Fan Fics, Original Fiction, and Fantasy

"It wasn't bad? I mean, he didn't suffer... did he?"

The tree looked down at her, speaking as trees did, the quiet rustle of dry leaves and the creak of bending wood. "He didn't suffer?"

"We all suffer," she finally answered the tree's repeated questions. "No one wants to die, so when you die it's suffering."

"Yes, but... but he didn't suffer more than anyone else does," the tree consoled himself. "It probably wasn't so bad. I would know if it had been bad."

She looked away. "He... he screamed... at the end. He was screaming."

"Tend to your fire," the tree reminded her shakily. "It might go out soon." In response to his urges she crumbled more rotten wood onto the little fire in front of her. "Those things might come," he murmured, "you might get cold... keep your fire going. It'll be morning soon."

A long silence passed between them. The night was black, the fire small, the world a tiny place. She sat near one edge of all that existed, the flames before her, the tree beside her. She still would not look at him.

"Morning doesn't come here," she whispered.

The leaves rustled above her. "It'll come. The sun didn't go down so long ago." His voice changed tone, trying to comfort with the creak of rubbing bark. "It's good that you're sitting on his stump like that. All his life he liked to be a home to other things, little animals of the forest, living among his leaves and branches. I hope it's comfortable. That's what he would have wanted."

"I killed him," she said. She looked up at the tree. "I killed him to feed my fire." In the silence that followed, she could only say, "I was so cold..."

"How could you kill him? You're not strong enough, not just like that."

"I had this." She held up the axe, firelight glinting from scratches on the blade.

"That couldn't do anything to a tree."

She struck down with the axe, lightly, and it cut into one of the stump's rotten roots on the ground with a ringing bite. The tree swayed in sudden horror.

"You're lying. Why would you kill him? You didn't hate him or want to cause him pain. He would have loved you, loved to talk to you for hours. You're lying," the tree said, almost to himself.

Her answer was flat and dead. "I needed his wood. I was cold." She hunched her body toward the fire. "I was cold."

"It..." he paused, leaves scratching together almost silently. "It will soon be morning. You won't be cold then."

"There isn't going to be a morning. There's no such thing."

"I remember the morning," he whispered. "I remember the sun used to rise up, and I could see trees, nothing but trees, all the way to the end of the world. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Trees..."

"There won't be a morning! There's no sun!" She turned her head to stare with angry eyes. "Only trees and the dark."

"I remember the sun."

The silence stretched out again, a barrier between them.

"You should feed your fire," the tree told her. "It's going out."

"I don't have any more wood."

"You need to find some. The things might come back. You might get cold."

"I will find some," she told him, and picked up the axe.

"What is that thing?" The tree asked her.

She did not answer, only struck off one of his branches with the heavy blade. The tree howled, its dry, crumbling leaves raining down as it shook itself back and forth. She broke up the dry wood into a pile, and fed a little of it into the fire.

"You hurt me," he said, his leaves still hissing with the pain of his lost branch. "Why would you hurt me?"

"I needed your wood."

"Is that what happened... what happened to him?"

She looked down at the stump where she sat. "Yes."

"Was it bad? I mean he..." the tree's voice gave out.

"We all suffer when we die."

"But then... he didn't suffer more than anyone else would have, did he?"

"No," she answered him. "About the same."

"Still," the tree rustled, after a long pause, "he would have been glad to know that you sat on him like that, his stump I mean. He loved to be with others... he would have loved you."

"I know."

She fed a little wood into the fire.

"I love you," the tree told her.

"I know," she told him, and leaned against his trunk. Her eyes grew wet, and her body heaved with sudden crying.

"Don't worry," he whispered softly to her, as her tears ran down his bark. "Don't worry... it'll be morning soon."

 

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Whup! We're sticky now! ROCK ON!

 

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O right!
[uh wait a second, where's that novel I'm going to upload?]

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Yes, I have made this thread a sticky - bow down to my awesome powers!

After this thread hits 200 posts, we should make a new one. Just to refresh things (For new users and other people who don't want to read 200+ posts).

 

A Short Story.

"Watch out," the voice said.

"What?" said the guy.

"Watch out," the voice said again.

"For what?" said the guy.

"For the face chewer," the voice told him.

"Why does it chew faces?" asked the guy.

"Because it hates when people talk," the face chewer told him.

CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH.

 

I warn you, my quality will continue to deteriorate if there are no responses. I have not yet begun to suck!

 

No no, theyre great, i'll nominate them for an award next, and if you crank out enough we can get a wee chapbook published, maybe with special illustrations.

 

I would love to see a little illustration of the Face Chewer.

 

yes, it would be interesting. And scary. But I dont have a tame artist to hand, only a rather wild one who paints what she wants to paint.
Does anyone have any artistic abilities and wish to draw one?

 

I guess it would just come out looking like Ghoul Feeding by Richard Pickman, or maybe a Giger picture. Of course, if it was Giger, it would be called "Illegal Entry IIb" or something.

 

"You should talk to her, you know," the voice came up from the pit.

"Mother? Are you all right?"

The young man bent down, his blonde hair glowing in the morning sun. Untouched by the smoke and devastation, he leaned over the edge of the impact crater.

"After all, you're not getting any younger," the voice from the pit told him. "I still think you're a fool to follow the Church." A soot-covered hand worked its way out of the pile of rubble.

"Never mind that Mother, what happened just now?" The young man grasped the hand and heaved mightily, sending debris and soil tumbling everywhere. At the other end of the arm a woman appeared, clad in burned and tattered clothes, her sunny face and brown hair smudged with soot but none the worse for wear.

"A trifle, sonny." She held out a rounded, misshapen lump of metal. "Shooting star, fetched me a good smart hit in the stomach."

Her incredulous companion goggled his eyes at her. "How did you ever survive?"

"The Lord blessed me with a strong constitution against ill luck. Don't look so concerned! My bad luck has turned to good for both of us, since meteoric iron is quite valuable. Perhaps we can get better accomodations tonight." So saying, she placed the lump in her pocket. "Also, my clothes need a little attention from a tailor."

At once the lady began to stride off at a brisk pace, leaving the young man to catch up with her.

"Mother Castle, why is your luck so consistently poor?" He finished the question without panting, but he was slightly out of breath from chasing her.

"Golden, my worst luck is to have a traveling companion who ignores my best advice and yet hangs breathless on my chancest statements." She fixed him with a look from her sea-grey eyes, her cheerful smile never wavering. "Although I hazard that your puffing comes more from exercise than anticipation at this point. You should concern yourself with more immediate matters than Fortune's little attempts upon my person; when will you ask that girl to marry you?"

The two stopped, Mother Castle staring at the young man, the young man staring at a snarling beast that emerged from the ditch at the side of the road. Its like was unknown to them, vast and black, with a vast, single fang that protruded crookedly from between slavering lips. It pawed the earth with shivering ferocity, its mad eyes playing over them both.

"Mother-"

Before Golden could complete his thought the thing fell upon them. Ignoring him completely, the beast bore down upon his elder companion, tearing and rending with its jaws and talons. The horrible crunch and snap of bone sounded from the two, and there was a terrible scream. The beast sprang away in a welter of blood, showering the road as it ran. Mother Castle slowly rose from where the beast had knocked her to the ground, covered in blood and dusty paw-prints.

"Very firmly rooted, that," she observed, looking at the huge fang in her hand. Bits of bloody bone still clung to its roots. "Quite a creature too! I've never seen the like."

"The strength it must have taken..." he muttered to himself. Then more loudly: "How ever did you-"

"Tut young man! Its immense tooth struck a stone in the road, no more than that. Now, we were talking about your engagement to the lovely Annabelle," she chastised, wagging the bloody fang at him by way of reproach. "I should imagine that she would become annoyed if you spoke with her of such inconsequential things."

"Really, Golden," she continued as she began to walk again, "you dwell too much on trifles. How does the sun rise and the moon set? How do waves wash across the ocean? How does a giant beast's tooth break off? Better you ask: How can I get Annabelle to marry me?"

"I..." the young man protested.

"Don't you want a beautiful wife? Don't you want beautiful children?"

An arrow flashed from the long grass and struck her in the arm.

"Don't you want to have a happy life?" she asked, reaching down to pull the arrow from her arm. "As I see it, you could have all three such things with her. We've been gone for two months, we'll be back in another, and you still wait and wonder and have questions about anything but her."

A hunter with a bow appeared from the grass, stumbling over himself and apologizing profusely. She handed the arrow to him with a brief look, patted him on the head, and then continued.

"It's time to get your head back down to the ground and stop thinking about the abstracts and the theoreticals and the things you don't understand. So," she prompted as she began walking again, and the two of them left the hunter behind in stunned confusion. "When you meet her again, what will you do?"

"I... I'm not sure what to say to her." Golden began to look around as they arrived at the outskirts of a small town. "I'm... not sure if I want to be married."

"Don't want to be married!" She raised her hands in exasperation, and at that moment a large piece of lumber tipped down and struck her on the head. "Don't want to be married! Of all the idiocy," she grumbled and shook her head, waving away the frantic apologies of the workmen who had accidentally struck her. "Who will take care of you? Who will tell you when you do wrong? Who will even notice the smell when you die? I've done my best to teach you what's good for you, despite the constant distractions, and the best you can do is tell me you don't want one of the few good things that the world has to offer! You wanted me to educate you, and all I've been able to do so far is make war on your stupidity! And now it seems that war is all but lost."

"But all I ever hear of marriage is the fighting!" Golden waved one arm to emphasize his point. "The house is a battlefield, the family is a battlefield! If I truly loved Annabelle, why would I want to make her an enemy in that endless war?"

"People fight to decide things, not just because they disagree," she told him as they walked toward the hostel. "When married folks collide over a decision it's a fight, but usually the decision is important enough to warrant serious conflict over. Often person or both wish to do something foolish, and it's up to the other - or at worst, wiser heads - to ensure that such foolishness is averted." A cinder from a nearby fire lit on her arm and kindled the cloth as she spoke. "In any case, a fight between married folks is like a fire in the kitchen. Dangerous to be sure," she nodded, gesturing with her arm now ablaze, "but no reason not to ever cook, just a reason to know how to put out a fire." Momentarily distracted, she beat out her blazing arm with her other hand.

"But, but I've learned so much from you," Golden interjected. "I want to be a Father in the Church as well, so that people will have a reason to look up to me."

"Father is a ridiculous word for a man with no children," she stated flatly. "Think about the Church again when your children are grown and can take care of themselves. Now, we'll get a room for you and talk no more about this."

"I have nothing to give her," he mumbled quietly.

"Tut! Go to bed!"

The next morning Golden found her sleeping in a charred spot on the ground.

"Grass fire. And possibly a lightning strike," she said, in answer to his questioning look. "Didn't wake me, nor you by the looks of it. But I had the jeweller do a little work before I went to sleep..." she stood and brushed the soot away from her clothes. "Look here!"

In the clear morning sunshine she held out a ring, the dark iron set off by a glowing ivory setting, in which was set a clear emerald with a blue like the calm sea of summer.

"That emerald..." he slowly recalled. "We were in the mountains when that rock fell and struck you on the head."

"The rock split clean in half," she nodded. "This was inside as you recall. The iron's pure carved from a meteorite, so it'll never rust. The ivory's from a beast I've never seen the like of in this world. The stone is clear as clear can be. A fine gift to give to your Annabelle."

"It is so beautiful," he breathed.

She only smiled. "Still think my luck is all bad? Now, a month hence you'll go home and tell your Annabelle you wish her hand, and this ring is all you'll need - as if you needed it before."

"I... I thank you mother. Perhaps I should have listened to you all this time... perhaps I was only afraid that she would not accept me." He looked up at her, and then behind her, and his eyes widened suddenly. "Mother, there are bees," he whispered.

"Ah. I suppose you'd better get back then," she nodded sagely as the stinging insects surrounded her. "They'll be stinging presently. Take that ring and mind you keep it safe! After the swarm leaves we'll be back on the road to your beloved!"

 

Coming soon: The New Race. I had a briliant idea, and I'm really tryign to make it work. It might take a few more weeks, though.

 

Whenever you're ready! Feel like I'm talking to myself here.

Is that race like contest?
Or race like subspecies?

 

Commentary (I miss post subjects)

Let me just note, that it's been my experience, when people comment on my work, that I don't usually agree with their specific suggestions more than their vague ones. I don't like it when they try to replace my words, but I do appreciate when they identify things that seem awkward, out of place, etcetera. So that's what I'm gonna do.

I don't like this. Unlike the rest of the paragraph, it doesn't create much of an image for me.

Pick one, make it plural.

I don't like this. It draws me out of the story, out of the event.

Overall, I really enjoyed the story. I laughed out loud here--

I never like the word "perhaps." It seems very out of place...very C-3P0ish. But, maybe that's what you're going for. Other than that, the dialogue was written very well. The descriptions were very good, if not for an ostentacious adjective here or there. Yes yes yes, I enjoyed it very much. Excellent work!

Now, my turn! Read at your leisure.

From the unfinished and tentatively titled "Epilogue's Crusader."

I had parked the car and walked a long way through the woods by the time the sun had fallen beneath the shoulders of the world. Mankind’s towers sang their bright lights into the darkening sky. Fireworks bloomed at the city’s distant edges. Fireworks that turned night to day, fireworks that stained the sky black enough to force nausea upon once-excited onlookers, fireworks that spread the moon’s grinning crescent from one end of the horizon to the other, fireworks that breathed life into the constellations. Scorpio’s pincers clicked angrily at brave Orion, and the blurred Pleiades necklace found a new home draped around Cassiopeia’s soft neck.

...

A hazy, orange glow brightened in the distance, glared through thick tree trunks, stretched their shadows to my bare feet. I stood from where I had reclined and jogged through the dewed grass. I weaved my way through the forest cage. The light grew brighter, it was a torch, held in the air by a muscular arm connecting to an unusually tall silhouette. A line of nude shadows walked behind him, following him, only their faces illuminated by the fire’s warmth. They were of all physiques. I watched them emerge from the forest into a small clearing. A stone shaped like an eye embedded in the grass glinted its jeweled skin. The followers circled around the stone, knelt on their knees, and the masculine man who held the torch climbed atop it, and raised the flame into the air as high as it would go.

A weak twilight gathered above the rolling clouds, out of sight, pierced their mantle and intensified until the clearing and the worshippers were as pale as pearl. Their pupils tightened, eyebrows lifted. The clouds fell back from the sky, and a curtain of white light danced in the air. The torch’s flame whipped about violently in the wind, but never slackened, as I felt that it had always been lit. The man’s tenacious fingers let the torch go. He returned what had been stolen. The torch, floating in the air where he had held it, was pulled by some force into the intense white light from the clouds, where it disappeared from my vision. The clouds gathered and closed, and over the course of a long while the light gradually faded into the void. For as long as I remained there, hidden behind the trunk of a tree, the palely lit faces of the followers, and of the man, never left the sky.

The fireworks had returned. I raised my head from the wet grass, blinked my eyes. The stars were moving. Some flared blue, some orange. They were concentrated at one point nearby Orion’s sword, darting about each other like fireflies. A battle.
I felt my insides constrict, and I began to sweat heavily. I sprinted to my car, sped down empty streets, my engine roaring. I reached the city, which was still asleep. I was alone. A different roar overtook my engine’s, and I stopped the car, stepped outside. I saw bombs speeding toward man’s towers. Projected faces talked and argued. Yellow text scrolled. People rolled in their beds. Smiled. Dreamed.

Contact.

The city shattered, crumbled. Flames angrily trailed debris that shrieked to the pavement. Dust and papers everywhere. The wind overtook me. I grasped the car door, fingers white. I couldn’t hear my scream, but I was screaming. Hot breath. Fire drenched me. I couldn’t hold on. The car boiled. My fingers crackled. The city’s corpses belched smoke through the glowing holes in their brittle skeletons. The sky was blushing hatred. Bloodied clouds coiled and funneled and swathed. I closed my eyes. I released my grip on the door, and fell away from the city, away from the epicenter of the strike, the wind’s muscular arms carrying my burden. I strayed from consciousness, let the craven world fall apart without my witness.

 

Damn Promethean torch, always destroying the world. Whenever the Gods give you fire, dammit, don't give it back!

 

I would have thought the simpler thing would be never accept a gift from the gods, there will be strings attached.

 

Actually, I think the gift was being given back to the gods.

Gods: Listen mortals, take ye this wonder known as fire, for it will warm you in the night and keep you safe from those who would harm you.
[Mortals take fire.]
Mortals: Thanks really a lot, Gods!

Chorus: Eons pass. Eons pass... mortals grow in power...

Mortals: Y'know, now that we have nuclear fission and wind-generated electricity, we don't really need fire anymore. Thanks for the fire and all, but we can stand on our own two feet now, and fire really doesn't excite us as much as it used to, so... um... here's your fire back. Thanks and all.
[Mortals give fire to Gods.]
Gods (aside): Ungrateful bastards.
Gods (to Mortals): Oh wow, thanks for our fire back.
[Gods drop fire on the Earth.]
Gods: Woops, we dropped it on your world, kindling it into a million flames and blasting you into withered husks! But since you're too GOOD for fire, I guess it doesn't hurt that much, huh?
[Mortals crinkle into dust.]
[Exeunt.]

 

Was looking at finding a better place to post and get feedback on stories. This place is great, but for improving my writing skills, developing my plotlines, and such, and was wondering if anyone here knows of forums devoted to original sci-fi and fantasy. Figured I'd ask here before looking around from scratch.

 

This is the only one I've tried.

Any part of the New Race piece done yet?

Also, what kind of help do you need developing your plotlines? The ones I've seen from you so far are strongly expressed and easy to follow. What else do you want them to be?

 

Well, I've noticed in doing the notes on the New Race piece that I have a little trouble figuring out the series of events. And other stuff like that. Character development is another problem.