Tale

Between this post and the previous, this blog hit 5,000 views.

Once upon a time, I wrote a story. Well, truly that would be something like several thosandce or millionce upon a time, but I finished this one, which takes it down by a few orders of magnitude.

Specifically, I wrote this story--a mash-up of Stardust and Thor--while on an exceptionally long pair of plane rides and a layover when I should probably have been doing homework. I was flying back from a visit to Oberlin, and now I am beginning school here, and should probably be doing homework. Symmetry!

Below the story are several comments, all of which I appreciated. One word, however, surprised me. The word was, "Gaiman-y". I'm sure the commenter thought that I had been trying to emulate Neil Gaiman's style, as he had written Stardust, and so I took the comment for the compliment it was. I appreciated it beyond that because I admired Neil Gaiman's style. But, since A)  I like to think I have a style of my own, B) Neil Gaiman can change style quite a lot between his books when it strikes his fancy, and C) I had never read Stardust, only seen the movie, the fact that someone thought I had mimicked his style struck me as odd. So, as one does when someone makes a comment I do not understand, I reread the story.

Oh, I thought. It's a fairy tale.

Which, in a way, it wasn't at all. Fairy tales are supposed to come from aural tradition, and have specific rules which I bent and skipped around every which way. But, in another more important way, of course it was. I was taking the stories of my culture, the world I knew, and putting them together in the fairy tale format. The fact that I happened to be adding together a movie based on a series of comic books based on a mythology and a movie based on a fairy-tale-ish book and then pushing those through the oddity that is my mind didn't matter terribly much. Or rather, it did.

Fairy tales are retellings. Even fairy tales like Hans Christian Anderson use the stories we grew up with, the rhythms and patterns we have in the back of our mind that tell us what should happen next. I used the patterns in the readers' minds, and used a few cues to tell them which headcanons I was accepting, and which I was tossing aside. There's no more obvious way to introduce an AU than describing canon and then saying, But that's not this story, and if there was a more obvious way to establish that I was trying to keep their personalities functionally the same, I did not know it. Having reread the story and thought, I reread the comment and smiled.

And that, dear children, is the story of how the most perplexing comment became my favorite.

Thought to Page

Between the previous post and this one, this blog hit 3,000 hits.

There once was a wolf.

(There once were many wolves, mother-storyteller. What kind of start is that?

Hush, apprentice-child.)

The wolf was packless.

(Because he had nothing to carry?

Child.

Yes, mother.)

In the tradition of his people, he had been sloughed from the pack when he reached maturity. Some wolves found packs soon after, temporary or permanent. This wolf had not.

Winter was coming.

(Oh.)

The wolf was no great hunter among wolves, but had enough skill to hunt the plentiful rabbit, and humble enough to take advantage of what luck came his way. But as the seasons changed, the rabbits were growing rarer and quicker. He stopped hunting as much for meat and hunted instead for a pack, but found no wolves--not even the ones who had thrown him out. But, the wolf's luck helped him once more: he found a pack.

(Did the wolves--

What wolves?)

The pack was an odd one. They walked awkwardly, on two legs, and changed their fur much more often than the wolflet had ever seen. But still, he saw them play, and saw them hunt, and knew they were pack.

A little child, too young even to apprentice, saw the wolflet. He waved and laughed, then ran over to a mother for attention. She gave him meat--the wolf sniffed the air. Burned meat was different from blood-hot meat, but he knew it. Rabbit. The little one enjoyed it; it seemed a treat.

The wolflet was very hungry. But, though his mind was poor for hunting, he knew well enough how to work within a pack. He killed a rabbit, carefully--he had seen this pack use the fur, and the only marks the kill left were a ruined throat.

He took the snow-white rabbit in his jaws, lightly, so lightly he did not pierce the skin, and trotted back to the house of skins where he had seen the child.

(What kind of house is made of skin?

And what is your house made of?

Furs--oh.)

The wolf-child sat again in the bushes where the child had last seen him. The child scurries off, towards him, though the wolf knows he crouches too low to be seen. He knows it better when he stands and the child starts.

"Pup!" the child says, for the wolf is a runt. The wolf does not understand, but takes it for a greeting, and drops the rabbit. He nudges it toward the tribe's youngling with his wet wolf nose, then waits. The mother would fear wolves too much, but perhaps, if the little one trusts him...

The child moved forward, innocent of any danger, and then the mother rounds the side of the tent, calling the youngling's name.

Pup does not know what the tribe would think of offering one's belly, does not yet trust them not to hurt him. He crouches in on himself, as when his mama-wolf would catch him somewhere he shouldn't be.

"Mama! The pup brought rabbit!" The young one held up the meat for inspection. The mother sees the teeth's mark, sees the thin, careful wolf, and sees tribe.

(What then?

You have a wolf-pet. What do you think?)

Another Origin

A/N: Just hit 1500 hits, and coming up on 100 posts. Wow.

It amazes me, as I edit old things I wrote, how redundant I was. Wonder what I'll notice in another few years.

“In the beginning, there was nothing.”

That’s how I’m supposed to start, right? But that can't be right. Because when someone says in the beginning, it means that there was the beginning. There is something present. The beginning is there. Were there truly nothing, it would not be a story.

If you merely wish to hear what happened, here it is: There was nothing, or so little that none would notice it. And then it became everything.

But the story is a story:

In the beginning, there was everything.

All wrapped up together, there was everything, tight as a bond between lovers, between mother and child, between trust and belief. And it was still.

There is no word left or yet for how absolutely motionless it was. A still pond has thousands of things moving in it, even in the tiniest drop. Motionless implies that motion is the basic state. But here, things were simply still because they were. None of the little particles in the universe had gotten the idea that one might turn yet.

So they were, and they were still—though ‘still’ is a shadow cast from that first stillness. And perhaps this is what some mean when they say, “In the beginning, there was nothing.”

And then, one tiny, miniscule little particle got the idea to move.

This was not easy. This was not moving against a strong wind, or moving against an ocean current pushing you the wrong way. This was not even moving against surrounding granite. A strong wind is still a force, and can be worked against; an ocean current can only push so hard; granite can be worn down. This was not merely moving against something tough. This was moving when ‘moving,’ ‘against,’ and, ‘force’ were not even ideas. They weren’t.

Yet this little, tiniest piece off a whole that had never been apart from anything managed to figure out that it could be done.

This was the first thought.

Then there was a slight movement, and the little piece—and ‘piece’ was as new as ‘slight,’ as ‘thought’—found itself doing something that was impossible.
This was the first action.

Then the first piece that had had the first thought and made the first action passed the idea to another.

It was possible for the piece to leave movement to itself. To be able to see all. To leave the universe an eternity before anything began to turn. But the piece simply shared the idea: the thought of being known or keeping this to itself as foreign as ‘moving’ had been a moment before. More, the idea of moving eventually came to this little one’s mind.

When I have been saying ‘little’, the only comparison I have had has been the universe. Our little one may have been larger than anything we could imagine. Or it might have been smaller than the smallest thing any will ever experience. The size does not matter, for, at this time, it was the smallest thing in the universe.

The idea being passed on was the first gift.

And something else picked up on the idea. There was a moment, an impossible moment. How do you introduce the idea of movement to one who has never felt it, never experienced anything like it? When it is not merely that you do not share a language, but there is no language, where do you begin?

This was the first story.

And the other piece, somehow, miraculously, understood. And they realized, together, that this was amazing. That this should have been impossible. That the little one should have sought for weary eternities, looking for one who could understand.

And then awareness sparked and they realized that this was simple. It was not luck. Once the first barrier had been broken, it was simple. For it is impossible to describe movement without movement, but descriptions are movement. They moved together, in the indescribable joy of two who have realized not just that they might be happy, but that everyone might be, and truly understanding.

This was the first emotion.

This was the first moment. The rest was background, now.

This was quickly followed by the first silence. Not because it had not been quiet before, but because there had never before been sound for silence to dance with.
And suddenly, one wondered about the other’s motives. Perhaps both. But then, one, the other, both, reached out for the other.

For each other.

This was the first trust.

This was the first truth.

This was the first time two souls, two pieces of collective divine, met.

They might have been together before, but they had not known each other, not even known of each other. They had simply had the universe, and were the universe. And that had been something.

But being able to be together, stand together, mind to mind, heart to heart, soul to soul, love to love, was something else.

This is why some people will insist that lust in any form is evil. Because that profound connection echoes through us still, and each any every one of us can feel that, in some way. And there is a fury in some spirits for doing something so similar, but so much less.

And, for the first time, they looked at each other. Then they realized that everything was moving. Had this been a sudden shift? Had it always been? How could everything have happened so quickly? They couldn’t’ve missed it, but they must have, hadn’t they?

And maybe they had. And maybe it hadn’t. It didn’t matter then, and it does not matter now. The two oldest souls are a part of each other.

They are just as old as everything else, but they came apart first.

They met first.

Storyteller!

The sun shone. The sky was that beautiful blue one gets on perfectly clear days: only there on the rarest of days, and all the better for it. It made the straw into spun gold, the grass greener than any emerald, even the roads were bright.

"Storyteller! Storyteller!"

I smiled at the girl who ran towards me, straw shoes smacking on paving stones, hair messily tied back, dress undyed and wrinkled. Her eyes were bright as the sky, and her hair matched the hay. There were ink stains on her fingers, still sharp black against sunburned skin. And, of course, scrolls spilled out of her arms.

"Yes, Prema?"

"I--I got a commission!" She beamed at me. Prema had had some trouble around that. Never cleaning up will lose you quite a few jobs, no matter how well you write or tell.

"Wonderful, little one." I ruffled her hair, to the extent that was possible. "Who's the lucky patron?"

She gave some impressive title that rolled off her tongue as well as one of her first stories told around the campfire did now. My lips twitched. She'd been practicing her patron's name. "And what does she want you to write?"

Prema's eyes were still as bright, but their character changed. "Um, tell, actually." Now she shifted the scrolls to one arm and pushed her hair out of her eyes. "And...it has to be something new." She shifted her weight and licked her lips, suddenly huddling in on herself. "She--she saw some stuff I wrote, and she wanted me to write something for her, then tell it, for her guests at the party."

"And you're getting...?"

"A good outfit, a night around potential clients, dinner and a few silver pieces." She flushed a little at the last, as if accepting food and fine clothing for one of her stories was perfectly acceptable, but money unthinkable.

I nodded and smiled. "Good, for a first commission." Premmy relaxed a little. "And what have you got there to look at?"

"Oh! Well, everything."

"Everything?"

She laughed. "All right, not everything. Everything I've ever written. Unless a muse decides to come around and smack my head with a new idea, I don't have time to come up with a whole new story from scratch and memorize it in time."

"Oh? When's the party?"

She grinned sheepishly at me. "...A week? I know; I know!" was all she said to my look, "but I've got fittings, and...well, I'd get so nervous."

I laughed. "As you wish. So you need to pick one to finish."

"Yes! I've got all of these memorized as far as they go, they just don't end."

"Well, which one did your lovely patron like?"

"Oh...well, this one." She juggled the papers around until she had the right one on top.

"You know, you could put those on the bench." I nodded over and we sat together, keeping all the scrolls between us. When she handed me the scroll I'd asked after, she looked away. It didn't take me long to figure out why. The characters were a little exaggerated at times, and it skipped over some things I wouldn't've skipped, but...

"I didn't know you were writing an autobiography."

She squirmed a little. "I--I mean--I'm sorry! I know I should've asked you before I showed it to anyone, but she wanted to see something and I forgot to take it off the shelf! I--" By then her eyes were starting to fill.

"Prema?"

She flinched. "Yes?"

How to say it... "You wrote beautifully. This is your story. I happen to be in it, but this, as it is written, is your story. As far as I am concerned, you never have to worry about showing this to anyone. If I had been hurt by this, it would have been because you believed something bad of me, not because you had written of it." I squeezed her shoulders and took in the air, tinted with the soft smell of hay and the warm smell of life, in general. "Not everyone will feel that way. But I'm your teacher too, and I'm honored I was there so much."

She looked at me. For a moment, she waited, as if she thought I would tell her it was some joke. Then she wiped her eyes, hugged me, and gathered everything up.

As she dashed away, she called over her shoulder, "I've got an ending!"

I smiled and walked around town. Nothing ever ends. But she'd found an ending, at least, and that would be enough for her patron. Knowing her, it would be fantastic. She wouldn't stop until it was.

Musing #6: Truth, Honesty, and Stories

Truth: facts

Honesty: straightforwardness, adhering to facts; see also honor, integrity

Story: Ha. Anything told. An anecdote, a fiction piece, a lie.

Oh, and of course.

Lie: something that is untrue that the speaker knows is untrue, but is reporting as truth.

WARNING: Opinions contained from here on.

Occasionally, I go through and try to figure out oxymorons. Most of the ones people bring up are fairly obvious, e.g. jumbo shrimp are large in comparison to shrimp, military intelligence is military wisdom/knowledge, information gained pertaining to the military.

For today: an honest liar, a truthful liar, a lying honest person and and lying truthful person.

The simplest is a lying truthful person. Stating facts, but only the facts one wants to. Nothing factually inaccurate is being presented, but the image created in the listener's mind is false.

A lying honest person is also fairly easy, though a bit harder to wrap one's mind around. If honesty is related simply to telling the facts, then it would be the above. But it is not--at least, not how I'm using it.

One can mislead by telling only the facts. But there are also times when this very exclusion can serve for greater honesty. If a person has genuinely reformed, then bringing up his or her past serves to do nothing but mislead. So that might get swept under the rug.

Or it might be someone asking if person X said, "Jane Doe needs to lose a few pounds." If the technical answer is yes, but it was said in a joking tone and meant to be taken as a joke among friends, then the honest answer is no. If X doesn't know Jane, or Jane is particularly sensitive about her weight, it gets trickier. But if it is given and taken as a joke, then saying yes is dishonest, even if it is factually accurate.

And, of course, it could also be taken that the honest or truthful person is being deceitful just this once.

A truthful liar is someone who regularly tells the truth and regularly lies. This would almost certainly imply the above example, using facts to mislead. But where the above implies doing so once, this implies doing it as a matter of course.

An alternative is much simpler, and therefore less fun to work out. It is simply someone who regularly lies and regularly tells the truth. This is probably the most dangerous type of liar, as people tend to ignore him/her--and 'Boy Who Cried Wolf' aside, it is rarely just the person misleading who suffers for this. Imagine, if you will, that the flocks are kept close together. The shepherds have to keep taking their sheep away, and finally when the wolf shows up, they don't. They lose their sheep, get injured, etc., etc.

An honest liar. This has the same deal as a truthful liar; it can be someone who tells factually inaccurate things for the sake of the true picture regularly, or someone who is honest and dishonest as a matter of course.

But because of how honest can be used, it has another way to take it. It would be someone who lies, but will not mislead on particularly big stuff. So, for instance, would say, "They went that way!" to get someone off a (friend) thief's trail, but wouldn't do anything that would end up killing someone. Or killing someone 'important', though what that means varies. More commonly referred to as a trickster, scalawag, or playful/mischievous [noun].

And, of course, it could just be a poetic way to refer to a storyteller. One who says things that aren't true, but in such a way that s/he doesn't expect anyone to believe them.