"It’s a funny thing, coming home. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realise what’s changed is you.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
It was a short sail back to the growing island town on the shore of the lagoon before we quickly walked through it towards the hidden harbour in the cliff. As we made the long climb back up to the top of the cliff, that surrounded the island and protected it from both the sea and the mon...
2022-03-05 23:54:32 +0000 UTC
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Heads up, it is that time of the month.
Good news
1. I'm still writing 6 months after starting this during a summer holiday. February saw my highest number of patrons reaching 321! Thanks for everyone's support!
2. I have a new job starting in April (This will cut out my commute saving me 10 hours per week hopefully more time to write from April onwards.)
Bad news
1. Children have been sick this last week wiping out any spare time for writing
2...
2022-02-27 10:20:33 +0000 UTC
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"You are confined only by the walls you build yourself."
Unknown
A lot can happen in a year. Then again, not a lot can happen in a year too! The question was, 'Which areas in your life have seen changes and which areas have not?' If I was on earth, my former world, I would have reached my 2nd birthday today seeing as it had been 24 months since my Delivery Day. Here though, in this world of the Compass Kingdoms, I am only 1 and a half. My dexterity stat had incr...
2022-02-27 00:03:02 +0000 UTC
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“Time flies when you are having fun.”
Albert Einstein
Alderman Cadmus POV
The Swift finally arrived at the island Wester Ponente, the furthermost isle of the Kingdom. This would be the last stop before the ship made its way back through the archipelago. Mercurio and I made our way up the stone stairway in the early morning light before descending down the slope, with the sun at our backs, to the town hidden on the shores of a concealed lagoon within the...
2022-02-24 02:01:42 +0000 UTC
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“Time heals all wounds.”
Stephen King
My brain had spun until I had passed out again. I was woken up to . . .
“Joyful anniversary.” Shouted by my family as they surrounded me in my crib. It appeared the song happy birthday had yet to make an appearance in this world and I wondered whether it would be wise to introduce it or not. Perhaps for my sister’s birthday I could but then I would have to endure hearing it forever more. It would be a difficul...
2022-02-21 17:34:46 +0000 UTC
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“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”
Robert Burns
Tick . . . tock . . . tick . . . tock
6 . . . 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1!
Happy Birthday to me! I lay in sullen silence as the time hour finally turned. I was never going to have a public birthday what with me being officially declared dead by family. Still, the last 12 days had dragged on in a new and disappointing way each day. My life had become utterly boring as I waited ...
2022-02-19 21:15:21 +0000 UTC
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"Optimism is the elixir of life for the weak."
Max Hastings
Waking up the next morning, was a roller coaster of emotions. The initial calm as your brain transitions between unconsciousness and wakefulness. Followed by a sudden burst of adrenaline as I recalled exactly what had happened last night. The accusation, my forced revelation, and the revelation I had forced in return.
Everything came flooding back, the awakening to the ominous words of you’re lying, the forced c...
2022-02-12 22:55:29 +0000 UTC
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“You taste injustice, even if it’s fictional, really taste it, it has a way of doing that. Sometimes you can never put the shoe on the other foot.”
Kristen Ashley
“Care to explain?” I had not had the best of nights and asked him to add to his answer. I could not honestly say that I was not feeling a little bit of schadenfreude. Especially now, that he appeared to be forced to answer my questions, much like I had been compelled to answer his. I’d like ...
2022-02-03 21:59:29 +0000 UTC
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“Try to remain truthful. The power of the truth never declines. Force and violence may be effective in the short term, but in the long run it’s truth that prevails.
Dalai Lama
Despite my anger at my choice in the matter being removed. I was struggling to think of any lie or omission that would not sound as equally strange as the actual truth. They say truth is stranger than fiction but in my case, I couldn’t think of anything saner than the strange truth th...
2022-02-02 22:19:14 +0000 UTC
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“Telling one lie almost always requires another, and before the storyteller knows it, they will be caught inside of their own web.”
Jenna Alatari
“You’re lying.” was an interesting sentence to wake up to. But that’s what I found happening to me. After a long day dissecting my stats with my family we had all fallen asleep with none of us the wiser for how to solve my crippled status. Grandfather said he had some ideas to try out but he had yet to illum...
2022-02-01 23:08:48 +0000 UTC
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“There are rules to luck. Not everything is chance to the wise; luck can be helped by skill.”
Baltasar Gracian
I had already had two naps today. So, even though I was tiring quicker than I used to, I was not actually tired when everyone else went to bed. Aleera regaled me with the story of the tortoise and the hare. She had to explain the animals to me first seeing as I had never seen one in this life before. The story itself was the same as the one in my...
2022-01-30 01:18:07 +0000 UTC
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When I started this project it was a holiday project. I got lucky on Royal Road and it took off.
Now that it could possibly be more than a hobby at some point, I am going to have to edit Singer, Sailor, Merchant, Mage. Probably not until the summer though when I have a little more time.
I am going to try to somehow fix/adapt/edit errors out of some of the chapters where I have lost readers. See chart below
2022-01-29 01:16:30 +0000 UTC
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“At the end of the day, it’s important to know what really matters most in life . . . your sanity, your health, your family, and the ability to start anew.”
Les Brown
At the end of the day I had started anew, afresh in a new world, but it looked like mother was not quite yet ready to let this one go. I had my sanity and my family, we were just working on fixing my health. I was willing to wait although hopefully not too long. To be fair I had not currently ...
2022-01-29 00:24:55 +0000 UTC
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It is that time of the month.
Hoping to get out another chapter or two before the end of January but it looks like I will be Covid negative for 2 days in a row over the weekend so back to work next week. This means I have some work work to do this weekend. But I consider myself fortunate that my symptoms have been relatively mild and that 'touch wood' I haven't passed it on to my family.
Looking back over my posts since I started patron I have managed to post around 8 a month. S...
2022-01-28 10:02:14 +0000 UTC
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“Sleeping is no mean art: for it’s sake one must stay awake all day.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
I awoke slowly for once, there is something about oblivion that puts your problems in perspective even if it was only the stupor of sleep. It gave you a chance not to think. To dream and imagine other things. My dream was fleeting and fast disappearing but I remembered flying up instead of always falling down. In control not only of my direction but my speed as well, l...
2022-01-27 22:30:15 +0000 UTC
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“If you are unable to understand the cause of a problem it is impossible to solve it.”
Naoto Kan
Stunned silence dripped to the floor, as the beer slowly trickled its way down the wall. They sat for a second absorbing the new information. Needless to say, from the earlier conversation I had already realised that 118 was well beyond what even a 10-year-old would have unless they had assigned their free points to it. Something I had not been able to do. But som...
2022-01-26 22:18:58 +0000 UTC
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“Mind over matter represents the triumph of will over physical hindrance. Our thoughts are our weapon against the world.”
David Adam
I had been here before. Sat in my mind watching the world go by outside without being able to interact. I had coped then I would cope now. In fact, built on the foundations of that time most of my skills were either mental or magical in one form or another. Sense Mana didn’t need my eyes to function. Echolocation used my ears ...
2022-01-25 22:50:18 +0000 UTC
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“If you want to keep a secret then you have to hide it from yourself.”
George Orwell
Now, this I had to see! My eyes spasmed open enough for me to be able to look between the lids. I left them where they were. It would have been nice to open them further but I couldn’t have guaranteed that they would have remained open at all. So, I left them where they were and was fortunate enough to be able to watch as my family turned towards my mother. I kept breat...
2022-01-24 23:41:10 +0000 UTC
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“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”
Buddha
“The child is imbalanced.” sighed Grandfather.
After I had been caught out of the air, I had been held and carried all the way back to the island and up to the top of the cliff. Watching the world stand still, had, after my minor panic attack, been entertaining enough for the first hour of subjective time. The problem was I couldn’t yet respond. I retreated into my ...
2022-01-24 00:46:58 +0000 UTC
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“Don’t underestimate me because I’m quiet. I know more than I say, I think more than I speak and observe more than you know.”
Michaela Chung
I’ve become a little quiet at the moment. The problem was, it wasn’t by choice. Each milestone has come with a side effect or two. Long-Lived while fantastic in the long run seemed to mean that it was going to take me a little longer to grow up than most. Not to mention the high vitality has meant that when my bo...
2022-01-23 00:27:57 +0000 UTC
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I am alive and Singer Sailor Merchant Mage will continue.
Just an apology for the delay in the chapter I am working on it. I have got sucked into researching the overarching concepts/races/traits of each of the eight compass kingdoms when all I really need to do is produce the next chapter.
In the next chapter is the clarity milestone and while I have a species for this trait I was not hundred percent happy with how it was working out and got a l...
2022-01-17 00:57:13 +0000 UTC
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"Never depend on a single income. Make investments to create a second source."
Warren Buffett
Rome was not built in a day but every day they laid bricks or something like that, I couldn't remember but the point was our salt flats are coming along nicely. They are gradually working their way along the western side of the island. We did a little bit more every night. Then during the day Des and Sinis would fill them up with seawater from the lagoon, then wait f...
2022-01-09 03:25:43 +0000 UTC
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“Even as water carves monuments of stone, so do our thoughts shape our character.”
Hugh B Brown
We had done another two jumps over the last fortnight and this meant that I was now sitting on 88 points of Clarity. I suppose I could have insisted on them helping me every day but they also had jobs to do, food to catch, salt to sell, tapestry to weave and whatever it was Grandfather did all day. I was not in too much of a rush but at the same time, I was on a de...
2022-01-02 01:51:24 +0000 UTC
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Looking at work for the next month. The posting plan is as follows.
Saturday 1st January Ch 55
Saturday 8th January Ch 56
Saturday 15th January Ch 57
Saturday 22nd January Ch 58
Saturday 29th January Ch 59
& Chapter 60 at some point somewhere.
I would love to do more and will try to but have to do my job, to keep my job, to pay the bills, to keep the internet, to post the chapters.
Proud to say that I have crossed the 100,000-word mark sometime...
2021-12-29 17:56:27 +0000 UTC
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“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”
H.P. Lovecraft
“Are you ready?” Mother asked.
“Um . . . yes?” I replied. Was I really going to do this again by choice?
“Good. Then off you go.” Grandfather responded as he lifted me up off the ground and threw me out over the edge of the cliff.
My heart started thudding as I felt myself rise to the top...
2021-12-28 18:00:34 +0000 UTC
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“To dare is to do . . . to fear is to fail.”
John Goddard
As Yoda once wisely said ‘Do or do not. There is no try.’ I would either be succeeding or I wouldn’t. I wondered to myself how I had ended up here again, this time by choice and how much it would hurt if I didn’t succeed. Was chasing those stats and levels really worth it? Was I tempting fate one too many times? I hoped so and I hoped not I thought to myself as I once more looked over the edge ...
2021-12-25 04:04:00 +0000 UTC
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A little light piano music Kai plays and composes in his mind fortress when thinking sometimes. Short and sweet an original composition.
2021-12-22 23:21:18 +0000 UTC
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"Folks are usually about as happy as they make up their minds to be."
Abraham Lincoln
Not sure why I was entertaining the idea but . . . “Needs to be higher and closer to the water to be safer.” Wondering whether managing risk meant the fall would be worth less experience in the long run. Still better to be alive than squished flat as a pancake.
“Hmm, okay.” He mused, “Maybe not from this island then but back to the Wester Island’s Outer Cliff ...
2021-12-22 23:18:09 +0000 UTC
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“Catalyst, a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change, or a person or thing that precipitates an event.”
Oxford Languages
Maybe, I would be both, something that increased people's rate of growth as well as someone who precipitated change. “What’s a catalyst?” I could make an educated guess but wanted my suspicions confirmed.
“A catalyst? Well, they are rumoured to be people ...
2021-12-22 02:00:32 +0000 UTC
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“The home is the greenhouse in which baby humans are nurtured until they are strong enough to withstand the elements outside.”
Rick Boyer
Ever since the anger, over our treatment, had erupted from mother when she arrived on the island and the dressing down grandfather had received he avoided the home. Almost understandably he would return late from wherever it is he went during the day. Returning only to change clothes and pick up food rather than actual slee...
2021-12-18 18:15:46 +0000 UTC
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