NaNo Blogging: The Second First Excerpt

Excerpt time again. I haven't gotten much writing done yet but what I do have, I'm fairly pleased with. It's not, you know, a masterpiece of...anything but, for me, it's strong work.

This section is actually from the prologue that I'm not writing yet. It's a dream sequence, one of several spread throughout the book which act as anchors, as thematic linchpins. I've been working on them first even though it's slow and plodding since when they're done, they'll form a framework for the entire story.

Dreams, by the by, are incredibly fun to write. Raw imagery that doesn't have to follow the normal conventions of logic and consistency. But, instead, can follow the dreamtime flow from one disconnected idea to the next. I haven't gone entirely off the rails here, though, opting for more of a lyrical, mythical feel as opposed to out and out surreality. But since my book is a fantasy book and it's also what I'd call a "low-magic" world, a lot of the mystery, a lot of the magic that makes it a fantasy instead of some kind of fictional history, comes from these dream sequences.

Then, Mydea was a mouse. She could feel the rumbling call of the earth as she scurried through the tall grass. The ebb and flow of sap within a hundred, no, a thousand roots as they pulsed with the moon. The gentle hum of clouds of insects and herds of mammals. Blood surging through her veins, her feet clawing at the dirt, straining for purchase as she tried to hurl herself further away. Fear. She felt the rancid stench of fear as it coiled in her nostrils.

The ground trembled like a drum struck by thunder. Racing through the whipping grass, their blades like razors slicing at her skin, Mydea risked a look behind her. Chancing to see what it was that had driven her into such a panic. Craning her head on an unfamiliar neck. And then she redoubled her speed.

Behind her, a giant strode the earth. A dark figure blotting out the sky. A man, something like a man anyway, made of twisting, inky smoke burning with the reflected light of an unseen fire. He flowed across the landscape, his movements calm and sure, full of the fluid grace of the serpent before it strikes. His steps heavy, ringing from distant hills, resounding through the valley. But they made no sound in Mydea's suddenly sensitive ears. Instead she could only feel the pressure building, falling, building, falling, and building along with her terror. A feeling beyond sound, coursing through her entire body like a blow.

The giant's feet landed like fists. Striking at the earth. Great clouds of dusts, freed from the the earth's loving embrace, danced their way into the skies. Great gouts of steam, loosed from the earth's depths, poured from cracked soil. His footsteps burned the land. Left it scalded as if he were pouring out boiling water from his soles. Where he stepped the grass, painted a weak blue by the light of the moon, began to wither. Trees already splintered by the weight of the insubstantial began to rot and crack apart. Bushes shrank in on themselves, their leaves drooping away.

Like a carpet placed too close to the fireplace, the vegetation drew away from the footprints, smoldering in circles around the embers. They lurched and twisted across the land. Writhing, wrinkling, boiling away. Mydea feels their agony cut through her like a knife. Their mad animal panic. Their desperate need to get away. Away from the pain.

Mydea then became the very earth itself. Her body stretching for miles over hills and valleys. Forests became the hairs on her skin. Rivers her arms, their streams her fingers. A woman made of stone weighed down by tons of dirt covering her. Her every move, her very thoughts ponderous. She moved at the speed a mountain grows. So large, so vast, was the distance that each impulse had to travel along lines made of sparkling gems. Something was wrong, somewhere in the great mass that formed her body. There was pain. In her side. Her children, the creatures that played over her slumbering frame, were dying. Screaming out in terror as their lives were ended. Waves of fear spreading along a spine that circled the world. Ripples in a pond.

She concentrated, focusing with an intensity to grind down a diamond, trying to find the source of their woes. Pinpricks. Sharp, staccato needles of pain running along her side. Followed them, let them guide her, to find a valley in flames. A tiny man striding amongst the hills, smashing through the brush. Made of smoky wisps congealed in the nighttime air. When he breathed he drew in the air for miles. His chortling laugh a current, a whirlpool, sucking away the world's vitality. His feet lanced through the ground. Each one sending a fresh sensation, a burning dagger glowing redhot, through Mydea's stomach.

Mydea, by the way, my main character. She's a young-ish girl who's a slave. Not a slave in the "Let my people go" sort of way but a servant who works for an important person. Part of his household staff who's entirely dependent on him but isn't kept in chains or out working in the fields singing spirituals. Slavery is one of those things that fantasy doesn't tend to touch on much - and there's a good reason why - but in most agrarian, pre-industrial societies it's just a fact of life. Especially the ones I'm modeling from here. Don't worry, though, We're not doing something sick and full of Gorean smut or anything.

Like the farmhand in the Hero's Journey, she doesn't stay a mere slave for long. It's just where her story starts. But it's an important aspect of her character since it reinforces the themes of duty and destiny that I'm really trying to hammer into the text. Mydea is a girl who's getting ordered around. By her owner at the start, by the leader of her little group in the middle, by fate at the end. She might not necessarily like it but she doesn't have a choice. Except, of course, that she does and that's the whole point of the book.