Tag: benha

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Why Charming Venda Hates Me

As I was making breakfast and logging on this morning I was thinking I’d come back to the Green Man story I’d started last night. Now I’m not so sure.

Last night I thought some on the fact that I’ve not been able to pin down much of Charming Venda’s character or characteristics. During that thinking I dawned on me that Charming didn’t—wouldn’t if she were real—like me very much. I’m not yet sure what that means in terms of her characterization, but it gave me both a direction to pursue and a pause to pursuing it.

I don’t mean that she won’t like me much as an author after I’m done with her story, that she won’t be pleased with my slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I mean that if she were a person she wouldn’t like me as a person. She’d be respectful and tolerant, but she wouldn’t seek out my company. She’d understand that others might befriend me, that others could love me, but she would never feel that way. Now I’ve got to figure out why she wouldn’t like me, and I’ve got to figure out who to put that into a character I would like.

A little crazy; never thought of a character in this way.

First, she’s the type of person who does what they say they’ll do, when they say they’ll do it or when they know others expect it done. She won’t appreciate my tolerance for excuses not to get things done or not to get them done in a timely manner. That would be her surface complaint.

Second, she’ll find my cussing inappropriate and excessive. She’s OK with cursing, though she doesn’t do it herself, but she’ll find my rationale for using impolite language suspect and nearly always flimsy.

My kind of anger won’t be her kind of anger. She will be righteously angry at injustice and mistreatment. She won’t understand anger which is nothing more than concentrated and vehement annoyance elevated beyond reason. Outbursts will not be her style; she’ll internalize anger and then affect changes outwardly. She’ll use her anger to fuel solutions.

OK, Doc. That’s all the shrinking I can handle for the day.

367 words on day 709

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Brother Gane’s Escape: Part I

Gane instantiated the hres he’d chanted up earlier in the day and watched as it enveloped his flit in shimmering darkness—a close match to the Benhá below. The silky circles and strands of moonlight were not part of the hres; they were not reflections either. Instead, they were reimagings of the moon displayed in proper perspective to any observer. That meant that someone watching him on the same plane would see what looked like night water on the bottom half and nothing but near blackness on top. He had not been able to include the Dovetail library, but he had made the edges of the effect indistinct, so in silhouette at least he wouldn’t look exactly like the Old Solex Guy spiriting away a teenage girl on a flit.

Gane buckled his kit bag to the deck directly behind the pilot’s sling and pulled a plastic case out. He opened the case to find a pair of goggles. He hoped the extension Brother Zimdaris had chanted for him connected as promised. It did. When Gane donned the googles and looked up to the flit he found it easily. In fact, it looked like it was bathed in daylight though it didn’t light the surrounding flit pad. Gane chanted a hack and brought the brightness down to acceptable levels.

Hopping into the pilot’s sling, Gane secured the safety line and, seeing a green light for launch, punched the fans. He and the flit rocketed twenty meters upward.

247 words on day 704

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After Morning Coffee at The Galley Cat Grill

Ugh. Must write something prosey.

Upward Charma heard the bay of Melon’s Flitworks creak even before she heard the nautical chime of the Pit’s wakebell sound. The two sounds were close together so she steadied for a substantial surge.

“Ma’am, grab hold.” Charma pointed her only shopper of the morning to one of the stanchions that held her stall’s green canopy aloft. “Quick.”

Charma scanned the Pit to see that her fellow stallmates around the Pit were directing the few early morning patrons likewise. Unsurprisingly the crunkle of the aluminum deck began at the north corner and waved rapidly underfoot till it concluded with a watery slap at the Pit’s south corner.

“Oh, my! What was that? I thought we were safe out here,” the touri said.

“We’re safe, ma’am. Nothing to worry about there. But the Pit,” Charma flicked her finger from north to south across the Pit, “The Pit isn’t moored like the rest of Benhá. We’re only tied on. It’s how you get these great prices.”

“Ahhh,” the woman responded but Charma could see she didn’t understand.

“Like a boat.”

“Ohhh, now I see. So that was a wake?”

“Yes. A pretty big one too. Look over here.” Charma guestured around to the southeast where you could see out into the river’s upper delta past The Galley Cat Grillery. “Should be a cruise ship coming by in a moment or two.”

Indeed in a moment or two a cruiseship’s triangular prow slid into view. It was so close that it nearly seemed to exit The Galley Cat after coffee with friends.

264 words on day 703