it came from 2011
May. 7th, 2020 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via https://ift.tt/2Wfx1wG
So part of what I’m doing at home in Buffalo is fixing my computer. It’s out of room on the hard drive, and my backups and external hard drives and all my shit are here. We have a totally sick wireless RAID array backup server in the house and my computer’s set up to automagically use it but it doesn’t work when I’m not on the local network. And it’s full of… mung. So I was poking around trying to see what I could easily shunt off onto a backup. All my photos are backed up separately on a 1TB drive that I’ve just realized is full.
I found another 1TB hard drive, though, and plugged it in, and it looks like most of it is from 2011 or so.
One of the text documents in it was titled NaNoWriMo2011, and I don’t remember doing NaNo that year. So I opened it.
…
insert that gif of Gandalf going “I have no memory of this place…”
I can tell I’d recently read Martha Wells’ Wheel of the Infinite, because I mention her concept of honor-bound bodyguards, kjardin. I can tell I wrote the thing, almost entirely because of that in the notes section. I progress immediately to referring to the bodyguards as “guardians”, with a clear-to-me air of “I’m gonna find-replace this as soon as I find a better term”.
And there’s about 6500 words, which doesn’t resolve or even make a coherent plot.
but there’s just enough to be tantalizing.
“Who are you,” Galan managed to demand.
The man hesitated, ice-blue eyes shifting from middle distance to focus sharply on Galan’s face. “Eyat,” he said, and there was an audible space where a unit appelation and a rank signifier, should have been.
“Eyat who,” Galan prompted, annoyed, and unsettled.
“That remains to be seen,” the man answered.
Galan eyed the man’s ears. There were caste markings there, sure enough; but there were also confusing scars where some had been removed, and Galan couldn’t begin to puzzle out what was what. He also had a facial tattoo like a married man, the distinctive dark line along the cheekbone. Even more unsettled, Galan watched the man watching him and wished he hadn’t said anything.
“I guess I can’t ask you what the hell is going on, then,” the man said after a moment’s heavy silence. He had no accent; he was Mahid and spoke the language with no inflection. He sounded like a guardian, sounded like the stern disciplined men Galan had grown up surrounded by.
He just didn’t look like one.
“I am the last person in the world,” Galan said bitterly, “to ever ask what the hell is going on."
Unexpectedly Eyat laughed. His posture changed, some of the steel going out of his backbone, and he unslung the rifle from his shoulder and set it to lean against the partition. He hooked a stool familiarly with his foot and sat on it with a sigh, pulling a canteen off the back of his belt. "I should’ve known,” he said.
Galan wanted to ask what he should’ve known, but made himself be silent, watching the man drink from the canteen. He put it back on his belt, then unfastened his helmet’s dangling chin strap and pulled it off, setting it on the ground next to him.
His hair was a wild mass of overgrown curls. Mahid soldiers cut it off; guardians wore it long, but tightly braided. Galan had never seen hair like this, ungroomed and untrimmed. His own hair was meticulously braided, as befitted his station as a young nobleman.
“What are you?” Galan asked, despite himself.
The man scratched at his scalp, yawning and working his fingers through his thick hair, and after a long moment tossed his hair back and looked up at Galan, looking deeply weary. Guardians rarely showed any kind of emotion or vulnerability. This man was familiar enough to pass as one, but was wrong in too many ways.
“That’s what remains to be seen,” he said. Galan could see the tension still in the man’s shoulders and spine, though he sat as though he were relaxed. No easy feat, on these flimsy canvas camp stools. His shins were curved like a horseman’s, toes pointing inward in repose.
A guardian wouldn’t have a marriage tattoo. Guardians couldn’t marry, it was a feature of their caste. A soldier wouldn’t have long hair. But this man was obviously a soldier, dusty from battle. There was even a little spray of dried blood flecking the edge of his neck where the helmet’s face shield would have stopped, and decorating the shoulder of the faded jerkin.
It hit Galan like his father’s open hand: a mercenary. Eyat was a mercenary.
Kazan had left him alone in a tent with an armed mercenary.
Galan gathered his breath carefully, considering what to do next. He was unarmed; his father had taken his pistol and his knife after Ruat had been killed, despite his protestations that it would leave him utterly bereft of protection.
If Eyat was a mercenary, he had to have defected. He had Mahid caste markings. He was from here. He even had equipment from here. His rifle was of Keloha make, but the body armor and helmet were Mahid.
Kazan had left Galan with an armed mercenary who was a defector or traitor.
Galan glanced up and noticed Eyat’s perfectly blank expression. He’d grown up among men with perfectly blank expressions, raised by a woman with an entire spectrum of perfectly blank expressions, so he knew how to read this one. Eyat knew Galan knew, now, and was affecting nonchalance to see how he’d react. Galan closed his face, not letting his eyes flicker to Eyat’s hands. In his peripheral vision he could see that neither held a weapon, neither had moved toward the belt or thigh, where standard holsters tended to be. But he refused to look more carefully. He stared at Eyat’s face, like a rabbit staring at a snake.
So part of what I’m doing at home in Buffalo is fixing my computer. It’s out of room on the hard drive, and my backups and external hard drives and all my shit are here. We have a totally sick wireless RAID array backup server in the house and my computer’s set up to automagically use it but it doesn’t work when I’m not on the local network. And it’s full of… mung. So I was poking around trying to see what I could easily shunt off onto a backup. All my photos are backed up separately on a 1TB drive that I’ve just realized is full.
I found another 1TB hard drive, though, and plugged it in, and it looks like most of it is from 2011 or so.
One of the text documents in it was titled NaNoWriMo2011, and I don’t remember doing NaNo that year. So I opened it.
…
insert that gif of Gandalf going “I have no memory of this place…”
I can tell I’d recently read Martha Wells’ Wheel of the Infinite, because I mention her concept of honor-bound bodyguards, kjardin. I can tell I wrote the thing, almost entirely because of that in the notes section. I progress immediately to referring to the bodyguards as “guardians”, with a clear-to-me air of “I’m gonna find-replace this as soon as I find a better term”.
And there’s about 6500 words, which doesn’t resolve or even make a coherent plot.
but there’s just enough to be tantalizing.
“Who are you,” Galan managed to demand.
The man hesitated, ice-blue eyes shifting from middle distance to focus sharply on Galan’s face. “Eyat,” he said, and there was an audible space where a unit appelation and a rank signifier, should have been.
“Eyat who,” Galan prompted, annoyed, and unsettled.
“That remains to be seen,” the man answered.
Galan eyed the man’s ears. There were caste markings there, sure enough; but there were also confusing scars where some had been removed, and Galan couldn’t begin to puzzle out what was what. He also had a facial tattoo like a married man, the distinctive dark line along the cheekbone. Even more unsettled, Galan watched the man watching him and wished he hadn’t said anything.
“I guess I can’t ask you what the hell is going on, then,” the man said after a moment’s heavy silence. He had no accent; he was Mahid and spoke the language with no inflection. He sounded like a guardian, sounded like the stern disciplined men Galan had grown up surrounded by.
He just didn’t look like one.
“I am the last person in the world,” Galan said bitterly, “to ever ask what the hell is going on."
Unexpectedly Eyat laughed. His posture changed, some of the steel going out of his backbone, and he unslung the rifle from his shoulder and set it to lean against the partition. He hooked a stool familiarly with his foot and sat on it with a sigh, pulling a canteen off the back of his belt. "I should’ve known,” he said.
Galan wanted to ask what he should’ve known, but made himself be silent, watching the man drink from the canteen. He put it back on his belt, then unfastened his helmet’s dangling chin strap and pulled it off, setting it on the ground next to him.
His hair was a wild mass of overgrown curls. Mahid soldiers cut it off; guardians wore it long, but tightly braided. Galan had never seen hair like this, ungroomed and untrimmed. His own hair was meticulously braided, as befitted his station as a young nobleman.
“What are you?” Galan asked, despite himself.
The man scratched at his scalp, yawning and working his fingers through his thick hair, and after a long moment tossed his hair back and looked up at Galan, looking deeply weary. Guardians rarely showed any kind of emotion or vulnerability. This man was familiar enough to pass as one, but was wrong in too many ways.
“That’s what remains to be seen,” he said. Galan could see the tension still in the man’s shoulders and spine, though he sat as though he were relaxed. No easy feat, on these flimsy canvas camp stools. His shins were curved like a horseman’s, toes pointing inward in repose.
A guardian wouldn’t have a marriage tattoo. Guardians couldn’t marry, it was a feature of their caste. A soldier wouldn’t have long hair. But this man was obviously a soldier, dusty from battle. There was even a little spray of dried blood flecking the edge of his neck where the helmet’s face shield would have stopped, and decorating the shoulder of the faded jerkin.
It hit Galan like his father’s open hand: a mercenary. Eyat was a mercenary.
Kazan had left him alone in a tent with an armed mercenary.
Galan gathered his breath carefully, considering what to do next. He was unarmed; his father had taken his pistol and his knife after Ruat had been killed, despite his protestations that it would leave him utterly bereft of protection.
If Eyat was a mercenary, he had to have defected. He had Mahid caste markings. He was from here. He even had equipment from here. His rifle was of Keloha make, but the body armor and helmet were Mahid.
Kazan had left Galan with an armed mercenary who was a defector or traitor.
Galan glanced up and noticed Eyat’s perfectly blank expression. He’d grown up among men with perfectly blank expressions, raised by a woman with an entire spectrum of perfectly blank expressions, so he knew how to read this one. Eyat knew Galan knew, now, and was affecting nonchalance to see how he’d react. Galan closed his face, not letting his eyes flicker to Eyat’s hands. In his peripheral vision he could see that neither held a weapon, neither had moved toward the belt or thigh, where standard holsters tended to be. But he refused to look more carefully. He stared at Eyat’s face, like a rabbit staring at a snake.
