Another chunk
Note: Yeah, ok, so Derek wasn't this bad back in high school. But remember that I was extremely shy and nervous and not at all outgoing, and so to me, this is how he came across.
“So there’s a world,” I started, tapping my notebook with inky fingers. Megan nodded, and gestured for me to continue. I tapped my fingers some more, not sure how to start. “There’s a world,” I started again, trying to think of the least-stupid sounding way to describe it.
“Brilliant.” Megan rolled her eyes, exasperated. “You worked through two solid lunch breaks just to get that down?”
“No. I worked through third period today too.”
“Awful lot of words to get one concept down,” she muttered. “What have I told you about filler?”
“It’s as useful as CD player for the deaf,” I parroted back. “Which is, by the way, a terrible thing to say.”
“Bah.”
“Okay, so in the world there’s a city, the capitol city, where the Queen rules over all.”
“Matriarchal society? I like it already.”
“The Queen’s a religious figurehead as well as secular. Her closest advisor is the Scribe Chief. The Scribes write down everything: merchant activities, history, laws, and most importantly, the words of the Goddess.”
Megan raised an eyebrow at me. “This isn’t about to become a self-insertion fic is it? I’m pretty sure I’ve told you no self-insertion fics. They’re never good, not even a little.”
“Patience, Miss Jump to Conclusions. It’s not self insertion.”
“Better not be. Fine, fine. Carry on.”
‘The Goddess speaks to me,’ the Scribe Apprentice wrote carefully, trying to squelch the unseemly pride that followed this statement. ‘Yesterday I entered the Room of Whispers, and after five long, nerve-racking minutes that made me certain I would fail, I finally heard Her. I wrote for long hours, telling the tale of children from a far kingdom who grew to be mighty warriors. Scribe Marin told me that it was a good tale, and I should check the Vaults of History to see if I have written a story of the past or of the future. I shall do so immediately.’
The Scribe Apprentice paused, and shook her aching hand out. ‘It would be nice to find proof that the words are truly of the Goddess, but part of me hopes that I will not find some historical reference to the children of whom I wrote. I like to think that maybe I am not to be another History-Keeper, although it is of course a noble calling! I hope, secretly, that I will be a Future Teller, writing the future as the Goddess reveals it to me.’
She blotted the ink carefully, and then folded the paper as Scribes are taught, to preserve it’s contents. She glanced at the sun-dial. It would not do to be late today. It was alright to be a little tardy to dinner or the lessons all Scribes were required to take before they could be elevated to their final rank within the guild, but today! Today she would meet the Queen of Utopia, to show her the words of the Goddess. If the Queen was pleased - and Scribe Marin said she usually deferred to the Scribe Chief in these matters - then she, Tamiru, would become Scribe of the City!
Proverbs
Commandment the Second: Teach your Goddess-in-training everything you know, and remember your former teacher’s lessons.
“The word of the day,” I stated, slapping my notebook down on the table, “is ‘flamboyant’.”
“Good word,” Megan grunted from behind her book. “Lots of syllables.”
“Thought you’d appreciate that,” I sat down and started thumbing through the pages of my increasingly grubby notebook. “I was thinking about ‘gaudy’ or ‘lurid,’ but ‘flamboyant’ just sort of had the right feel to it.”
“Could have picked ‘ostentatious,’” Megan surfaced from the pages grudgingly, realizing that I wasn’t about to let this one go. “Any particular reason for this train of thought?”
“Derek,” I snorted.
“Ah,” she nodded wisely. “That guy in your English class. What about him?”
“I don’t know what he wants!” I threw my hands up in the air. “I tried to tell him it was only a stupid little story. I had this weird dream, and I wrote it down, and then I forgot to do the English assignment so I just handed that in instead. It’s not like it was a carefully crafted masterpiece or anything!”
“Was this the flying coffee table in space story?”
“Yeah.”
“That was a freakish one,” Megan said, then pointed an accusing finger at me. “You ate cafeteria food again, didn’t you?”
“No! Well, a cupcake. A little one!”
“So a teacher reads your weirdness in class and now this guy follows you around?”
I nodded miserably. He’d come up to me in the library, right after the embarrassing public flying-coffee-table debacle (which had sent me all but running from the room as soon as the bell rang). I’d been scanning the new books on the shelf, and a hand had landed squarely on my head. I froze instantly, but before I could even fully register the foreign contact, my head was being spun around. Naturally, my body had to follow. I found myself nose-to-nose with a wide brown eyes on a pale, angular face, topped off with a mess of sandy colored hair. “You’re the space-dream chika,” he said - no, sang. “I think that’s the first time Mrs. Penson actually read through an entire story instead of just reading out the best bits.”
He let go of my head and stepped back far enough for me to see the rest of him - and it didn’t do much to change my initial reaction. It looked like someone spun the big Wheel-O-Worldly-Garb and then handed him the results. He wore a bright blue and pink striped shirt open over a green t-shirt proclaiming him a “Man of Fate” in big orange letters. His shoes were purple, with heavy black stripes added on in marker by an artistic hand.
And he was - and still is - the only man I had ever seen who wore plaid pants with pride.
“You have a creative mind,” he announced, sweeping one hand through the air as if presenting me to an audience. “And the talent to organize it into coherent material.”
“Uh,” I shifted my weight and offered a weak smile. “Thanks.”
“Are you in any extra curricular activities? Clubs? 4H?”
“No,” I answered cautiously. “Not really.”
He eyed me with those wide brown eyes. “Sports?”
Fighting my way through crowds of homeward-bound teenagers at the bus stop after school probably didn’t count, I decided, and shook my head. Although it definitely felt like one.
He smiled, and there was something eerily like victory in that expression. “Good, excellent,” he reached out again and before I could think to duck, he’d patted me on the head again. “Then we’ll be in touch,” he said over his shoulder as he strolled out of the library doors.
I watched him go until the doors swung shut behind him, and then watched the doors for a few more minutes in case he came sweeping back through them. Even when I was relatively sure that he wasn’t going to sneak back through them, I couldn’t bring myself to turn my back to them. After all, one can never be too careful when plaid pants are at stake. So in lieu of looking over my shoulder every few seconds, I’d fled the library and gone as calmly as possible to my next class. I sat through that class as if nothing at all had happened, waiting instead for the safety of lunch time, when I could properly freak out to Megan.
Unfortunately, her advice was less than helpful. “Next time he tries to talk to you, just punch him in the face.”
“I can’t do that!” I exclaimed. “Besides, what if he likes it or something?”
“That weird?”
“Oh yeah.”
She shrugged. “Then ignore him and he’ll go away.”
It was a pretty good plan, I thought. I ignore him, he forgets about me, and we get along fine. And I certainly did my bit of it as flawlessly as any shy, reclusive teenager. Problem was, someone forgot to tell Derek his part in this. He kept passing me in the halls and greeting me in a loud and occasionally audacious manner. It was tough enough for me to deal with the times that he called me by my name, in a crowded hall where all sorts of strangers were watching and listening. But he had a worrying tendency to skip my name altogether and call me by titles. “Good morning, writer-girl,” or “Hey, scribbler.” Worst of all, though, was when I walked past the science department office only to have a pale hand (with several multicolored bangles on the wrist) reach out and snag my arm, as the all-too-familiar voice attached to that hand called, “And here she is, the space-dreamer.”
I froze instantly, and turned my head enough to see Derek standing in as triumphant a pose as ever, dressed in a plain dark t-shirt and dark jeans that would have looked normal except he’d added a belt of woven neon shoelaces and patches of colorful material all over the jeans. A tall, slender, gorgeous girl stood by his side and a short, dark skinned boy leaned behind him on the wall. “If you are otherwise unoccupied,” Derek continued, as the beautiful girl smiled politely at me and the dark boy stared impassively, “Join us this afternoon in the English department conference room.” He let go of my arm, but I didn’t flee. Something in the way he stood suggested that he wasn’t quite done speaking yet, and like a peasant before a king, I remained obediently to hear his words.
“We begin at three thirty sharp,” he told me. “And you don’t need to bring anything, of course, but all contributions are great.”
“I hope you’ll be there,” the beautiful girl said, holding out one elegant white hand. “Derek says your story was really interesting.”
Maybe it was her smile, or the graceful way she moved, or maybe it was just that she sounded so normal next to Derek’s grandiose manner, but I found myself liking that girl instantly. Before I could stop myself, I smiled back and said, “Sure.”
“Good, excellent,” Derek nodded decisively. “Then we’ll see you there, writer.”
They had moved off, the beautiful girl and the still-silent dark boy moving smoothly in the wake of their brightly-colored leader. He walked, no, strode through the crowd like a man who knew his purpose, and whose purpose was to draw as much attention as possible. I wished for a moment that I was more like that, although not, maybe to that extreme.
Well, even if I couldn’t be in real life, there were other venues open to me, weren’t there?
I made a beeline for the library, reaching for my notebook as I went.
Flamboyant, I thought. And then, wait until I tell Megan.
“So there’s a world,” I started, tapping my notebook with inky fingers. Megan nodded, and gestured for me to continue. I tapped my fingers some more, not sure how to start. “There’s a world,” I started again, trying to think of the least-stupid sounding way to describe it.
“Brilliant.” Megan rolled her eyes, exasperated. “You worked through two solid lunch breaks just to get that down?”
“No. I worked through third period today too.”
“Awful lot of words to get one concept down,” she muttered. “What have I told you about filler?”
“It’s as useful as CD player for the deaf,” I parroted back. “Which is, by the way, a terrible thing to say.”
“Bah.”
“Okay, so in the world there’s a city, the capitol city, where the Queen rules over all.”
“Matriarchal society? I like it already.”
“The Queen’s a religious figurehead as well as secular. Her closest advisor is the Scribe Chief. The Scribes write down everything: merchant activities, history, laws, and most importantly, the words of the Goddess.”
Megan raised an eyebrow at me. “This isn’t about to become a self-insertion fic is it? I’m pretty sure I’ve told you no self-insertion fics. They’re never good, not even a little.”
“Patience, Miss Jump to Conclusions. It’s not self insertion.”
“Better not be. Fine, fine. Carry on.”
‘The Goddess speaks to me,’ the Scribe Apprentice wrote carefully, trying to squelch the unseemly pride that followed this statement. ‘Yesterday I entered the Room of Whispers, and after five long, nerve-racking minutes that made me certain I would fail, I finally heard Her. I wrote for long hours, telling the tale of children from a far kingdom who grew to be mighty warriors. Scribe Marin told me that it was a good tale, and I should check the Vaults of History to see if I have written a story of the past or of the future. I shall do so immediately.’
The Scribe Apprentice paused, and shook her aching hand out. ‘It would be nice to find proof that the words are truly of the Goddess, but part of me hopes that I will not find some historical reference to the children of whom I wrote. I like to think that maybe I am not to be another History-Keeper, although it is of course a noble calling! I hope, secretly, that I will be a Future Teller, writing the future as the Goddess reveals it to me.’
She blotted the ink carefully, and then folded the paper as Scribes are taught, to preserve it’s contents. She glanced at the sun-dial. It would not do to be late today. It was alright to be a little tardy to dinner or the lessons all Scribes were required to take before they could be elevated to their final rank within the guild, but today! Today she would meet the Queen of Utopia, to show her the words of the Goddess. If the Queen was pleased - and Scribe Marin said she usually deferred to the Scribe Chief in these matters - then she, Tamiru, would become Scribe of the City!
Proverbs
Commandment the Second: Teach your Goddess-in-training everything you know, and remember your former teacher’s lessons.
“The word of the day,” I stated, slapping my notebook down on the table, “is ‘flamboyant’.”
“Good word,” Megan grunted from behind her book. “Lots of syllables.”
“Thought you’d appreciate that,” I sat down and started thumbing through the pages of my increasingly grubby notebook. “I was thinking about ‘gaudy’ or ‘lurid,’ but ‘flamboyant’ just sort of had the right feel to it.”
“Could have picked ‘ostentatious,’” Megan surfaced from the pages grudgingly, realizing that I wasn’t about to let this one go. “Any particular reason for this train of thought?”
“Derek,” I snorted.
“Ah,” she nodded wisely. “That guy in your English class. What about him?”
“I don’t know what he wants!” I threw my hands up in the air. “I tried to tell him it was only a stupid little story. I had this weird dream, and I wrote it down, and then I forgot to do the English assignment so I just handed that in instead. It’s not like it was a carefully crafted masterpiece or anything!”
“Was this the flying coffee table in space story?”
“Yeah.”
“That was a freakish one,” Megan said, then pointed an accusing finger at me. “You ate cafeteria food again, didn’t you?”
“No! Well, a cupcake. A little one!”
“So a teacher reads your weirdness in class and now this guy follows you around?”
I nodded miserably. He’d come up to me in the library, right after the embarrassing public flying-coffee-table debacle (which had sent me all but running from the room as soon as the bell rang). I’d been scanning the new books on the shelf, and a hand had landed squarely on my head. I froze instantly, but before I could even fully register the foreign contact, my head was being spun around. Naturally, my body had to follow. I found myself nose-to-nose with a wide brown eyes on a pale, angular face, topped off with a mess of sandy colored hair. “You’re the space-dream chika,” he said - no, sang. “I think that’s the first time Mrs. Penson actually read through an entire story instead of just reading out the best bits.”
He let go of my head and stepped back far enough for me to see the rest of him - and it didn’t do much to change my initial reaction. It looked like someone spun the big Wheel-O-Worldly-Garb and then handed him the results. He wore a bright blue and pink striped shirt open over a green t-shirt proclaiming him a “Man of Fate” in big orange letters. His shoes were purple, with heavy black stripes added on in marker by an artistic hand.
And he was - and still is - the only man I had ever seen who wore plaid pants with pride.
“You have a creative mind,” he announced, sweeping one hand through the air as if presenting me to an audience. “And the talent to organize it into coherent material.”
“Uh,” I shifted my weight and offered a weak smile. “Thanks.”
“Are you in any extra curricular activities? Clubs? 4H?”
“No,” I answered cautiously. “Not really.”
He eyed me with those wide brown eyes. “Sports?”
Fighting my way through crowds of homeward-bound teenagers at the bus stop after school probably didn’t count, I decided, and shook my head. Although it definitely felt like one.
He smiled, and there was something eerily like victory in that expression. “Good, excellent,” he reached out again and before I could think to duck, he’d patted me on the head again. “Then we’ll be in touch,” he said over his shoulder as he strolled out of the library doors.
I watched him go until the doors swung shut behind him, and then watched the doors for a few more minutes in case he came sweeping back through them. Even when I was relatively sure that he wasn’t going to sneak back through them, I couldn’t bring myself to turn my back to them. After all, one can never be too careful when plaid pants are at stake. So in lieu of looking over my shoulder every few seconds, I’d fled the library and gone as calmly as possible to my next class. I sat through that class as if nothing at all had happened, waiting instead for the safety of lunch time, when I could properly freak out to Megan.
Unfortunately, her advice was less than helpful. “Next time he tries to talk to you, just punch him in the face.”
“I can’t do that!” I exclaimed. “Besides, what if he likes it or something?”
“That weird?”
“Oh yeah.”
She shrugged. “Then ignore him and he’ll go away.”
It was a pretty good plan, I thought. I ignore him, he forgets about me, and we get along fine. And I certainly did my bit of it as flawlessly as any shy, reclusive teenager. Problem was, someone forgot to tell Derek his part in this. He kept passing me in the halls and greeting me in a loud and occasionally audacious manner. It was tough enough for me to deal with the times that he called me by my name, in a crowded hall where all sorts of strangers were watching and listening. But he had a worrying tendency to skip my name altogether and call me by titles. “Good morning, writer-girl,” or “Hey, scribbler.” Worst of all, though, was when I walked past the science department office only to have a pale hand (with several multicolored bangles on the wrist) reach out and snag my arm, as the all-too-familiar voice attached to that hand called, “And here she is, the space-dreamer.”
I froze instantly, and turned my head enough to see Derek standing in as triumphant a pose as ever, dressed in a plain dark t-shirt and dark jeans that would have looked normal except he’d added a belt of woven neon shoelaces and patches of colorful material all over the jeans. A tall, slender, gorgeous girl stood by his side and a short, dark skinned boy leaned behind him on the wall. “If you are otherwise unoccupied,” Derek continued, as the beautiful girl smiled politely at me and the dark boy stared impassively, “Join us this afternoon in the English department conference room.” He let go of my arm, but I didn’t flee. Something in the way he stood suggested that he wasn’t quite done speaking yet, and like a peasant before a king, I remained obediently to hear his words.
“We begin at three thirty sharp,” he told me. “And you don’t need to bring anything, of course, but all contributions are great.”
“I hope you’ll be there,” the beautiful girl said, holding out one elegant white hand. “Derek says your story was really interesting.”
Maybe it was her smile, or the graceful way she moved, or maybe it was just that she sounded so normal next to Derek’s grandiose manner, but I found myself liking that girl instantly. Before I could stop myself, I smiled back and said, “Sure.”
“Good, excellent,” Derek nodded decisively. “Then we’ll see you there, writer.”
They had moved off, the beautiful girl and the still-silent dark boy moving smoothly in the wake of their brightly-colored leader. He walked, no, strode through the crowd like a man who knew his purpose, and whose purpose was to draw as much attention as possible. I wished for a moment that I was more like that, although not, maybe to that extreme.
Well, even if I couldn’t be in real life, there were other venues open to me, weren’t there?
I made a beeline for the library, reaching for my notebook as I went.
Flamboyant, I thought. And then, wait until I tell Megan.