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Lady of the Land

Registered: 05-2003
Location: Germany
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Exercise #14 - 24/09/07 - Waterfall


Here's the link to a picture:

Multnomah Falls

Now, what in the world is that person doing up there on the bridge? Or what else comes to mind? Just turn this into a little story or even just a few paragraphs.

(You can do either fantasy or sf.)

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- Firlefanz


9/24/2007, 4:00 pm Link to this post Email Firlefanz   PM Firlefanz Blog
 
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Shepherd

Registered: 02-2006
Posts: 573
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Re: Exercise #14 - 24/09/07 - Waterfall


quote:

Firlefanz wrote:



(You can do either fantasy or sf.)




Better yet I challenge evryone to do both! (If you have the time. One story written is better than two unwritten.)

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...waiting patiently for a few submissions to come back.
9/24/2007, 4:03 pm Link to this post Email BaneBlade   PM BaneBlade
 
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Shepherd

Registered: 02-2006
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Re: Exercise #14 - 24/09/07 - Waterfall


I posted my fantasy story (more of a scene really) in the practice hall when I realized it was taking place in the world I sometimes use for my novels and short stories. Boy did it get long!

Now it's time for a Sci_Fi one.


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...waiting patiently for a few submissions to come back.
9/25/2007, 1:52 am Link to this post Email BaneBlade   PM BaneBlade
 
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Grand Master

Registered: 01-2005
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Re: Exercise #14 - 24/09/07 - Waterfall


I love that waterfall. I have actually been there a couple of times. Beautiful place. In about 8 hours I will be driving near there too emoticon

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Writing: Eriadhin

9/25/2007, 7:57 am Link to this post Email Loud G   PM Loud G AIM Blog
 
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Knight of Honor

Registered: 11-2005
Posts: 1883
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Re: Exercise #14 - 24/09/07 - Waterfall


Okay, Texas got me started. It looks like no one has used this lovely scene as inspiration yet, so I will. Anyone ELSE have any idea what could be happening here?

Here's my story. Feel free to comment/edit as desired. (I rather like receiving informative criticism.) Sorry that it's a bit longer than convenient for this forum, but that's just what it ended up being! (I'm not good at writing really short stories!)

Climbing Kalla’s Temple

Caren shifted the umbrella on her shoulder and shivered as droplets tipped off it onto her arm. Mist. Always mist in this place. They said the water cascading down the falls were Kalla’s tears, as the sky goddess sat atop and wept over her lost love Taron, the star-maker. Who knew? Maybe it was true. No one had ever made it up and back down to tell.

Jerome didn’t believe the story about Kalla’s tears. Caren had watched for weeks as he and Renauld prepared, practiced, gathered their gear. “There’s nothing special about the Kalladesi Falls,” Jerome told her over and over again. “One long day’s work and we’ll win the award. No more worrying about whether the police will close your foundry job again, or if the priestesses will carry me back to jail for refuting their words, or if we can scrounge enough money for winter.” He had faced her, cradling her chin in his strong hands. “Caren, I love you. I can’t watch you go through another winter like the last one. There’s no other way, so I’ll try this one. And once Renauld and I prove once and for all that the story about the Falls is nothing but silly superstition, we’ll go home and never have to worry about money again.” He had kissed her more thoroughly then and, despite her concerns, she had allowed him to pull her onto the floor, then their pallet, and had forgotten her worries for the night.

“I will come back to you,” Jerome had said just this morning, as he and Renauld pulled on their harnesses and set out. “I will come back with proof that the priestesses are wrong. There is nothing special about the Kalladesi Falls, except their unusual beauty. It is only a myth that everyone who tries to climb it dies from Kalla’s wrath. It’s just a very hard climb, the hardest I’ve ever seen. Even with the water running down this face, it’s safer than the other sides. Before Renauld’s company invented modern climbing gear, it likely was a real death sentence to try. The goddess wouldn’t need to intervene.” He rubbed his cheek against her forehead before putting on his helmet. “I’ll be back for dinner.”

An hour later, Caren still stood in the mist, watching the men climb the cliff face across the chasm from Kalla’s temple, listening to the waterfalls crash into the crystalline pool below. She couldn’t stand to huddle inside in the warmth with the watching priestesses, not after what they had done to Jerome the previous year. Better the cool mists and rain trickling down her arms than have to put on another false face. Better water pooling at her elbows and chilling her feet than have to speak another lie to stay safe.

The men slowly scaled the wall. Caren had gone with them earlier that month as they investigated the surface. She had touched the smooth, wet surface, springy with moss in places and glassy as ice in others. People had climbed this without gear? On the day she had brushed the rocks’ edges, she had felt both confident that Jerome was right about the reason behind the danger, and fearful that even with their equipment, they would slip and fall to their doom.

Today, she felt nothing but the fear.

The two men climbed and climbed. Caren’s hands grew numb as she watched them inch up the rock face, crawling horizontal at times to avoid streams of chill water, having to backtrack twice to avoid impassible areas. She paced back and forth across the temple’s bridge to keep her legs warm as Jerome held firm when Renauld’s feet slipped; held her breath when a narrow lip crumbled out from under Jerome’s hands and it was Renauld’s turn to pull him back to safety.

When the two men at least reached the top, Caren added her own tears to the goddess’s.

“It won’t matter.”

Caren spun, gasping, then relaxed her face into a frown. “What do you mean, Priestess?” she asked, making certain to keep her voice more than civil, actually polite. She was no revolutionary philosopher like her husband. One of them needed to stay on the good side of the temples.

The high priestess shrugged her silk-clad, narrow shoulders. When she tossed her black hair back, gold and jade hangings danced from her ears. With cool disinterest, she answered, “Others have reached the top. Kalla will not let this pair return to safety any more than she did them. It is not the way of things. Kalla keeps her sanctuary to herself.”

Caren bit her lip, but could not help but answer in some way. “Those others who fell weren’t as prepared as my Jerome. Kalla surely won’t harm him.”

The priestess looked at her with something resembling pity. “Come,” she said, after a moment. “You must be chilled. Rest and warm yourself in Kalla’s temple, while they rest in her grace at the summit.”

Caren hardly wanted to spend more time with the priestesses, but she was shivering. Nodding slowly, she agreed, “Just until they begin the descent. Then I will come back out to watch again.” She hesitated a breath, then smiled and added, “Thank you, Great Mother.” It never hurt to be polite.

She crossed the bridge again, this time trailing in the high priestess’s wake. Entering Kalla’s temple felt like entering an oven, so cold she had become. She reveled in the warmth, accepting the aid of the shy young acolyte who took her jacket and umbrella and set them to dry. The high priestess joined her in the main sanctuary for the prayer of welcoming, then returned to the inner sanctum, leaving Caren alone in the public areas.

“Ma’am?”

Not quite alone. Caren turned and smiled at the nervous face of the young acolyte. The girl could not have been more than ten or twelve, and she was so serious and worried about doing her job correctly that it lightened Caren’s heart. “Yes, child?”

The acolyte gestured. “If you’ll come with me, we’ve got some tea brewing in the room of communion. By Kalla’s grace.” She smiled shyly at Caren, adding almost in a whisper, “It gets so cold and wet here. I thought maybe you might want some?”

Caren smiled back and nodded. “Thank you. I would, very much.”

She followed the girl into the room of communion, where two tables stood before a glowing hearth. Two other acolytes, both older teenagers, were already in the room, studying Kalla’s scrolls while they waited to tend to any temple visitors. One reached for the kettle and had a cup of tea set before Caren even before she sat down. “By Kalla’s grace,” the acolyte said, stepping back with a prayerful little bow. She sat down in her spot at the other table, sipping her own tea but not re-opening her text. The youngest acolyte took a seat beside her, watching Caren curiously while pretending to read. After a moment, Caren decided to simply drink her tea and politely ignore them all.

After perhaps ten minutes’ peace and blissful warmth, the third acolyte, almost a woman grown, broke the silence. Clapping her book to the table, she angrily demanded, “How can you not believe in Kalla? How can you let your husband defile her Falls like this?”

Caren started back and replied without thinking, “I do believe in Kalla! With all my heart! But how do you know she’s really up there and wants solitude?”

“The scrolls tell us—”

“The scrolls about the Falls were written by people, after the star-maker Taron died and after Kalla last spoke directly to us. Who knows if what those scrolls say is really what Kalla really wants?” Caren’s honesty stunned even herself. Perhaps she was too wet and anxious to care enough to lie well. But that was a poor excuse when the temples were involved, she realized.

The oldest acolyte glared at Caren. “You’ll see soon enough. They should never have challenged the laws of the temples! And you’re as evil as they are!” She picked up her texts and stormed from the room without a backwards glance.

Caren sighed. She glanced into her nearly-empty cup. One more cup of tea, to warm her up. Then it was back outside to the bridge. And what had she been thinking, to answer honestly to anyone from the temples? Jerome still had nightmares of the weeks spent in lonely darkness, empty weeks they claimed were needed to “purge” his soul and allow him to see Kalla’s grace more clearly. Caren shook her head at herself. She needed to think, to be more cautious when she spoke.

“You’re right, you know,” the older of the remaining acolytes said quietly. “That’s why Leslie is so angry. Because since Taron died and Kalla stopped speaking to us, no one can know for sure what she really wants.”

“One of the girls asked about that in class,” the littlest acolyte whispered into her cup of tea, “but the priestess wouldn’t answer.”

Caren stared at the girls.

“I’m Alia,” the older said. She got up and refilled all of their cups, then nodded toward the younger girl. “This is Pippa.”

“Caren,” Caren responded, overcoming her shock. The temples knew? The temples realized that the newer scrolls might not be goddess-driven? And they had still imprisoned Jerome and the other philosophers for pointing it out? Why?

“Do you think they can make it?” little Pippa asked, growing more bold. “The men?”

Caren nodded, keeping her fears to herself. “They have the best gear, the most experience. They’ll make it back.” Jerome had promised to come back. He never broke his promises to her.

Alia commented, “Some of the priestesses say they’re desecrating Kalla’s Falls and the whole temple just by trying. But my friend Susan – only she’s Sister Susan now, one of the new lower priestesses – anyhow, Susan and some of the others think they’re not. And Mother Michelle said once in class that it’s possible that we’re putting limitations on Kalla by believing blindly in what people wrote about her, rather than praying for her divine blessing and inspiration. She’s the sanctum now, praying for the safety of the climbers, you know.”

“I think they’re brave,” added Pippa.

Caren realized her hand was shaking. She set her tea carefully down on the table. These girls questioned. Others, older priestesses in the temples, questioned – even prayed for dissidents like her Jerome. Maybe, maybe Jerome was right. Maybe there could be change within their lifetimes. “They’re very brave,” Caren agreed. “And they don’t want to desecrate anything. They just want…” She paused, then pressed on. “They just want the temples to stop telling them what they have to think. Especially when so much of it doesn’t line up anymore with other things we know.”

“What do you mean?” asked Pippa.

Alia answered before Caren could. “She means about the new science. Susan says there are natural philosophers now, looking into some of Kalla’s forbidden topics – and they’re actually able to understand things!” When Pippa frowned, Alia added, “Well, it’s not like Kalla herself forbade them, you know. It was the old, old high priestesses. And while I’m sure they meant the best, they’re only people, too. Maybe they made mistakes, and since Kalla isn’t answering us anymore, except through prayer and dreams, she can’t correct the parts that are a little wrong.”

“Maybe Kalla is asking us to correct our own mistakes,” Caren inserted. Then she gasped. This was the sort of talk she had with her husband’s friends and colleagues, with other philosophers like Jerome. What was she thinking, saying such things to acolytes of the temple? Yes, she was nervous and distracted because of the climb, but that was no excuse at all for this sort of thoughtlessness. All of that was true, but it could not prevent her from spending a few more minutes explaining what she meant to the two girls. These were the kind of people they needed to reach. In a decade or two, they would be full priestesses in their own rights, able to impact what the temples did and said. Something inside Caren lit up and pushed her to keep talking, despite the fear.

The two acolytes frowned, but less at her than at their own thoughts. “Maybe…” murmured Alia, after a while. Pippa looked perplexed, the subject a bit over her head, and just took another sip of tea.

After another moment of silence, Pippa glanced out the window and jumped up. “Look!” She pointed. “I think they’re waving.”

Caren ran to the window. Her heart leapt in her throat when, for a moment, she only saw Renauld. But a moment later, Jerome emerged from behind the cliff’s edge as well, waving down at the temple below. She let out a long sigh of relief.

Next to her, Alia began a quiet prayer of thanksgiving, which Pippa quickly joined in on. After a moment, Caren joined as well. The cadence of the familiar words ran over her mind like a balm, relaxing her and keeping her back from the panicky edge of fear as she watched the two men begin setting up for the climb back down. It was strange how, even though she despised so much of the temples’ behavior, she could not bring herself to disbelieve in the goddess herself. Jerome questioned even that, she knew. But he was a natural philosopher and Renauld an engineer; to them, things needed to be more concrete. Caren was merely a foundry worker. She liked the idea of a goddess and could not imagine how the world could have come about without one. Not even Jerome understood that, which is why he never argued against her belief and always went with her to temple prayers.

When their setup was complete, Jerome and Renauld began slowly picking their way back down the slippery cliff. From the shorter climbs she had taken with them, Caren knew that the descent could be just as dangerous as the way up. She turned to find her dry jacket and umbrella, but Alia touched her on the shoulder. “You can stay in here with us, if you want. The window looks right out on the Falls. You could stay and watch them from here, until they go below the tree line.”

Pippa nodded, adding, “And we could help you pray for them. Even if you’re right and Kalla won’t throw them off, it’s still awfully high up.”

Caren paused, weighing her choices. Then she sunk down on a nearby chair and reached across the table for her tea. “I’d like that. Thank you.”

The girls joined her. There was a light in Alia’s eyes as she suggested, “And maybe we could talk some more? Do you know anything about the new science?” Pippa said nothing, but she slid her chair closer to Alia and got the look of a girl guarding a secret.

Caren smiled, feeling at home with these girls and hoping her words could change things. “I’m no philosopher myself, but I know a little.”

The long afternoon slipped by. If not for her underlying fear of the temples and overlying fear for her husband, Caren would have been content. Partway through the afternoon, Alia had slipped away to grab her friend Susan, the former acolyte and new lower priestess. The three older women spoke, little Pippa watching intensely and chiming in occasionally. Caren could not help but be drawn to all three of the girls. From what she gathered, people with such beliefs were a minority in the temples, but a far larger one than Caren had ever dreamed possible. As Jerome and Renauld worked their slow way nearer and nearer to safety, Caren felt her hope in the future grow.

“One piece of plain evidence,” she said to the girls. “That’s all we really need. The new science is too unclear for most people, even for me. But if we can prove the Kalladesi Falls are climbable, we can show that one small piece of the newer scrolls is simply wrong.”

“And if one piece is wrong, others can be,” Susan concluded with a nod.

Caren smiled back at her. Were she not a priestess, Susan would have made a good natural philosopher, Caren suspected. “Exactly.”

She peered out the window. The sun had long since fallen behind Kalla’s cliffs, making it hard to see clearly across the chasm. Nonetheless, Jerome and Renauld had been visible enough. Now, however, the trees around the temple were beginning to block her view. “Ladies, it’s been a true pleasure, but I think I’m going to go outside again to greet them once they make it down.”

“Can we come with you to watch?” Pippa asked.

“Great idea!” said Susan. “Let’s go. Grab cloaks for us all, will you, Pippa?”

Caren grinned as Pippa scampered off. She trailed behind with Alia and Susan. As they crossed the threshold of the temple to head outside and the two acolytes and priestess turned to cry the prayer of leaving, Caren joined in with a grateful heart. A long, stressful day was coming to an end, but she had made friends and her husband would soon make history. At the prayer’s conclusion, she popped her umbrella open and followed the girls back to the bridge. Pippa huddled under the umbrella with her, with Alia and Susan growing happily damp to her right. Feeling Pippa standing so near, so trusting, made Caren think that maybe this was the year she would push the issue with Jerome and convince him to raise a child or two with her. A little child that she could hold, just as she had an arm wrapped around Pippa now. An older one that he could brainstorm with, just as she had with Alia and Susan. Yes. After this climb, she would convince him.

The men were only thirty or forty feet from the bottom now, and moving faster since the rocks were slanted at more of an angle. A short climb down and they’d be safely at the pool. From there, it was an even shorter hike back up, following the rough trail the temple had long ago carved into the hills.

A sharp snapping noise from the direction of the temple caught Caren’s attention. She looked away to find the source of the sound, but Jerome’s scream of pain from across the pool drew her eyes back. He had fallen, slipped oddly sideways, as if his leg could not withstand his weight. Caren held her breath, but the rope connecting him to Renauld held, and Renauld was wedged in firmly to support against the strain. She let her breath out again, but frowned when Jerome flailed to regain his grip on the rock. He had fallen like this many times before. Why wasn’t he straightening back up?

A second snapping sound rang out. This time Caren saw the arrow cut into Jerome. He lost his grip on the rock completely, dangling freely. A third arrow marked Renauld, cutting into his shoulder enough to make him slip against the rocks. Jerome’s weight pulled him down, sending them tumbling down the cliffside together, screaming, with no more control than a branch flying through a storm. A sickening noise, a thud followed by a shallow splash, echoed across the chasm a moment later.

Caren heard the girls screaming around her. She ran to the temple, thinking of nothing but the hiking trail down to the pool below. As she entered the clearing before the temple, she ground to a halt. The high priestess stood there along with Leslie, the angry acolyte she had briefly met. A middle-aged priestess was lying dead on the ground before them, a wet blade still in Leslie’s hand.

The high priestess shook her head at Caren. “I told you that it wouldn’t matter. Not if they reached the top. Not if they reached the bottom. Kalla lives here, and as she requested, we protect her sanctuary.”

Caren heard a child’s scream behind her. Pippa! She whirled to see a dozen priestesses surrounding Alia and Susan, and another priestess holding Pippa’s arms tight behind her back and dragging her towards the chasm. “Mother Michelle!” Alia cried when she saw the dead body. One of the priestesses knocked her into unconscious silence. Susan struggled, fighting her sisters and managing to break free of the two priestesses holding her. Her escape attempt ended suddenly with an arrow in her back.

“I do thank you for cleaning out some of our bad apples,” the high priestess continued, as if there had been no interruption. “We knew there was an underground. There always is. A light truth drug in the tea helps us distinguish between the true followers and the rot, often enough. Still, it’s only an encouragement. Without the right provocation, all we’d learn about is the petty fears and jealousies of our acolytes. You and your husband and his friend were excellent provocation.” The high priestess’s eyes gleamed with joy. “Why, we’d have never learned about Mother Michelle’s unwanted contribution to religious education without you.” She glared at Alia, Susan, and Pippa. “Those three were already suspected. But Leslie proved herself innocent of suspicion, when she turned from you and brought her tales to me.”

Caren stared, her mouth grown suddenly dry. “You never wanted…”

The high priestess nodded at the acolyte beside her. “Leslie has earned my trust, and a favor in return. She is the future of the temples.” She smiled kindly at the young woman. “Go on, then. Finish cleaning Kalla’s house.”

Two priestesses grabbed Caren’s arms and held her in place as Leslie raised her long knife again. As Pippa’s scream echoed down into the chasm behind her, Caren had one long moment to regret teaching the little girl what she knew, before Leslie’s arm came down and she went to join her Jerome in Taron’s eternal stars.


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  -- YAR!
1/17/2012, 4:26 pm Link to this post Email Reythia   PM Reythia AIM MSN
 
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Lady of the Land

Registered: 05-2003
Location: Germany
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Re: Exercise #14 - 24/09/07 - Waterfall


Woah, this is a dark one. Maybe not surprising, considering the topic is religion.

What jarred me a little was the setting and the names. This seems a nearly medieval setting with the belief system so fully in place. Then you talk about new science, improvement and all that, so that made me think of a 19th century setting.

Yet the priests use arrows to kill - so there is a slight discontinuity in there. The names didn't seem to come from one culture, as the men have French names, and the girls very British names, or at least that's what they felt to me. Again, this was distracting.

Nice, dark story, though. emoticon

Ah. And now I know where I knew "Kalla" from. It's Flying School novels by Toby Bishop, it's their horse goddess.

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- Firlefanz

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1/17/2012, 9:12 pm Link to this post Email Firlefanz   PM Firlefanz Blog
 
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Knight of Honor

Registered: 11-2005
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Re: Exercise #14 - 24/09/07 - Waterfall


Actually, I was imagining a technological level concurrant with the 1500s or 1600s in our world. I tried to use the term "natural philosopher" to bring to mind people like Pascal and Descartes, as well as Newton and Galileo. But maybe that's a little to specific a detail of knowledge to expect the general public (who probably reads far less scientific history than I do!) to know!

On the other hand, I didn't really design their society to be a copy of our worlds'. In this universe, the temples hold overarching power, so the meaning of "nations" or "tribes" is a small one, and cultures have blended far more than they did in Europe by the 1600s (or even today). The names are common American names (except Renauld, which just sort of came from nowhere!) -- which is why they're originally from a variety of languages, of course. I almost always make up "fantasy-esque" names for characters, so it was actually something of a treat to use "normal" names, for me! Sorry if it threw you off a little, though!

And I've never read those "Flying School" books you mentioned. Funny how different sounds end up re-used by different authors as totally random fantasy terms, isn't it?!

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  -- YAR!
1/18/2012, 3:21 pm Link to this post Email Reythia   PM Reythia AIM MSN
 
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Lady of the Land

Registered: 05-2003
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Re: Exercise #14 - 24/09/07 - Waterfall


It's funny how such little things serve to create a world in the mind. emoticon

(And Renault is a French car manufactorer, maybe that was lurking in your mind.)

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- Firlefanz

Mystical Adventures
Hannah Steenbock
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1/18/2012, 4:22 pm Link to this post Email Firlefanz   PM Firlefanz Blog
 


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