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Entry one: Inspiration/origin was a writing challenge on the theme "torn map." I don't remember exactly how long the plotting and writing took in total -- an evening? Hours, anyway, probably. The title came last, as it often does for me.
Piece Work
"You can get the whole thing from just a piece of it, eh?"
Dare set down her mug, peering again at the man who had joined her corner table that evening. A weathered veteran, he appeared even more down on luck than Dare was. "It's a basic principle of magic, yes: The part contains the whole. But the application isn't always so straightforward." She blinked back memories of how spectacularly divergent intent and result could be in magic. "So stop beating around the bush, Olivi, and get to specifics."
Olivi gestured for the tavernkeeper to refill Dare's mug, then watched until he retreated back out of earshot. "You've heard of the treasure of Goren Kesh, of course. But you may not know Kesh's lieutenants had a falling out, and cut the map into pieces."
Dare snorted. "Any schoolchild could tell you that."
"But no schoolchild could tell you where even one of those pieces is." After glancing again around the room, Olivi reached a hand into his shirt and withdrew a flat package that he gingerly unwrapped.
The section inside didn't look impressive: torn, a jagged piece of a piece, less than two inches. Brittle edges had cracked away through centuries. There were some dark lines and loops, indecipherable without context. Near one edge of the parchment was a letter B . . . or perhaps P or R.
"That could be from anything," Dare started to say, but she couldn't resist reaching out to it -- and then she knew. Her sensitivity might be sporadic, but it was never wrong. This was a piece of the Goren Kesh map. A piece, and a chance for more.
Olivi saw the change in Dare's eyes. "Complete the map for me, mage, and I'll give you a ten-percent finder's fee."
"You haven't got me that drunk," she said.
"Fifteen. That's a fortune."
"Fifty -- you have no idea what creating this spell will take from me."
"And you don't know what I had to do to get this. I'll give you forty percent."
Dare drained her mug. "Done." A blue glow surrounded them as they clasped hands, proving the arrangement binding on both.
***
"Stop pacing, Olivi, you're making me nervous." Dare scanned her hut, making sure everything was in place. "In fact, as much as I appreciate your help the past two weeks gathering components while I researched, this part is all me. You wait outside."
Lighting the first candle, Dare began her chant, threw herself into performing her most ambitious spell ever. To reintegrate this part into its whole, she had to counter the weight of a thousand years, reverse the ravelings of entropy.
Colors flashed from the hut's windows and cracks, too brightly for Olivi to try peeping in a second time. Arms folded, he strode back and forth in front of the door -- like an expectant father, he thought, which would make Dare both mother and midwife. "Ha!" He was just a man anxious to get his hands on a fortune.
The moon outside was fading with the approach of dawn as Dare slumped to the floor, gazing in wonder at the incredible re-creation she had worked.
"Olivi! Will you want steaks or milk?" She snorted back a damp laugh. "You own sixty percent of a cow!"
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Entry two:
An Elizabethan Sonnet
Regardless of the guarded fortress walls
And labyrinths with thorns of steel and flame,
Or any dire tale that Rumour bawls,
Gladly will I fight, my prize to claim.
Hidden from the world by strong defenses,
Not seen, there is a pearl beyond all measure.
All other men are fooled by fierce pretenses;
I know there lies within a fragile treasure.
Like soft-spun gold and silver is the hair
That frames the face that frames twin sapphire eyes —
Much as those eyes, in turn, reveal a rare,
Delightful soul, despite your hard disguise.
Lay down your shields, my lady, and your doubt:
Bluff as you will, you cannot keep me out.
My inspiration was my Lady, my wife, whom I met as a fellow member of a medieval and Renaissance re-creation society. Tools included iambic pentameter and a mix of "masculine" (one-syllable) and "feminine" (multisyllabic) rhymes.
In addition to being an Elizabethan (aka Shakespearian) sonnet, the poem is also an acrostic. The initial letters of the lines, in order, spell out the name (and initials) that my wife goes by in the society -- Raoghnailt Marie de la Barbe.
Edited to add second entry, lightly tweaking the presentation of the first as I did so.
hiddenneggs / Will
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"But then again, i think the main reason people invented civilization was to get together and complain about the wild animals eating them." --mousapelli
Last edited by hiddenneggs on Thu Sep 23, 2004 10:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
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