[Competition 10S] Daily Life

Post Reply
User avatar
Alicorn
Posts: 245
Joined: Wed May 11, 2011 2:57 am
Location: Mevwan, Pelagia
Contact:

[Competition 10S] Daily Life

Post by Alicorn »

Create (or recycle) a character native to your statelet, and write a description and a short story about their daily life.

Demon of Fides
Posts: 771
Joined: Sun Nov 28, 2010 12:01 am

Re: [Competition 10S] Daily Life

Post by Demon of Fides »

[[Official Entry is Missionary, the thread of whom is currently in progress in The Favoured]]


Missionary is a thin, young man with jet black hair in an untamed widow's peak. He speaks in a sonorous and heavily accented baritone. He worked in the Colony as a Silver and then joined the Preachers, eventually becoming an emissary to the other major military superpower, The Favoured, from the Preachers. He suffers from many major issues with both his liver and pancreas, requiring medical treatment for both about once a month.
Life with the Preachers was hell. It was liberating, it was the most freedom any living Colonist ever had, but they had turned away from their God, and they were being punished. The majority of days were spent fleeing, both Gold patrols and the sounds in the earth. Often sentries would be overwhelmed by the sounds, their bodies dragged into the tunnels, their suits exploding as the life-support disconnected. Food was sparse, water more so. Every day two or three Preachers joined their cause, and each day four or five were taken.

Time has no meaning in the black abyss of the tunnels, they moved with the tides in the putrid underground pools, they were the shadows on the wall, they were soon gone.
Hier post ich, ich kann nicht anders

User avatar
Illuminarch Nicholas
Posts: 46
Joined: Mon Jan 10, 2011 4:49 pm

Re: [Competition 10S] Daily Life

Post by Illuminarch Nicholas »

As the entry, It'll be a little teaser from a project that I teased from my most recent SINGULARITY piece concerning the Antiquity Expedition. It's set a few years after Singularity. Enjoy!

Character(s) Present in the Following Narrative: Mila Sunoya (female, Lead Navigator) and Dennis van Noy (male, Head Archaeologist)
"This is absolutely incredible! And I mean that not literally, of course." Dennis van Noy said excitedly. Mila Sunoya looked at him in an annoyed fashion.

"If we actually dissect the word "incredible" from its original root dilect, it literally translates to "without credibility", which means false, which is not what I mean. So perhaps I should use another word that would lessen confusion. This is absolutely monumental!" Dennis said in a rushed manner. Mila's eyes widened: was she really going to have to stand this for the entire Expedition?

"I don't think people will mind you using the word incredible. I don't think people think that far into it." she said tersely. Dennis looked down.

"Oh... well, they should! But, this expedition is groundbreaking & fantastic! Do you know how many ruins and artifacts are down there?"

"No."

"A lot!" Dennis said. His hyperactivity was comparable to a child's.

"That's incredible." Mila said, leaning on immense hull of the Wind of Eurus. When did Agent Epsilon say he was getting back? Because she really needed a good excuse to leave this little situation.

"What if the Reactor's intact? Think of all the memorabilia from The Expo! Diaries, journals, logs, souvenirs! I could be one of the first archaeologists to properly examine the pre-Cataclysm lifestyle of the people prior to Omega!" van Noy said hurriedly. Sunoya had to admit: that part was cool. The trip there probably wasn't going to be, though. But she had always felt in inclination for the past.

"Eruditia... that word seems so foreign yet so modern. Life must've been so different back then, huh?" Dennis said. Mila smiled for real this time and looked at him.

"I bet you'd be surprised."
Illustro est via

User avatar
Alicorn
Posts: 245
Joined: Wed May 11, 2011 2:57 am
Location: Mevwan, Pelagia
Contact:

Re: [Competition 10S] Daily Life

Post by Alicorn »

Marketta had to make three trips to drop off her family's laundry off at Teno Sabelshi's house. One trip for Marketta and her sister's clothes, one for both brothers, one for her parents, two bags in each hand. And after each trip, she carried back her next door neighbors' laundry. The whole street had their schedules staggered, so when one neighbor was dropping off, they were also picking up for someone else. Her route took her past the fairground, today holding an agricultural show - giant squashes, flowers that would grow even in the cold of the southern provinces, cauliflower in strange colors and whitegrass that didn't deserve the name because it was yellow or sky-blue. Marketta wondered if it would make colored paper, or if the pigments would fade when the grass was pulped.

After she was done with ferrying laundry, and the neighbor had slipped her a salmon-filled bun dripping with glaze, Marketta went to the fair to find out. The family showing the colored "whitegrass" was thronged with curious townies, but eventually (licking her fingers) she pushed to the front to see the plants up close. They were planted in showboxes, not cut, but - yes, there were samples of paper in attractive pastels. The man behind the table was talking: "They are new strains, but yes, we do have to pep up the color with pigments in the soil. But standard grass won't pick it up at all."

The paper was for sale. Marketta frowned at the price, but finally she ran home, fetched her little leather shoulder-bag, and jogged back, newly jangling with each footfall. She bought thirty sheets of the blue paper. Twenty people subscribed to her magazine about edible wild plants and foraging, eight people were owed copies for having submitted articles to the issue she was in the process of editing, Marketta always kept one for herself, and one copy would go to the newsstand in the middle of town that Marketta's father's sister ran who'd promised to start carrying it regularly if anyone ever bought the one copy Marketta brought with each installment. Someone would definitely take a closer look at this issue if it had a pretty blue cover instead of just being plain newsprint.

It occurred to Marketta that she was probably not the only person to have this idea, but she already had the paper, so she brought it down to the printing shed her family shared with the neighbors on the other side. She had to wait for their little boy to finish typesetting the one-page family newsletter he produced (frivolous, but kids had to start somewhere; Marketta used to print Lightlessly awful poems herself before she'd gotten into foraging). As long as she was there, she helped him work the press, running off four copies, and then told him she'd clean off the type if he'd run along. He went, and she wiped the ink off the blocks, re-sorted them, and placed more letters for her cover template.

Thirty blue covers later, front and back and inside and out, she was the one holding up the next person who wanted the press. She made way for her older brother, who didn't have a publication of his own but did have terrible handwriting and had to typeset anything he wanted printed in someone else's. Marketta got out of his way, leaving the blue paper to dry, and then instead of heading directly home, she detoured into the woods looking for a likely source of berries. Her sister had mentioned something about wanting to make a batch of preserves.

It was almost sunset by then, and that meant Marketta was nearly due at work. She shrugged into her favorite patterned fur (fox, with diamonds of ermine spotted along the hem and a ring of it around the hood), then looked out at the light snowfall that was starting and put on a down-puffed shirt under it for extra layering. Her train was usually a few minutes late and it would be bad if she froze at the bus stop.

Her train was late, but only by a minute, and soon it was trundling along at a sedate perturber's pace to the other side of town. Marketta got off at the second-to-last stop on the line and walked a block to the theater house. She wasn't a performer herself - not until she managed not to choke at an audition, anyway - but she sold concessions on their property (turning over a cut of her profits), and could help herself to the extra for her supper when sales slowed down. She signed in to work, made the run to the store across the road (it was after hours, but the owner was her cousin) and hauled back the boxes of food in three trips. She put the cold things on a folding table outside the door, the warm things on a different table inside by the fire, and stood at the entryway, where she shilled to early arrivals. Herring on a stick, crackers in paper packets, spiced potato pepper pancakes, jerky, sugar icicles, frozen yogurt in cucumber or maple, overpriced imported chocolate-covered dried fruit. Someone was disappointed that she wasn't selling her own wild green salad (served double-wrapped in paper to keep leaves and chopped allicins from spilling everywhere, with dressing doled out on purchase from a single jar), which was gratifying, but none of the ingredients were in season. She convinced the customer to buy a pancake instead.

The play started, and Marketta nibbled on excess jerky while she watched it through a gap in the rear curtains, not wanting to really use up her inventory before the show let out or risk being thrown out if she crossed into the theater proper without a ticket. It was a tiresome story and she'd seen it before, but she'd read all her magazines and wasn't expecting more until the next day, so she hadn't brought anything to read. So she watched Kemthu and Liondio play out their love story (so cliché: they share a cousin but aren't related themselves, the cousin tries to set them up, they resist because they're rebellious teenagers who think they'll trip over true love one day all by themselves as though it were somehow weakness to want help, and go on ill-fated excursions with improper prospects before finally letting the cousin introduce them.)

Marketta wished one of her cousins would set her up. It'd be easier. She could never figure out how much eye contact she was supposed to make with a boy if she liked him, or how that was ever supposed to turn into the two of them having a nice dinner of seared seal and kelp followed by necking and getting married in a beautiful cape sewn all over with owl feathers under the bells of the church. It'd be easier if one of her cousins figured it out for her.

The play let out after an hour and a half, and Marketa sold most of the rest of her inventory (she had gotten pretty good at estimating how much she'd need), except for some of the crackers and the imported candy. She put her folding tables away in the theater's storage room and walked back to the train station, where she had to wait for ten minutes. She nibbled on her leftovers there.

Back in her neighborhood, she checked the mail on her way in, collecting magazines for her parents and siblings but none for her, and left them on the front room table before she went to her room and to burrow under her down quilt.
Last edited by Alicorn on Tue Jul 19, 2011 7:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
Shyriath
CONDOLORD
Posts: 1444
Joined: Mon Dec 27, 2010 1:45 am

Re: [Competition 10S] Daily Life

Post by Shyriath »

Timun Dan is in his mid-thirties, of medium height for a Deep Singer, thin, with blond hair that is already extremely sparse and is receding; his eyes are pale blue. He is, to all appearances, a small-time merchant; though born in Ezhku, he has set up shop in the distant Beacon of Suronkadi as a purveyor of Ezhkuith foods. On the other hand, sometimes one's job involves things no one would expect...
The Beacon Hall of Sironkadi began its working day as it always did. The vendors and merchants shuffled into the various stalls, set out their wares, raised the colorful banners proclaiming themselves to the incoming crowds, and sang out, sirens luring customers onto the shoals of spending.

Timun Dan had certain advantages there. Not all vendors had merchandise that was easy to sing about; but if you imported yours from a distant but well-known place, such as Ezhku, about which any number of songs had been created already, it was nearly impossible to run out of advertising material. And he did, after all, have a good voice.

As the crowds expanded with the morning rush, his stall attracted the usual patrons, most of whom he knew by name: people who wanted a taste of something different, or who wanted more "cultured" food than they usually found in Suronkadi, or even visitors from Ezhku. Timun, having selected a stick of sweet axir candy to quell his appetite till lunch, spotted two such visitors approaching the stall. He stuck the end of the axir stick in his mouth, and grinned at the familiar faces. "Gentlemen!"

"Timun," said one of them, agreeably. "I should've known you'd still be in business, even out here. You'd find a way to prosper in a crack in the wall."

"You're too fond of the big Beacons, Pelu," he replied. "A place like this will do you good."

As the three chatted about events back home, a very, very close and careful observer might have noticed the way that, as they leaned on the stall's counter, their fingers twitched in subtle patterns.

The order has been given, Pelu's fingers said. The target has become inconvenient. Look to the coins.

I will serve, replied Timun's fingers. I have identified another Brother; he may be working for Naidax. He is providing money to the target.

Will he interfere? asked the other visitor.

I believe I can take care of them both. Timun's face was very slightly smug.

As you say. Their fingers stopped moving, as Pelu and his companion bought some salted bat from the stall. After a lengthy exchange of farewells, the travellers continued on their way, and Timun sucked thoughtfully on the axir stick.

He leaned down beneath the counter, where there were a few small shelves with boxes of supplies underneath. He opened the money box, which sat next to his extra condiment pots, and noisily tossed each coin in, quickly feeling each one first. The metal banding on one coin, he found, was only foil, giving the appearance of a real coin but covering a tiny hollow. Setting the coin aside for a moment, he took a salt shaker, which looked quite unlike the ones he normally used, and unscrewed the lid; then he tore the foil off the coin and dumped a small quantity of grainy white powder on top of the salt before screwing the lid back down.

"Timun? You down there?"

Timun grabbed a small pot filled with green axir sticks and rose back up. "Just refilling, Kani. The axir goes quickly, y'know."

Kani gave him a wry smile. "It does the way you eat it. I'll take five sticks before you finish the rest off."

Timun conducted his business for several hours before closing for lunch, strolling along with his hand in the pocket of his long-sleeved robe. The salt shaker was there, as well. As had been his custom for the last several years, he went to Shalo Kem's stall, which sold some rather delicious dried fungi; it was popular in Suronkadi. One of the Beacon's councilors was a regular patron, and quite coincidentally Timun generally stopped by at such a time that he was there when the worthy lady came to pick up her own food. And, possibly, more than just food.

He bought his lunch and took a seat at the counter. Shalo, an old Naidaxith vendor, gave him a friendly nod as he took the money; Timun returned the nod. He ate unhurriedly. As the councilor arrived and Shalo looked to her to take her order, Timun reached for the salt shaker and sprinkled more on his dish; then, so it appeared, he put it back as the councilor sat down nearby. He finished his meal as the lady received hers, nodded again to Shalo, and strolled away.

He had gotten about twenty meters away when there was a commotion behind him; he turned, and let an expression of well-crafted surprise and horror onto his face. The councilor had fallen out of her seat, stark dead. A member of the Beacon-Watch had already arrived and was calling for his brethren. Suspicious looks were being aimed at Shalo, and at his food. No doubt the Watch would find out what she'd eaten and test every bit of it. They couldn't fail to notice all the salt she'd used, either; she did love her food to be salty. It had been a useful thing to know.

Timun didn't permit himself a smile. It would've been noticed. But, inside, he felt a glow of satisfaction.
Shyriath Farstrider (aka Shyriath Bukolos), KD MOU OLH XBH
Viscount Farstrider of Erysisceptrum, Count Bukolos of the Condo, Harbinger of Cheese

TOTUS MUNDUS TABULAM RASAM EST

Post Reply

Return to “Contest Archives”