(no subject)
More NaNo practice. I would just go to bed, but I'm waiting for a FA build to finish, and talking to hermionemalfoy. So I might as well do something while I wait.
This time it's a standalone, not a continuation of previous entries. It's in the same universe, but different characters and a different time period. And I really have no clue what it's going to come out as, but I figured I'd give a try.
Vartoth looked out across the frozen lake, the icy-tipped peaks of mountains hanging low in the background. It was barren. It was desolate. But something felt right about the place.
He had been travelling for forty days, wandering from place to place in search of...something. He wasn't sure what. People like him travelled often. Vagabonds, gypsies...they were called a lot of names, mostly by people who had no clue what they were like. But wherever Vartoth and his ilk went, strange things happened. Trees would droop and whither, or suddenly spring to life. Objects would float through the air. Lightning storms would spring out of clear skies.
They called him a curevra, a cursed one. One of the untouchables of society. Upstanding citizens would move away when he approached. And for good reason. Something terrible might befall them, something terrible and out of his control. Because whatever freaks of nature happened around him, he had no idea what caused them. It was all a mystery.
Once in a while he would find people like him, people for whom the laws of reality weren't quite the same. And they would talk, and commisserate, and move on. Because just because you're isolated from mainstream society doesn't mean you fit in with other outcasts. Each wanderer, each witch he met was unique in his or her own way, and rarely had anything useful to talk about with Vartoth.
And so he lived a lonely life, always moving, surviving on whatever scraps of food he could get. The lowland plains were harsh places for him: most land was claimed by farms, now, and he was not welcome on their land. Farther to the north, in the deep forests, he felt more at home. But even they now had tribes of settlers enroaching upon them.
That was why he was now in the mountains, besides this frozen mountain lake. There was plenty of game - mountain goats and sheep and birds of prey. And very few humans to share it with. The perfect place to start a new life.
The lake in front of him stretched on for miles. He thought he saw a low, flat, island in the center, with some low scrub vegetation. With any luck, there'd be fish in the lake, come spring. The scrub brushes would provide adequate shelter. And he could see birds flying overhead even now, and there had been deer in the woods as he climbed up. This was the place.
*****
He studied. And practiced.
Vartoth had expected that he'd spend the whole time staying alive. But nature had been good to him, the game bountiful, the fruits succulent. He'd soon settled down into a routine, and found that he had plenty of time.
So he spent his free hours trying to figure out just what made the world so weird around him. Because it was still happening. At odd times - in the middle of a hunt, as he was setting down to eat, when he was voiding his bowels - something odd would happen. It was something different each time, but every one of them was an incongruity. A stick would suddenly burst into flame. Solid ground would turn into mush, or a rivulet would spring up from the earth. The trees would bleed. The birds would take root.
He never understood it. Nothing seemed to make sense. Maybe he was just going mad, like all the villagers of his past life had suggested. Maybe he really was curevra. But he couldn't live like this, not understanding the world around him.
Something had to be common to all the experiences. Something that would let him control them.
He tried meditation. He tried visualization. He tried praying to the Gods of nature. But nothing worked, and the incidents continued.
It was in the depths of winter, a couple years later, that he made a breakthrough.
This time it's a standalone, not a continuation of previous entries. It's in the same universe, but different characters and a different time period. And I really have no clue what it's going to come out as, but I figured I'd give a try.
Vartoth looked out across the frozen lake, the icy-tipped peaks of mountains hanging low in the background. It was barren. It was desolate. But something felt right about the place.
He had been travelling for forty days, wandering from place to place in search of...something. He wasn't sure what. People like him travelled often. Vagabonds, gypsies...they were called a lot of names, mostly by people who had no clue what they were like. But wherever Vartoth and his ilk went, strange things happened. Trees would droop and whither, or suddenly spring to life. Objects would float through the air. Lightning storms would spring out of clear skies.
They called him a curevra, a cursed one. One of the untouchables of society. Upstanding citizens would move away when he approached. And for good reason. Something terrible might befall them, something terrible and out of his control. Because whatever freaks of nature happened around him, he had no idea what caused them. It was all a mystery.
Once in a while he would find people like him, people for whom the laws of reality weren't quite the same. And they would talk, and commisserate, and move on. Because just because you're isolated from mainstream society doesn't mean you fit in with other outcasts. Each wanderer, each witch he met was unique in his or her own way, and rarely had anything useful to talk about with Vartoth.
And so he lived a lonely life, always moving, surviving on whatever scraps of food he could get. The lowland plains were harsh places for him: most land was claimed by farms, now, and he was not welcome on their land. Farther to the north, in the deep forests, he felt more at home. But even they now had tribes of settlers enroaching upon them.
That was why he was now in the mountains, besides this frozen mountain lake. There was plenty of game - mountain goats and sheep and birds of prey. And very few humans to share it with. The perfect place to start a new life.
The lake in front of him stretched on for miles. He thought he saw a low, flat, island in the center, with some low scrub vegetation. With any luck, there'd be fish in the lake, come spring. The scrub brushes would provide adequate shelter. And he could see birds flying overhead even now, and there had been deer in the woods as he climbed up. This was the place.
*****
He studied. And practiced.
Vartoth had expected that he'd spend the whole time staying alive. But nature had been good to him, the game bountiful, the fruits succulent. He'd soon settled down into a routine, and found that he had plenty of time.
So he spent his free hours trying to figure out just what made the world so weird around him. Because it was still happening. At odd times - in the middle of a hunt, as he was setting down to eat, when he was voiding his bowels - something odd would happen. It was something different each time, but every one of them was an incongruity. A stick would suddenly burst into flame. Solid ground would turn into mush, or a rivulet would spring up from the earth. The trees would bleed. The birds would take root.
He never understood it. Nothing seemed to make sense. Maybe he was just going mad, like all the villagers of his past life had suggested. Maybe he really was curevra. But he couldn't live like this, not understanding the world around him.
Something had to be common to all the experiences. Something that would let him control them.
He tried meditation. He tried visualization. He tried praying to the Gods of nature. But nothing worked, and the incidents continued.
It was in the depths of winter, a couple years later, that he made a breakthrough.