Storythread

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I'm not going to be around this weekend (basically from now onwards), so hopefully anons will keep an eye on this thread and bump it in my absence, otherwise this is going to be even shorter than the last thread.

g'night all

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El-Hakik was a city of contrasts. Tall palaces overlooked the largest port in the southlands, in all their splendid glory. The city's towers seemed to be carved out of ivory, and the walls made of ebony.

The walls hid a city teeming with life, perhaps too much life for a port this big. El Hakik was the marienburg of the southlands, a city filled with thieves, cutthroats and worse.

It is not a surprise what ended up happening to the city on during the year 2519. The city of Copher, a smaller, but far more organised city state had long been looking to become the premier trading hub of the southlands. The city states of the Southlands, much like those of tilea were fiercely independent and vied to become a kingdom as they had been in ages past, with each of the cities as the new seat of an arabyan empire.

On this occasion, the threat of an invasion from Naggaroth had caused the High elves -normally the brokers of arabyan city states- to race home, leaving the seas open for piracy, and the wind calling for war.

Far away in tilea, the howling wind lent wing to the ships that sailed the seas, and thus the dogs of war were let loose...

Imma continue this later tomorrow, I need to sleep .

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Much as I want to contribute...well, I've had to rewrite what I have and am now stuck where I was before I had to rewrite.

Hopefully some sleep might allow me to push forward and maybe finish this.

Something I threw together for last time. Very raw.

Far to the east of the capital, in the rugged terrain of the high desert, lay the territory of the trollkin. As their land could provide little to the unlearned, they had few outside visitors, much like this thread.

The soil was alkaline, and potable water was difficult to obtain. Agriculture and grazing were impossible. Game was infrequent, and quite shrewd.

These trolls mainly survived on the carcasses of the foolish, much like the prepubescent board-dwelling ones we know today.

The women of these tribes had an uncanny instinct for animal behavior. No animal was safe from them. Thus, they were the hunters, gathering carrion and fresh kill alike. Clay sling bullets and bolas were their means, stone knives their tools and sidearms. Of critical importance were food and water decontamination. Men handled all aspects of water and food preparation, relying on an astonishing array of chemicals to cook and purify their meals. Metal was unknown to them. They bartered with stone tokens for IOUs, which the men crafted when they had time.

The daily quest for water was the most important duty, particularly during the fiery summer months. A good water source might endure for a week at the most, before sand or heat or demand swallowed it up. The hunters would carefully mark any sources they found for the men to come collect. The water was usually tainted, and required chemical purification cocktails, or boiling in partially-lidded stone troughs made for this purpose. When cool, the result would be fed to one of a small number of quails they raised; if it took ill or died, they poured out the water and looked to tap another source.

A bit of seacoast afforded access to the great ocean. Wood for shipbuilding was impossible to find in any quantity, and the seaboard was fraught with jagged rocks and sandbars anyway. The children often played at the cove and swam in the cool water during the summer months. The coast had been a dead zone for as long as they could remember, with no aquaculture worth mentioning. Still, clumps of seaweed happened along from time to time, which they gathered for food, and sometimes used for crude twine.

The plateaus and craggy cliffs of the high desert provided shelter for these stubborn inhabitants. Using their stone tools, they carefully scraped out a hollow in whatever rock wall was handy. A space just large enough for their needs, no more, lest it collapse on them. Over time they had created a series of these small and open caves all over the territory. They moved between them in search of food and water, the men carrying their troughs and buckets on their backs.

They never thought of any location as "home". Families, and sometimes whole clans, moved regularly, not that there was much to pack. In the summer, the canyons provided rare protection from the bitter heat, but the risk of a flash flood meant that they could not rest easy there.

These trolls had lived and died this way for so long that they were not certain where they had originally come from. Some thought they may have been driven from the fertile lands to the west when the human empire arose. Others thought they had come from across the sea, in ships made from the smooth material of seashells, or on the backs of giant birds. Still others wondered if they had been underground dwellers, forced to the surface by upheavals within the Underdark. The eldest insisted that trolls had always lived here.

It was hard to imagine a time when this land might have been different, fertile, well-watered, teeming with life.

But in Damaris' time, everything would change.

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I'm stuck on a story I've been writing since 2012. It's over 110,000 words long but has ground to a halt thanks to the fact that after a two-year thesis I've lost the ability to write convincing human speech. No dialogue I write sounds natural anymore. It sounds like an alien trying to fake being human. Does anyone have any ideas on how to make humans talk naturally again?

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Hopefully this thread will survive until I get time to write more. I've got company over today.

Post a paragraph of it.

bump

The troll later known to history as Damaris The Sentry was born a few years after the ascension of King Ewald to the capital throne. The trolls themselves had no king or nobility. Only the most serious matters warranted a gathering to decide what to do.

Damaris was born second after her brother, and was the youngest child of her father. This man was a quiet craftsman of some skill. Back then, it was forbidden among the trolls to teach women the secrets of purifying food and water. But when she pleaded with him, he taught young Damaris a few things about stonework. Her mother was a stern and quiet hunter, hardbitten and competent. She was rarely satisfied with Damaris' performance in the wild. That was how a woman's legacy was judged in those days, by how well her daughter learned to hunt.

Among the trolls, young Damaris was mainly known for her ability to fabricate and repair hunting weapons. All the women came to Damaris for construction of knives and bolas that would throw true. Although her own hunting abilities were not poor, the tribe constantly compared them to those of her mother, whose skill was renowned.

The trolls of the wastes lived hard, short lives, and had few formal customs. If a troll woman got along with a man, they would simply mate and begin living together, usually at the onset of puberty. Occasionally as a pretext, a woman might bring the man a kill to prepare, and then just never get around to leaving his cave. The interdependence of living in such harsh conditions made separations quite rare.

For her mate, Damaris selected Kopek, a well-liked troll who, though a competent water-worker, was something of a slacker. She had always been attracted to him despite their vast differences, or maybe because of them.

We might never have learned of this obscure race, except for a rare occurrence that found Damaris one day while she was on a hunt.

Damaris had been with Kopek for only a few moons when her mother suddenly disappeared. Her body was later found with no marks on it, in a canyon far to the west, where the hunters only rarely ranged. As a result, Damaris was suspicious of the western reaches and tended not to hunt there.

One morning in the autumn, when the last of the summer heat was expiring, Damaris decided to hunt along the highest plateau near the cove. As she was crossing a natural bridge, the ground began to shake tremendously. Damaris was knocked off her feet. Gazing to the west, she saw the entire plain begin to tilt upwards at the western end. Huge clouds of dust filled the air, making it impossible to see further.

She turned her eyes to the east and looked down on the cove, where she saw a most unusual sight. Out where the cove met the ocean, the seawater was bubbling violently. The waves parted to reveal a black mass beginning to form on the surface of the water. She watched it for awhile as it grew, wondering what this would mean.

When the dust settled enough, she decided to make her way back to her cave. But the tremors continued, all that day, and for many days afterward. Everyone was very worried.

The trolls of the wastes had no revelation of any gods, or of supernatural powers of any kind. Theirs was the pragmatic existence of predator and prey. If an all-powerful entity wished to take their lives, most would have accepted it as their fate, just as they accepted that prey must die for them to live. Resources were too dear to offer in sacrifice.

With no holy men to offer explanations for this phenomenon, and nothing in the oral histories about any shaking, the trolls were at a loss. The worst fear was that the shifting land would plug their intermittent sources of water. That would doom them all.

Having seen the massive tectonic display from her vantage point on the natural bridge, Damaris became curious about what this could mean for her people. Although the hunting on the highest plateau was poor, she began to travel there every day. The plain began to tilt even higher in the west, and lowered in the east, while the black mass in the ocean began to broaden and rise. Damaris marked the progressions by notching the cliff wall with her stone knife.

Kopek was unhappy. He liked a good meal, and was getting sick of eating quail eggs and dried snake jerky. But Damaris felt that a great danger threatened them, and became obsessed with stopping it.

sorry, guys, I'm juiced.

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Eventually the quakes stopped, but life grew harder for them. As they had feared, some of their water sources dried up, and the water-workers had to range farther away. The burden of carrying heavy stone buckets full of water for miles and then trying to prepare food and corral the kids was too much. Every man was exhausted.

Some of the men began to bring the women with them to gather water. The hunting was awful anyway.

They began to exhaust their supplies of dried meat. Kopek was unusually quiet.

One day Damaris decided to try to hunt the highest plateau. She had cast some clay pellets, and was hoping to possibly down some passing birds with them.

At the natural bridge, more out of habit than anything, she gazed out to sea, and what she saw stunned her.

The black mass had turned green, and hordes of gulls were ascending from it and diving on it.

She had brought down the occasional gull before, but the dead zone had meant they were very rare. The volcano had changed that.

She had to know more, so she descended to the cove.

With the tide going out, she was able to wade about half of the way to the island. Trees, shrubs, and sea grape covered its surface.

That much greenery could not be there without a source of fresh water. And that many gulls meant meat, lots of it.

She swam toward it with slow, powerful strokes, trying to conserve energy. Soon, she felt the sea bottom beneath her feet again, rising toward the black, rugged beach. As her bare feet touched the island for the first time, she knew this was the answer to all their problems.

The quakes had opened the sea floor, and thick lava pushed through. Piling up in heaps, it finally breached the surface, cooling into pitted and bubbled black slag. Meanwhile, underwater ejections of sulfur and nitre awakened dormant bacterium that fed on them, and those bacteria drew fish. The fish drew gulls and other seabirds. Seeds from their waste peppered the island, settling into cracks in the porous igneous rock. Under the force of sandy winds and freak waves, the fragile rock began to crumble into soil. The seeds found that soil, along with some fresh moisture, and began to sprout, forcing the rocks apart.

That same moisture bathed Damaris' face as she reached the central dome, the highest point of the island. A hot spring had forced its way through the virgin rock. Steam and water cascaded everywhere.

The water pooled on the side farthest from the cove. It was cool enough to touch, so she tasted it. The flavor was amazing. She finished the water in her skin, then refilled it from the pool.

Then she downed two fat gulls with well-thrown rocks, bound them to her bandolier, and headed for the beach. The tide was coming back in now, and she couldn't afford to stay any longer.

She could not wait to tell everyone the news.

Kopek was hungry, and in a surly mood. He had been out all day and found no water, and their trough was getting low.

Quietly she plucked the birds, then brought them to him in silence. She ached to blurt out everything, but something held her back.

Kopek murmured in appreciation of the fine take Damaris had gotten. "These are fat," he said in awe. He began to smile, his first smile in days. He knew better than to ask where she found them; no hunter would ever divulge her hunting ground.

As she had done so many times before, Damaris uncorked the skin and offered it to him. "Taste this," she said.

Kopek expertly raised the skin to his nose. "Smells of iron and calcite, and a little salt," he said. "That's good." He took a small sip, then stared at her for a long time. "This is the best water I have ever tasted," he said. "Any chemical I would add would only degrade it. Tell me where to go, and I'll gather it. I'll leave tonight if I have to."

She smiled. "You won't have to leave tonight," she said, and there was a twinkle in her eye.

[following entry is all PG 13 naughtiness]

They made love that night, in the mouth of their cliffside cave in the wastes. The sandy desert floor was their couch, the cloudless, starry sky their canopy. Exultation mingled with relief as their passions surged, like breakers crashing against the jagged coast of the land they called home.

Kopek touched her that night like no man had ever touched her. His gentle caresses brought forth an intensity in herself that she had never felt.

For a moment, he glimpsed in her mind's eye the spring, bubbling forth from between two smoothed slabs of rock, gently dribbling down the slope, coating her skin with ardent moisture. His ministrations were driving her mad. His curly whiskers tickled her face, but she barely felt it. She kissed him as if she would never see him again.

Her need driving her, she rolled on top of him, and settled into her course. She had seen other women mate this way, but she had never tried it, until tonight. Now, however, she threw caution to the wind. Her twin, conelike breasts sedately rode the waves of her passion, their nipples like adamant.

Kopek gripped her behind her knees and held on for dear life. In one moment, she had transformed from a quiet, sophisticated huntress into this wild and playful nymph, like a being out of myth. The sights and sounds of her pleasure were a thing to behold.

Arching her back, shuddering, bucking with the sheer visceral thrill of her release, she fought against it, as if to break herself upon his body, determined to see this through to its farthest height.

[following entry is all PG 13 naughtiness]

The trolls of that time were not like those we know today. Their skins were thick, their backs strong. They lived by deed, not by word.

Though a barbarian, when it came to having fun, Kopek was something of a connoiseur among his people. Now at his physical peak, his skills in lovemaking were second to none.

The gentler he touched her, the more she surged against him. He was teasing her now, evoking the unbridled demon within, calling to it like a summoner in the Hall of Second Sight. His tongue upon her flesh felt like the waves had, lapping against her inner thighs. Her hands, palms outstretched, at first tried to fend him off, then pulled him into her. She had lived her life by control, and letting go was not her way.

But he was singleminded, and she knew, as he knelt before her, plying her toned legs apart, that control was a luxury that was rapidly slipping away. Her fingers dug helplessly into the sand as he divided her, focusing all of his skill on her quivering form. In the end, he carried her as he willed, drove her about as he willed, took her as he willed. She would've been off to the land of dreams by this time. But he delayed, squeezing every last bit of patience from her, as he rocked her back and forth across the threshhold of ecstasy, with those determined, powerful thrusts that drove everything from her mind, tempted her sanity, and threatened to bring the stoic huntress to his heel.

Then, they lay there, as though dead, gasping like fish out of water, their thoughts turning to who could have heard. Eventually, Kopek picked her up, brushed the sand off her, and carried her, gently laying her on her cot. She never felt it.

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The sun was high when they awakened, and they had much to do.

Clarity came with a good night's sleep. The island presented a dilemma for them. They could not ferry water from it. As a nomadic people, they would have to move onto the island to reap its bounty.

But the dangers were manifold. The island was broad, and could support perhaps twenty families. But the treacherousness of the deep sea, the possibility of winter storms, the dangerous-looking fish she had seen, and the threat of a future eruption were all daunting hazards.

They both disliked the idea of taming the island alone, she in view of its many unknown dangers, he because there was no one to drink with. In rare times of plenty, the trolls concocted from a spiked desert plant an intoxicating drink called kemrah, and Kopek loved to celebrate.

They decided to gather what they could and prepare a dinner for their neighbors, to try to persuade them.

In the end, no one went with them.

Kopek's cuisine had been impeccable by troll standards, and they all agreed the water was far better than anything they had here. But Damaris ruined everything.

She had never been wise to the feelings of others. Even her animal empathy as a huntress was affected, and more than one prey had evaded her grasp that way. She was cringingly direct, painfully honest, and tended to prattle on in times of nervousness, and all of those features were on full display.

The dangers were just too great for a move like that. The most forward of them, a female named Clea, openly said what they were all thinking. They preferred to take their chances here, in the world they knew, and if necessary, to face death on their terms.

Only with many protestations did she even secure Kopek's support for traveling there together. In the end, it was the promise that they would only stay one month, a month of plenteous days and nights measured by number of passionate trysts. After all, she had to do something to keep fit when hunting was this easy.

They left most of their larger tools behind, restricting themselves to several stone knives, a punch, and a hammerstone. They also brought skin tarps to create shelter against the sun, chemicals for cooking, and extra waterskins in case the spring should be disrupted by an earthquake.

For the most part, the island was a paradise. The food was beyond anything they could have hoped for, the water like wine. Sinews and seaweed awoke the crafter within Damaris, and the tide brought in materials they had never seen before. Bamboo and timbers allowed her to expand the sun shelters, a yellow sail from the southern pirate coasts she turned into a fetching wrap.

Kopek stopped talking about their old home almost immediately. He began to lose himself in the culinary possibilities. With water plentous, he turned his attention to fishing. He carved a bamboo pole into a fishing spear, and soon they began to sample the delicacies of the deep.

With a strong sense for danger, Damaris had tended to be cautious about matters that could invite ridicule. Except for that one night under the stars, her lovemaking had been staid and quiet, for fear that others would trouble her about it. The privacy of the island changed all that, and she gave in to her curiousity. There were few avenues they did not try. Kopek wore a smile at all hours of the day. Months passed.

As the odes say, it was like heaven on earth, and it could not last.

One day, Kopek found a crate of glass bottles of Tinaxian wine. They sampled it freely and got more than a little drunk. Kopek began to talk about the old life back in the wastes. "If we could only bring them some of this wine," he said. "They've been dour for so long. Think of how much fun we would have!"

"They wouldn't trust it," Damaris argued. "Going back to them now would be a bad idea." Kopek nodded and fell silent.

The next day, Damaris awoke to find Kopek gathering up his supplies. "What are you doing," she asked. "I lost our last knife while fishing," he said. "I'll have to go back to the mainland and make new ones."

She produced a spare knife from under her pillow, but he shook his head. "That's not the right kind of knife," he insisted, despite the fact they only had ever known one kind.

She stared at him, trying to gauge what he wanted. Kopek was not usually hard to read, but reading people was Damaris' weak point. "Stay one more night," she said. After a moment, he agreed.

It was a night they would never forget.

It was the end of a very peaceful winter, with only a few gentle squalls worth noting. But as the sun arose that morning in a blood red sky, the clouds began to build. By afternoon, it was as dark as night, and when the sun finally set, the tempest began. The birds and fish scattered, knowing the dangers to come.

The winds were beyond anything they had ever seen. The rain was coming down almost horizontally, stinging their bare flesh without respite. When one tarp snapped free and began to flap raucously in the wind, Damaris tore it down and wrapped them in it.

Tremendous waves began to surge up from the beach and onto the sill where they huddled. They had done everything they could to secure their belongings, but one by one the greedy ocean began to snatch them away. When Kopek was nearly knocked off his feet by a particularly large wave, Damaris knew she had to act.

Grabbing him with one arm, she began ascending the central dome, where the hot spring was.

When Kopek told the tale later, few believed him. It was too farfetched, they said.

Finding the spring intact, Damaris made a split-second decision. She laid their tarp over it, using large rocks to jam it into place, to force the heated water into the cooling pool. Then in the space she had cleared, she began to dig at the rock with her stone knife.

Kopek cried out in terror as a huge wave traveled the full length of the slope and struck savagely at their feet. With all her strength, Damaris drove her stone knife into the tiny split she had gouged in the rock. Then, wrapping both arms around her companion's neck, she wrapped her fingers around the roughened grip of the knife and held on.

Waves crashed over them, debris surged around them. Timbers two spans in diameter mingled with empty waterskins and kelp. A young girl's pink pinafore washed by.

Their mouths inches away from one another, they still could not hear their cries over the raging wind and seas.

She held on longer than she had ever thought possible. But in the end, she lost consciousness.

She awoke to Kopek shaking her, and vomited out some seawater. They both felt awful. Kopek's shoulder had been dislocated by a massive timber, and she was covered in bruises and scrapes. The storm surge had carried them into the cooling pool before it abated, and it was a miracle that neither of them had drowned or been swept away.

There was no argument about it now. They would have to return to the wastes. Getting anyone to come here now would be impossible.

They lay there all that day and night, fearfully watching clouds flit by on the tailwind of the giant storm.

Then they made their way back, their disheveled appearance a cautionary tale.

Their wounds healed, and they began to take up their old life once more. Their neighbors were horrified to hear what had befallen them, and most of them were eager to help.

Things had improved on the wastes while they had been gone. The storm had flooded the canyons and seasonal streams. Their troughs were brimming, and game was returning.

Kopek was never the same after that night. His eyes wore a haunted look, and he turned to drink. He would not even talk about the island after that.

But Damaris never got over that island. In fact, she swam back to it the very next day. It called to her. She couldn't stay, but she continued to hunt there.

The portion of the plain that had descended began to fill with water. It was tainted, but the water-workers could purify it, and the fortunes of the trolls began to turn.

For several days after the storm, debris continued to wash up on the island. Damaris went out to it every day.

The one thing that had remained on the island was the plant life. It had revived almost immediately. There were even new kinds of plants springing up.

Although cultivation was unknown to the trolls of the wastes, Damaris noted that the plants closest to the hot springs did the best in the hotter months. She often watered the struggling plants, and ripped out some of the more common ones to make room.

Bounteous times bring nature's blessing, as the odes say, and Damaris soon found that she was with child. The light came back into Kopek's eyes again. In time, she could no longer swim out to the island, and returned to her old life of hunting and fabricating weapons.

Later that year, Damaris gave birth to a baby boy, whom she named Kogen. Kopek was as proud as could be. He doted on the little lad, and took him everywhere.

As game became more plentiful and her child began to put demands on her time, Damaris stopped swimming out to her island to hunt. But she traveled to the plateau often, gazing out to sea from the natural bridge, out to the paradise she had loved so well.

With an influx of game, larger predators started appearing as well. Damaris began stalking jackals, boars, and large birds of prey, adapting new tactics for them, and having some success.

One day Damaris came home with a rather nice kill, but neither Kopek or Kogen were home. She asked around and found that Clea had been entertaining them at her place. When she got there, she found Kopek dead drunk, with Clea bouncing Kogen on her knee.

Although the situation was somewhat suspicious, Damaris decided not to confront Clea until she knew where Kopek stood. As she gathered her child and drunken husband, Clea stared at her with a slight smirk on her face. Damaris hid her anger and slowly led her charges home.

While Kopek sobered up, Damaris learned a few more rumors about Clea from the local wagtongue. Word was that Clea had never liked her and said as much on many occasions. The most damning bit, however, was that Clea had overheard Damaris and Kopek talking the morning after the starry night tryst, and purposely turned everyone against traveling to the island, purely out of spite.

When questioned, Kopek maintained that the rumors were unfounded and that Damaris was just worrying too much. "You need to relax more," he said. Kopek could be rather persuasive when he wanted to, so Damaris came around and dropped her grudge against Clea.

After a number of years passed, Damaris became pregnant with her second child. This pregnancy was more difficult than the past one, and she was occasionally confined to bed. Kopek took care of her. Well into her second trimester, her symptoms eased. Damaris was able to hunt again, though not with her full skill.

One day, feeling nostalgic, she decided to climb the highest plateau and look on her island. Afterwards, as she carefully made her way down, she noticed from the notches she had made that the plain had lowered even more. The cove had now become a deep bay, and seawater threatened to flood the plain.

More canny now than in her youth, she decided not to say anything. Instead she quietly planned an evacuation. As the deepened bay could only be crossed when the spring tide was out, she prepared several skin bladders that could be filled with air, to help children and the elderly to float across. Preparing the floats was the work of several nights, and she was exhausted, but she pressed ahead.

One day she awoke to find all the water-workers meeting in the area outside her cave. Their stone tools were insufficient to desalinate the water. To make matters worse, seawater had begun gushing in through a gap in the crags, and stood to flood the whole plain, including many of their homes.

The time had come to try again. Damaris made her pitch once more, evenly, calmly, addressing every eventuality and possibility.

As before, Clea opposed it, but this time she had no plausible alternative. And when Damaris produced the bladder floats, that decided the majority, who had gotten weapons and skins from her for years.

So Clea grudgingly yielded. She even admitted that Damaris was the only one who could get them there. At this sign of reconciliation, Damaris melted. Tears in her eyes, she hugged Clea and thanked her. The thought of bringing the people she loved to her beloved island had sent her over the moon.

The morning before the migration, Damaris, though huge with child, traveled to the highest plateau to check on her island. She hadn't seen it in some time, and she wanted to be sure that everything would be all right for their dangerous journey.

As she had done so many times before, she made her way to the natural bridge. To her delight, tall coconut palms swayed gently over her beloved retreat. The island had never looked more lush, more beautiful to her than this moment. It had come to her in her moment of need, had anchored her in the moment of her greatest fear, had fed and nurtured her. It had helped her to see another side of herself, to explore her creativity in ways she had never known.

Suddenly a searing pain shot through her leg as a terrific impact knocked her down. The leg went completely dead.

She turned in horror to see Clea, reloading her sling with another oversized bullet.

Jherak turned slowly, but said nothing. His armor spoke instead, rumbling with a voice all its own as it moved, ancient plates grinding against each other. "Who goes there?" it thundered for him.

"Did I startle you, human?" The Eldar's voice was lilting, even through the crackle of its helmet. Jherak didn't know if it was male or female. He wondered if it had the same trouble distinguishing his own kind.

"If such a thing were possible, then you would not be alive, xeno."

"Indeed."

In truth, he hadn't heard it coming; it walked with a weightlessness across the floor that was absolutely silent. But there it was--the faint, spicy, cinnamony smell of dry books, almost too faint even for his inhuman senses to pick up, that went before every one of its kind he had ever met. Perhaps they were a race of librarians, these Eldar.

"The bottom floors are clear." Jherak held his weapon away from the xeno, but he kept the barrel at chest height.

"As are the top. Did you lose anyone?"

Beneath his death mask helmet, Jherak's steely jaw clenched. "One."

"Then we shall weep for him."

"You weep for a mon-keigh?"

"For a warrior. How precious few we are in these days."

Through two helmets and two sets of eye covering, Jherak felt their eyes lock. The purity seals that covered his armor, litanies against the wicked works of the alien, whicked around him in the draft from the stairs the Eldar had come down. "Too few."

At length, the Eldar spoke again. "You know one of our words, Deathwatch."

"Did you lose any of yours, Asurmen-son?"

It may have been only a heartbeat, but the Eldar hesitated. "Two."

Beneath his helmet, Jherak closed his eyes and bowed his head, ever so slightly. The gesture was lost outside the armor. "May they find peace as your kind do."

He turned again to leave.

"May we never meet again, mon-keigh", said the Eldar after him. It was not a curse.

"How precious few, xeno."

"Sorry Damaris, but this is the only way," Clea said coldly. She had stalked Damaris like wounded game, followed her onto the plateau, and was now fixated on the kill. Her eyes had that detached look that hunters have when preparing to dispatch their prey.

"Spare my unborn child!" Damaris wailed.

"You've taken the tribe in the wrong direction," said Clea. "Better two lives than seventy."

"They won't survive otherwise!" said Damaris.

A crooked smile spread across Clea's lips as the sling began to whirl. CRACK! The bullet struck Damaris' right forearm. Searing pain shot through her, every twitch was agony.

"Maybe. But the few that do will be looking to me to lead them, not to you." She stepped closer, readying the killing shot. "You never were a match for me in weapons, much less now in your pregnancy. Your mother was much more of a challenge. She fought to the end."

The sling spun up one last time.

"When I'm through with them, that fool of a water-worker and his son won't even remember you."

With her remaining strength, Damaris flung her left arm at Clea. The tiny knife, the knife that had anchored her in the storm, flew out. It struck Clea directly in her left eye.

Just then, a massive tremor struck. The whole plateau rocked as water surged onto the plain. Suddenly, a chunk of the natural bridge, eroded at the base, gave way under Clea's right foot. With her arms occupied, too late she tried to grab for the rock wall. But her right hand, still holding the sling, couldn't find purchase, and skidded off the edge. For a long moment she clung there, silently, facing her fate. Then she fell to the rocks, and was dashed to pieces.

It was at that moment that Damaris went suddenly into labor.

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Kopek found Damaris some time later. A water-worker had been at the lake and heard a scream, where he turned and saw the women fighting on the natural bridge. Because there was no time left, they carried the unconscious Damaris on a stretcher directly to the bay. There they attached the floats to her stretcher and slowly made their way to her island, with her baby bound to her chest.

Convalsecing on the beach she loved so well, Damaris eventually recovered, but she never regained full use of her arm, and it pained her during storms. She named the baby girl Lydia, the first of the troll females that did not become a hunter.

The trolls developed the island into a major port. They ferried blocks to the island and constructed lighthouses and reinforced breakwaters to protect it. Soon, they became the seafaring people we know today. The wastes became a large bay, the caves that had been their homes became refuges for fish and octopi.

Damaris governed the island for 23 years. She died after a short illness, during the reign of King Jorin the Second.

With the help of his son, the grieving Kopek carved a large statue of Damaris. It was installed on the natural bridge, gazing out to her island and her beloved people.

Over time, the astronomers named a constellation after her. She is known as Damaris the Sentry, and guides sailors home from their voyages across the great sea. No heroes are named from that time save one, and her name is Damaris.

THE END

Good work user

Oh there she is again with that elf... Not that have anything against humans being with non-humans, it’s just that of all people, my daughter Lucille just had to end up with that rogue Vamir Farwyn. That is why I'm concerned for Lucille, Vamir is a rogue or at least "used to be a rogue," according to Vamir himself. But I doubt him since he also said he was once a member of the Sunset Shadows that very infamous Thief's Guild now thankfully disbanded after the Viscount sent professional soldiers to dispatch them and arrest their leadership.

And now there they both are, an upper class and upper town human girl with an elf who frequents the slightly more impoverished lower class downtown area and is rarely seen above in the midtown and upper town area. And I will not go on as to how much the downtown place has a high crime rate, which makes me worrisome about Lucille being around that supposedly former rogue Vamir.

"Do not worry so much, I know Vamir used to be involved in the crime world, but he moved past that and now works as a small time blacksmith at downtown and sells his metal works at midtown."

Lucille tells me everytime she'd go out on a date with that elf. And yes Vamir does work as a smith and I admit, a number of metal works done in my abode have been the work of Vamir. Once elven rogue, now an elven smithy.

(May continue tommorow)

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HOLY FUCKING OVERUSING COMMAS, BATMAN!

Bruvs, nobody expects aspiring writefags to have perfect score english but don't overderp with commas and shit, pur-leeeeese.

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I differ from Strunk and White on that. I hate semicolons, splitting sentences ruins the hypnotic meter of the read, and inserting the pitiful conjunction "for" seems pompous.

El'mathwiea embraced his human lover. He came only seldom amongst thier kind, but he'd been this way before recently, and had shared many passionate trysts with the girl. He had much enjoyed resuming thier casual-yet-intimate relationship.

"My love," she sighed, "last night was wonderful..."

"As was this morning, and this afternoon, and half an hour ago behind mill-house." He quipped.

The girl batted at his shoulder "Be serious!" She scolded in mock-reprimand. "My point is; I fear we must be more discreet; no more climbing in through my window in the wee hours: Last night my mother almost caught us! Had you not been so quick in hiding under the bed..."

El'mathwiea silenced her objections with a kiss. "Calm yourself, beloved; sharp hearing and quick wits are elven traits of renown. As long as the floorboards outside your room creak we shall never be taken unawares."

"Even so, mother would send me to a nunnery if she caught us; she has always warned me against romantic dalliances with strange men."

"Then it is as well I am an elf, not a man." He retorted and kissed her again.

She melted into his arms, fiercely returning his kiss. Even though it had been not one half hour since they had last made love, the pair pulled each other over toward an overgrown corner of the courtyard. Pausing to affirm their privacy with furtive glances, they disappeared behind the dense undergrowth.

"Oh, El'mathwiea!" she moaned into his mouth.

"Oh, Serina!" He gasped as her hand plunged below his waistband.

She paused. "Susan."

"Pardon?"

"Susan. My name is Susan. Sarina is my mother's name, silly!"

A horrible thought occurred to El'mathwiea.

"...How old are you?" He asked, disentangling himself from her.

Her pretty face showed confusion. "Twenty-two years, why?"

El'mathwiea began to panic: How long had it been since he passed here last? Surely it wasn't *that* long ago? Do humans really age that fast? Oh god. Oh god. Ohgodohgodohgod.....

>Thoughts?
>Feedback?

You're valid in strunk. Those are nonrestrictive clauses and they require commas.

It was a draft, so whatever.

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...I have the urge to ask about seats and explanations.

bump

It all started when you were nine.

Mom was never good about remembering to buy food. When she was drunk, she always forgot, and when she had to be sober she felt too sick to go shopping. You and Ben managed, mostly. You learned to cook, a little bit, and make do with what you had. But when she left the two of you alone one September weekend the pantry started running dry, fast.

That was when you met Can.

You could hear his voice, muffled, calling from the bottom of the trash bin. His label was dirty and he still had some rancid cream of mushroom soup inside him, but he cried and cried and cried until, eventually, you dug him out of there and held him in your hand. He thanked you and said he was so grateful that he would make sure you and Ben never went hungry again, as long as agreed to keep him somewhere safe. You agreed, not sure what to think.

The next morning, the pantry and fridge were fully stocked. Can beamed at you from your headrest where you kept him, in the strange way that you could only feel, not see. You asked Can where all this food came from, and he said it's ok, the people who had it won't miss it. You said isn't that stealing? But Can didn't say anything back.

One night mom came home late and the house caught fire.

The firemen said she must have fallen asleep with a cigarette in her hand. They said you were very brave to rescue your brother even though you had to choke on clouds of ash and burn your hand on the doorknob to his bedroom. You didn't feel brave, though. You just felt scared and alone.

That was when you met Bic.

You found her on your bedside table when you were in the hospital, after the doctor told you that you'd have to learn to write with your left hand now. Someone left it there on accident, a nurse or houskeeper maybe - just a little white cigarette lighter, unimportant to anyone but you. Bic said that you didn't have to be scared, because she would keep you safe.

Bic kept her promise. When mom lost custody, you went to live with uncle Wade, the one with the greasy hair and the smile that made you feel gross inside. He tried to touch your collarbone and Bic set his hair on fire. You tried to explain to Bic that it was bad to hurt people. Bic said okay, but what if they're really bad people? Then it isn't bad, right?

This time you were the one who didn't answer.

You're fourteen now. You've been in and out of psyche wards for the last two years, but things have settled down enough since the last incident to allow you to attend normal highschool.

You hear the class stifle a laugh as Mrs. Norwick informs you that you'll have to rewrite your essay because she can't read your handwriting, which despite your best efforts is still a slow, painstaking scrawl. Your stomach sinks, but then you hear Bracelet's soft murmur from your pocket.

Hard to write well with a missing finger, Bracelet says. You ask him what he means by that, but Bracelet just giggles. You beg him not to get you in any more trouble. Bracelet just keeps laughing, and laughing, and laughing until you can't hear anything but his voice resounding in your skull.

They don't always listen when you say you don't need their help. Sometimes they're a little too rough and get you in more trouble. But you can never gather the courage to throw them away.

After all...

...everybody needs friends.

I suppose I should ask this since I don't know any better place to ask.

I'm in the process of writing a story from the perspective of an admirer who desperately longs to have a relationship with the object of their affections, but the admirer fears that they're too imperfect to ever be considered.

I've been going through the angst part of this all, and I'm just wondering if anyone has any tips on figuring out when the angst just gets too much. Right now, they're finally getting intimate, but the admirer's still in this state of denial and thinking that this is all still a perfect dream.

Best advice to just keep in mind the principle of cause and effect: everything important that happens in your story must have an understandable cause, even if that cause is merely implied. People change their way of thinking in response to observations challenging it of which they are incapable of rationalizing (at least, given that the character isn't insane or tremendously stupid). Failure to provide a reasonable cause for the change in thinking, or failure to provide a change in thinking given reasonable cause results in a broken narrative.

On a more aesthetic level, there's also the concern over whether listening to the main character whinge about whether anonette REALLY likes him for that long is emotionally satisfying for the reader. I try to always make sure that if I revisit some kind of internal struggle a character is having, the reader gets a slightly new angle on it every time I mention it, rather than just constantly going BY THE WAY, HE'S STILL REALLY MESSED UP ABOUT THING JUST SO YOU KNOW.

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Seats?

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Yes.
Seats.