The "Late May update"

That is, in any case, what it was called on the Trello board. I'm not sure where May ended and June began, to be honest, so. Suffice it to say that it feels a little like March, as it did last month and the month before that.

I would like, most importantly, to say that I hope you're doing well: that you're staying safe, that you and your loved ones are healthy, and that you're able to make your way through the <waves hands vaguely> the everything. There's a lot of it, and I am incredibly fortunate to have some truly wonderful people in my life, you all included. Thank you for being lovely, and thank you for making the world a better place, and just... yes. I hope summer goes better than spring.

If these are helpful to list updates for you, over the last few weeks:

• I've redone the way notes are handled in the Fourth Wall story engine on writing.dog; notes can now be linked to, and it's possible to skip directly between notes. I also cleaned up the way story interlinks were formatted, which was previously a bit ugly, particularly on mobile browsers.
• Some tweaks to the word-generator, and some new words in the dictionary. That's just something I want to try to keep updated, so the zip file is attached.
• "Shore Leave" (Casey and Dev story), the first new chapter of Terra Nova in seven years, and an updated and annotated chapter of An Iron Road Running are now posted to writing.dog. So is "Getting a Physical," a commissioned standalone piece (more on that in a bit)
• I've updated the writing.dog Tiurishkan and Rukhat dictionaries, and also added a new "setting primer," which is intended to summarize my fantasy universe briefly and without the vagueness I sometimes am compelled to adopt in my story notes.

Okay! Now for, like, Patron-ish things. Two of them, even.

One, this year's novel seems like it will be a sequel to Hatikvah, set around 20 years later in the moreauverse. While I say "novel," my approach is to tell it as a set of stories focusing on different characters, which advance in a linear fashion but spread the perspective around. Think of it maybe as something more like... I dunno, World War Z? I said The Martian Chronicles, so I guess that works too, but it's turning out to be a little less completely independent. In the event, these are the stories that are currently either written or outlined:

• A civilian contractor befriends a pilot in the Commonwealth's air force against the backdrop of rising tensions leading to more intensive combat training*
• A machine shop worker and her partners organize to force a reluctant government into action when intermittent attacks on Commonwealth traffic fray the previous peace treaty*
• A mercenary hired to train the human militias encounters one of the moreaus and begins to doubt his allegiances*
• Kalasos, the now-retired intelligence officer from Hatikvah, is brought back to work on a project she'd started just before leaving the Self-Defense Force
• Anders, the husky dropship pilot from "And To You Your Wassail" (last year's Christmas story) meets up with the ambassador again and questions whether his loyalties are (or should be) divided
• After the outbreak of fighting, an offworld human reporter is asked to inflame local passions against the moreaus by an irresponsible editor who is apparently not aware of his feline partner*

...Plus a couple of random pieces mostly involving human antagonists, who I will probably let stay antagonists this time. Anyway. Everything above is all in some degree of "in progress" or done; right now it amounts to about 21,000 words. The ones marked with "*" concern completely new characters. However, if there are plot threads you feel I've completely dropped and there are things you'd like me to revisit in the Moreauverse, this is your chance to tell me. So that I will do them.

Related I guess, but, as I said I posted a short, smutty story "Getting a Physical" on SF and writing.dog, which was requested by one of you. It is, honestly, a nice change of pace to write things like that, and to write ideas that I wouldn't necessarily have come up with on my own. So please consider this a standing invitation to give me your ideas (either here or by PMing me) and I will put them on the Trello board. You've more than earned that :D

Anyway. I am going to stop rambling, also because it's late and I have a thunderstorm to go watch. But once again: I hope you're staying safe, I hope you're doing well enough, and I hope you know that you are terribly wonderful. Patreon doesn't like me being too risqué, so the next chapter of Terra Nova will be "*cough* adult" but here's a teaser about what the New World looks like beforehand:

===================

“Stars of Different Color”

In Izkadi, far inland from the Sheyib River, they studied magic. Sheshki Anariska knew this. None of the jackal’s family had been academically inclined, and she’d never turned her gaze from the water—but she knew the Dominion studied it, at least.

As she knew, without direct experience, that none of the grey-muzzled scholars in Izkadi, or Shereflik, or even Esifyr itself had ever seen anything like the sight before them. From the outside the building had been plain, and unassuming. Within, the ceiling—was there a ceiling?—stretched as a yawning, wide blue sky.

To either side of the tiles under their feet ran water, clear and quick, seeming at once close enough to touch and so far away that a sense of vertigo struck the jackal. Sheshki focused on each step, following Gethet Issich to a dais where a trio of the continent’s strange inhabitants waited to meet them.

Jalamin spoke in his own tongue to them, and Sheshki saw now what Rettari Halvas meant: now and then, as he spoke, there were overtones beyond the music of his language, beats inaudible that nonetheless echoed in the subtler parts of the jackal’s brain.

Then Jalamin turned expectantly to Halvas, who cleared his throat. “Juten, Vapaske, Suari,” he said, pointing to each of the three new figures. “Vapaske is the most… the most senior, though it seems the translation is somewhat imperfect.”

Vapaske stood, and the disk of wood he’d occupied settled silently to the dais. “Invaders. How did you evade us?”

“We didn’t,” Gethet said. “Not deliberately. We come from far away to the east—the direction of sunrise. Jalamin—and please, I apologize that we apparently can’t pronounce your names as you do—Jalamin said that nothing comes from there. For my people, nothing comes from the other direction. My ship was in the midst of a storm. When it cleared, we were somewhere off the coast. Your coast.”

“If we believed you, that might explain your… bizarre appearance,” Vapaske admitted. “Or you could be from a further sunset. Beyond the dark lands.”

“Bizarre?” The one Halvas called ‘Juten’ rose, too, and stepped down from the dais. He circled the easterners carefully, his eyes narrowed. Sheshki, in particular, seemed to draw his attention, and when the man leaned close she saw eerie sparks glinting in his eyes. “This one looks familiar, doesn’t she? They’re spies, I imagine. We should kill them now.”

“Can we be certain? This is unprecedented.”

Juten stared straight at Vapaske. His paw jerked, leaving a glowing crimson trail behind it. Defiance, Sheshki decided, from Vapaske’s scowl. A gesture of defiance. “What’s more likely? Visitors from the sunrise—or that the desert-folk are testing our alertness? How else to explain the long seasons of quiet? How else to explain this? She’s one of them,” he declared, pointing at the jackal.

“And do you know that?”

Another irritated wave; another flash of red. “Look at her. Feel her.”

“Do you?” Suari had stayed quiet. She kept her seat, and her voice was calm. “Have you?”

“That is not my job.” He muttered something else, in his own impenetrable language, and stalked back to the dais. Suari answered in kind, drawing a growl from the man. “No.”

“Yes,” she insisted. “They don’t understand our tongue.”

“And theirs is… useless. It takes so long to say anything at all. None of this is necessary, Suari.”

Suari folded her paws. “I disagree. Either this is unprecedented, or it is not. We have only one way to find out. What’s your name, stranger? What bloodline painted your fur such colors?”

“Sheshki Anariska Orshanid Basultaqa Basarman. Anariska is my bloodline. I was born in a town along the coast of Tiurishk, a desert nation. I suppose that gave me my colors.”

“Come closer,” Suari beckoned.

Sheshki doubted the wisdom of defiance. Steeling her nerves, she stepped forward. Still, Suari kept gesturing for her to approach, until she was standing right in front of the older woman. Her paws returned to her lap, and she stared. Peered at Sheshki. Narrowed her eyes until her gaze was well beyond the jackal, in dimensions she could not perceive.

“A fisherman. His son. A web, crafted by hand, cast into murky waters.”

Ears flattening, Sheshki nodded. “Sultaqa was the first to move to my hometown. My father Shanid inherited his boat. He makes his own nets to catch fish.”

“‘Net,’” Suari murmured. “I see.”

“What do you see?” Vapaske asked.

Suari closed her eyes, and Sheshki became at once aware that she had been trapped, and was now released from the woman’s hold. “Her bones. Her bones tell a story half as old as this world, Vapaske, and the tellers of that story are unknown to me—the language itself a mystery. Even the means used to craft it are not of our kind.”

Juten snorted, claws showing as his fingers flexed. “You can’t be certain of that.”

The room went dark: utter, oppressive blackness. And then, in subtly glowing threads, Sheshki saw a scene being woven. It was the spires and marble walls of Esifyr. It was the broad stretch of the Sheyib River. It was the black walls of Körlyda. A trireme, the oars shipped and the sail unfurled. A cotton loom. A bazaar.

The tapestry vanished as soon as it was finished, and the chamber returned to its former appearance. Suari stared fixedly at Juten. “More certain than you are,” she said. “If they’re telling the truth, Vapaske, then they’re guests—not invaders.”

“Violating our territory, nonetheless,” Juten insisted. “Desecrating it.”

“From ignorance alone, not malice. They don’t understand where the universe came from. But, with their permission, perhaps I can explain?”

“Please,” Gethet said.

Suari closed her eyes, relaxing. “This world began not in silence but in shouting. Every voice—the voice of every thing—cried out at once. Nothing could be heard. Nothing could be understood. Our oldest ancestors began the task of creating order… learning to listen, to organize, to protect…”

Rain fell upwards, she recounted. Animals gave birth to their own parents, or to reeds, or to fire. Rocks melted, and spread, and took root like trees. Bit by bit, though, their ancestors worked to bring some sense of harmony to their surroundings. Centuries later—how many, even Suari did not know—Osani was the result.

As she explained it, the town was connected to everything around it, and they felt each disturbance as ripples through the fabric of their very existence. That was how they’d noticed the arrival of the Clarion Adamant; that was why the felled trees startled them so. Holding chaos at bay required constant, careful attention.

And everything its inhabitants—raccoons, she said, in passing—did involved bending the threads of that existence. They twisted bedrock to grow their buildings from it; they borrowed the sunlight dappling mountaintops for their torches. Jalamin’s bow was the branch of a tree, destined to fall generations into the town’s future; its shape was held by the energy of the storm that felled it.

“You… make things,” Suari said. “It is a strange concept, and a little crude. But I believe I understand what it means to craft something the way your people do. I understand why you cut down the trees you did.”

“We did not understand,” Gethet Issich said. “I apologize.”

“On behalf of all of us, I accept it. But I’m not sure you do understand, even now. It’s not that they’re important to us. A tree is just a tree: it cannot speak, cannot experience the world as we do. But it is connected to the soil around it, to the time before it, to the time after it. It can be difficult to understand all that unfolds in consequence to its destruction—even more difficult to set right any damage to the harmony of its surroundings. Fortunately, in this case, we can manage.”

“Will you stay here?” Vapaske asked.

“We do not intend to.” Sheski heard the lack of certainty in her captain’s voice. “I intend to return home—if we can. When we can. My ship needs repairs, and my people need food, but…”

“But you will not stay.” The answer satisfied them. “Then we’ll help you. At least we can reduce the impact you have on the natural order of this land. You’ll fell no more trees. We can teach you what to do instead. You understand the tapestry?”

“Not well. My ancestors probably knew magic. But…” Gethet’s shoulders drooped. “I never learned. My adopted homeland does not appreciate it.”

“Isn’t it strange?” Suari said strange, but in Sheshki’s judgment of her tone she seemed more amused than anything else. “The word they use—‘magic’—it implies something mysterious and unknowable.”

Juten grunted. “Primitive.”

“Are they? Why does a torch burn?”

He scowled, as if her questioning should’ve been beneath him. “It’s the nature of pitch to burn. We find the threads that pull it towards such light—shape the course of its story. It takes little work.”

“Indeed.” Her amusement had become more plain; a smile curled her muzzle. “These strangers certainly are primitive… and yet, their torches still burn. What do they know of pitch, Juten?”

“Little,” he declared. “And little of use.”

“But they might learn. My counsel is that—as we help them, Vapaske—we try to teach them, as well. This one, the dark one—his mind is already open. But so is hers.” Suari pointed at the jackal. “One of our own more… radical acolytes should train her. Valisen, I think. I’m curious what we might be able to teach one-another…”

“Valisen is impetuous. Incautious.”

“Yes. And, therefore, more likely to understand someone not raised like us,” Suari countered. “That is my decision, Juten. If we can live with it.”

For now, Vapaske agreed. There was, Sheshki sensed, more arguing to be had between Osani’s elders. And in this case, they would be privileged to hear none of it. Jalamin took them back to their camp, reminding Gethet of Osani’s admonishment to cut no more trees.

“Wait,” he said. “Wait, and we will return.”