Speaker's Identity, Prologue Rewrites

Pre-commentary: It turns out that I have three different versions of this. There's the original version, which is about four and a half years old, and the second version, which is about a month younger, and the 'final' version, which is about a half-year old. Rather interesting how my writing changed in one month, much less four years.

I'm kinda embarrassed by the first two. The third one is meely passable.

By version three, I changed the name of the Tesper to the Eidolon. I can't figure out whether I like Version 1 or Version 2 better, but Version 3 is definitely an improvement. At least, in my opinion.


Version 1
[Some parts were cut out; aka, erased, so I can't read them anymore.]

The man moved among the trees. He tucked his rifle under his arm, knowing he would no longer need it. Armored boots padded softly on the forest floor, taking care to avoid rocks and sticks.

His gray uniform snagged on a thorned bush. Yanking it free, he left a tattered scrap of cloth fluttering on the branch.

It was imperative that he complete his mission. All humanity counted on him.

Tucked into a flap of his jacket was a small metal sphere with one button. That button was colored bright red.

It was a bomb. A deadly explosive with the force of a thousand bolts of lightning. Destined to become the human salvation. The target? A clear dome made of a strange crystalline substance, housing a strange life-form.

The Tesper. A human being - in appearance, at least, but with an unfathomable power. Magic, some called it. Sorcery. Witchcraft. It was known by many names, to many cultures. Mythical. Mysterious. Ridiculous. Even, stupid.

Some called it fact. Some called it fiction. But none knew of the Tesper. The Tesper was power in itself. Energy. It had the power to cure and heal. The Tesper could summon the elements of the earth - fire, water, wind, lightning; it had the strength to destroy with a thought.

That was why he must continue. The Tesper had sensed the others, and now they were gone. One by one, he had seen his friends struck down. Fire, consuming a woman in a writhing blaze of agony. A swift bolt, striking down men left and right. A face twisted in pain, forever frozen in a block of ice. The last one to go had been his close friend. Shrieking winds had swept him away into the endless skies.

"I will avenge you!" he growled under his breath. "By the death of the Tesper, you shall be avenged!" Just across the clearing the shimmering crystal stood; a prize to be taken. The prize of victory.

Crawling flat on his belly through the weeds, he pulled out the sphere. Sweat mingled with blood dripping donw his facce. He paused a brief moment to rest.

So close to the target. So close to salvation. By pressing the button, he would blast away twelve acres of land, causing the death of the Tesper, the life of the forest, and... himself.

Hand shaking, he placed his thumb on the button. For a split second, his nerve failed him. He crouched numbly in the undergrowth, cursing his fears.

The thumb resting on the trigger trembled with nervous anticipation.

"At least I shall not die by the Tesper's hand," he whispered, and pushed the button.




Version 2
[The revision of V.1, but otherwise unedited.]

Below the knee hung a shredded mass of flesh, the skin torn off and hanging. Where the decimation began at the knee, lifeblood pumped out, caking and lumping in a huge scarlet mass. Where the foot should have been there was nothing but a charred stump where blood no longer flowed.

Lying on the ground, he could see the sky. Pure blue, stretching as far as his eyes would go, was marred by a strand of dark, dark hair that had fallen over his forehead.

Weak and drained, the man rolled his head over to look at his outstretched hand. The fingers lay absolutely still and unmoving, not cold yet limp, the fingers of a dying man. In it lay a tiny black device, not unlike a remote. One red, square button covered most of the top surface.

Grimacing, he tried to move his fingers, to get any response from them. They would not move, refusing to admit that they were part of a barely living, breathing being.

At an odd angle to his shoulder, his other arm, the left one, lay awkwardly across the large root of a tree. This arm he could move - but only a little, inch by inch, to his side.

With some effort he moved the broken arm across to the numb one. Each move was punctuated with a soft, strangled gasp at the pain. Finally, as his hand reached the elbow of the other arm, he stopped. Sweat beaded across his face.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he gritted his teeth. With a sudden, sharp jerk he grabbed the elbow of the numbed arm and lifted it a fraction of a centimeter. Barely enough to tip the remote-like device onto the ground. Immediately he dropped the arm. It landed with a barely audible thump, leaning against the box.

"Please," he groaned aloud. "I am alone, I cannot move. How long must I endure this agony?"

The only response was a faint breeze that could not even ruffle his sweat-dampened hair. Silence permeated the air, a thick, stifling silence where nature held its breath and waited.

Even as he coughed blood up, the air muffled his labored breaths, his pleas for deliverance onto death.

And after he had been silent for a while, he realized that he was truly alone. He wanted to die, to end the suffering, to block out the despair of defeat.

"But who am I," he thought to himself. "Who am I, to forget why am I am here, and for what I am dying?" He looked again towards his lifeless hand. The tip of one finger lay over the red button, not exerting enough pressure to move it.

Now as the shadows of the trees fell across his face, he smiled bitterly. "I will die so that others may live," he thought. "But I do not have to gloat at the victory made of defeat."

The pain of his decimated leg, his broken arm, faded away as he dredged up the last of his waning strength. Blood gushed freely from his leg, soaking into the ground or leaving puddles in fallen leaves. He rolled onto his side and swept the broken arm over, slamming it hard onto the button. He closed his eyes with finality.

* * * * * *

Moments later, an explosion rocked the earth. A shockwave spread and grew, shaking dirt down over the body that lay still on the shaking ground.

Across the sea tidal waves rose and fell. Huge faults split the lands. And in a remote part of the ocean, an island sunk beneath the waves.




Version 3
[Unedited from February of this year. A rewrite, no revision/editing of previous versions.]

His fingers made long, bloody furrows in the dirt as he clawed his way up the hill. He had almost reached the top when the object of his search caught his eye: a small, innocuous black metal box, half-covered by the ragged corpse that had fallen on top of it.

Without thinking, he smiled. The remains of his left leg trailed behind him, further marking the ground with his blood as he crawled to the box. One hand reached out to touch it, gently, and the other, missing a finger, pulled it toward him.

He sat up, resting the little box in his lap. Somewhere nearby, something was burning. Had his sense of smell not been obscured by caked blood from the part of his cheek that had been ripped off, he might have been able to smell the mingled odor of roasting flesh and burning pines.

His good hand caressed the box tenderly, stroking the sides with one finger. He did not remember, yet, how to open it, but again, he smiled. It belonged to him now. This box was previous, a treasure that many had given their lives to protect.

And therefore, here, surrounded by the thousand bodies that had died before him, he would reveal to the world this treasure.

His fingers tapped the top of the box, at first aimlessly; then faster, insistent, until he slapped the side of the box with the palm of his hand.

Obligingly, it opened.

He looked at the thing inside, and his entire body trembled.

What manner of treasure had he come this far to obtain!

His hands shook. But he had already found it, found that small and deadly object that all soldiers knew was meant only to destroy. A simple, yet devastating grenade, with an explosive power made greater by illegal chemical additives. His smile grew.

He let the box tumble from his lap. It fell down the hill a ways, its progress finally arrested by a pile of newly deceased bodies. On these bodies, he knew, was enough remaining ammunition to cause an explosion well beyond the power of the grenade alone.

The pin pulled easily out of the small metal sphere. For the briefest of moments he looked at it, at that small black box, and lifted his hand in one gesture of finality.

His body relaxed as it released the explosive, falling back against the ground, and the thing sailed through the air. The only sound in the moment before it hit was the dying man's defiant final word, that named his precious treasure:

Eidolon.

From this day forward...

All these posts are brand spankin' new.

In the meantime, I'll post something new in a few minutes, once I get it typed.

The Sampler

In history, we learned that America is the most important country of the world. This means that we have the terrible duty of ruling the world even if people hate us. However, we are not allowed to call the President the “King” because “President” sounds more democratic and we are supposed to be a democracy. Actually, we are a “Democratic Republic.” This means that we are a divided country, because Democrats are liberal (that means that they put a lot of butter on their bread) and Republicans are conservative (that means they try to save the butter for later). I think we should just buy a lot of butter and give the Democrats most of it and the Republicans just a little bit, and that would solve our problems. Mom says that spread is cheaper to buy, though, but since it’s mostly made out of oil, we should probably just use it to run our cars.

===

“It’s been a while,” Black said to himself. Iria looked over at him, and said nothing about his muttering. She still had not become very tolerant of his endless ogling, but she didn’t seem to mind when he just walked alongside her and mumbled. Most of the time he mumbled about how cold it was, and sometimes about how persistent Iria was in turning him away, and now, more recently, on how he really, really wasn’t looking forward to coming back to this place.

They had walked on quietly for the while now, through the slowly-melting snow. More often than not one or the other would stop paying attention to where they were walking and would have to be pulled up damply from a wayward snow-drift, looking a little sheepish.

“Been a while since what?” she asked finally, and he managed a laugh. Her curiosity had finally gotten the better of her.

“Well,” he answered, a little more relaxed, “we’re coming up on my place in just a few hours. It’s a little nerve-wracking, you know?”

“You haven’t been there in a while?” Iria, looking at him, nearly jumped away when he reached over to hold a branch out of her way. “What did you do wrong that made you not want to come back?”

He muttered something.

“What?”

“I said…" Black put a hand on her shoulder, stopped her from walking, and whispered something into her ear.

Iria jerked back, shocked, and stared at him in horror. “You did what? And now you’re doing what? How c-“

===

The second lightning storm came down upon us harder, more furious than before. It was the day before the fair, and the entire town shivered in their houses.

Through it all, Grands sat in front of the fire, staring into it impassively, though the walls seemed to melt and fade away around her. Impassive, save for one moment, when I, barely lucid, stared at her silhouette against the fire, and she pointed at me. Amid the sound of thunder and the crash of lightning, her voice echoed shrilly in my ears:

“You - it’s you! Your fault! It should never have happened -!”

When it was all over, the house was missing parts of the wall and roof, and I had not slept for days. I lay in bed listening to the fearful murmur of the town around me, my body limp and too weak to move.

==

“But you surely realize that leaving will put you in some greater danger of losing your seat than before.”

“I,” Siren said, exaggerating the word a little, “have been proven several times over to be quite unfit for the House Seat. If I manage to succeed, it will only be because the requirements are so lax. Seventh circle, second class? I haven’t found a single House Head in any of the book so far that was below fourth circle, first class. Or are you hoping that I’ll somehow magically - er - somehow grow stronger between then and now by staying home and studying my books? Or that I’ll become any more Talented or that I’ll learn something useful?”

“Sirenia-“

“Siren. Seer-en. What were you thinking, naming me that? Yes, I’m a seer. Only a Reader, even. No big deal. There’s more of us than we let on, I’m nothing unusual. No Healer or Enhancer or Shield or anything useful. I’m not going to spontaneously discover any new Talents along the way. I’m not going to be any more qualified or special like all the other House Heads. It’s not as if by birth I can suddenly just be worthy of a throne, or a House, or a Guild - ”

“Sirenia Anna.”

Siren didn’t flinch, but she shut up.

===

I missed the bright orange “OFF LIMITS SIGN” and walked right through the one area where the construction tape had fallen down. Up ahead was one of those giant cranes, carrying a load of those cement beams. I stood below it and looked up, fascinated, up until the moment that the crane’s load decided to strategically detach itself from the cable.

A second later I gawked at the transfer student as he calmly held two cement beams, one in either hand, about a foot over my head.

===

Eventually the talk died down, and the camera continued to focus on Cal, who was walking across the parking lot to his Mercedes. One of his shoelaces on his sneakers had come untied, and one could see clearly the “NB” symbol scrawled across it in crass shoe commercialism. They focused the camera on that for a few seconds, commenting on how ‘endearing’ it was to fans that Cal was such a common kind of guy, and so easy to like for it.

Yeah, I know. Better than you do.

He got into the car, dark blue and compact, rolling down the window and giving the horn a good honk to make sure all the reporters cleared out of his way before he backed out. The camera came in for a close shot of his license plate - BE GREEN - an obscure political/vegetarian reference - before the view went back to the studio, where the perpetually smiling woman anchor was smiling even more and the male anchor smiled too, albeit somewhat confusedly.

===

Precious Vera is a child, and I am watching her romp through the grass, turning back to laugh at a tall, grey-eyed boy, somber and silent, watching her. I think a little while, and realize that I am Allegra, mother of the boy, whom I have named, but who has no name. I know that Vera is my darling, daring daughter-to-be, for I can see such things - and I can feel my smile spreading as Vera runs back to take my son's hand, pulling him along with her.

I follow them to the garden, wide and sweet-smelling within the confines of a castle wall, and Vera makes the young prince a crown from the tiny little Vervain plants that are her namesake, telling him gaily that a prince needs a crown.

===

“This is him?” My mother whispered to me, watching Michael set our poster boards down on the living room floor of our house. She’d just come back in from weeding the garden - it was fall, and I wasn’t sure why she bothered. “They have guys like that in advanced placement classes?”

I shushed her, turning red with embarrassment when he turned to grin at the two of us. Did he hear?

He grinned even wider at me. My mom laughed, and it had all turned into a big joke. I looked at the both of them, half-humiliated, half-confused. Why was that funny?

Some time later, when we were both bent over the board meticulously gluing down cardboard-backed pictures, my mom brought us drinks. She had a cold Coke in one hand, and a Sprite in the other. Of course, she offered him the drinks first, and seemed surprised when he took the Sprite with a thank-you.

“You don’t have to worry about Vera,” she said, holding the Coke out towards him. “She’ll drink any soda you give her.”

“Mom!” I protested, eliciting a laugh from both of them.

==

“Ither,” she said aloud.

In front of her, on the desk rather than the chair, a faint shimmering appeared. Dust motes coalesced and took on color, quickly solidifying into the shape of a young boy. Light brown hair tied back into a tail, and clothes of a style a thousand years old - this was Ither. He dangled his legs over the edge of her desk, gripping it with slightly translucent hands.

“You are troubled, akanasana.” He spoke with the voice of an adult, rather than a child. In truth, his voice was close enough to that of the king that the lady tensed. “Akanasanen is troubled as well, and I am willing to gamble that it is for near the same reason.”

“I will not go back and apologize to him,” she snapped, coming over and yanking her chair away. Ither had been using it as a footrest, in his insubstantial form. “It’s his fault, mocking me like that - “

“No.” Ither disappeared from the desk and reappeared beside her, his ethereal figure pulling the chair away from her. “You hold a grudge still from years past.”

“That’s - you - he knew how I felt,” she said, voice trembling a little. “He knew, and he took advantage of it - he hurt me, to be cruel to me. How can I forgive him?”

===

She crouched shivering, watching the remains of the house crumble in flames. It had been her fault, though none of them knew it. It had been her fault, and there was no one left..

No one left! To comfort her, to tell her it was all right. To tell her that her parents had not just perished in the house that she had set on fire. Zaya was alone. She didn’t cry. She couldn’t cry. It was her fault, so she wasn’t allowed to cry. No - no one could comfort her, anyhow. A girl who had killed her own parents didn’t deserve to be forgiven and consoled. A girl who had done such a thing deserved to die -

===

Allegra found the girl perched precariously on a tree branch much too high for her to climb, watching the soldiers prepare for departure.

She stood watching for long moments, letting the wind blow her hair astray, occasionally brushing an errant strand out of her eyes. The girl wouldn’t come to any harm - she had gotten herself up the tree and would come down in the same way. However, the girl seemed to be more fascinated with the soldiers than with her daily lessons, which annoyed Allegra to no end.

“Thea,” Allegra called. “Althea Aislin, come back down right now!” She stood, hands on hips, as the girl looked down, startled.

“Coming, ‘llegra!” The girl, with seemingly no apparent care, took a wobbly step on the branch, then jumped down from a height of nearly fifteen feet, landing neatly on the grass in front of her teacher.

Allegra gave the girl a fierce glare. “You should be waiting for me, not climbing trees to watch the soldiers.”

The girl looked only a little apologetic. “There was this one soldier who felt bad, ‘llegra,” she explained, “so I was watching him to see if he was going to do anything bad.” She nodded, as if this concise explanation made as much sense so as to be understood. “Someone else should watch him if I can’t, because I think he wants to do something bad, and his mother isn’t around to scold him.”

This time Allegra took the girl’s arm, and looked intently into her eyes. “He wants to do something bad, Thea?”

Thea nodded, opening her mouth to explain more, but instead Allegra began to pull her across the lawn and around the walls of the keep, towards the west gate. “Can you show me which soldier, Thea?” She did her best to walk in a dignified way across the grass, although it was hard to both run and look dignified at the same time. The girl skipped beside her.

===

The doorbell rings. She runs to answer it, her bare feet slapping across the kitchen floor, then pads across the carpeted foyer to the door. She peers out the little window beside the door, and stares: there is a police car parked on the curb, and a tall, imposing man looking in on her. Frightened, she turns on her heel, slips on the carpet, and nearly falls. “Billy!” She yells, calling her second-oldest brother down - he is four years older than she. “There’s a policeman at the door!” Her parents are not home.

===

Thou art. Contrarily, you may not be art, though society may often define characteristics of individuals such as you, a human, as art. Questions arise such as, "Art thou art?" and "Art thou skilled in an art?” These questions can only be answered by analysis of the word "art", its meanings, interpretations, and usages. I "art" not, due to grammatical incorrectness in using the second person singular present indicative of "be" in referring to myself...

Harry Potter Fan Fiction Attempts

Hahahaha, hahaha. Hahahahahahha. I make myself laugh. A lot. This is actually a LOT funnier than when I wrote it. Try the very first clip of my only Harry Potter fanfic:


Chapter 1: The Outset


The year is that selfsame in which Harry Potter and co. arrive also as first-years at Hogwarts. It is the bare second week of their first term there, and therefore they are still learning the rules, ways, and particulars of this most magical place.

Vera, as few will be surprised to note, managed to arrive just on this day, late because her grandmother insisted (for a week and a half) that she would come see Vera off at Platform "Nine and Three Quarters". Therefore Vera was held back by the inability of her muggle grandmother to go through the wall on the first day, and the following days had to stay in the hospital while said grandmother had reconstructive surgery on her nose.

And thus Vera arrives at Hogwarts, fresh out of the train, and is quickly sorted into the great house of Ravenclaw. Herein begins the adventure. Well, it doesn’t start like an adventure. But you'll see, you'll see.

Vera ran down the hallway, shoving her glasses further up her nose as she struggled with the immense load of books in her arm. Somewhere inside her sleeve she'd lost her wand; but that wasn't important, it was the first day of her classes - and she was already two weeks behind! She remembered to mentally thank Grands for making her the only new student to be almost two weeks late for term.

There were stairs right here she was supposed to turn into and go down, and Vera did this with alacrity, barely missing a step as she fled down them as if chased by a pack of ogres. It was only when she was halfway down when she began to hear footsteps, coming from below, above her. This dubious sound, echoing within the clatter of her own steps, quickly halted her progress as she took a breather in the middle of the stairs, hoping desperately that the up-comers were either students, or some teacher that was in too much of a hurry to notice her.

As the sound grew louder Vera could hear two voices, and sighed with relief. ”She’ll will throw a fit if we’re late for the third day in a row!” one of the voices said breathlessly. “And with that weird trick of hers you’ll never know if it’s her cat watching or if it’s actually her.”

“That trick is so bloody cool!” said the other voice, slightly higher pitched, and more excitable sounding.

His voice seemed to pinch Vera’s ears, especially with that strange way he emphasized the “bloody coolness” of whatever trick that was. I’ll bet he’s a redhead, she wagered to herself, and, having recovered her breath, began to walk down the stairs again.

That proved to be a veritable mistake.

The two that had been running up the long stairway towards her charged around the bend like a pair of rats on fire. She let out a startled squeak and dropped her books. In slow motion, the books tumbled down the stairway and onto the oncoming feet of the upstairs stampeders. She watched in horror as the first one, a medium-ish figure with a Gryffindor robe, stumbled on her Herbology textbook. The second figure, a redhead (Hah! she thought to herself. I knew it!), caught his shoe on the robe of the first one, and thus the two crumpled in an undignified heap on the stairs.

Vera sighed, and the glasses promptly fell off her nose. She glared fiercely at the stupid thing, and then turned to glare at the two who’d been running up the steps. “How rude!”

The both of them scrambled upright, grabbing a few of her books as they went, and offered them back to her. “Very sorry,” said the first one, straightening his glasses on his nose. He had a strange lightning-shaped scar on his forehead, half-covered by dark hair, though it barely merited her stare.

“Sorry,” echoed the redhead, brushing his robes off in an agitated manner. “We were late for McGonagall’s class, y’see, and-“

“Wait,” Vera interrupted. “Did you say ‘McGonagall’? Where’s her room?”

“Up here,” explained the first one. “You’re lost too?”

“It’s my first day,” she said haughtily, and sniffed at them. “I can’t help if it someone gave me the wrong directions.”

"Oh," said the first one apologetically. "Sorry. We'll show you the way if you want. By the way, I'm Harry - Harry Potter. This is Ron Weasley." He nodded at the redhead as Vera hid a snicker. What kind of a name was Weasley? He looked like a Weasley, whatever one looked like.

"I'm Vera," she said, continuing to glare at them, "and you are standing on my book. My book. And you quite nearly tore the cover off of my Herbology text. Harry Potter? The name sounds familiar, but... Get off my book!"

Harry jumped off of her book sheepishly, nearly into Ron, who dodged just at the last moment. She picked it up along with Herbology, and sighed. How completely inept of them. Vera rolled her eyes and searched around on the floor for the useless glasses. Where had they gone? She hoped they hadn't gone down the stairs. It wasn't as if she needed them, but...

As she stood, Ron looked extremely uncomfortable. "You don't wear glasses, do you?" he asked, shifting one of his feet. She heard a distinct sound of glass, winced, and nodded. This time she let them hear her sigh, as loudly as she could with dignity.

"Never mind. We'd better go before it's too late.

>> Disclaimer: I am not making fun of British accents. I am just VeraVera confused by them sometimes. <<
"Hermione can fix them," Ron said helpfully, as they all looked down at the shards of glass and twisted wire that lay carefully in Vera's hand. "She fixed Harry's glasses too."

"Don't be stuuuupid, Ron," answered the frizzy-haired girl, giving the redhead a severe look. "It makes a difference when the glasses are in two pieces rather than two - hundred. And besides -" Vera was starting to dislike that know-it-all attitude of hers. "Besides, why don't youuu fix them? As I hear, youuu were the one that stepped on them." Not only that, that noxious "eeewww" sound coming out of her mouth every few words made her sound like a complete prig. Not only that, she spoke loud enough to be heard all the way down the hallway, much less throughout the entire bloody school.

"All I want," Vera explained patiently, "is for my glasses to be fixed. That's all."

"And youuu," Hermione had turned her look on Vera, "youu were reading just fine in class without glasses."

Vera blinked at her and glared. "Wasn't."

"Was too."

"Was not!"

"Look," Harry interjected, having remained silent for most of this time. "Why don't we all just go look up spells for it in the library?"

Ron was quick to agree with him. After all, Vera figured he was kinda like a sidekick or something, because he was always walking with Harry, but he was also always the one who messed up. And he had to always agree that "it" was a great plan, because sidekicks were there to boost egos. She wondered idly again why the name seemed to sound familiar.

"Hey, Potter," called an obnoxious voice from down the hallway. Vera immediately disliked the voice. "You and your friends having a foursome in the library?"

Harry muttered something under his breath, and Vera watched with some interest as his wand appeared magically from his sleeve. Well, of course it was magical. This was a wizard's school. Duh, she reprimanded herself. But, when things appeared magically, wasn't it supposed to be a figure of speech? Apparently not anymore. It made her wish that some of her relatives besides the non-wizard one had actually survived. Darn stupid luck. She pulled a piece of candy out of her own sleeve and ate it while Harry and the obnoxious kid, some blond guy with two ugly sidekicks, (Vera snickered at them under her breath) exchanged glares. Well, the blond guy didn’t seem too threatened by the wand, because he had both arms folded and a superior look on his face.

“The grrreat Hah-rry Poh-tter, standing with an idiot and two book-worms,” the blond kid began, and got no further before Vera began to laugh.

“Hah-rry Poh-tter,” she giggled, and the others turned to stare at her. “Hah-rry Poh-tter. I’m from America,” she explained, in between fits of laughter.

“Ah-merica?” the blond kid repeated in disbelief. “They let Ah-mericans into Hogwarts? I cain’t believe it!”

“Shove it, Draco,” said Hermione fiercely. Vera hid her candy wrapper in her sleeve and pondered if the girl had ever said anything so rude before. “I’m surprised they let youuu into Hogwarts."

The Old and the New

I've been unable to sleep tonight, due only in part to my earlier nap. I dug out a bunch of my old notebooks, and read them through, thoroughly enjoying most of it. My writing is terrible, and it completely sucks, except for a few stellar passages and some great one-liners (I'll share them later today, if I remember).

But, I love my story. I like the way the characters bounce off each other, and the way they interact. Secondly, I like my story. It's not the greatest or most imaginative or dynamic, but I think I'm able to write my characters so well into the story - they fit the story. You know what I mean about characters not fitting a story, or you should - it's like casting the wrong actor/actress for a part in a movie.

About three years ago, when I was 13 and 14, I was able to capture quite well the spirit I've now acquired and understand as a 16-year-old. How I managed to do that when I was so much younger and inexperienced, I'm unsure.

Teenagers are peevish, selfish, thoughtful, wild, and ever so empathic.

>Story rant here that may not make sense to the uninvolved<>The Lower Expectation (Zaya being the main character). To summarize very very briefly, one was an arranged marriage with the enemy, and the other an arranged marriage with one nearby. The outcast theme is predominant in each one, embodied however by different characters; of course in the former story it is Zaya who is the outcast, and in the latter it is her betrothed, a clumsy, unskilled, yet intelligent orphan who is heir to much. [Yeah, yeah. Don't worry about understanding it too much.] The third draft was a little stranger, of course with the arranged marriage thing [this pattern will be explained momentarily], but a less real story, a little more detached from the characters. Zaya is engaged, this time without her knowledge, to the son of a House that will gain much by his marriage to her. In this case, neither is the outcast, but it happens that they become outcast... One way or another.

The reason for the arranged marriages? Easy enough to explain. Of course, the world of Alenia is not unlike that of a modern world. They freed themselves from the constraints of written word and foretelling and surged ahead, and in leaps and bounds advanced society and culture. Yet there are drastic flaws that remain yet to be mended, and it is my idea that only through the work of individuals can this happen... That didn't explain it?

Sexism. But, of course. It's ever so subtle in the first world countries of today, and ever so blatant in the second and third and between worlds. Of course as a habit I would choose the subtler of the worlds, for I never had a talent for stating the obvious. Mind, my platform is all too typical. And I do not intend (nor do I ever) for the story, whichever one I choose, to be some kind of pulpit upon which I can decry the crimes of the world.

There is something else in there, though. It is all too common to have some sort of romance where the fated two hate each other, and by some chance one of them saves the other by sheer compassion and honor, and they begin to see that which is loveable in each other.

Bah. Hopeless sap. What about that which is there that is hard to face - possibly unforgiveable? It would be a rare woman who would be able to well forgive a husband's infidelity, and a rare man to do the same for his wife. Or rare that a pacifist could love a soldier, or a soldier feel no contempt for those who do not share his drives. But, it's not hard to understand why such a thing might come about. Examples: The powerful alliance of the two Clintons, not because of any kind of love or affection, but because each has political power that the other can use for advantage. Or less specifically, a rebellious son, even, who knows he must depend on his father and mother for support, and thus holds the family together by the sheer power of need.

One realizes quickly that need and love are not the same thing, not in the sense that we know them. And often the line between need and greed become subtly blurred, but that is not what is of consequence.

In times of need, those who understand the need will come together. It is when there is outside opposition that those inside come together.

What does that have to do with arranged marriages and sexism and teenage angst?

Simple. It's what I've been talking about all along: my characters.

Zaya, despite morphing a little from variation to variation, shows some interesting repeating characteristics. (Her name, by the way, means "zero" in Sutjin, and "one" or "alone" in Verlocun; it's also a nickname. Her real name is Mirashi.) She is tall, and unattractive to the eye, and feels oft unwanted; she deviates from social norms - by being athletic, or a bookworm, or a musician. Her personality is jaded and suspicious, yet fiercely righteous and protective of a family which she holds dear. She has hardly any opportunity to overtly prove herself a coward or hero, so one imagines that it is impossible to grasp her character as either contemptible or admirable. It's hard to tell you without letting you read the three stories, but what I'm trying to say, is that she is meant to be a character upon whom it is hard to pass moral judgment.

Thus will the characters be drawn together by need, and the obstacles faced with the strength of the bond created not by emotion, but by this need. The ends do not justify the means, but they are certainly satisfying.

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Found my Inferno story. It was better written than I'd originally thought it, and more amusing. I could clearly understand the references to people (janitors, leprechauns, swords, ladders, tour guides, cyborgs, idiots, and other denizens of hell), which was a good thing. I will, no doubt, steal some parts of the excellent story and put it into my new Inferno story (8 people consented to be in it, now)... And perhaps find someone to give me a new translation of all my Gaelic phrases.

More later; tired. If I find the typed version soon, I'll post up the introduction to my Inferno story here.