30 Jun 2021

Silver - Emma Many-Names

Gather round while the fire’s hot and bright and I will tell you how our Emma Many-Names got her favorite one.

A long time ago, before many of you were born, Emma Many-Names found herself overwhelmed by wanderlust and left her village. She moved from town to town, city to city, continent to continent, swift as a bird and twice as free. She did many great things and many terrible things; she began collecting titles like trophies, keeping track of the names people called her in her little journal.

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29 Jun 2021

Silver - Future

Hi! This is a follow up to this other thing I wrote: Silver. This one can stand on its own, but it’ll make more sense if you read that first!

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Roger’s consciousness bubbled to the surface as his body reformed, buoyed by too many memories from too many lives. He sailed through each of them, grasping for them, reexperiencing them in slices, but never enough to satisfy his nostalgia. Right up to the very end.

A short time of peace. Solitude; finally, something approaching contentment.

Cut short.

A flash of violence.

And a long, long time in the deep dark.

But now, something was pulling him back. Quickening the blood in his veins, thawing out his frozen muscles.

He opened his eyes to a brilliant array of stars strewn across the sky, peeking out from behind the tattered thatch roof of a crumbling house. His crumbling house. He stayed there a spell, back to the splintered wood floor, face to the stars, chasing his half-dreamed happiness. He didn’t move until the sky began to lighten.

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24 Jun 2021

Bittersweet

In the bright morning light, Maresh was calmer than it had been in decades. There was none of the bustle that had come to characterize the great city: the soldiers running drills in the practice fields to the east, the constant stream of ships arriving and departing in the harbour to the west, the engineers moving about the wall, strengthening it where they could and offering prayers where they couldn’t. All had ceased. Today was a day of celebration, but it was also one of reflection; what was Maresh to be in peacetime?

Ser Alain pressed his weight into the low, decorated balcony wall, digging the stone into the skin of his elbows until he could feel the marks forming.

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