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Predecessors to "A Tale or Two"
I'd stopped by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
queenlua's post on her theory on different approaches to story construction, and remembered her earlier remark on how reading about other peoples' writing processes interest her, so I decided to spend the time writing up this post despite having fifty other better things to do.
Despite being a tiny work just shy of 3,000 words and taking only a handful of days to write out, "A Tale or Two" is probably more accurately dated as something mentally in the making since 2008. So, here I retrace the many abandoned projects that developed some ideas well enough to ultimately allow me to write "A Tale or Two".
Note: I think DW does something funny with font sizes and doesn't honor smallfont when you just view this as a page. I suggest viewing it expanded on my journal if possible, as I use smallfont to mark off ficquotes.
These are in chronological order, not in order of importance. I would say that 1 and 3 are closest at heart.
0. Something I'd posted before.
But shall not make overt mention to in a public post because I don't want to make the connection between my old name and this one all that obvious. But if you do know that name, I think it's pretty obvious which one I mean. It was a far more popular take on the idea than "A Tale or Two", but also far slighter in scope.
1. Last modified 8/14/08 - "hybridjournal" (working title) - abandoned at 1100 words
Introduction
Soren (c. 630 - ?) made his primary mark in history by serving as the hero Ike's tactician throughout The Mad King's War (645-646) and the following Goddess's War (648). Little is known of his life aside from his work; many critical victories were attributed to his service in the war memoirs preserved from that period. He himself kept an impersonal journal a century past the war, a valuable insight into the reception of the hybrid (then “Branded” or “Parentless,” a term he used often in spite of his own heritage) community following The Second Covenant. Skilled in Ancient Tongue, these records have long been untouched, thought of as a daily record of no interest, overlooked with the pressing need of translated text and lack of skilled translators. In our troubled times, the strife depicted serves as a valuable warning to the policies which our leaders prepare to enact. As such, I have taken it upon myself to carefully and candidly preserve this valuable segment of history, unabridged.
- Argell Sothe Daein, 1821 Heaven 33
I can't remember when I first took an interest in far-future Soren, but this is the first attestation in my files, and definitely led directly to several other ideas along these lines.
True, there's no far-future Soren in A Tale or Two. But all these far-future history shenanigans really started with Soren.
So, this fic was supposed to be a far-future translation of Soren's journals from shortly after he returned to Tellius after Ike's death. It was supposed to be a portrait of sorrow or something because I'm always writing portraits of sorrow. At the time I was very interested in exploring Soren after parting with Ike, via various circumstances, and this was just one of them, but with the twist that it would explore poignancy lost through the clinical view of its historian translator -- an idea that stuck to me long after I ditched this.
At the time, I think I was simply not good enough at many things to successfully execute the concept. I had started to establish the translator note thing so that it could be used later to great effect, or something, but I hadn't honestly thought of a way to present the loss of Soren's subtle poignancy (and subtle it has to be, because it's Soren).
39th of Earth, 712
Kilstaff, an unrespectable beorc of middle age, has agreed for a fare of 800 gold. Should alternatives be plausible, or indeed exist, I would gladly explore them. I have stalled long enough in hopes of another trip, but the sailors tell* me this trip was planned in advance for the past five years. While I have no pressing need to return, there is nothing for me in Aqualia, and doubtlessly Mist and the rest would be deceased by the time safe transportation between Aqualia and Tellius is established. Ashunera by some whim has kept me alive until this day, and it would be a horrible joke if a rowdy captain and his ship should take me. Ike knew in departing that a burial at sea may be his end; it would be no worse than Aqualia.
* Translator's Note: ﺍﺌﻘﻚ is commonly translated as tell, but may also be loosely rendered as slander or gossip.
2. Last modified 9/1/08 - "ancestry" (working title) - abandoned at 1200 words
It was a shoddy night at the bar. They all came for the dancers, they all tipped the dancers, and I came home with an empty hat.
The idea was something like this: In the far, far future, Soren (who is living very discreetly in Begnion) comes across Mist's descendent. Soren's prickly, the orphan is wayward, Soren draws his picture and tells him a thing or two about Ike, just enough to be appropriately mysterious, before kicking him out or something.
It was also super pretentious, told partly in first person from the orphan's point of view, third person from Soren's, interrupted by stylistic passages focusing on dialogue. More often than not, it didn't work, because this was 2008.
“Who's Greil?”
“Ike's father.”
The boy didn't express surprise although he was surprised – every man has a father, though some never know who he is. Fathers, however, are not the stuff of legends.
“But... I'm not related to Ike?”
Annoyed, the sage corrected,
“You're related. He had a sister.
Ike had no children.”
“How do you know?”
-- and the boy realized that he had asked two questions.
“I simply know.”
I don't think this directly built toward A Tale or Two, but it does show that my leanings toward far-future fic have always been agonizingly pretentiously experimental.
3. Last modified 12/7/10 - "Tutored Hero" - abandoned at 7000 words (I believe the last modified date was when I wrote down my notes for the ending, when showing this to other people. I stopped working on it in earnest much earlier -- I think before April of the same year.)
(There were originally two pages of this, and formatted a bit differently, and I'm far too lazy to re-format it. Noteworthily one of the last things written in the bold hand is "I can write a sentence without any help.")
These two sheets have been preserved for centuries by the Nevassa Museum of History. The student has been proven to be Ike of the Tellian War, early in his life. Handwritten messages left by Ike are rare, thus the historic value of the piece. The Begnion Society of the Humanities recently purchased this piece and several others for an undisclosed sum.
This item, named Tutored Hero, is an absolute beauty to me. It's customary for us to only hold copies of important documents.*1 However, very little of Ike's writing exists. Most communications that survived were penned by his staff officer or a general of an allied army. My instructors once recounted an anecdote about how a team of scholars thought they had found a grocery list by his hand. They went wild, buying carriages for themselves and everything, before the analysis came in that it wasn't written by any historical figure, though it did roughly date to the War.
That's why, when it came to the purchase of Tutored Hero, that team of Royal Scholars with glasses too small for their faces quickly accepted it as a piece of academic interest. I can't imagine that they would take a child's first writing lessons under any other circumstances. It would probably be sitting in a quiet countryside memorial, rather than this expansive collection. We have two sets of armor that Ike wore personally. One was confirmed to be the suit he donned when confronting the splintered Goddess. It's worth more than Gallia's total national assets. Compared to that, Tutored Hero isn't academically exciting. I understand it was accepted only because we have no other handwriting samples of his in our collection.
Still, I love Tutored Hero. We hardly ever see anything about the personal lives of ancient heroes. Tutored Hero is beautiful that way. It might be the only thing left from the hero's reportedly blissful childhood. It shows that there's more to the man than the bold statements of our artifacts tell us. I think I would like to have taken Ike out for a drink sometime. We have war survivors who give us firsthand accounts*2, but I would've liked it to hear it from that blunt, plain man who was in the thick of everything.
---
*1 For example, we currently have a special exhibit on Queen Micaiah's famous letter to Phoenicis, a cherished piece of Kilvas's national history, briefly touring as part of a series on Queen Micaiah's rule, in celebration of the hundredth anniversary of her retirement. She honored us with a visit when we were putting the Daein-Begnion Treaty of 649 in front. I tried to sneak carefully around her since I was nervous about her infamous perception. She said without turning, “I try to respect others' privacy,” then winked right at me. All I can say about my response was that she was far too beautiful for someone about six-hundred years old. My sister has more wrinkles than her.
*2 “I was with King Tibarn that mission... good man, King Tibarn... we haven't seen a hawk like him since. I swear we don't have hawks of his make anymore. You can't tell hawks apart from beorc or herons anymore. Anyway, we flew all day and night to make it. They were huddled in this tiny fort, but they fought like real men and when we got back to them there weren't anything for us to apologize for, just a mercenary group just as whole as we'd left them! Ha!” - a soldier in the Phoenican main unit.
So a bunch of dorky historians working for a museum get their hands on a document written by Ike, who never writes anything. They go wild. Except it's kind of a stupid document, considering that it's a handwriting lesson. The dorkiest historian loves it, and he is sad when everyone else jumps on a proposal from a noble to trade it for a more historically revealing item in his collection: a note from Ike about his return to Tellius post-post-war.
Willym said he came to see us off on the morning of the negotiations. He hovered near the display case for Tutored Hero as we carefully removed it. Although he wouldn't admit it to us, his disheveled hair and sleepless expression was transparent as ever. “The collector must value this piece to trade such a rarity for it,” I told him. As usual, he missed the point, saying, “I know he'll take care of it.” Very well. I let him wallow in his sadness by the empty display.
The story was to be told first person and stylistically from the point of view of each of three historians at this museum, with a final scene with the noble trading the note. My notes on this scene:
The final portion is shorter than the rest, in third person limited. The scene begins with Valserio waiting in his receiving room alone, with tea before him and everything generally set up to receive a guest. A hooded man by a code name arrives for him, and Valserio welcomes him. Valserio excuses his servant and flips a switch to turn off all the big brother screens/cameras/security measures for a bit of privacy. His guest reveals himself to be Lehran (referred to in the narrative as Sephiran at this point) and they have tea together. Valserio says something along the lines of, “How many years will it be?” Their conversation exchanges old man angst, with Lehran passing on experiences, wisdom, whatnot. It comes up that Ike inspired them both, and Valserio remarks, “Yes. He could live without any help.” Lehran exposes that Valserio's original name was Soren and the names switch to Lehran and Soren in the narrative at this point. Soren takes out Tutored Hero with his bare hands, without the tweezers-and-gloves caution it had always been subject to. The paper holds up just fine. He sits there, holding it, and Lehran tells him that sooner or later, all things must be left behind.
Although I liked the conclusion a lot, quite frankly I felt that over 7000 words of dorky OC historians going on about a speculative far-future Tellius with a shaky connection to the Tellius we know was just too much to demand people to sit through. Most of the worldbuilding I did for this was off-handed and extremely sloppy, although there are definitely a few ideas that I developed for this that I would come to stand by in later pieces, most notably the fate of Goldoa.
*3 There's only one notable exception, aside from pessimistic modernists. The public rarely hears of the schism in Goldoa that began about 40 years ago when King Kurthnaga's son became of age. There's been building resentment in that nation over the losses suffered at the conclusion of the Tellian War. While they haven't decided yet whether they're angry at Dheginsea, Lehran, Kurthnaga, Ashunera, the other nations, or absolutely everything, the leaders of each nation have quietly agreed that when their rage finds a scapegoat, there will be war again. King Kurthnaga has been trying to calm his citizens down and teach his son to forgive and move on, but if anything is true about the near-total destruction of a race, it's that it's hard for the survivors to move on. Luckily for us nonmarked-beorclikes, nothing will probably happen until this generation of Goldoans grow up and ease into positions of power, which will take about five hundred years. I'll be dead by then.
There are some other bits of meta that I like but never ended up using because they just never fit in well with any other piece.
But the thing that really killed this piece was the factor that killed my momentum.
I) Calia
A. Visits at 2030.
1) Used the pretense of my scarf to visit me.
a. Red and yellow striped. Knit by my aunt. Hideous. I don't remember losing it.
b. Highly feminine act.
c. The scarf is over-used as a gesture of romantic intent.
2) Dressed in casual clothing.
a. The loose jacket looks better on her than a dress.
b. She doesn't know how the casual look affects me.
c. Probably not here to deliberately impress.
d. It's too late for dinner.
e. Is this going to lead to crying?
f. I hate dealing with that.
I developed a mild dislike of my dorky historians.
The next few stories are relevant from a worldbuilding standpoint. But I think Tutored Hero and its focus on history, evidence, and depersonalization was definitely the spiritual predecessor of "A Tale or Two".
4. Last modified December 2010 - "Crossing the Desert" - discarded draft (12.5k words)
Silent Master of Winds – Soren
Though his tactical genius was unmatched, Soren never used his talents for anyone but Ike.
It was at their meeting by chance in the year 650 that they began the ancient game of igohs. (In this year, the lion-blooded one was drafting law and order for his kingdom to be. He knew who he wanted on his high council.) The man of lion blood said, “Let us keep you sharp in case you change your mind.” The silent tactician complied to the game although he felt such an exercise was akin to sharpening a knife on wax – and he knew he would not change his mind.
I can't actually find the file for a last modified date, which kind of upsets me because I'm a terrible packrat, but I know for a fact that Crossing the Desert hails from December 2010. I vomited out the draft over the course of finals week, figuring things out as I went along, and it showed. I poked at it a lot before ultimately realizing that there was too much fundamentally wrong with the characterization and the dynamic, and throwing it out altogether to be rewritten.
The important part is that during the first draft and after, I dwelt a lot on how Tellius would change after the war. Things like all the little ways in which Goldoa got the shaft (following up from the idea first spawned for Tutored Hero), the evolution of Daein under Micaiah's rule, the location of Hatari within Gallia, all that good stuff.
The king mused as he saw the tactician to the palace walls that he would have preferred friendly relations with Goldoa, but at this point they might as well press for reparations – and Goldoa was a fertile land, after all. “And as for you, what will you make of your newfound royalty?”
Oh, and I think this is the first time I entertained the idea of dividing the years into Eras or somesuch, too.
Also worth noting that the bardsong originates from a scene cut from this fic.
“Yeah?” The man helped himself to someone else's cup of lager. “Guess seein' you's not so bad.” Belch. “You and Great Hero Ikey livin' it up? He got himself a holiday. I gotta get me one of those....”
“I haven't seen Ike in years.” Casually. “As for the holiday, it revolves around Ashunera.”
The old man snorted derisively and made a series of crass gestures toward the bard. “Yeah? Nobody thinks that. Listen t'the little cuss.”
He marched in twain with the dark-haired lass,
Seven-hundred paces from th'field to the tent,
Mashing their faces, two hours he spent,
Driving his worth up the shopkeeper's ass!
“Yes,” the tactician said, gesturing for the bartender to bring him a drink. “It makes me want to vomit.”
5. From an email, 4/17/11 - Floodwater Rises - Vaguely tossed aside after conceptual notes
Have you thought it scientifically strange that continents were submerged under a flood and didn't, you know, re-emerge? That the water just stayed like that? Have you wondered where the water *came* from?
Crack theory: The goddess pushed water away from herself (I'm taking her location at the time to be Tower of Guidance in Begnion, personally) in an emotional rage, causing the Great Flood. Her regret/restraint held the waters where they were in fear that they would recoil back and flood all of Tellius, too. After the goddesses depart for a time after the events of RD, her absence causes the hold on the waters to erode, and they start coming back toward Tellius.
Why this works so well: Suppose Phoenicis, Kilvas, and Hatari were previously submerged under pre-flood water levels. They were exposed post-flood, and now in Ashunera's absence, are slowly becoming submerged again. This coincides with both of the nonsensical large-scale migrations in Tellius: the unification of the bird tribes to Serenes (despite the meat problem) and the Hatari migration.
They had bandied around the idea before the reverse-flood happened, of course, but I don't think they were too serious about it until their homeland started sinking.
This also works with the fact that Ike went off to explore new lands. Since the water's returning to pre-flood levels, this must expose formerly submerged continents on the other side of the world.
This was originally built up as the backstory for a doujin collaboration withblankspectrum, which would've focused on the Hatari migration.
Thus, for the Hatari people, the flood is equally something of a creation myth. This is the origin of their venerated proverb, "When floodwater rises over old cities, elsewhere a new land is born." (It's also decayed into the idiomatic phrase "floodwater rises/rising" in daily use to mean something similar to our phrases "silver lining," "look on the bright side," what have you -- but every sufficiently respectful Hatari person knows the full proverb.)
That proverb -- and their creation -- comes full cycle when the waters begin to rise on them and they're forced to find a new home again. It's Nailah's (not uncontested) ruling that they should go merge with Gallia instead of trying to make something out of the seaweed-conquered landmass slowly emerging from the east. They figure Hatari will be submerged before that area is inhabitable anyway, so if they're moving back to the old world, they'll have to find a temporary settlement anyhow.
There was a lot going on there, for something that ended up amounting to one line in "A Tale or Two". A footnote, at that.
3 Note that there would have been no other continent to journey to at the start of the Third Epoch. It would be thirty years from the absence of the Goddesses before the ocean would finish returning to its pre-flood formation, and the other continents were still submerged.
But the best throw-away lines are the ones with paragraphs of meta behind them, or something.
Of course, "A Tale or Two" is still its own story. When I saw the Love prompt I was torn between my long-standing resolve to Write Some Ike/Soren For FE_Contest Sometime, and this idea I had about some silly Ike/Aimee parody.
When I decided to resolve it with my repeated attempts at a far-future Tellius story about myth, about Soren's erasure, about Goldoa's complicated politics, it all came together wonderfully.
And I don't feel the need to bother with far-future Tellius anymore. Not for a couple of years, anyway.
queenlua's post on her theory on different approaches to story construction, and remembered her earlier remark on how reading about other peoples' writing processes interest her, so I decided to spend the time writing up this post despite having fifty other better things to do.Despite being a tiny work just shy of 3,000 words and taking only a handful of days to write out, "A Tale or Two" is probably more accurately dated as something mentally in the making since 2008. So, here I retrace the many abandoned projects that developed some ideas well enough to ultimately allow me to write "A Tale or Two".
Note: I think DW does something funny with font sizes and doesn't honor smallfont when you just view this as a page. I suggest viewing it expanded on my journal if possible, as I use smallfont to mark off ficquotes.
These are in chronological order, not in order of importance. I would say that 1 and 3 are closest at heart.
0. Something I'd posted before.
But shall not make overt mention to in a public post because I don't want to make the connection between my old name and this one all that obvious. But if you do know that name, I think it's pretty obvious which one I mean. It was a far more popular take on the idea than "A Tale or Two", but also far slighter in scope.
1. Last modified 8/14/08 - "hybridjournal" (working title) - abandoned at 1100 words
Introduction
Soren (c. 630 - ?) made his primary mark in history by serving as the hero Ike's tactician throughout The Mad King's War (645-646) and the following Goddess's War (648). Little is known of his life aside from his work; many critical victories were attributed to his service in the war memoirs preserved from that period. He himself kept an impersonal journal a century past the war, a valuable insight into the reception of the hybrid (then “Branded” or “Parentless,” a term he used often in spite of his own heritage) community following The Second Covenant. Skilled in Ancient Tongue, these records have long been untouched, thought of as a daily record of no interest, overlooked with the pressing need of translated text and lack of skilled translators. In our troubled times, the strife depicted serves as a valuable warning to the policies which our leaders prepare to enact. As such, I have taken it upon myself to carefully and candidly preserve this valuable segment of history, unabridged.
- Argell Sothe Daein, 1821 Heaven 33
I can't remember when I first took an interest in far-future Soren, but this is the first attestation in my files, and definitely led directly to several other ideas along these lines.
True, there's no far-future Soren in A Tale or Two. But all these far-future history shenanigans really started with Soren.
So, this fic was supposed to be a far-future translation of Soren's journals from shortly after he returned to Tellius after Ike's death. It was supposed to be a portrait of sorrow or something because I'm always writing portraits of sorrow. At the time I was very interested in exploring Soren after parting with Ike, via various circumstances, and this was just one of them, but with the twist that it would explore poignancy lost through the clinical view of its historian translator -- an idea that stuck to me long after I ditched this.
At the time, I think I was simply not good enough at many things to successfully execute the concept. I had started to establish the translator note thing so that it could be used later to great effect, or something, but I hadn't honestly thought of a way to present the loss of Soren's subtle poignancy (and subtle it has to be, because it's Soren).
39th of Earth, 712
Kilstaff, an unrespectable beorc of middle age, has agreed for a fare of 800 gold. Should alternatives be plausible, or indeed exist, I would gladly explore them. I have stalled long enough in hopes of another trip, but the sailors tell* me this trip was planned in advance for the past five years. While I have no pressing need to return, there is nothing for me in Aqualia, and doubtlessly Mist and the rest would be deceased by the time safe transportation between Aqualia and Tellius is established. Ashunera by some whim has kept me alive until this day, and it would be a horrible joke if a rowdy captain and his ship should take me. Ike knew in departing that a burial at sea may be his end; it would be no worse than Aqualia.
* Translator's Note: ﺍﺌﻘﻚ is commonly translated as tell, but may also be loosely rendered as slander or gossip.
2. Last modified 9/1/08 - "ancestry" (working title) - abandoned at 1200 words
It was a shoddy night at the bar. They all came for the dancers, they all tipped the dancers, and I came home with an empty hat.
The idea was something like this: In the far, far future, Soren (who is living very discreetly in Begnion) comes across Mist's descendent. Soren's prickly, the orphan is wayward, Soren draws his picture and tells him a thing or two about Ike, just enough to be appropriately mysterious, before kicking him out or something.
It was also super pretentious, told partly in first person from the orphan's point of view, third person from Soren's, interrupted by stylistic passages focusing on dialogue. More often than not, it didn't work, because this was 2008.
“Ike's father.”
The boy didn't express surprise although he was surprised – every man has a father, though some never know who he is. Fathers, however, are not the stuff of legends.
Annoyed, the sage corrected,
Ike had no children.”
“How do you know?”
The old man answered both.
I don't think this directly built toward A Tale or Two, but it does show that my leanings toward far-future fic have always been agonizingly pretentiously experimental.
3. Last modified 12/7/10 - "Tutored Hero" - abandoned at 7000 words (I believe the last modified date was when I wrote down my notes for the ending, when showing this to other people. I stopped working on it in earnest much earlier -- I think before April of the same year.)
(There were originally two pages of this, and formatted a bit differently, and I'm far too lazy to re-format it. Noteworthily one of the last things written in the bold hand is "I can write a sentence without any help.")
These two sheets have been preserved for centuries by the Nevassa Museum of History. The student has been proven to be Ike of the Tellian War, early in his life. Handwritten messages left by Ike are rare, thus the historic value of the piece. The Begnion Society of the Humanities recently purchased this piece and several others for an undisclosed sum.
This item, named Tutored Hero, is an absolute beauty to me. It's customary for us to only hold copies of important documents.*1 However, very little of Ike's writing exists. Most communications that survived were penned by his staff officer or a general of an allied army. My instructors once recounted an anecdote about how a team of scholars thought they had found a grocery list by his hand. They went wild, buying carriages for themselves and everything, before the analysis came in that it wasn't written by any historical figure, though it did roughly date to the War.
That's why, when it came to the purchase of Tutored Hero, that team of Royal Scholars with glasses too small for their faces quickly accepted it as a piece of academic interest. I can't imagine that they would take a child's first writing lessons under any other circumstances. It would probably be sitting in a quiet countryside memorial, rather than this expansive collection. We have two sets of armor that Ike wore personally. One was confirmed to be the suit he donned when confronting the splintered Goddess. It's worth more than Gallia's total national assets. Compared to that, Tutored Hero isn't academically exciting. I understand it was accepted only because we have no other handwriting samples of his in our collection.
Still, I love Tutored Hero. We hardly ever see anything about the personal lives of ancient heroes. Tutored Hero is beautiful that way. It might be the only thing left from the hero's reportedly blissful childhood. It shows that there's more to the man than the bold statements of our artifacts tell us. I think I would like to have taken Ike out for a drink sometime. We have war survivors who give us firsthand accounts*2, but I would've liked it to hear it from that blunt, plain man who was in the thick of everything.
---
*1 For example, we currently have a special exhibit on Queen Micaiah's famous letter to Phoenicis, a cherished piece of Kilvas's national history, briefly touring as part of a series on Queen Micaiah's rule, in celebration of the hundredth anniversary of her retirement. She honored us with a visit when we were putting the Daein-Begnion Treaty of 649 in front. I tried to sneak carefully around her since I was nervous about her infamous perception. She said without turning, “I try to respect others' privacy,” then winked right at me. All I can say about my response was that she was far too beautiful for someone about six-hundred years old. My sister has more wrinkles than her.
*2 “I was with King Tibarn that mission... good man, King Tibarn... we haven't seen a hawk like him since. I swear we don't have hawks of his make anymore. You can't tell hawks apart from beorc or herons anymore. Anyway, we flew all day and night to make it. They were huddled in this tiny fort, but they fought like real men and when we got back to them there weren't anything for us to apologize for, just a mercenary group just as whole as we'd left them! Ha!” - a soldier in the Phoenican main unit.
So a bunch of dorky historians working for a museum get their hands on a document written by Ike, who never writes anything. They go wild. Except it's kind of a stupid document, considering that it's a handwriting lesson. The dorkiest historian loves it, and he is sad when everyone else jumps on a proposal from a noble to trade it for a more historically revealing item in his collection: a note from Ike about his return to Tellius post-post-war.
Willym said he came to see us off on the morning of the negotiations. He hovered near the display case for Tutored Hero as we carefully removed it. Although he wouldn't admit it to us, his disheveled hair and sleepless expression was transparent as ever. “The collector must value this piece to trade such a rarity for it,” I told him. As usual, he missed the point, saying, “I know he'll take care of it.” Very well. I let him wallow in his sadness by the empty display.
The story was to be told first person and stylistically from the point of view of each of three historians at this museum, with a final scene with the noble trading the note. My notes on this scene:
The final portion is shorter than the rest, in third person limited. The scene begins with Valserio waiting in his receiving room alone, with tea before him and everything generally set up to receive a guest. A hooded man by a code name arrives for him, and Valserio welcomes him. Valserio excuses his servant and flips a switch to turn off all the big brother screens/cameras/security measures for a bit of privacy. His guest reveals himself to be Lehran (referred to in the narrative as Sephiran at this point) and they have tea together. Valserio says something along the lines of, “How many years will it be?” Their conversation exchanges old man angst, with Lehran passing on experiences, wisdom, whatnot. It comes up that Ike inspired them both, and Valserio remarks, “Yes. He could live without any help.” Lehran exposes that Valserio's original name was Soren and the names switch to Lehran and Soren in the narrative at this point. Soren takes out Tutored Hero with his bare hands, without the tweezers-and-gloves caution it had always been subject to. The paper holds up just fine. He sits there, holding it, and Lehran tells him that sooner or later, all things must be left behind.
Although I liked the conclusion a lot, quite frankly I felt that over 7000 words of dorky OC historians going on about a speculative far-future Tellius with a shaky connection to the Tellius we know was just too much to demand people to sit through. Most of the worldbuilding I did for this was off-handed and extremely sloppy, although there are definitely a few ideas that I developed for this that I would come to stand by in later pieces, most notably the fate of Goldoa.
*3 There's only one notable exception, aside from pessimistic modernists. The public rarely hears of the schism in Goldoa that began about 40 years ago when King Kurthnaga's son became of age. There's been building resentment in that nation over the losses suffered at the conclusion of the Tellian War. While they haven't decided yet whether they're angry at Dheginsea, Lehran, Kurthnaga, Ashunera, the other nations, or absolutely everything, the leaders of each nation have quietly agreed that when their rage finds a scapegoat, there will be war again. King Kurthnaga has been trying to calm his citizens down and teach his son to forgive and move on, but if anything is true about the near-total destruction of a race, it's that it's hard for the survivors to move on. Luckily for us nonmarked-beorclikes, nothing will probably happen until this generation of Goldoans grow up and ease into positions of power, which will take about five hundred years. I'll be dead by then.
There are some other bits of meta that I like but never ended up using because they just never fit in well with any other piece.
But the thing that really killed this piece was the factor that killed my momentum.
I) Calia
A. Visits at 2030.
1) Used the pretense of my scarf to visit me.
a. Red and yellow striped. Knit by my aunt. Hideous. I don't remember losing it.
b. Highly feminine act.
c. The scarf is over-used as a gesture of romantic intent.
2) Dressed in casual clothing.
a. The loose jacket looks better on her than a dress.
b. She doesn't know how the casual look affects me.
c. Probably not here to deliberately impress.
d. It's too late for dinner.
e. Is this going to lead to crying?
f. I hate dealing with that.
I developed a mild dislike of my dorky historians.
The next few stories are relevant from a worldbuilding standpoint. But I think Tutored Hero and its focus on history, evidence, and depersonalization was definitely the spiritual predecessor of "A Tale or Two".
4. Last modified December 2010 - "Crossing the Desert" - discarded draft (12.5k words)
Though his tactical genius was unmatched, Soren never used his talents for anyone but Ike.
It was at their meeting by chance in the year 650 that they began the ancient game of igohs. (In this year, the lion-blooded one was drafting law and order for his kingdom to be. He knew who he wanted on his high council.) The man of lion blood said, “Let us keep you sharp in case you change your mind.” The silent tactician complied to the game although he felt such an exercise was akin to sharpening a knife on wax – and he knew he would not change his mind.
I can't actually find the file for a last modified date, which kind of upsets me because I'm a terrible packrat, but I know for a fact that Crossing the Desert hails from December 2010. I vomited out the draft over the course of finals week, figuring things out as I went along, and it showed. I poked at it a lot before ultimately realizing that there was too much fundamentally wrong with the characterization and the dynamic, and throwing it out altogether to be rewritten.
The important part is that during the first draft and after, I dwelt a lot on how Tellius would change after the war. Things like all the little ways in which Goldoa got the shaft (following up from the idea first spawned for Tutored Hero), the evolution of Daein under Micaiah's rule, the location of Hatari within Gallia, all that good stuff.
The king mused as he saw the tactician to the palace walls that he would have preferred friendly relations with Goldoa, but at this point they might as well press for reparations – and Goldoa was a fertile land, after all. “And as for you, what will you make of your newfound royalty?”
Oh, and I think this is the first time I entertained the idea of dividing the years into Eras or somesuch, too.
Also worth noting that the bardsong originates from a scene cut from this fic.
“Yeah?” The man helped himself to someone else's cup of lager. “Guess seein' you's not so bad.” Belch. “You and Great Hero Ikey livin' it up? He got himself a holiday. I gotta get me one of those....”
“I haven't seen Ike in years.” Casually. “As for the holiday, it revolves around Ashunera.”
The old man snorted derisively and made a series of crass gestures toward the bard. “Yeah? Nobody thinks that. Listen t'the little cuss.”
He marched in twain with the dark-haired lass,
Seven-hundred paces from th'field to the tent,
Mashing their faces, two hours he spent,
Driving his worth up the shopkeeper's ass!
“Yes,” the tactician said, gesturing for the bartender to bring him a drink. “It makes me want to vomit.”
5. From an email, 4/17/11 - Floodwater Rises - Vaguely tossed aside after conceptual notes
Have you thought it scientifically strange that continents were submerged under a flood and didn't, you know, re-emerge? That the water just stayed like that? Have you wondered where the water *came* from?
Crack theory: The goddess pushed water away from herself (I'm taking her location at the time to be Tower of Guidance in Begnion, personally) in an emotional rage, causing the Great Flood. Her regret/restraint held the waters where they were in fear that they would recoil back and flood all of Tellius, too. After the goddesses depart for a time after the events of RD, her absence causes the hold on the waters to erode, and they start coming back toward Tellius.
Why this works so well: Suppose Phoenicis, Kilvas, and Hatari were previously submerged under pre-flood water levels. They were exposed post-flood, and now in Ashunera's absence, are slowly becoming submerged again. This coincides with both of the nonsensical large-scale migrations in Tellius: the unification of the bird tribes to Serenes (despite the meat problem) and the Hatari migration.
They had bandied around the idea before the reverse-flood happened, of course, but I don't think they were too serious about it until their homeland started sinking.
This also works with the fact that Ike went off to explore new lands. Since the water's returning to pre-flood levels, this must expose formerly submerged continents on the other side of the world.
This was originally built up as the backstory for a doujin collaboration with
blankspectrum, which would've focused on the Hatari migration.Thus, for the Hatari people, the flood is equally something of a creation myth. This is the origin of their venerated proverb, "When floodwater rises over old cities, elsewhere a new land is born." (It's also decayed into the idiomatic phrase "floodwater rises/rising" in daily use to mean something similar to our phrases "silver lining," "look on the bright side," what have you -- but every sufficiently respectful Hatari person knows the full proverb.)
That proverb -- and their creation -- comes full cycle when the waters begin to rise on them and they're forced to find a new home again. It's Nailah's (not uncontested) ruling that they should go merge with Gallia instead of trying to make something out of the seaweed-conquered landmass slowly emerging from the east. They figure Hatari will be submerged before that area is inhabitable anyway, so if they're moving back to the old world, they'll have to find a temporary settlement anyhow.
There was a lot going on there, for something that ended up amounting to one line in "A Tale or Two". A footnote, at that.
3 Note that there would have been no other continent to journey to at the start of the Third Epoch. It would be thirty years from the absence of the Goddesses before the ocean would finish returning to its pre-flood formation, and the other continents were still submerged.
But the best throw-away lines are the ones with paragraphs of meta behind them, or something.
Of course, "A Tale or Two" is still its own story. When I saw the Love prompt I was torn between my long-standing resolve to Write Some Ike/Soren For FE_Contest Sometime, and this idea I had about some silly Ike/Aimee parody.
When I decided to resolve it with my repeated attempts at a far-future Tellius story about myth, about Soren's erasure, about Goldoa's complicated politics, it all came together wonderfully.
And I don't feel the need to bother with far-future Tellius anymore. Not for a couple of years, anyway.
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