Author: OneTrueStudent

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I finally have a bit of free time again, and I’m finishing the migration from AO3 I started a few years ago. I want to be able to put my stuff up in one place, keep original fiction with the fanfic, and make stuff I intend to publish generally available before publishing.

So what would make it better?

What would be useful for navigating the site?

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If you have other ideas, let me know. I’ll add them to the poll.

You want more of the kid’s stuff? Fanfic?

I was lurking AO3’s subreddit and found a series of threads about readers who found stories they liked but had been discontinued. The OPs asked what they should do, and invariably, the responses consisted of other people telling OP not to bother the original author.

I find that response incomprehensible. Don’t give offense by telling the author you like some material and gentle urging them to write more? That sentence doesn’t make sense to me. Sure, don’t be a jerk about it. That, obviously. But don’t write, ‘Dear Besty, I love your story, and hope you find inspiration to write more,’ letters for fear of passing insult???? Knock yourself out.

Don’t call me Betsy, but that’s about the only concern I have. If I don’t find inspiration, I won’t write more. I won’t be offended if you ask.

Mind: if that’s etiquette, I won’t do it to others. Different strokes for different folks, et al.

My thinking runs toward making things easier to find. I like the regularity of deadlines, and while I’m not cleaving to them, I do generally like having targets to hit. That means weekly Twilight in Heaven updates, generally at noon, Sundays MDT. I’ve got some stability here.

Fridays of Karesh Ni, also theoretically at noon, take the first slot of flex updates. I do have a job, go to school, and go outside, and sometimes something has to give. I’m going to keep working on it. That’s certain. But it’s early enough hat I’m still making big changes, and every now and then the river changes its route. I was at such a point last week when I got sick. Thankfully, I got lucky and did well, but that took my feet out from under me. I went down in the water.

But that’s the joy of writing. It can’t actually kill you! It just takes a bit.

Between irregularly updating when I can or holding until I can put stuff forward fairly consistently, what do you think?

Karesh Ni

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 8

Previous Chapters

Chapter 8

“So we’re going to turn this in, right?” asked one of the men on the shore.

“Yes, we’ve decided to be stupid about it,” agreed one swimmer from the center of the water. It was the one who’d claimed to have gotten it before.

“Oh, the blight upon you!” swore the other swimmer in the dark lagoon, and he turned, pulling hard toward the shore. The blighted one followed.

I ran between dunes and broken trees. Knotted pines had fallen over. Rifts had been driven into sand and dune, and narrow rivulets crawled through them. I could see where the hills had sunk, and where they would level out as wind and rain would shave the sand bar’s rough edges. But I also saw huge shelves of black stone up on their sides like broken dinner plates dropped from a picnic. Mallens’s stomps had lifted the bedrock here, driven it down there, and hills like the Flatirons of Thango rose out of flat beaches. They gave me great cover.

Around a jetty I found the sandbar the five had stopped to rest on, but it wasn’t connected to the land. Between us was a submerged section of dark water, filled with silt and black weeds. It looked about knee deep. I could run across, but they’d hear and see me coming. Their spit of sand had no dunes.

I could wait and hit them when they crossed. If I timed it right, I could catch the few in front and put them down while the others were still in the water. That might cause problems depending on who had the sword, but it seemed better than bull-rushing the five of them.

I hid and waited. There was some argument I couldn’t catch, and I broke cover to get closer. They didn’t notice.

“I’m agreeing with you!” said the disagreeable agreer. “We all agreed to be stupid, and so stupid we shall be. We’re going to turn it in, because Mallens will give us a reward and certainly not just take it as his due. We aren’t going to take this obvious item of power to the mists and and make a party palace out of it! We’ll stay in our little house instead of making a mansion because all the partying would distract us from our complaining time!”

Someone sighed. “Osret,” he said, slowly and as if in great pain.

“What?” yelled Osret. “Who wants all that party sex? Clearly, not anyone here.”

“If this is one of the weapons used to try to kill Mallens, do you really think we should keep it?” asked another one. “Does that seem remotely wise?”

“Of course not. We definitely shouldn’t transform it into something nothing alike, because Mallens will clearly start watching the property market for mist palaces when he needs to find assassins. Blessings of feast and fortune, you’re so smart! There’s certainly no way we could hide a sword.”

Someone else sighed.

They all looked so tired except for Osret. He took advantage of their silence.

“And we certainly couldn’t do something worthwhile with it, like give it to the ghost. This is only exactly what she asked for, and then we’d get revenge on the man who killed your mother,” Osret almost screamed.

“You want to use a forbidden weapon to hire a ghost? Osret, what part of that plan could go right?”

“She’s a ghost! She disposes of things so they are never found. She’s a ghost!” Now Osret was yelling.

Another repeated, “You want to use a forbidden weapon-”

Osret said, “It’s not forbidden. Mallens doesn’t even know it exists!”

“Who cares?” interjected a third. “Are you going to argue with him if he finds out? Claim ex post facto rules don’t count? He’s the Lord of Creation! He’ll stomp you to death and unmake your essence. What will you do then? Be dead at him?”

“Osret, we’re decided,” said another. “No one cares what you think, so stop talking.”

“Death upon you,” said Osret, and I thought he would strike the other.

But he didn’t. The two of them glared at each other while the other three formed a silent, worried crowd. Then Osret looked away, and the rest spoke among themselves quietly.

One of them came forward. “Everyone. Osret, Zenjin–” he looked at the one Osret had cursed “–we have to live together. Can we all agree with that?”

No one agreed with that. Several muttered. Osret and Zenjin looked away.

“Now bless feasts,” said the one trying to still the conflicts.

Osret and Zenjin didn’t bless anyone’s feasts. Osret managed to look nauseated, annoyed, and tired at once, and Zenjin was looking at him like he’d just spotted someone he’d always hated and never been drunk enough to fight.

“Glad we’ve put that behind us. Now we–” He was looking at Osret when he sighed a deep, gurgling thing of bubbles in his throat. His entire attitude changed, and he turned back from the sandbar that separated us to fully addressing the others.

“Osret, it’s just us. You can stop performing. There’s no one here to see you. We’re cousins. Me, you–” he tapped his chest. “Nurim, Apseto. Zenjin–” he double-tapped the other on the chest too. “You’re wishing death on people! Osret, that’s not necessary! I understand, I’m with you, but we’re not trying to get you. We’re your family. Osret, it’s okay. Hesh, you with me?”

Osret wouldn’t look at him.

“Come on, hesh. Hesh, we go back from before we could walk. Before my Mom died, she used to tell stories of when you used to chew on me when we were crawlers. Come on. Please. I’m not fighting with you. I’m your cousin. I’m Aesthus. I’m a person, I’m family, not some enemy. Come on.”

And Osret still wouldn’t look at him, but he sighed.

“And Zenjin, you too. You had no reason to say that. It was disrespectful.” Aesthus held out an open hand, both warning and calming.

“Yeah, ye,” said Zenjin. He made an act of will. “Osret, I apologize I shouldn’t have said that.”

To Zenjin, Aesthus said, “Thank you.” And to Osret added, “See? We’re with you.”

Osret and Zenjin stood awkwardly for a moment, then shook hands like limp fish. But if they weren’t embracing like brothers, their shoulders held less tension, and their arms didn’t clench.

Aesthus continued. “We talked about this, and four of us agreed. But Osret, we’re not dismissing you. Yes, if things go right, making a mansion from the blade would be something, or giving it to the ghost. Yes, we could make a party house, and yes, if we didn’t have to pay rent, we could throw double bumps. I also heard you about giving the sword to the ghost. Feast and fortune, Osret, of course I want revenge. He killed my Mom!

“But she’s my Mom! And I think about her, the way she kept telling me to be smart and take care of myself. Mallens is mad. Not just angry, but mad with with fury. He threw Tollos into the sky! If he finds anything, anything about the sword, he’s not going to be calm. We’re not going to have a chance to argue our case. He’ll just start killing people.

“I’ll take the sword to him. I massage his feet. I know all of you hate it, so I’ll do it. I’ll tell him how wonderful he is and how loyal we are, and how everyone else is wrong and he’s right. I’ll give him the sword. And you’re right; he’s not going to reward us.

“But we’ll be made. And if we can talk him down, all of the other gods holding their breaths will remember. And if we plead–and I’ll plead, remember. You don’t have to say anything—he’ll take Tollos down from the heavens, and she’ll remember.

“You’re right, okay. If everything goes well, your ideas are better. But if anything goes wrong, we’re all going to die, and Mallens isn’t going to be calm or reasonable about it. But I’m pretty good talking to him, and I’ll massage his feet, get between the toes, and he’ll be okay. We win this way.

“But we have to stick together. We have to work together. You need to stick with us. Zenjin won’t say anything like that again, he apologized, and the rest of us will be a little more respectful. But if we, family, are fighting like this, Mallens is flipping plates. Come on, hesh. Stay with us.”

Osret made a noise like he’d eaten bad shrimp. He frowned at the sea and waves.

“Osret, agree with us,” said Aesthus. His voice was low but not soft. He insisted. “Let this be done.”

Osret looked away. The others watched.

After a moment, Osret tried to walk away, but Aesthus caught him and held him back. Another struggle of wills happened, and Osret obviously just wanted the others to drop it. But Aesthus wouldn’t, and while he didn’t contest with Osret, he didn’t look aside either. He stood peacefully demanding, and the other three cousins stood in a close circle around Osret. He wouldn’t be able to get away with shoving or fighting.

Aesthus repeated, “Agree with us. Let it be over.”

And Zenjin added, “I did apologize, hesh. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Finally Osret took Aesthus’s hand and shook it. “Fine.” He shook hands with the others, Zenjin again, and they were fast but tight handshakes. But it galled Osret, and I could see a deep banked fury in his eyes. It bordered on malice. His cousins must have seen it too or chose not to.

I felt like a pervert watching this conversation, so I looked down and away. The notion of running up on them and hard initiating to take the sword felt even worse. There didn’t seem to be any alternatives, but I stared around as if magic was hidding under a rock.

Instead I saw dark, quick figures like shadows slide through the shallow water. They moved without even rippling the surface, through water barely knee high. Nereids, fish spirits, the dryads of sea and surf, I thought.

All around me the wreckage of the beach rose in piles and towers. The nereids swam into the deep black water around the cousins’ sandbar and vanished. Nereids are usually peaceful, lazy, and they like to tease. But the shore had been ruined and disrupted by Mallens’s efforts, and the dryads had swum silently and fast.

They swam like predators, I thought. Suddenly I had something worse to worry about than Osret.

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Greek

Science has pretty much adopted Greek as the language of variables, which makes seeing Greek writing so bizarre. I know all the variables, but the equations don’t make any sense. I spend a ton of time writing, reading, and working with Greek letters! But they’re numbers. And they don’t spell anything like, ‘Bathrooms down the stairs.’

Current affairs aside, I’d sort of expect Arabic or Cyrillic to dominate, both for historical reasons. And yet, it’s all Greek.

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DUuDE?

I take classes at the University of Denver, DU. I’m collaborating with the University of Deleware, UD.

DUUD, UDDU, or DUuDE?

Edit: I can’t figure out a way to get DUDU.

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Accessory Wish List

The NC700/750 frunk is the only feature I ever find myself specifically wishing for. Everything else is at best nice. Power, ride height, fuel economy: they’re all good, but they have tradeoffs. I can take or leave any of them with regards to any bike. But I constantly find myself wishing every bike had a frunk to put a helmet in.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 7

Previous chapters

Chapter 7

It took me two days to run from Angel’s Crest to Hyperion moving with all due haste. Clean air filled my lungs and made me want to move. Manna kept me going. The mountains of the west dwindled. North of me, other mountains would be rising though I couldn’t see them. Mallens had drawn the privacy veil around Mount Attarckus, thick white clouds that rolled with wind and thunder.

Of course that had nothing to do with me…well, it had everything to do with me (Yay! I mattered!), but I hoped no one figured that out.

My master plan to become famous seemed to have some rather significant problems.

I put them out of my mind.

When I arrived, I had one of those moments of indecision where I knew whatever I chose, I’d choose wrong. The heavy cloud cover blotted out the sky, and Hyperion, Beloved of Light, lay dark. I couldn’t see squat. I could head in at night, but I wouldn’t be able to see what I was entering. If I waited until dawn, that was time wasted.

After unpleasant hesitation, I waited. The city beloved by light lay dark. That didn’t look right. It didn’t sound right in my head. It didn’t feel right on my skin. I slept and started with a full stomach.

In the morning I couldn’t see the Sun, but dawn came anyway. The world went from dark gloom to light gloom.

Mount Attarckus rises north of Hyperion, the eastmost and tallest of the Broken Fangs. Other, lesser kings who had ruled Heaven before had built their mansions on those peaks, and Mallens had thrown them down when he heaved Attarckus up. In clear weather, it’s a cone that reaches the sky. A pennant of stars trails behind Attarkus’ summit at night, and at the summer solstice the Sun has to change his path to avoid hitting the peak. Now it looked like a funnel or a wagon stand. The green of trees had turned to dingy gray, and the cone of the base had barely begun to taper when it hit darker gray clouds. They spread outwards and rolled like the top of a pot of water just coming to boil.

The Headlands of Ju rose above the Dawn Sea on white sandstone. To the east they met the ocean with marble cliffs. Hyperion took up most of the headland, a rumpled plateau where white hills jutted up from manicured forests and table-top mesas held marble palaces. Every forest had been perfect, every stream bed sculpted. Spirits of water and rain came from the ocean or the fast flowing rivers nearby to tend the springs of the city. Sandstone is a dry rock, and only constant attention by the spirits made Hyperion livable by the gods.

I say by the gods because Hyperion was a city for the gods. No one else was welcome. The spirits were tolerated and Celestials allowed, but they both received cold welcome even as they kept it running. Being mortal in the capital city of Heaven was a capital offense.

So’s treason.

Earthquakes had shorn the edges of the plateau off, and golden palaces and magnificent lawns lay in rubble fields. Idyllic rivers tumbled over marble cliffs and ran through broken houses. The main roadway had fallen apart, and the sign that said ‘No Mortals’ had been torn apart. I scrambled up a scree-field and entered the city without ever passing a sign.

There were no guards. Sometimes I saw movement in broken palaces, and a few timid people moved on the streets. Mostly I saw no one. I’d catch a glimpse of someone a few blocks ahead, but by the time I got there, the streets were empty. A few times I came upon someone, but they pretended not to see me. I did what I could to take advantage of this.

From my mother’s side, I knew that spirits did live in Hyperion, more of them than even the gods knew. Many dryads came here to tend the perfect forests. Nereids warded the beaches and watched the waves like shepherds. Naiads sculpted the crystal rivers that flowed between houses, kept the deep pools clear of pond scum, and ensured the wild life didn’t get wild enough to inconvenience the gods of the city, much less the titans who ruled it and all.

Also from her I knew of the deep frictions between the spirits and Celestials. The Celestials, mostly born of titans and the great powers, but occasionally the forgotten offspring of gods, were powers of themselves, atavistic beings of might. Hoarfast was one. They had skins of steel, they breathed snowstorms, they wore capes of rain, or their bodies were goats or boars. Some were extremely powerful. Death was a Celestial. Some were mere animals. The Boars of Herindon pulled the chariot of Regulus and ate the corpses of his victims. There were many of them. Mallens had fathered five hundred sons. They were not gods and not titans, but somehow less.

Which put them in the ranks of spirits, but they had to be better than somebody.

In Hyperion, Celestials formed the interactive working class. They ran forges, carried bags, pulled rickshaws, and served food. Spirits tended their domains: forests, rivers, and parks. Celestials tended the works of the gods.

No one cared about mortals. We weren’t even a thing.

If they could, spirits and Celestials belligerently ignored each other. They could walk face-first into each other on a corner and move on without either recognizing the collision happened.

After crossing the outer walls, I headed east. If I approached someone among the trees, I walked near the roads. If someone with iron skin or bee’s wings approached, I stuck to the forests. Everyone put me in the ‘other’ group, and if questioned later would have a hard time identifying me.

Soon I found the waterfront facing the Dawn Sea. The Sun Palaces lay in tatters with roofs stomped in and grounds torn with canyons. Mallens’s stomps had driven the ground down to bedrock, and the tops of great trees stuck out of sand traps. Whole buildings were driven underground or smashed flat. Over this place a curse of dark skies hung.

But there were no signs forbidding me to enter. I suppose the clouds and curse of dark skies meant that, but they didn’t say so.

This was it. If someone found the scepters before I did, I was dead. I’d tattle on Koru immediately, and we’d be tortured together. My death would be agony, but his would last forever. I’d win.

Self! Stop!

I didn’t want to die in agony. Death in agony wouldn’t be better if Koru’s was worse. I needed to find the weapons, dispose of them, and I didn’t know what to do next, but there wouldn’t be a next if I didn’t get find the scepters first.

I thought of two utterly blistered summers at Fate, filing unread documents in the bowels of an office building. It’s beautiful and majestic office building. It’s built on Firmament of the Sky, behind the stars of the Mask! But you know what a basement in a scenic building looks like?

It looks like every other basement.

High stress, someone always checking my work but no one ever needing it, no promotion potential, I had almost nothing to show for those two summers. I’d already spent my wages on rent.

But I had four little bits of luck.

I prayed to the Pattern Spiders and asked for one of my favors. I needed to find those weapons.

I glanced around. No one watched. I jogged down to the sea and started searching.

#

It took me several hours to figure out what was where. The New Light Cape had detached completely from the mainland, and Mallens had stomped lagoons into the beach, making a false shore. Wooden towers for lowly gods to greet the dawn had toppled over. The deeps east of the Cape bred tall waves that rolled on or collapsed, depending on what took place beneath the surface. A morass of beach houses, scrub trees, and rocks hid under calm water.

I looked for Heridite’s Crest. It was, or had been, a low prominence where yellow rock stuck up through the beach, a famous picnic spot surrounded by small pagodas and pavilions. Mallens had stood there the last four years when he’d greeted the dawn at First Light. That’s where we’d planned the hit to occur, so it would be a good place to start searching. However the geography of the place had been rearranged.

While I was poking around on a spur of boulders, splashing noises suddenly broke the otherwise dead silence. They didn’t sound like fish or whales surfacing, and after a moment, I made out shouting from the other side of a line of dunes.

“We’ve got it,” said someone.

“You mean I got it.”

“Oh, shut up. We got it.”

Wondering what it they got, I ran over.

Two heads were splashing and yelling in the middle of a black lagoon, and several more were swimming for the beach. The swimmers resolved themselves into three climbing out of the water and fell, gasping, onto the sand. The two in the lagoon were still yelling.

“Would you both shut up?” yelled a guy on the beach. He held up something. “We got it!”

‘It’ had a blade as long as an arm with a two-hand handle. It had no hilt. The cutting edge formed a stretched S; the other was straight and blunt. The blade wept a kind of darkness when the man waved it, a faint staining shadow like ink in water. But it would cut like razors. It would cut gods. It was a godly weapon.

It was a magnificent copy of Death’s All Things Ending, and Hasso, who’d made it, knew exactly who I was.

My jaw clenched.

I looked over the five of them, three if I could get there quickly enough. They were tired; I was fresh. I could probably hit them from ambush.

Was I really about to kill three people to take that sword?

The idea bothered me, and yet, what did I face at Mallens’s hand?

I ground my teeth like I was chewing rocks.

Maybe I could get the sword quickly. I’d take it without killing anyone.

Yeah. No one had to die. It would be fine.

I stayed low and started around the rocks.

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Quarter is Finally Finally Over

Everything wrapped up Thursday. I’ve spent two days in full goblin mode.

And yet, I hit the gym, stretched, ran errands, and fixed a bunch of problems in fiction. But I haven’t worked, and there’s so much to be done.

Ugh