Word after word

Based off this story prompt/fill (X) where you are born with a designation like Hero, Demon King, Blacksmith, etc.

Your name is Dolly. You are a Villager. You, as well as anyone, know what that means.

——————-.

You are sixteen and it is your first day at school.

Your first lesson is that Villagers are the only ones who start so late.

“Because there’s not much to be taught,” a boy says. His clothes are made of finer cloth than your mother’s wedding dress and his hair is as shiny as the brass buckles on his shoes. He grins at you, as proud as a peacock in front of half the class. “Don’t need to ask what your Destiny is, do I?”

You don’t know why he’s singling you out. A quick glance back into the classroom shows the rest of the students sitting at their desks with their heads low. They’re Villagers too. Most of you are. That’s why there isn’t anything special enough about any of you. You look back at the boy. “…are you going to ask me something else?”

“What?”

“If you don’t need to ask me my Destiny,” you say slowly, “do you need to ask me something else?”

“I don’t need to ask anything from a Villager!” the boy cries. He jabs a finger at his own bicep where his mark lies under cloth. “I’m a Lord!”

“Okay,” you say. The other kids behind him are frowning at you. Some of them are Villagers too, but different from you. They’re the children of merchants which is a different sort of destiny altogether. “I need to run some errands for my mother. Will you let me pass?”

Also, if you didn’t care about the future, didn’t that mean you didn’t care about the stone either? You might as well give it to someone else. Maybe someone better suited than you. There was this little girl across the street who had an acorn necklace and played in puddles and always sat very still until the every last stray cat felt safe enough to eat what she brought them. Maybe the stone should go to her, she at least gave a shit.

You debated arguing or refusing, but your disinterest won out in the end. “Sure,” you answered, holding out a hand for them to plop the stone into. You weren’t scared of it, especially since it looked utterly unremarkable. If you tossed it into a river, no one would be able to tell it apart from the other rocks.

The three wizened elders, apparently the smartest of their magic circle, exchanged grave looks and you waited until they were done with their silent communication and their leader stepped forward.

“We entrust you with the Stone of Possibility, never use it and always hide it,” they said, voice solemn and carrying the sort of undertone that spoke of great importance. You blinked slowly. “Give it to no one, no matter how noble their hearts, how pitiful their tale or how silver their tongue.” You couldn’t help but imagine a genderless person sticking out their tongue dripping with mercury.

You are chased out of your village the moment your powers bloom at fifteen years old, and the skies turn black with your fear. A rock hits you between your shoulder blades just as you make it to the main road and you stumble, falling to your knees in a mud puddle at the very moment the skies open up.

“She’s cursing us!” the midwife who delivered you screams over the thunder. “She’s damning us with her!”

Your mother is crying, but she doesn’t raise a hand to help you. She did everything she could, keeping your Role a secret all these years. She won’t risk anymore with another little girl to take care of.

No one tells you that you have a choice. No kind stranger drags you out of the rain and into the warmth of their home where a wise sage tells you it is not how we are born, but what choices we make.

Instead, you take the little pack your mother hid for you in the depths of the forest and sling it over your shoulder. There’s money, provisions, and more wraps to cover the evil mark on your left bicep.

“Your destiny will find you,” your mother told you only hours ago. “I forgive you for it.”

She meant the words as a comfort, but you only heard condemnation in it. Without having killed so much as a fly, she is already blessing you with forgiveness.

Ships don’t blow up cleanly in flashes and sparks.  Oh, if you’re in the engine room, you’ll probably die instantly, but away from that?  In the computer core, or the communications hub?  You just lose power.  And have to sit, air going stale and room slowly cooling, while you wait to find out if the battle is won or lost.

If it’s lost, nobody comes for you.

It had been about half a day (that’s a Raithar day, probably a bit shorter than yours) and Kvala and I were pretty sure we had lost.  Kvala was injured, Traav and I were dehydrated and exhausted, and Louv was dead, hit by shrapnel when the conduits blew.

Most fleets give you something, of course.  For Raithari, it’s essence of windgrass.  I looked at the vial.

“It’s too soon,” Traav said.

Kvala gestured negation, shakily.  She had been burned when conduits blew, and her feathers were charred, and her leftmost eye was bubbly and blind now.  Even if we were rescued, she probably wouldn’t survive.  “You know we’re losing the war.”

They couldn’t deny that.  “It doesn’t mean we lost the battle.”

“Doesn’t it?  The Chreee have better technology.  Better resources.  And they have their warrior code.  They don’t care if they die.”

“We can’t give up!” Traav protested.  They were young, a young and reckless thar who had listened to a recruiting officer and still believed scraps of what they had been told.  “Any heartbeat now—”

There was a clunk.  Something had docked with our fragment of the ship.

“You see?!” Traav crowed triumphantly.

Kvala exchanged glances with me.  The Chreee never bothered to hunt down survivors.  What was the point, after all?

The Aushkune did.

There weren’t supposed to be Aushkune here.  They were supposed to hide in nebulas.

But if there were—

If there were, we were too late.  The windgrass couldn’t possibly destroy our nervous systems in time to stop the corpse-reviving implants, and once you were implanted, it was over—or it would never be over, depending on how you looked at it and whether Aushkune drones were aware of anything—

Footsteps.

Bipedal.  The Aushkune were supposed to be bipedal.

And then the blast door opened, and a figure stood in it.  My first thought was, robot?  That’s almost worse than Aushkune . . .  But no, it was a being in some sort of suit.

Who wore suits?

“Friendly contact,” the suit’s sound system blared, as the being moved over to Kvala.  “Urgent treatment.  Evacuation.”

“Who are you?”  Kvala struggled upright.

Despite the primitive suit, the blocky being was using up-to-date medical scanners.  “Low frequency right angle shape,” it explained—or maybe didn’t explain.  Two more figures came into the room and put Kvala firmly onto a stretcher.

“You’re with the Chreee, aren’t you?”  Kvala was not at all happy to be on a stretcher.

“Not Chreee,” the sound system said.  “You Man.  Soil Starship Nichols.”  The being hesitated.  “Rescue Chreee as well.  On ship.  Will separate.”

“You what?” I said faintly.  Who would do that?

“Oath,” the being explained.

“What kind of oath?  To what deity?”

The shoulders of the being moved up and down.  “Several different.  Also none.  For me, none.  Just—oath.”

I exchanged glances with Traav, who looked as unsettled as I was.  I had never, ever heard of groups cooperating when they couldn’t even swear to or by the same power.

The being scanned me.  “Have water,” it said.  “Recommend.”

Raithari have fast metabolisms.  I could—would—die of thirst quickly, and painfully.

“Where will you take us,” Traav asked, “after you give us water?”

“Raithari to Raithar.  Chreee to Chreeeholm.”

“Chreeeholm would kill them for failing,” Traav remarked.

The being hesitated, and then said, “War news sometimes bad.  Sometimes lie.”

We had learned long ago not to believe the recruiting officers, but what did that have to do with anything?

“And you—what?” I asked.  “Just fly around looking for battles and rescuing victims?”

The being seemed to consider this.  “Best invention of soil,” it said finally.

Most of what it was saying didn’t make any sense.  Did it worship soil?  But it had said that it had sworn to no deity . . .

Madness.

On the other hand—war was a deliberate, rational act by deliberate, rational people, and I wanted no more of it.  So why not embrace madness and see what happened?

“Soil Starship—Rrikkol?” I asked, stumbling over the word.

“Yes.  Soil Starship Nichols.”

This is what took me a moment.

over describe things

under describe things

short sentences in rapid succession build tension

single sentence paragraphs build dread

uncanny valley = things that aren't normal almost getting it right

third person limited view

limited expressions

rot, mold, damage, age, static, flickering, espsecially in places it shouldn't be

limited sights for your mc - blindness, darkness, fog

being alone - the more people there are, the less scary it is

intimate knowledge, but only on one side

If your dialog feels flat, rewrite the scene pretending the characters cannot at any cost say exactly what they mean. No one says “I’m mad” but they can say it in 100 other ways.

Wrote a chapter but you dislike it? Rewrite it again from memory. That way you’re only remembering the main parts and can fill in extra details. My teacher who was a playwright literally writes every single script twice because of this.

Don’t overuse metaphors, or they lose their potency. Limit yourself.

“Say, there’s a Qualar over there. What are they saying?”

“No idea.”

“What?”

“That’s a Kinzian Qualar. I’m a Surolian Qualar. You’d have just as much luck understanding them as I would. You’re lucky I even speak Human.”

“Human isn’t a language.”

Good! Read other people's stories and get frustrated with your writing! That's what we call "learning to write better"! Do you know why people think my story sounds like old scifi? It's because I read old scifi! Not all of it, not as a chore; I read the stories I find interesting! People whose stories are more enjoyable and interesting than mine, and make me feel frustrated with my writing! And then my writing gets better! Because recognising what other authors are doing better than you is a fundamental step in improving your own writing, which improves things for your readers!

You should seek out writing that is more enjoyable, more profound, better constructed than yours, and enjoy it! Read above your writing skill level and have a fantastic time doing it! It is the only way we ever improve. If you avoid works that you suspect will make you see flaws in your own, you will not learn to write better. You will always write stories of the quality you're writing now, whatever that is. Also, you'll miss out on having a lot of fun!

so i asked to hold their hand again. they didn't burn me this time, either. and i asked them if this moment felt small to them. they said it didn't.

Camera rotates to reveal bat has been hanging upside down above a human doing the exact same visual gag and each ruined the other's bit.