Today is International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day

International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day is a day when professional science fiction writers post their content for free on the internet. While I am not by any stretch of the imagination a professional science fiction writer, I thought I’d post part of a sci-fi/fantasy story I wrote when I was about seventeen for a couple of reasons. The first being, I’d like to let aspiring writers know that even though the change may be imperceptible in real time, you do get better the more you write. The second being I wanted to give an example of writing that was overwrought to show the value of simplicity and not trying too hard.

The first pieces I ever wrote as a child were sci-fi/fantasy stories. I wrote them on thick yellow legal pads behind the freezer in the family laundry room. I did this because when I was in a writer’s head-space I couldn’t hear my parents scream at each other, and because for some odd reason I found placing my head against the freezer’s motor to be relaxing. Over the course of time, I developed eight languages, a made up system of physics that could function as magic, and about 5,000 years of history on a couple of thousand pages of notes. What can I say? I’m a nerd.

Anyhow, if anyone wants to know where I developed my writing chops it went like this:

1. I wrote.

2. I threw it away.

3. I wrote some more.

4. I studied what I had written.

5. I threw that away.

6. I wrote some more.

7. I showed what I had written to some people.

8. I listened to what they had to say.

9. I threw that away and wrote some more.

10. I read every book I could get my hands on.

By the time I was about the age of 18, I had written about 1 million words. I threw all of them away. I wrote books so long that you could start them thinking they had been authored by a child, and finish them wondering why an adult had come along and polished them off. Then I used the pages to line the bottoms of garbage cans.

Writing isn’t about a finished piece, it’s about a process of creation and destruction. You have to develop an instinct for what makes sense, and the only way to do that is to write a ton of garbage so you know what doesn’t make sense. Keep clicking along. Think about the story only as it pertains to the process, and over time, you’ll start churning out stuff that’s good by paying attention to the process.

I’ll stop with anymore apologetic rambling, and leave off with a few facts. This was part of a book I never finished called “The Tide.” It was the very first part of the book, and the book was the very first book in a series I had imagined of about seven. The prologue introduces an important place that has great impact later on in the story. Story is after the jump.

THE NAMELESS MOUNTAIN

He could still hear the beating drums, and feel the blazing fires of the encampment. Though the drums were no longer the matter of a bone striking a taut skin, but the product of his heart throbbing madly in his ears. The heat of the fires had likewise been replaced by the desert sun, which now shone mercilessly on his sweat soaked skin. His sweat soaked skin. The thought rolled through his mind, echoing like a pebble tossed down a deep well. He had been worried about how much he was sweating on the second day of his journey. But on the third day, after his lips had begun to crack and his tongue turned into a sandy stub, and after his eyes had started to feel full of sand no matter how he rubbed at them, he had stopped caring. Now, on the fourth day, he barely knew his own name let alone that he was dying of thirst.

The Elders had said that he must pass beyond the rims of his soul. They had said it amidst the circle of fire, when they had tied the white rag around his forehead marking him as one set to Witness. He had almost laughed in the middle of the ceremony. What a preposterous phrase that had been. What rim did the soul know? The babble of old men who took themselves too seriously. Yet the childish boy was gone. The desert sand had brushed him away and left another harder man in his place. He lacked the cognitive abilities to describe his current state of consciousness, but it might have been fair to say that he had passed beyond the rims of his soul. The Elders had been right after all. Some part of him could not help but think that he had been a fool to disbelieve them in the first place.

He tried vaguely to remember his father and a conversation… and a woman? Some part of those long ago talks seemed important. But his memory would not hold him. All that existed now was the eternal walk. The mindless pacing that would chew his body into dust. Behind him a trail of tracks stretched backward over countless dunes, as far as the eye could see, embodying the concept of infinity.

His legs felt numb as he lifted them, the muscles crying loudly for rest, burning like a living flame, yet he planted one foot in front of the other in defiance of the pain. At this point his only hope for survival was to find water in Emar Daan. Some small cling to sanity in his mind made his legs work toward that goal. Whatever it was worth. Even if he got to water there was now no guarantee that he would live even if he drank it. Overhead, the sun pulsed with sickly heat.

Kaeraem… he thought that was his name… could not remember the air being as hot as it felt on him at that instant. Not even when he had first come out of his tent, after having been inside it for a week with the Thrashings. Even then, we he had crossed the boundary from cool to crisp, the sun had not been nearly so hot. His temples throbbed with his heart, and the sound of drums in his ears was almost deafening. Blackness flickered at the edges of his vision. His fingers and toes trembled before they went lax. Kaeraem stumbled suddenly, and almost fell before catching himself. Stopping to pant, he supported his body by placing his hands on his upper legs. Stupid boy! If you had fallen you never would have been able to get back up. Do you want to die out here? Do you want to be food for the buzzards? A voice in his mind admonished. It was familiar, that admonishing tone, that was somehow filled with both love and disdain at once.

“Kaydee?” he asked the air around him. The soft whisper of the wind was the only answer. “Kaydee?” he called again, “where are you?” The name came from his lips without thought, his mind not recognizing its meaning. The vastness of the desert mocked him. “Kayd-,” the name was half out of his mouth when he saw something against the horizon. Against the rising sun he could make out what looked to be a group of people.

Kaeraem smiled in joy, believing he was not to die alone after all, and did not notice as blood began to trickle out of the gashes he opened in his lips. Overhead, a buzzard cawed, but Kaeraem could not hear it over the incessant beating of his own heart. “Why didn’t you answer Kaydee? I’m sorry I said those things to you at Raes Nor. I shouldn’t have said I didn’t love you!” He shouted toward the figures in the distance. They did not move toward him, or give any sign that they had seen him. They stood there, stone-like, waiting for his approach. Forgetting the numbness in his legs, Kaeraem stumbled toward the distant figures. “Kaydee, I’m so sorry… so sorry,” he began to weep then, but no tears could be milked from his scorched eyes. “I do love you. I do. I never would have come if I didn’t. All I wanted was for you to be proud of me.” Still the figures stood motionless, the air about their feet shimmering oddly.

Time had no meaning to Kaeraem as he crossed the distance between himself and the people before him. He noticed the black out no more than he noticed coming out of it. “Kaydee?” he asked, only now getting a good look at the group of people. He had been betrayed. The figures were not Kaydee. They were only a bunch of silly statues! Kaeraem grew angry at the deception, and growled… though the sound was pitiful. He struck at one statue, and his hand rebounded, as hurt and throbbing as the drums in his ears. As the pain rushed through him, his anger dissolved.

“Why did you trick me Kaydee? Don’t you love me anymore?” Slowly his knees sank out from underneath him, giving out like his hope for survival, and finally he fell into the shade of the statues. I told you not to go. I told you that you’d never survive the trip. In Emar Daan, your Touch will afford you no protection. Kaydee scolded from somewhere in the recesses of his mind. “I’m sorry Kaydee, you were right.” His eyes began to close, shutting without his conscious command. His arms and legs felt suddenly chilly despite the heat.
(Child) A voice whispered, like smoke in the night. Beckoning to him.

His eyes fluttered open, pupils dilating as they stared straight into the sun. Kaeraem tried to speak, only to find his throat had gone hoarse. Moving his neck slowly, he brought his head up until he had a view of the statues. Their clothes were of no kind he had ever seen, and they wore their hair oddly, with two long strands of it hanging to either side of their faces. Whatever artisan had made them had done a more than an excellent job. Were it not for their color and stillness they could have easily passed as real people.

For some reason all of statues faced northward, and three of the six were pointing in that direction. Their eyes were simultaneously commanding and frightening. Somehow, the artisan that had made them had managed to capture the emotion of the statues as well as their pose in the stone. Indeed, a sense of urgency and authority seemed to emanate from the six figures.

Kaeraem’s eyes sharpened as he stared at the pointed finger of one of the figures. This one a large and broad-chested male with a powerful chin. Kaeraem glanced at his own hand for a moment, startled by what he realized. The hands of the statue had grooves every bit as tiny and as fine as his own.

(Child)

The voice echoed in his head, representing not a word but a concept. Pushing himself slowly upward, he finally managed to stand. Leaning against one of the statues, Kaeraem looked at the figure with its finger extended northward. Craning his head he followed the finger’s path. In the distance, like a large fang jutting out of the earth, a mountain rose in the middle of the desert. The earth around it was scorched and cracked, like sunburned skin, and at its top clouds clustered and swirled, flowing with the life of a storm. Kaeraem instinctively knew that if it were not for the drums that he would hear thunder. A breeze began to lift the strands of his white-blonde hair, originating at the peaks of the mountain, cooling the sweat on his skin. That mountain… it had no name. Some part of him knew that. Some part of him also knew why it bore no name, and that part also knew the story of Emar Daan, but it stayed silent for some reason. I told you not to go Kaeraem. I told you it was better that we lived apart than for you partake in the Quest. “I can do it Kaydee. Give me a chance,” his voice was like a stone scratched against raw leather.

“What do you want?” he asked the statue with the pointed finger. However much he tried he could not make the words come clearly. In response, the statue only faced forward and pointed its finger.

(Child) It said again. Its stony eyes glared at him, or seemed to at least.

Kaeraem’s face flashed in sudden anger, “By the Fathers,” he uttered sluggishly, trying to puff out his chest, “What do you want!”
The statue’s masculine face, set with impossibly high cheekbones and glaring eagle eyes, seemed to fade somehow. It did not become translucent; it did not become intangible. It seemed to become somehow… less fixed in reality. Behind him the buzzards he did not even know had gathered began to retreat, their wings beating rapidly in the air. The silence around Kaeraem hung heavily in the air. For a moment the drums in his ears ceased to beat.

(GO!)

Had he not been clinging to another of the statues, Kaeraem was sure the force of the thought would have sent him sprawling off of his feet. Taking a minute to collect himself, Kaeraem was about to foggily ask where, but the pointing finger left to doubt as to the intended destination. He could have wept where he stood. It was whole rods to the distant mountain. And even if it had not looked like such a foreboding place, he doubted he could physically make the trip.

“I can’t do it,” he sobbed, “it’s too far.” Don’t be a coward Kaeraem. You’re always being cowardly! “I am not!” he yelled at the statue, which now no longer seemed as eerily alive as it had been. “I wouldn’t have gone on Quest if I were a coward,” Kaeraem muttered.
Pick up your feet and move, Kaeraem! If you ever want to see me again, move your feet right now! Kaydee screamed at him. “I cuh-cuh-cuh-can’t,” he replied weakly. If you ever loved me Kaeraem, if you meant what you said to me in the Rock Gardens, you will move now! Sobbing the same strange tearless sob, Kaeraem began to move his feet, which now felt oddly heavy, in front of one another. The drums in his ears changed from a hard throbbing to a high-pitched, shrill whistle. He winced at the transition, but did not let it stop him. Looking over his shoulder Kaeraem spared one last glance at the statue. Still oddly silhouetted by the sun it pointed northward, toward Emar Daan and the Nameless Mountain. He nodded at the statue, not knowing why, but perhaps to show that he would do as it had asked.

After the first few steps, he thought that he would surely fall, for it seemed that his insides were beginning to bake. But thankfully a breeze began to pick up, cooling him immensely. He could almost smell water in the air. Smiling at the thought of water, Kaeraem reopened the cracks in his lips and blood once more trickled down his chin. It felt wonderful as it dripped onto his burned chest.
Kaeraem looked at the mountain before him, fixing it in his sight as his end goal. As the hours passed it grew larger in his vision. And as he drew closer the storm clouds atop the mountain seemed to condense until they pulsed madly, billowing heavily as if trying to draw breath. In stark contrast, the sky outside the storm ring was bright, blue, and cloudless.

Soon, the wind cooling his skin was not a light breeze but a full force gale. His hair flapped into his face, obscuring his vision. The wind pushed back on him, daring him to attempt another step. “I’m sorry Kaydee!” he screamed to the sky, and his raw throat seemed to tear open as he yelled the words. “I will see you again in the After!” The clouds atop the mountain swirled around the mountain’s top. Lightning flashed amongst the peaks and Kaeraem could hear the thunder that followed it like the roar of an animal.

The ground beneath his feet rumbled and Kaeraem’s knees, for the second time that day, gave out from beneath him. He barely felt his body hit the ground. The sand drew at him, tried to consume him, as if it had become water. It was only with great effort that he was able to remain atop it. The wind grew stronger, howling madly, until even the high pitched whistle in his mind was buried in it. “Kaydee!” he cried hoarsely. Still on his knees, Kaeraem threw his arms wide, bowing prostate before the mountain, ready to embrace his fate. Remarkably enough the ground stopped shaking for a moment, and the wind around him reduced to faint drafts. His eyes, which he realized he had closed, opened disbelieving.

Taking a moment to brush the hair out of his face, Kaeraem surveyed the mountain in the silence. His sharp blue eyes scanned the mountain, trying vainly to discover its secret. Then, before his eyes could even register a change… a shaft of light came from somewhere near the top of the mountain, emerging from what looked like a dark cave, blazing wildly out into the sky, through the storm. There was no sound but an odd shrieking as it left the mountain, yet despite its volume it penetrated into his mind like a knife. Kaeraem tried to put his hands over his ears, but to no avail.

The beam flew wildly, insanely, into the air, pointing west and south… toward him. The clouds dispersed as it passed through them, billowing apart like smoke rings. Once again, the ground beneath him rumbled and the winds howled. As the beam passed over his head, Kaeraem heard a voice in his mind that turned his soul to cinders that dimmed the lines of his identity. He grabbed at ears that spurted out blood in an incredible mass, and with his raw throat attempted to scream. But no sound would come…

(I COME AGAIN!)

The words ripped through his mind, raping his soul. He looked into the beam, stared into the light of a thousand suns, the heart of all the world’s fire. Kaeraem tried to yell something to it, as he waved his arms in the air. His eyes began to tingle, but the sensation could not hold his attention. The voice was… he tried to grab at something… some memory in his blood. Yes I remember! The mountain is named- The world went black.

As the beam passed over his head, it was only faintly that Kaeraem realized his retinas had been reduced to ashes.