Storyteller

Here aspiring creators can lay down some basic ideas of what they are going to do before submitting a finalized form for the viewing public. A good place to get some help from your fellows.
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Azizrian
CAPS LOCK INCARNATE
Posts: 50
Joined: Tue May 21, 2013 1:36 am
Location: Narnia

Storyteller

Post by Azizrian » Mon Jul 08, 2013 11:35 am

I am Storyteller.

When I was a little girl, my mother took me to the temple of the goddess who she said was responsible for my birth, to give thanks. As I waited for her to finish giving her ritual offerings, I wandered near one of the walls and began to tell myself a story about a rabbit and a fox, with my hands as the actors. As I spoke, one of the priests from the temple came closer to listen, and when my mother came over to scold me for running off and take me home, he complimented her on having such an imaginative little girl.

And I shall never as long as I live forget the look in his eyes—a kindness and a pity and a sadness—as he knelt in front of me and said quietly, “she is quite a Storyteller.” Mother did not hear him properly, thanked him for the compliment, wasn’t that such a sweet thing to say, and insist I say thank you, too. But we understood each other as we looked in each other’s eyes, and with all the dignity my small body could muster I drew myself up to bow to him. Goddess Feyana had spoken through her priest. My life was set, a clockwork map of the planets like my father had, now spinning into alignment.

I have seen and told many stories throughout my life, but this one is mine. It is for you alone, for this time and place, this one moment, and I must tell it quickly, for once the night ends and the moon shifts, the moment will be gone.

Time is not what you think it is. People so rarely understand the ways it eddies and flows, doubles back in on itself, twists and turns and carries us along with it and sometimes is carried along itself. We move with and through time with our voices, with the memories that we call to our minds. Time is such a fragmented thing, and though it has a here and a there the movement between those points is all but smooth.

And what people forget and you, little Keeper, must understand, is that stories are not always about telling what is true but what is Truth. Stories, too, bend the flow of time—make things real and not real and build new histories so that we may carry something new into the future.

It is time. Let us begin.
Gæð a wyrd swa hio scel...
Волков бояться, в лес не ходить

User avatar
Azizrian
CAPS LOCK INCARNATE
Posts: 50
Joined: Tue May 21, 2013 1:36 am
Location: Narnia

Re: Storyteller

Post by Azizrian » Mon Jul 08, 2013 2:47 pm

I am born. Just a little thing, with a shock of jet-black hair that would mellow to brown as I grew. Eyes grey as storms. My father and mother like to call me Masha, which is short for something, but I will never know what—it will only ever be used on the birth certificate.

This small family resides in the huge tiered city of Yrtrid. The original foundations are constructed of pale-grey stone. A thousand years ago, the entire city was roofed for defense in the Great Wars. To this day no one can remember why a city would need to block out the sky. Regardless, the stairs allowing access to the rooftop watchtowers offered a way for families seeking new lodgings ready access to more building-space. As such, the city now rises in many layers far above its foundations.

My family is poor but not impoverished. My father is the grocer in one of the mid-level areas of the city, not so poor as to live completely exposed to the sky, but not quite within the limits of the well-to-do original city.

I am a quick thing, a small, odd girl-child. My parents are not sure what to do with me. Ghosts become my early companions. One night, whilst falling asleep, a sound in my room causes me to open my eyes. I find my bed surrounded by greyish-white spirits, gathered silently around my bed, eyes all fixed on me. My scream summons my mother instantly. By the time she enters my room, the phantoms have all gone, and she calms me by reminding me that they cannot be real, that ghosts do not exist.

Two weeks later, the ghosts come again. I sit quietly for a few moments, terrified but waiting to see what they will do, until one opens its mouth as if to speak and I lose my nerve. The scream brings my mother less quickly this time, and her assurances that the ghosts are not real are less convincing. I quiet myself down again, tell her I am alright and go back to bed. In the morning, though, a visit from the local doctor indicates my mother is not so sure. From the other side of the kitchen door I can hear him say that such things are not uncommon in children, but that a recurring dream like that could actually be a hallucination, and a sign of a larger problem.

My mother has taught me two important lessons: caution and the importance of keeping my own council.

And so when, two years later at the age of five, we go to the city’s Temple of Feyana, I do not attempt to correct my mother. Do not tell her of the difficult life promised to me in the priest’s eyes. Tell her nothing but the childish story I invented. I am old enough to know when she stops listening halfway home.

My greatest joy at this time is the puppet shows put on in the city squares. I go to them so many times I begin to memorize them, performing my own stick-creature renditions for an invisible audience.

I turn ten and am chosen from my community to be educated in one of the upper-class regions of the city where I will learn numbers, writing, and history. The children from wealthy families are, as might be expected, standoffish at best, cruel and vicious at worst. My stories, and the new stories I learn from the books my teachers lend me, keep me company. I learn their contours, the ways stories flow and bend, how to deal with dragons or minotaurs or fairies.

The morning of my fifteenth birthday dawns clear and yellow, promising a crisp autumn day. By evening, the sky will be filled with smoke and fire.
Gæð a wyrd swa hio scel...
Волков бояться, в лес не ходить

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