper. Bye!

326 words on day 565

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The Secrets Bible

In the center lay a square box draped in gold cloth. A gift maybe.

We people, individual persons really, surrounded this box at a distance. Our numbers crowded deep into the dark corners where the braziers couldn’t reach. Each man and each woman arranged themselves such that they could see the box. We packed ourselves shoulder to shoulder and front to back. Each knew if their neighbor wore rough linen or smooth silk. Where four pillars stood, our desire to see that box cast a shadow of humanity.

The spice of the men and the fruit or flower of the women warmed the air but dissipated with the fires’ smoke and the cave cool of the carved stone walls. Hidden vents replaced the clean human smells with unused outside air.

Only the shuffle of a slipper or the scuff of a boot created an occasional murmur in a room void of spoken words. And, despite a marble ceiling the tallest among us could touch with his fingertips, the room remained hush.

None of we knew what our box held. None of we wished to not know.

The last person, a woman, stepped into the perfectly filled room. All eyes drifted from the box to momentarily light on her. She was unremarkable.

Kung!

We felt the sound in our feet more than heard it in our ears.

Kung!

Someone gasped—not near me—all the others remained silent but looked one to the other. Each person’s face mirrored the others: eyes wide and mouths drawing breath to ask an unfinished question.

A delicate steady drum-pat surrounded we. A distant flute began and did not stop.

For no obvious reason all faces refocused on that box. It rested in the center of a sunken square of the floor two steps down where the lucky first few to enter sat comfortably while most of we stood. The gold cloth marked the sharp corners of the box; four ridges sloped outward and downward to merge with the stone plain. We could see the dark red box through the cloth. It was larger than I’d first supposed.

A faster moreinsistent drum quickened the pace of the music and strings imparted an invigorating rhythm and melody. I blinked my eyes to clear a mote and the box shimmered and rose to it’s bare feet. Our angular box transformed into a curvaceous woman in gold.

She swept a bow into dancing.

412 words on day 564

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Start Doing Next

I’ve mentioned my curating or indexing a number of times lately. I may not have explained what I meant. 1000 Days grows each day—not always wonderfully so—but grows nonetheless. I know I’m losing some good stuff in the cracks. I’m not too concerned about this happening since much is not worth dredging out of those cracks, but there are some worthwhile pieces mixed in with the sludge. And several older pieces I’d forgotten drifted away too.

So I’m indexing. I pumped all my posts into a spreadsheet and started rereading them post by post. I pull out character names, events, places, invented objects of interest and put them in a wiki. This way they can be linked to each other. Each item resides on it’s own page with summary and detailed information capturing it’s essence. At the end I list the reference rows from the spreadsheet so that I can relocate the source material if needed.

Apart from imagining such an endeavor holds it’s own innate value, I also find the effort invigorates my writing thoughts. Usually these thoughts form into tendrils advancing the thread I lost, but yesterday I indexed a pair of back to back entries that held more interesting characters and concepts than I’ve come up with in a month recently. I wonder if I wrote better ideas then or if my learning since that time helps me see these elements with a more purposeful intent. I suspect it’s the former. I think maybe my writing suffered less from a critical eye. I think I felt less constrained to produce quality and volume and more inspired to produce anything at all. The trouble is that none of that writing went anywhere.

Yet.

I hope my nostalgia will resurrect the worthy and my increased inclination toward structure will prop it up and take it somewhere. Got to stop doing now and start doing next.

325 words on day 563