Business Transaction

A moist breeze blows through the cracks in Bartholomew’s door as he wipes the cobwebs out of the window corners.  He elevates his eyes upwards through the smoked glass; looks like rain again.  Bad news for any of the street vendors.  Better news for him.

The man returns to the well-worn floor planks behind the counter, rubbing his ginger mutton chops and surveying his establishment.  Clothes is what he sees; a tailor by trade he is, and if he does say so himself, the best in the tri-city area.  The ego has not gone without substantial proof of his prowess, and over the many seasons he’s racked up quite an impressive list of wealthy clients looking for custom-made garments.

{This’ll be going somewhere, if I can remember to make it go there.}

That Night

I have been through a small piece of hell, unlike anything I have experienced before.

A hell that I will remember.

The Island of Misfit Toys – Session 10

In which being in charge means you have to make the tough decisions.

Real Fake

It’s all fake.  All of it.

The colors, the textures, the fabrics, the smells.  On the outside, from a distance, it gives the illusion of sincerity.  It will fool the eye’s casual glance, as the brain fills in the unseen and unfocused details with superior imagination.  But upon closer inspection, the seams show.  The paint peels.  The chrome becomes plastic, the steel becomes wood, the silk becomes starched cotton, and the leather becomes some polymer with a synthetic and unfeeling name.  What seemed to be an authentic relic of ages past with stories to tell was simply fabricated and assembled mere months ago, perhaps even mass-produced with hundreds and hundreds of others just like it.  There is nothing special about it, just like there is nothing special about the other hundreds.

{Temporary Notice}

I am in Boston,

Visiting friends, having fun.

I am back Tuesday.

Bardic

“It’s been, what, twenty-six years now, since the raid?  And any man worth his salt round these parts should know that he’d have shown his face around here by now, if he were still alive.  Hell, even if he were imprisoned in some abyssal hellhole you can bet gold he’d find a way to let people know he was still around.  I can see it now:  wake up one morning and plastered on the side of the town hall is a big note.  ‘Greetings and salutations, citizens of Creekwall.  I seem to have found myself in a bit of a predicament.  What with the seven pit lords constantly holding the other end of my shackles and my troublesome lack of eyeballs now, I do think you’ll be seeing quite a deal less of me around these parts.  I will however make my best effort to join you for next year’s harvest festival and recount the tale in full.  You are ever in my heart.  Signed, K.D. the Blue Bard’.”

 

{Again, something in my head that means nothing to me now, but might later.}

Scrambled thoughts about fantasy

All this fantasy seems so pretentious now.  Telling the public, “My version is the version you have to accept for this story, and if you don’t like it then too bad.”  At first I thought it was the original stuff that was pretentious, telling the public, “You’ve never heard of these before but you have to care about them like they’re things you’ve always known and care about deeply.”  But the thing is, that’s the whole point of original characters:  you have to MAKE the public care about them.  That’s the challenge, and that’s the reward:  creating something good out of nothing.

John

John stands before the mighty stone door, and looks up at its aged surface, at the ancient crest of the ancient land upon it.  His palms sweat as they grip his rifle, so heavily augmented it’s likely transcended all words that currently exist to define firearms.

“Who are you?” the boy speaks to the voice on the other end of his headset, a voice which has been his guide and friend for months that have felt like years.

Off The Edge – The End (b)

The so-called Danny-boy doesn’t quite comprehend exactly what just happened at first.  He sees the stone suddenly sail backwards in the opposite direction, exactly like it would if it had hit a wall, except there was no wall to hit, just clear blue sky as far as the eye could see.  He trails the dying arc of the stone to the ground, where it bounces once before losing itself in the tall grass.

“Wait, wait, no, hang on…” Daniel stutters, his eyes rapidly flipping from the ground near the rock to the sky above.  “That didn’t just…  Do, do it again, I didn’t get a good look the first time!”

Jashe rolls his eyes and merely goats his mount forwards.  “Come on, ya little runt; yer gonna want to touch it anyways, might as well get it over with early.”

The Uncanny Valley of Truth

A state of mind that is hard to describe.

A place that you believe should not or does not exist, but when you find yourself there, it exists, in so many meanings of the word.

It is a place far enough removed from reality that your conscious mind knows it’s not real, but close enough to it for your subconscious mind to be tricked into thinking that it is.