Soulfire Scribbling

ladylight — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 09:08:54 GMT

Lest We Forget

You Can't Fool Owls

ladylight — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 02:59:45 GMT

... Everyone is Fond of Owls

... ^_^

ladylight — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 03:32:05 GMT

I'm trying to work out the exact point where this transcends corniness and becomes absolutely adorable ...

*wanders off singing about a-rach-uh-nids*

INCOHERENT SQUEEEEE

ladylight — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 13:38:13 GMT

WHO NEEDS A PLOT WHEN YOU HAVE JET LI KICKING SINISTER ARSE IN CHINESE LACQUER?!

'mala dies' sounds sinister

ladylight — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 05:26:53 GMT

The Romans used to believe that some days were fas and some were nefas (incidentally, where we get 'nefarious' from). You would have to be a loony to expect things to turn out right on a nefas day. Chinese and Japanese people believe similar things about certain days.

Yesterday, I had a nefas day, a conjunction of stars and planets so adverse that absolutely nothing could go right. It was a mistake to get out of bed! So take warning. I tell now The Tale of the Story of the Saga of the Training Day.

(No, really, take warning. I am very bored and it is very long.)

I shall highlight and itemise proofs of my Planetary Miaslignment Theory (possibly Soy Planet-based; I may never know) as the ~~gasbagging~~ saga progresses.

Yesterday I was scheduled to take a day-long training course offsite for a program called IMS. This is how police track their cases and associated documents. I'm not an officer, of course, and I don't have cases or associated documents, but I file/despatch them. Every bit as exciting as it sounds. :D ... :/

My coworker, a fellow data entry receptionisty soul, had arranged to go with me to the big police complex where the training was to be held, 8:30am to 4:00pm (joy! excitement!). This was good, because I had no clue where the complex was except 'near the WACA'. Only annarti will understand the significance when I say that high-ranking officers on the top floor of the complex can see into the WACA ... FROM THEIR OFFICES :O

Anyway, I digress. Get used to that. I shall now outline the first two small but significant Circumstances of Ill Aspect for the day:

1. My mobile phone had died.
It had died on Sunday night. It often does this - its battery life is now down to a day and a half or so, though I never use it. I only have to switch it off at work anyway, especially on a training day. So I just shrugged and just plugged it into its charger on the bench for the day.

2. My coworker suddenly had to change her plans.
She ran unexpectedly late that morning (darling child-related reasons O;) as I found out when I arrived at work to find she wasn't there yet and gave her a call. She said she'd meet me there instead. "Don't worry, the guys'll get you there."

I was just photocopying the map of the Midland facility and tidying away before I left when one of my sergeants came up and said, "Hmm, I'm not sure you'll make it on time, you know ..."

"Aaaagh really?" I said, or something to that effect. I was rather puzzled, as I dimly recalled the first time I'd been taken there as being a trip of about ten minutes by car. "I thought Midlands was closer than that!"

"Midland. No, it's about half an hour. But don't worry - I see the good constable in the corner there's not up to much."

"Ha ha ha," said good constable in the corner at that.

This good constable is also a very kind constable, though, like all of them, so she grinned and took me out to Midland in one of the big police trucks. It was indeed a 40 minute drive in that traffic. Inside the car I realised what was soon to become Ill-Starred Planetary Conjunction #3:

3. I left the copy of the training email I'd printed on my desk.
In my sudden flap around to leave, the detailed outline of the IMS training and so forth had been forgotten on my chair.

No worries, off we were on our way to the Midland complex anyway. Wow, it all looks so different from this direction, thought I. Wow, I hope the trainer is tolerant of fools with no sense of distance, and doesn't have one of those scary police caps.

We arrived at the Midland facility, which is -huge- and still being built. I thanked good constable profusely and rushed in, buzzing through the gate with ID all official-like, and rushed up to the reception desk of the first building (as there were three).

Wow, all these buildings look very different with all the construction going on, thought I. I don't seem to remember it being quite like this.

"Hi, I'm here and I'm running late for IMS training," I said to the receptionist.

To which the nice lady blinked and replied, "Um?"

After checking with all three buildings on site, it became apparent that there was no IMS training being held anywhere. (I could've received resuscitation training, though. Coo.) I was absolutely bemused as to how a training session could vanish - these sessions are large and consist of 50-60 people each - until the nice receptionist suddenly exclaimed, "Ah! I bet I know where it is! I bet it's the Maylands facility!"

4. Midland and Maylands are both external police complexes in the metropolitan district.
They are also rather far from each other. ;P I had no idea there were two - I had visited one (Maylands!) on my first day, and had probably heard the name of one or the other once or twice after that, but my brain had helpfully compacted them into the one similar reference.

Of course, if I'd had the training email with me, this wouldn't have been a problem. I tried calling my coworker from the nice reception lady's phone, but my coworker was obviously in the training session and had her mobile switched off. I had no IMS contact person to call because of #3. Instead I called my sergeant back at the office.

"Ummm ... I'm an idiot and it's 'Maylands'," I said. "I'm going to be horribly late at this rate. Should I just come back to the office?"

"No, no, they might let you in," he replied cheerily. "Off you go. Twit. *click*"

Oh, I thought. Well, transit, eh? Bah, I am a wayfarer of Japanese Rail! No worries!

I summoned up my paltry powers of navigation and walked in the direction I remembered the train station to be. It was ... a bit of a dodgy walk. Midland is a pretty rough part of town (in the words of one secondment officer, "Hell, you lot are moving out to Midland in August, aren't you? Hope they're issuing you all with pepper spray!"), a bit of a graffiti jungle, even with a huge new police complex going up there. The construction patches were particularly not-confidence-inspiring. I passed a few people muttering to themselves but got to the station without being hit by a broken bit of drainpipe, which is Good!

The train stations and the Perth train system in general are a no-brainer when you compare it to Tokyo (*silent scream*). In fact, as luck would have it - or so I thought - Maylands is on the same train line as Midland. It's only 20 min away, in fact.

So I hopped the train, swaggered off at Maylands Station with a little smirk on my face (until I remembered I was already an hour late) and went to the information desk.

This is, of course, not Japan. The desk was unmanned. I suspect it was painted on.

I looked around for a helpful map of the train station's immediate surrounds. This is not Japan; such a map would be covered in mindless graffiti tags within two seconds flat. As such, it did not exist.

I had no address for the Maylands complex because of the lack of my printed training email. Maylands is not quite as way out in whoop-whoop (you may refer to it as 'the boonies') as Midland, but still, a metropolis it is not. I had trouble finding someone to ask for directions, but luckily or so I thought an old lady was loitering around the station.

"Oh, yes, I know where they are, I've lived here for years!" she assured me. "Up that way! Up on the hill!"

I hiked up the hill, which was not actually a -real- hill, because this is WA and we put up warning signs for ten-degree slopes (not a joke ;D). As I hiked, I glanced behind me and noticed I could see the river. Far away from hill and train station alike. Hum, how odd, thought I, I could've sworn the place I went to was practically beside the river. We were sort of near the WACA oval last time.

5. In the 1980s, there was a police station further up the hill in Maylands, which had only been gone for ... oh, fifteen years or so.
Or so the pensioner walking his dog told me when I asked for directions again.

... bugger, I thought. I was now one hour and fifteen minutes late. Getting back to Maylands station made it one hour and thirty-five minutes. Oh, well, better call the office again on my GAAHDAMNITFUCKINGARGH. (#1)

I began a search for a map and/or phone. A teenager would not lend me her mobile phone; perhaps I looked shady. The hydroponics shop had no map. The model train shop had no map (yes, that is the kind of natural city planning we have in regional WA - "I'll sell whatever random crap I like" - and I love it <3). The florist and bakery had no map. All assured me that the Maylands complex was way down by the river 'somewhere sort of down that way', though.

I found an unvandalised pay phone. Called twice. No-one in the office picked up.

I walked further. I found another pay phone. Called twice. Someone picked up, but the line cut out both times.

6. I ran out of coinage.
Australian payphones (the ones that work) are frigging expensive. >_>

By now I had hiked down almost to the river foreshore and was busy hunting for the WACA and/or signage, which Australians do not believe in (except for bowls clubs ... I found three bowls clubs, very clearly indicated ... curious). I could see the city centre across the river and knew I must be close, but there are pockets of lovely trees everywhere down there, and Maylands complex itself is lightly tucked away in a screen of them. So are many residential blocks there, many of which I wandered around searching for signs of policeness. XD

The 'two hours late' mark arrived. I'd pretty much given up anyway. I pounced on a lonely newsagent's shop and begged the use of their phone, which they kindly granted, and called the office twice more. On the second time, I caught a senior constable who'd just arrived for his shift! YAY!

"Daaaah sorry I can't find Maylands I've been calling all morning the office must be empty I'm coming back to the office now please tell the sergeant that aaaagh," I informed him.

"Righto, love, will do," replied the S/C placidly, and hung up.

Victory and success! ... I thought.

First I walked back to the nearest train station. This was a kilometre away, and I'm glad I didn't trust the directions I was given to it because I'd have missed it - honestly, WA! When your sense of direction is worse than MINE, there is a problem! My problem, at least when it came to getting back to the station, was

7. I was wearing new boots.
Not generally badly made or uncomfortable, but not made for the purpose (you show me ANY pair of boots 'made for walking' ... false advertising in that song, it is). Thank god I don't wear heels.

Then I arrived at the station and discovered that in addition to #6,

8. I could not locate my SmartRider card.
A SmartRider card is a nifty thing in Perth which you use to ride buses and trains without requiring change. Unless, of course, it's gone missing. I didn't know how that had happened between Midland and Maylands, but on that particular day I can't say I was surprised. ;D

#7 took on a whole new meaning. I was damned if I was going to hunt around aimlessly for another shop, though. FINE FINE FINE I AM A HIKER OF ANTIPODEAN WILDERNESS ANYWAY, BRING IT ON! I thought.

I started following the train tracks (from the adjacent road, obviously :P). I noticed almost immediately how far apart stations are in Australia.

Walkwalkwalkwalkwalkwalkwalkwalklimpwalkwalkwalklimpwalklimplimplimpwalklimplimp.

Three stations passed. By then my grand adventure had been going on for 3.5 hours. If I had seen a SINGLE GODDAMN TAXI all day I would've obviously taken it, but this is WA.

Limplimplimplimpaaaaghthepainlimplimphobblelimplimphobblehobblelimp.

One or two more stations.

At long last I arrived at a station within Zone 1 of Perth station, which means it is free IF you have a SmartRider card. Fortunately - and this really was fortunate, for a change - I found an OLD SmartRider card with a only few cents' balance on it. I was allowed to use it to tag on. I got on the train and sat.

I rode one station to Perth. I hopped on the free CAT bus to my work as I do every morning (and as I'd already done once that morning ;P). I inched upstairs to the office and wobbled inside to produce my abject apologies for being, well, me. But the moment I stepped through the door -

"Daaaaah there you are we've been so worried we're SO sorry you poor thing thank goodness you weren't mugged aaagh!" wails Acting Sergeant Teddy-Bear (I gave him this name in my head the very first week, since not only does he have a teddy bear on his desk, he -is- like a very tall white-haired teddy bear himself, and you'd agree if I had a photo). At this point everyone else in the now-populated office is daaaah'ing as well.

I was ... bemused. Because if I line up the circumstances and mark in red the ones that were my fault:

1. My mobile phone had died.
2. My coworker had to change her plans. (Shouldn't have relied on just her knowing the way!)
3. I left the copy of the training email I'd printed on my desk.
4. Midland and Maylands are both external police complexes in the metropolitan district.
5. In the 1980s, there was a police station further up the hill in Maylands. (Aha! NOT my fault!)
6. I ran out of coinage.
7. I was wearing new boots.
8. My SmartRider card could not be located.

... yeah.

I pointed this out at length and kept apologising -properly-, wondering how a seasoned criminal investigator was managing to misintepret the overwhelming body of evidence. XD

I was also amused to find out that the circumstances of nefasness had continued at their end as well. Apparently my other sergeant had thought I was still with kind-constable-who-chauffeur'd-me when I called from Midland, or he'd have sent someone else to get me. Apparently the senior constable (another one of my favourites ;) whom I'd finally got through to had just turned up for his shift without any of the others around and hadn't realised I was out at Maylands without an officer. And worst of all, apparently the reason the office had been -completely- unmanned at one point - usually there's at least one person left to take calls - was because poor Acting Sergeant Teddy-Bear had been so worried he'd taken one of the cars out to drive around Maylands looking for me! :(

"Daaah it is our responsibility to make sure you know where you're going so never never never think of it as an imposition to call for a car," explained Acting Sergeant Teddy-Bear in that impartial way. "Maylands is a half-hour walk from the train station even if you know where it is we're so sorry aaaaagh."

I tried again to go through list items 1-8, paying particular attention to the glorious Lissness of #4, but I really don't think he was listening.

"Next time we will drive you direct," he simply declares.

"Yeah, and maybe we should give you an EPIRB tracking beacon, hahaha," says S/C Smarty Pants. "'Help! Code Red! I'm lost in the carpark!'"

"You can wear one of the fluoro road jackets too!" crows Other S/C Smarty Pants.

"What's the Dog Squad's extension again? Should we put it on speed dial?"

At which I thumbed my nose at them all and limped back to work.

The work is boring, but I do love this office XD

I also find it weirdly cheering to think what a bizarrely fun day I had misadventuring around the place. It may not have been going-to-visit-the-Sun-Goddess adventure, or where-the-HELL-is-this-guy-on-the-bicycle-TAKING-me adventure, which I do miss. But I just found it a timely reminder that sometimes, while you're shuffling to work in the same stiff suit to catch the same cramped bus, life will throw your hat over the fence and giggle hysterically at you as you run around after it - and frankly, I find that awesome.

(Could do with a new pair of shoes, or feet, though. Twelve blisters on both feet ... coo)

Terminator 4: Antibacterial Day

ladylight — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 03:35:02 GMT

I have a day off today. It shall be a Day of Cleaning the moment I extract myself from these blankets and this laptop (barcode effect increasing exponentially now ... I guess the VGA monitor was doing more to alleviate Silicon Insanity than I thought).

Obviously I haven't done either of those things yet, and have instead completed a book list meme swiped from age.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (tried; failed)
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (except the last one)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Julius Caesar) (I love SOME, certainly not all)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen (tried, failed)
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen (how many in the one list? get this woman tf out of my books already)
36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
37. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
39. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
40. Animal Farm - George Orwell
41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (two chapters - and can I flag my intention NOT to read it?)
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
47. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
49. Atonement - Ian McEwan
50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
51. Dune - Frank Herbert
52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (asfsddagh I mean it)
54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (not fond of Dickens but this was beautiful)
57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
67. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
68. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
71. Dracula - Bram Stoker (if only he'd known the emo monster he would create)
72. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
74. Ulysses - James Joyce
75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
77. Germinal - Emile Zola
78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (the BBC series is brilliant)
79. Possession - AS Byatt
80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
86. Charlotte's Web - EB White
87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
93. Watership Down - Richard Adams
94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I have also done what I have been meaning to do since early 2007, which is to say I have fixed my LJ filters. I now have: Unfiltered (you're reading it), RL filter, Writing Ramble filter, Actual Writing filter, Talechasing filter, Games filter and AFL filter (population one but awesome nonetheless T_T). Your interest or lack thereof to date in any given subject has been expertly determined by the application of a personality matrix*. This AQGBTA** matrix has however been known to fail, so from now on, if you hear about something in which you have no interest whatsoever, let me know.

* Unfortunately there is no Meaningless Dribble filter. If you don't want meaningless dribble, you friended the wrong journal. For example:

aaaaaaargh don't make me go and clean ;_;
okay fine. be that way.

** A Quick Glance Back Through Archives

ladylight — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 09:45:44 GMT

First, my apologies to all those sweet and/or demented souls who have ill-advisedly entered into correspondence with me since April. I managed to answer a few last week and I'll get to the rest tonight. Sorry, didn't expect to be away this long.

Late May/June has been a rather inauspicious time for my future silicon-based masters. My wireless connection was first to fail me (though I'm starting to suspect it was Hannibal HP's fault and not entirely the box) - a partial signal loss late in May and then complete lack of connectivity the week after.

Always one to appreciate a bit of premeditated electronic evil, I actually found the meltdown of my decrepit laptop's VGA slot a day after finally fixing the wireless connection to my room a tad amusing. Once I'd finished swearing, obviously. I think it's the mental picture of my HP shrieking fiercely at me from behind its manic little streaks of cyan/yellow/magenta warpaint that does it. :D

(You may or may not recall that last year, Hannibal the HP's rubbish screen started to burn multiple vertical artefacts right across the display face and I had to get an external monitor to plug into it, which now no longer works. By appeasing the wrathful technology gods with a blood sacrifice, random keystrokes and a few solid whacks I've finally stopped it trying to display through a nonexistent external VGA, but typing now is a bit like squinting at the page through a technicolour barcode and I can't let it go into screensaver mode or the screen just stays blank.)

It's weeks like these that narrow escapes like "whoops, I almost ended up in the computing industry for a living" sort of occur to you with gentle feelings of relief ;)

No doubt it's just a matter of time now before Hannibal HP goes the way of old Carthage (in fact I'm stunned he's lasted -this- long ... rationing has worked well), but my sister's boyfriend very kindly sold me his old desktop PC for a pittance, so I do have a backup. This backup machine was an absolute fiend in its day (2005), which makes it very much serviceable even now in 2008. Not quite as high-powered as Hannibal, but with the not inconsiderable bonuses of being functional and having a readable screen.

I'm only using Hannibal now because I'm determined to get my money's worth out of him and all my crap's still in his loony little brain - AND because it's cooold in the back room. On that note, it's so nice that I'm back in a state where I can safely call 16 degrees 'cold' ... ;D

Anyway, that about covers Recent Events; the rest is nothing I'm terribly interested in discussing, nor indeed terribly interesting for that matter. Additionally, I haven't written or read anything and know better by now than to promise a swift change on either account while Murphy's within earshot, so I think I'll just announce a hiatus on both and blab mindlessly instead. It is, after all, my Calling.

Rather dull, sorry. Unlike THIS!

I love the goddamn internet :D

Zoom, zoom, zoom!

ladylight — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:10:54 GMT

That's actually a car ad, isn't it? No matter.

At the moment I should be finishing off an online application - public service intake for the following year closes April of the preceding year in most departments, oddly - but ... ha! Make me! No, don't, please, it's hideously boring and full of crap ("provide an example where you worked with others in a group to achieve a common goal. please state the situation, your action and the outcome." are you kidding me? do I have to wear the school uniform again too?). I do actually have a job now - that interview I mentioned a while back with the WA Police went better than I somehow thought at the time, and it looks like I start next week - but it's just a temporary thing while I scrounge up an actual career, so it seems wise to try to get into something else next year.

Can't say I'm insanely enthusiastic about any of it, but meh. Work is not supposed to be interesting. Work is supposed to be what you do while you're wishing you could do something else - something to make you appreciate your weekends more XD

I have had a nice day today, delightfully full of mediaeval maybeship-nails and archaeological Thames beach detritus (you UK madames get pipe-stems and pottery fragments washing up on shore ... we get six-pack plastics and stubbies), because saltnester is made of several densely packed layers of awesome.

Also, I have eaten fifteen Anzac biscuits. Take up my challenge IF YOU DARE (and if you know what an Anzac biscuit actually is, come to think of it ;P).

A Sign of the End Times

ladylight — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 04:54:47 GMT

Pal: What are you up to right now?
Me: Oh, just checking email for the first time in a while ... sort of lolling around on the couch, you know ...
Pal: Really? What's so funny?

... NOTHING! NOTHING IS FUNNY! I JUST HEARD THE CHOKING DEATH-RATTLE OF MY NATIVE TONGUE!!

*curls into a little ball and weeps* T_T

I r go shoot a friggin lolcat now, rawr!!

Heh heh heh

ladylight — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:06:24 GMT

日本語を読めば、今日は何日のかもうチェックしておいたかしら。。？
If you can read Japanese, I wonder if you've checked what day it is today ..?

... the date for that entry being, of course, April Fools Day (Australian time). O;D

Muahahaha!! Ah, but you lot are too sharp for me.

Just to clarify, then: Lorannon's lifetime laser ban is still VERY much in force (*shudder*), Isaille would never manage to pilot interstellar technology just by mashing the keyboard with her fist, and Schiri would curl up into a cranky ball of eternal sulk if someone confiscated his sword AND his body. Not to mention that the world certainly ain't ready for Nuan in a skin-tight spacesuit XD XD

I do have this unbearable compulsion to put an Acarthian or two in space and see what they do now, though. Damn! I have paid >_>;;

... where on earth did the 'oak' come into it, I wonder? O_o

MAROONED!

ladylight — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:50:29 GMT

... on a comfy couch >_>

Well, it looked good in the title. My grandad's come to stay with us for a while, so I'm camped in front of my Wii and my relocated (as of now) computer instead of in my room.

I've also been incommunicado for a while because over Easter I went up to my uncle's house in Geraldton. Four hour drive from Perth, it is. I remember being insanely boooored as a kiddie, making long trips in WA in the car, because we do suffer here from a certain ... er ... invariant altitude, shall I say. But being adult and getting to stare up at our enormous sky/gorgeous scrub made my skin feel all tingly this time. (And the HEAT! O glory!)

I also went up in a light plane over the Abrolhos Islands! Said islands only being half an hour's slow flight from Geraldton. (Famous in WA for being the site of a shipwreck/mutiny, too ... the Dutch ship Batavia, not that even Shanrie is likely to have heard of it! ;P) Absolutely gorgeous - I must get the photos from my sister's boyfriend. I now want a pilot's licence, a plane and an island. Not necessarily in that order.

Hope everyone's had a lovely week/weekend/break/etc. :) I'm likely to be quiet for another few days (nights may be okay) until I am released from my lonely exile, doomed as I am to a prisoner's diet of chocolate rabbit and whatever-I-want-from-the-fridge-6m-away.

Someone call Amnesty International.

No new Basic LJ accounts after March 2008

ladylight — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 06:52:13 GMT

Interesting.

I hope they leave the existing Basic accounts alone indefinitely, or I'll have to ditch soulfiresnippet and go internet-hiking for another notes dumpy place without ads. Can't say as I find the tone of this promising, though.

... *rather fed up with policy shifts in various online communities lately*

Thar she blows! The Whoite Wheyle!

ladylight — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:09:27 GMT

I do not like panel interviews.
I do not like panel interviews.
I do not like panel interviews.

Thank you.

What I did like was 'The Lies of Locke Lamora'. Actually I finished it yesterday, but was too distracted on my Shirt Hunt to post.

First of all, I want to find Scott Lynch and either a) clone him or b) fund his dictatorial Published Authors' Retraining Boot Camp with a Huge Stick. I've read books where the writer understood one of the necessary ingredients - people should like my characters, people should see my world, people should believe my story, etc., etc. - but not within Lissish memory have I read a book with so many you'd-think-they'd-be-fundamentals in it at the same time.

The book isn't flowery-ambitious. It's not about continent-spanning events or delicately worked motifs of redemption. It's about a rather cunning group of confidence-trickster friends - all essentially decent sorts, and with mostly believable explanations for why this is so - and how they get sucked into a power shift involving other thieves who are anything BUT decent. The story doesn't pretend to be anything but an adventurous, suspenseful and fun way to spend your reading hours, so that's what it turns out to be.

Lynch hasn't let this constitute an excuse to be lazy, either. Everything in his world (alchemy! ancient magical glass! *swoons*) is described in fascinating detail without becoming very infodumpish, and it's all very well thought-out, and it's logical. This also extends to his characters for the most part. Even very minor characters are given less cliched roles and personalities than you'd ordinarily expect.

They're also extremely likeable, by and large - even the protagonist, for a change *gasp*. There are quite a few things I love about Locke. First and foremost is that Lynch lets him fail. Locke is a smartarse who isn't always right, and sometimes his trust in his own cleverness gets the better of him. He's also an essentially decent sort in spite of all the thieving - almost the street-trash-with-the-heart-of-gold, but not quite, since there are aspects of his upbringing which provide more or less credible reasons for why this is so. I was willing to believe them, anyway. ;)

(For the record, my favourite character was Jean. Hem. Moving on. ;)

There were a few things that still made me quirk a brow a bit. I was often puzzled about what the Gentlemen Bastards' actual purpose was, and why only they were so effective - a team of five with pretty formidable resources for a group formed only a matter of years ago. I thought it was odd that there were no older Gentlemen Bastards hanging about (all are recruited within the scope of the book). I also thought it was a wee bit of a stretch of the imagination to think that (mini-spoily: highlight to read) an ambitious little git like Locke never had more grandiose ideas about what to do with all the money they stole.

The Bondsmagi struck me as a tad overpowered - why would they not be ruling the world by that juncture with that sort of incredible magic? why was the gang war so drawn-out with a power like that on the other side? And as for the climax, why on -earth- did the Bondsmage assume that a thief like Locke would give a crap about what happened to a bunch of nobles he didn't know? Quite obviously he did, but it didn't feel like character information that the Falconer should have.

But none of those little ponderings were game-breakers for me, and overall I found it a really immersive, really enjoyable day's read. Oh, yes - and I cared what happened to them all. :D

I will be buying the sequel. I will also be reading 'His Dark Materials' next ... fingers crossed!

Happy Wensdy, peoplies :)

Book-book-book ... bookawk!

ladylight — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 15:30:13 GMT

Today I went out and did something I've been dying to do for a long time ... I bought some books. :)

My expectations of modern fantasy have been beaten and battered so miserably since university that for a long time, I'd just stopped buying them - almost all my fantasy reading has been online (as you lot know ;). The only things I bought were non-fiction. (Like 'The Tyrannicide Brief' by Geoffrey Robertson - wonderful book. Though now that I type that, I get this weird feeling of deja-vu like I've mentioned it before ... ignore me if I have.)

I don't think I'm a terribly picky reader. I demand only one thing from my books - I want to care what happens to the people I'm reading about. There isn't much I won't forgive, even more conventional plots where Knight Slays Dragon or Prince Rescues Princess, if I actually FEEL FOR and BELIEVE IN said knights, princes and princesses. I don't even have to like them, damn it! A frame for sympathy is usually enough!

But nooo, all I could ever find were sulky, limp-wristed girls and supposed dark hero loner tough-guys who spent inordinately teenage-girlish periods of time musing over and getting in touch with their feelings.

What happened to the golden age, I ask you? When did 'adult fantasy' start to imply pure start-to-finish angst, as opposed to meaningful emotional highs and lows? When did all the pretentious wording creep in? When did writers forget about friends and family to go with all the lovers? Where are the Arthurs and Launcelots, the Eowyns and Eilonwys, the Raistlins and Caramons, the Sparhawks and Kaltens? Where have all the real people gone?

I now seem to have that song 'Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?' stuck in my head. Serves me right.

Anyway, the books I bought were The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (since I've seen Panth recommend it about the place), His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman (since I've heard it recommended ... somewhere, and because it's children's fantasy, which is usually better :P), and The Summoner by Gail Martin (which I've heard nothing about, but I felt like a leap of faith). I am determined to get back into the fantasy genre again. As a popular FBI agent once said, I Want To Believe.

Okay, he didn't say it. It was on a poster in his office. Don't get picky with me.

This has been an extremely random rant. We now return you to your regular Sunday programming, gentles all ;)

Twinkle, twinkle

ladylight — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:25:49 GMT

Agh, the stars, the stars, the stars - how'd I last another whole year under an eerie black sky? They are so gorgeous tonight. There's a whole field of them all sprayed up there, benevolent and twinkly*. (My parochial soul doesn't like to admit it, but they'd be even more gorgeous back in Hobart tonight than with the mild light pollution in central Perth. But ... Hobart was 16 degrees today, and we were 38, so HA!)

I am still a tad listless lately. It took a long time to adjust last time I came back, too, so not to worry - I'm sure I'll feel better when I'm not quite so directionless. It'd be nice to have a job to take my mind off things. I did get invited to an interview next month for that job I mentioned a while back, so have to see how everything pans out there. Not getting my hopes up just yet.

Nothing written over the last few days - I blame the aforementioned floaty feelings AND sister's boyfriend for showing me that bloody 'Mass Effect' game, though luckily I've almost finished it now (great fun playing as Ketty ... Lorannon tried to edge in so he could finally have a laser and a spaceship, but I didn't let him). I did write a story a bit before the sci-fi binge, though. And THAT was tasllyn's fault. I glanced at one of her icons (okay, fine, fairly innocuous thing about fairies) and scribbled the whole thing down. Will post it when I'm not meh.

In other news: CHEESE. FRICKIN' CHEESE. Enjoy it. Revel in it. You never know when you may (go overseas to a country that doesn't make it properly and) not be able to eat it.

* may consider entering this phrase for some sort of Pulitzer Prize

Happy Florida Day!

ladylight — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 04:07:59 GMT

(I think it's today ... *prods GMT conversion*)

Have a lovely trip, hyarmi_records! :D

Bad habits

ladylight — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 06:24:31 GMT

STOP WRITING SPUR-OF-THE-MOMENT THINGS INTO RANDOM TEXT-FILES AND LOSING THEM. I MEAN IT, ME.

In just a few weeks my desktop and random folders have started looking like junk piles again. What do you suppose is contained in the Notepad file called 'new.txt'? I wonder if it bears any relation whatsoever to 'new2.txt'? I wonder if 'rental payments.txt' is just about rental payments, or whether it has three pages about Sir Immovan Mordeglaive tacked on the end?

I SUPPOSE WE WON'T KNOW UNTIL WE OPEN THEM AND DEFEAT THE WHOLE PURPOSE OF FILE-NAMING, HMM?

*spends half-day whipping things into pseudo-order* :P

I also seem to be confusing myself with Where Stories Go online. From now on I think I'll keep soulfiresnippet strictly for notes/abstracts and put all finished pieces (Talechasing challenges or otherwise) either on Elfwood or here under a filter to avoid nuisance to non-reading flisters. If you want to go on my writing filter just drop me a line; otherwise you can look forward to blissful radio silence from here on in ... weeell, unless you count all the random wafflage and silly memes XD

In other news, PEANUT BUTTER! How did I live a year without it? What chronic later-life diseases will this peanut deficiency lead to? I don't know but I'd better eat more right now.

ladylight — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:33:17 GMT

I watched this on TV and I read the transcript again and am impressed by the grace and sincerity of it ... and while the sad, cynical history student in me is still muttering that words are marvellously easy and there's still absolutely no change in any system, she's probably just partially embarrassed that a politician brought tears to her eyes.

To save a bit of face, she does express the sardonic hope that it will go down in history as more than one of Australia's most moving speeches, mind you.

Happy Birthday, Becca! :D

ladylight — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:07:46 GMT

# Happy birthday to you
# Your hard-drive's a zoo
# There's kelpies and centaurs
# And a Nawala too

# Happy birthday to you
# [Think I missed Shaylie's - boo :(
# But] happy birthday dear Beccaaaaaaaaaaaa...
# Happy birthday to-- you---!

(appropriate barbershop chord please)

Hemhem - happy birthday, Becca me dear!

Not only are you a doll, a love, a sweetie and whatever other bizarre/random grandmotherly terms I pile on the deserving, you are a beautiful snapshot of the quintessential writers' spirit - writing shared freely and joyfully with everyone for the sheer love of the craft ... and/or craftiness, depending on the cast at the time. <3 I admire your gloriously feathery writing, your gloriously feathery imagination and your gloriously feathery you (well, you might be; I don't know) more than gloriously feathery words can appropriately express.

Here instead is a pictographical representation of how much I admire you.

The exact amount is difficult to calculate in icecream, but I tried.

Have an awesome 2008!!

I'm back ...

ladylight — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:19:13 GMT

Actually I got back on the 11th, but given that I'd had 8 hours of sleep over the preceeding three days, that my regular bedtime the previous two weeks was 4am, and that I had an all-nighter trying to get to the airport after my first taxi company bailed on me ... let's just say I am only just human again (and barely) ;)

Still, it was all in a good cause - cleaning my apartment at normal hours and then sleeping versus going to meet/goodbye friends ... hmmmm ... tough choice, that ;P - and I have a week or so to readjust my sleeping schedule, which of course means that's probably when Writing Things will start chewing on my ankles, ahaha.

*wonders what the safety procedure is for removing fae/winterknight teeth from one's ankle*

Expect me to start me well-practised old catchup routine tomorrow, as tonight I have to whip up a job application for something closing at 4pm that afternoon. If it didn't look so interesting I'd probably just let it go, but hey. Anyway, just thought I'd post here to say 'the plane aten't crashed', etc.

I'm still quite melancholy post Japan-farewell, but that's the price you pay for travelling near or far, innit - no choice but to leave bits of yourself behind with all the beautiful places/people you see :/

Beware, I'm also in a bit of a photoey mood, so I might subject you next post if it lasts, heh heh.

Happy Tuesdy, me dears. <3

... where did she go?

ladylight — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 22:27:05 GMT

cleaning cleaning scrubbing packing cleaning cancelling contracts ARGH CLANCY THE COCKROACH meeting sorting cleaning cleaning not enough tape running to shop searching ack where's my vitally important thingy cleaning cleaning cleaning cleaning cleaning cleaning cleaning cleaning cleaning cleaning cleaning

Mini-Challenge: Quandary

ladylight — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 16:41:53 GMT

... bloody hell but I am loving this ... *plays in pile of words and throws them up in the air like money* Where were you in 2007, you bastards?!

It'll be Sailley or Rannon who come crawling back next, mark my words. Hahaha. Immovan's already showing them up anyway ;D

(**PS: half-day warning for any watchers of soulfiresnippet to defriend for whole-year-postponed notes-spamming purposes**)

Anyway, this is set about 250 years into Arathalian's imprisonment. It's too talky for its own good and there's little in the way of a plot, but I've warmed to it a little on the reread. I think it's purely because the ending gives me (nasty?) satisfaction. ;)

Presents from Arathalian
I fear the Greeks, even bearing gifts. - Virgil, The Aeneid

Nataul stared down at his notes almost without seeing them, collecting his thoughts and calming his enthusiasm pre-Query. The sergeant at the door, who was now unbolting the heavy catch-alls to Arathalian's cell, had already grunted a warning at him. You really want to go in there looking like you've come to a party, nassy? Bloody hell, you faebait and your new old things ...

He had a good feeling about this find, though. Such a good feeling! Ilinme hadn't a clue what it was, nor how to read the sigils properly, which generally meant one of two things - lying or genuinely powerful. And since the former occasionally tended to indicate the latter, it was hard to see how this situation could turn out badly.

Besides, artefacts like this - unless they were dead - were always good news. There hadn't been a fresh one turned up for at least eleven years.

Still bubbling quietly away on the inside, Nataul stepped into Arathalian's cell with flawless outer calm, giving the fae a polite morning smile. Arathalian didn't seem to notice. The adult-shape usually left him less restless than child-shape, but he was actually on his feet today, prowling up and down his heavy wall of bookshelves.

After checking for any visible signs of some darker mood - though Nataul doubted the sergeant would've neglected to mention anything like 'he's got demeanour' - the researcher cleared his throat. "Am I interrupting something?"

"Can't find it," said the fae - a bit peevish, but only mildly so. "This is what happens when you lot try to shelve things for me ... oh, never mind. Go and sit."

"I've got a long Query allocated today. There's plenty of time to look for whatever you're looking for."

"Why, you're absolutely right, Macain Nataul," agreed Arathalian. "In fact I could spend the entire time looking for it if I wanted to. I assume you'd let me."

Nataul inwardly shook his head at himself for implying permission, but before he could start a non-obvious bit of backpedalling the fae said, "Long Query, you say?"

"We've found something new."

"Mirror?" Arathalian asked boredly. "Doll? Pot?"

"A wand," said Nataul.

The fae shot him a narrow look. "You don't say. Well, go sit down already, and let's find out whether I want to talk to you or not."

Nataul moved across the cell to sit on the traditional researcher's seat - the end of Arathalian's bed - as the fae himself went to sit in his familiar, full-stuffed chair.

"You may have to describe this wand and where you found it if you expect me to tell you anything about it," Arathalian prompted, flicking a bit of fluff off one armrest. "Still haven't developed my mindcatching powers that far, you see. Well, for all you know, anyway."

Nataul flipped two pages through his notes and turned the sketch around to show the fae. The wand was a slim, simple thing, delicate, made rare by its lack of distinguishing features rather than the particular presence of one. Its near-lack of etchings or natural gnarlings were particularly unusual - in Nataul's experience and the corpus of Artefacts research, at least.

"It's made of pale cari-wood," he said as Arathalian leaned forward to peer closer at the sketch, "wrapped in three similar shades of blue. Our Surveys leader reported a massive spike of magic when it was approached - he assumed someone had tripped a defence mechanism - but although it killed his entire searching pack of dragons, it had no verifiable effect on any human there. What kind of artefact would be protected by wards against fae, but not humans?"

"It could be any number of things," replied Arathalian, "not all of which I'm prepared to talk about, of course. You'll just have to be more specific."

"There's not much else specific to say. It's unadorned. Examinations and Surveys have told us it's an extremely high-powered artefact. Ilinme couldn't understand the sigils on it, but she said it was incredibly complex and more than likely to be the work of a Maker."

"Where did you find it?"

"An emergency cache - we presume - on the River Barcain. Some coal miners found the entrance and we've been excavating for some time. The gatewarders which Lasalt asked you about earlier came from there, though he wasn't cleared to tell you at that point."

"So he said." Arathalian looked down at Nataul's sketches, tracing an absent finger around the nondescript outlines. "The River Barcain is rather large. Where exactly did you find it?"

"Well ... I'm not cleared to tell you at this point."

"I see." The fae looked up at Nataul this time. "So your question today is, in effect, 'Can you tell me what this powerful artefact with no defining visual features is, minus the context of its location?'"

"You have a context. How many caches can there possibly be along the Barcain, Arathalian?"

"As I said, Macain Nataul, the River Barcain is rather large."

Nataul kept his sudden rush of delight entirely away from his face, but on the inside he was crowing. Arathalian didn't often give presents. Telling him where to find more caches of fae artefacts was right off the scale.

"Now," said the fae, turning the sketches over and calmly taking the pen from Nataul's hand, "before you scurry off to start digging two hundred kilometres more of the riverbank, I suggest you take your artefact back to Ilinme and ask her to look for this."

Ink glistened and pooled in the thick, hooked strokes of the sigils Arathalian wrote. There were three sigils in total, interlinked line to line. Nataul felt they were familiar - he'd probably seen them over and over again in all the years of staring at sigil transcriptions - but he had no more idea of their meaning than Ilinme had.

For a moment he studied the curling marks, hoping for some hint of Arathalian's state of mind. There was none. Although these were unquestionably high-level sigils, they behaved with perfect equanimity on the page, neither scattering with their writer's reluctance nor scribbling and unknitting with his anger. All they did was shuffle for position, curling serifs around each other while they moved so as not to lose their place. Perhaps it was a good sign.

"Are you sure Ilinme will know what these mean?" he asked, staring down at the stirring black lines.

"Not if she's tried and failed to read it already, obviously," replied Arathalian. "But she'll be able to tell you whether they're there. Unless you'd like to bring the wand in to me?"

"Right. I'll check with my superiors. Would you like a firearm, too?"

"A Laskey rifle, if you've got any spare."

Nataul took back his pen as it was offered and dropped it into the suppository for Special Issue to destroy. A pity. He'd liked that pen. "I'll just send for a transcriber to copy those sigils. Was there anything else you felt like telling me?"

"Yes. If Ilinme doesn't find those sigils, keep digging up the river until you find a similar wand that does have them. Your Senate will love it, I promise."

"The Senate? So it's powerful?" Nataul paused for a moment, struck by something. "You know, I haven't had to bribe you even once for all this ..."

"Can't I do these things out of a genuine desire to help?"

"I don't know, Arathalian. Can you?"

Arathalian's neutral face flickered with a brief, crooked smile, and he clearly saw no need to reply.

"She found them," Nataul said before he'd sat down. "You knew she would, didn't you?"

Arathalian was on his feet yet again this morning, picking through books on his top shelves. He didn't turn around; Nataul suspected he'd be talking to the back of the fae's hair and shirt for most of the Query. "I was quietly confident. Tell Eris Lasalt that this means I can tell him more about those gatewarders of his, too, by the way."

"What is this cache we've found?"

"Exactly what you thought it was. A cache. Just a place to store - or to hide - what you insist on calling 'artefacts'. But it's a Makers' cache, not a royal cache. And it's hardly ancient."

Nataul eased down on the foot of the bed, watching Arathalian's pale fingers walk spiderlike across book-spines. "By which you mean it's from the time of Yurahaina's rule? Lacrallame's?"

"Even later. Mine. I commissioned the making of that marvellous weapon you've found. It's not the work of a Maker - it's the work of an entire collective of Makers. It was only used a few times before it was stolen, sadly, and I was told it had been destroyed." Arathalian's shoulders gave a shrug. "I should have known they wouldn't quite dare to do it."

"They?"

"Never mind history. History is irrelevant, isn't it? Don't you want to know how it works?"

"I'd rather know what it is, first," replied Nataul guardedly, "and how you guessed what it is. It looks like a hundred other wands I've seen, and if you thought it was destroyed you had no reason to associate it with the River Barcain."

"The Scantlan stereotype is true, you know," said the back of Arathalian's head. "You're a pedantic lot. Prone to exaggeration, though, because you couldn't have seen a hundred wands wrapped in those colours. There wouldn't have been more than two or three dozen."

"And are you going to tell me what those colours mean?"

"Yes, actually, I am, so don't get sarcastic. You'll find that one of the blues is Quicksilver blue, which I would have thought was quite a giveaway. The other two blues are the colours of the Cornflowers Fading School. In short, that tricolour is the mark of the major Makers' collective who used to take my commissions. They made quite a lot of lovely things for me - your department's found quite a few over the years, I understand. The wand you're talking about was almost the last thing they made."

Nataul scribbled notes as Arathalian talked, his handwriting as spidery-mad as agitated sigils. "Go on."

"As for how I knew what it was, it wasn't the Barcain that made me suspect - though it makes additional background sense. The headwaters of the River Barcain were sacred to two of the schools in eastern Canuel. You must know that. Think of all the lovely stuff your department has looted from the shrines along that way."

"Let's not discuss that now."

"No, no, you're right. I'm getting distracted. I've got so much to tell you. What did I get up to?"

"Not the Barcain."

"Ah, yes. It was the gatewarders, actually. The two Eris Lasalt described didn't have the Oath of Three inscribed on them. You know - Ilsymithos, Manacyathos, Hoscolothos. The ruler's code. That tends to indicate a certain displeasure with the rulership, which is unusual."

The fae gave a sudden, short laugh. "Well, not unusual. Fairly constant, actually. But even for them it wasn't common to go about making wards that would keep out the rulers of Inyaron."

Nataul looked up from his page. "That cache was hidden from you?"

"It must have been. I always suspected a few from Cornflowers Fading to have taken the wand back, among other things. But I had other important things to do, of course."

"Yes, I can see where that's going."

"Repetitive, am I? All right, we'll move on. The wand you found is Calling Black Rain. I'm sure you're familiar with the Sunless Winter, yes? Hordes of warbeasts, storms of death and acid, that sort of thing? This wand was responsible for most of the latter. It's a marvellous instrument, really. Extremely powerful. Won't your Senate enjoy literally raining death on their enemies?"

Nataul stopped writing again, shooting a mordant look at the back of Arathalian's head, since it was safe. No wonder he'd been so forthcoming all week. "This wand calls up black rain?"

"Kills a man in minutes," replied the fae pleasantly, switching two books out of alphabetical order. "Melts the flesh right off his bones. Well, I say 'a man', but of course I should really be using the plural. If I remember rightly, the radius was something like thirty kilometres. Nothing grows on the earth for decades afterwards, either. Sometimes longer. Have you ever holidayed on the Greylit Beaches?"

"Yes."

"Ah, nice. Saulan Hascott was telling me about his holiday there the other day. You can thank me for those, you know - they weren't always beaches."

He'd seen it coming, but there didn't seem much Nataul could say to that.

"Don't worry; your Senate will use it wisely," said Arathalian. "All governments are wise like that. Just open any history book and you'll soon see. By the way, how much ink do you have left? There's a pretty complicated ritual to trigger the wand each time, and you'll have to take it down in very careful detail. You'd never guess it on your own - that's probably why the Makers didn't bother to ward it from ironbloods as well. Silly them. Oh, and make sure you write a warning note somewhere about only using it in wellsprings, or the first use will just drain and kill the wand. Seeing as you're ironbloods and all."

Nataul stared at his page for a while. He could see extra funding, departmental commissions and scholarly publication gleaming like pearls in his future, and he couldn't feel what that should be making him feel. Weren't pearls made from dirt and sand?

"I can't hear any writing," said Arathalian. "Aren't you excited? This will be a promotion for certain. Make sure you bring me some of the celebratory cake."

"I'm listening," replied Nataul, tight-lipped.

"Hey, I've had a horrible thought," said Arathalian. "Imagine if the Faeborn ever got their hands on that thing? Brr."

"I said I'm listening. Tell me the procedure whenever you're ready."

"Maybe I'd better sit and watch this. It's very easy to get things wrong." The fae stopped fiddling with his books and finally turned around, moving back to his famous chair. He didn't sit down immediately, though. He stood there and looked down at Nataul for a while with folded arms, steady-eyed, bright-eyed.

Nataul continued to stare fixedly at his page, feeling heavy and grey. After a while he finally heard the clothy sigh of the cushion as Arathalian sat down, and half-saw the fae's legs shuffling into comfortable position.

"You'll need a fairly sizeable flask of water, a piece of lapis lazuli, some beach sand and a piece of deadwood," said Arathalian. "And it's a right-handed wand, so don't hold it in the left. The first step is to trace this sigil - have you got another pen? pass it to me - trace this sigil either in the air or write it on the ground if you don't think you can get it right ..."

The sigil Arathalian wrote twitched and fidgeted on the page, playfully chasing the pen nib around. It was pleased, like its writer. So were the others that followed. Nataul tried to put that out of his mind, and just kept transcribing.

The fae hadn't been exaggerating. It was a highly specific ritual, and it took quite some time for Nataul to write down not just what must be done, but what must not be done in activating the wand. Arathalian was even considerate enough to repeat several points, speaking slowly and clearly for an accurate transcription.

Nataul wrote in perfect silence, ignoring the fae's bright-eyed asides and gibes. Then he stood up, took his leave in the face of the tiny, tiny smirk the moon fae had permitted himself, and left.

Work was work.

It was weeks before Nataul returned, stepping into the cell without enthusiasm. Arathalian, white-haired in his elder-shape, was couched with a loose-bound sheaf of papers this time, one leg crossed across the other.

"How did it go?" the fae asked conversationally, licking his finger and turning a page.

"Very well, I think," Nataul replied, taking his seat on the end of the fae's rarely used bed. "You know I can't discuss specifics, but the department is quite excited."

"Promotions? Departmental sponsorships?"

"Coming, apparently. I have you to thank for that."

"Mm," said Arathalian. "Interesting."

"What does that mean?" He paused warily on the verge of uncapping his pen. "I fully intend to give you more material thanks, if you're wondering."

"No, no, it doesn't 'mean' anything. It's interesting, that's all. Not the word choice I'd have made for releasing such a dreadful weapon. Did you study the Sunless Winter in school?"

"Of course I did." Nataul shrugged. "What could I do about it? If I'd refused to write it down, you'd just have told someone else in the department, wouldn't you?"

"Mm," said Arathalian. "I certainly would. I love dealing with the Hold's pragmatists."

Nataul nodded and looked down to pull out his Query papers.

"But you're not a pragmatist, are you?"

"What?"

Arathalian gave a faint smile and turned the booklet he was reading to face Nataul.

Query Research Report, Artefact Overview #MN089-2098 (Wand, Upper East Camwell, Site UEC04-2098)

Words failed Nataul for quite some time. It didn't matter; Arathalian didn't move or blink, patiently waiting for a response.

"Where did you get that?" Nataul asked finally.

"Don't be silly," said Arathalian. "I'm allowed to look at transcripts of my own conversations, if I ask."

"Who gave it to you?"

"Oh, he asked me not to tell, because he knew you'd be angry," the fae replied. "Here's a hint, though: brown hair, glasses, surname starts with S. Anyway, that's not important right now. I thought you'd like to know about all the mistakes in your notes from our last Query. See? Here ... and here ..."

Nataul said nothing.

"You must have misheard some of the steps of the ritual," Arathalian went on, flicking a few more pages ahead. "Bit careless of you. If someone tried it this way, the wand wouldn't do a thing, I'm afraid."

Nataul still said nothing. He just watched Arathalian watch him.

"I'd ask the obvious question," said Arathalian at last, letting the last pages flick shut and a breeze flutter through his hair, "but given that it's obvious ..."

"Have you told someone in the department?" Nataul asked flatly.

"Oh, mere moments away," the fae replied. "Tell you what. I like hearing about your holidays up north and I don't want you demoted or fired, necessarily, so why don't you just make a note of the changes I've made in this copy and go apply them to the original? - bearing in mind, of course, that the original is quite accessible to me?"

"No," said Nataul.

Arathalian arched his brows. "No? Just no?"

"Just no. I won't do it."

"But whyever not?" The fae tipped his head to one side. "It's like you said yourself: if you don't do it, I'll only end up telling someone else."

"I won't be responsible for black rain," replied Nataul, sharply capping his pen again and gathering up his notes. "I've seen pictures of people who've fallen into the Helltell River and that's bad enough."

Arathalian flapped the booklet at him, amused. "But you're already responsible, Macain Nataul. You told me all about it."

"I wish I hadn't. I'm going now, Arathalian. Do what you want."

"You're not going anywhere," the fae replied. "Sit."

Nataul sat, but slowly, simmering with resentment.

"I can't stand more than three-quarters of the cringing creepers in your department," said Arathalian, his tone suddenly sharp. "As I said before, you are one of the few who entertain me, and you're not going to ruin that for me with a false attack of conscience now. This is your job, Macain Nataul. You identify 'useable artefacts' for your government. You knew when you were employed that this could include fae weapons - in fact I'm sure you're well aware that the lion's share of successfully identified artefacts are weapons.

"Let me tell you what your problem is. You're very happy for all this to go on so long as you aren't the one directly involved. You are, in short, a cowardly, dissembling hypocrite."

"But entertaining," Nataul reminded him with a sour smile. "Can I go?"

"No," said Arathalian. "I'm now trying to make up my mind what I want to do with you. Or to you, possibly. You're almost as bad as those hypocritical worms who cry support for executions but would never dream of taking a gun and shooting someone personally. Why is the executioner the only one with the courage of his convictions? Ah, and look, now I'm getting all allegorical."

"This is pointless, Arathalian. If you're going to do something, do it. If you're not, let me go. I'm not going to touch that report again either way."

"You think this is about the report? Don't you listen?" Arathalian gave an irritable sigh and tossed the booklet on the bed beside him. "All right, Sir Altruism. Let's see how deep that noble streak really runs. Do you really want that ritual suppressed?"

"Obviously."

"We'll see. I'm going to make a deal with you. If you go back to Head Office and quit your job today, I'll swear never to pass the real ritual on to a Holder."

Nataul stared at the fae again. "Quit?"

"If you then proceed to hang yourself," he went on calmly, "I'll swear never to pass it on to Faeborn, or use it myself, depending on whether you think that likely or not."

"What?"

"It's only fair," said the fae. "You've put a terrible weapon in historically irresponsible hands, Macain Nataul. You could be responsible for the deaths of hundreds, possibly thousands. If you really want to make restitution ..."

"I have a wife and two little boys to take care of," replied Nataul sharply.

Arathalian spread his hands. "And are they equivalent to hundreds, possibly thousands of other wives and little boys?"

Nataul had been through plenty of unpleasant Queries, but he had never wanted so desperately to hit the fae with a chair. Or something harder.

"There's the rub, of course," said Arathalian. "Not many are willing to admit it, but they are equivalent, aren't they? Never mind, Macain Nataul. It wasn't a serious offer. I understand people too well for that. Now why don't you make those corrections I suggested? It's that or demotion."

"No, it's not," Nataul snapped. "I quit."

The fae clicked his tongue. "Just quit? No suicide? Don't be half-arsed about it, now. I can still teach Faeborn the ritual if you only quit, remember. Or don't you believe I can?"

"It doesn't matter," he retorted. "The wand's going to be locked up in the vaults down here in the Iron Hold. You can tell whoever you like. And that's just going to have to be enough on my part, because I'm just a researcher, not the Iron General. I want to hear your oath first, though."

"Mm," said Arathalian. "Are you sure?"

"Just let me hear the oath. I know how these should go."

"How irritating," he said. "I don't want to have to talk to Aldis Barkes more than once a week. He'd better not replace you."

Nataul waited, stony-faced.

"Oh, iron break it," the fae snapped, suddenly annoyed. "I, Arathalian, swear by my name, the Flow and the Circle that I shall never pass on any knowledge of the activation or use of Calling Black Rain, be it by spoken word, by written word, by gesture, by intimation, by mind-speech, nor by any other means existing now nor yet to exist in future. If this my oath should be broken, may the Circle too be broken, the Flow cease and my name be as nothing."

Scribbling down the exact wording as Arathalian spoke, Nataul stared at it word by word, wary and anxious. "You didn't specify the party to whom you won't pass the knowledge on," he accused after a while.

"I said I wouldn't pass on 'any knowledge'," retorted Arathalian, still looking severely irked. "That's all-inclusive, if you weren't paying attention. And it's more than you damn well deserve."

Nataul studied his page a while longer anyway, mouthing the words to himself, aware that the fae's mood was eroding moment by moment. Finally he admitted, "There's nothing I can see wrong with it."

"Fantastic," returned Arathalian. "Are you sure you don't want another hour?"

"I'll go and resign, now," Nataul replied, ignoring that as he stood up.

A book hit him in the back as he turned. It was such an Ilinme-like gesture that he could only assume by context it had actually been Arathalian.

"You really don't pay attention, do you?" the fae's voice asked sharply from behind. "There was no proviso in that oath."

"I did notice. I just assumed you'd take other measures if I didn't quit."

"Well, I won't. So go back to your desk and do whatever it is you do all day, and make sure you're very, very entertaining next time you have a Query with me."

"I'm afraid I can't do that," replied Nataul. "Goodbye, Arathalian."

"Can't? What do you mean, can't?"

"When I make a promise, I don't need to swear a magical oath to enforce it," he returned, still moving towards the cell door. "And even if that weren't the case, you were actually right about my being a hypocrite. I am resigning. Today."

He heard Arathalian stand up from the chair, but this had all gone too far for a return anyway. He just rapped on the cell door as he reached it and hoped desperately not to see a quicksilver flash.

The peepslot opened first, checking the cell, and then the door began to open.

"What will I do if it's Aldis Barkes?" asked Arathalian behind him - but some distance behind him, probably still just standing in front of his chair.

"Put a record on," Nataul replied without turning.

Then he stepped out of the cell.

Mini-Challenge: Speaking

ladylight — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 11:35:11 GMT

Not the thing I started writing mid-essay the other day, but it bit me just as I polished off my references and screamed "I WIN ESSAY!" in primaeval triumph to the sky.

I didn't do that but it would've been bloody cool.

And it still would've made more sense than my essay. *wonders if her lecturer will think that she's just pasted something into Babelfish* XD XD

Anyway, I blame this on my notes-collating the other day (and a glance at the topic 'speaking' ;P). I was going to polish up the creation myth I wrote for 'Bittermint', but couldn't settle on a narrator/a style that didn't make me yawn, so in the end I sort of got sidetracked by a smaller myth I've had floating around upstairs.

Also, 'Cometfall and Corpseraker' is getting longer than I thought. This probably bodes ill for petty concerns like Sending Study Materials to UTas for Review, Cleaning All Belongings from Apartment and Leaving Japan. Bah, I've got two weeks for all that anyway >_>

The King of Bronze and Winter's Daughter

The girl's tiny little body was only hints and folds under the thick woollen coverlet of her bed - hands, feet, even half her face had all been hidden from the cold. Her eyes still stared out over the tuck of the coverlet, though, clear and blue.

The man at the window looked out at the night sky a few moments more, then turned and moved to sit in a chair by the girl's bed, his boots speaking loud and soft as he crossed stone floor to rug to stony floor again. Once seated, he met her unwavering stare and gave a small grin.

"You look just like you're waiting for a bedtime story, sweetheart," he said.

The little girl said nothing - just stared at him over the covers.

"There's really only one story that springs to mind at the moment, and you're probably sick of it by now. Hah, I'm absolutely certain your mother must be. Still ... I guess while we're waiting for her, there's not much else to do, is there?

"Once upon a time, there was a young but lonely King. Hard though he searched, he could not find a woman to be his bride. It was not for want of princesses and ladies seeking his favour, no; the problem was rather that he sought nothing less than the most beautiful, the most graceful, the rarest and most devoted of maidens for his wife. And why not? He himself was a man of beauty and grace, a lion-hearted warrior devoted to and adored by his people, beloved and favoured by many divine as many of his noble line had been before him.

"But the years wore on and the young King grew less young, reaching fullest manhood without finding the wife he so ardently sought. He began to despair of ever finding her. Rather than continue his search, he took to riding far and alone through his beautiful country, and his people mourned to think that this most glorious line of kings would end.

"Mortals cannot see all ends. The world is wide and mysterious, and full of gods."

The big pine tree outside the house rattled the bristling hands of its branches against the wall in a heavy evening huff of wind. The man in the chair looked up and laughed.

"Ooh, an omen," he grinned. "They like to hear their names, sweetheart. Perhaps they're listening to the story.

"One evening, in a dark and cold midwinter, the King rode alone to the titan-toothed mountains of the furthest west, where the Sun dies at the close of every day. And it was here he found a forest, and it was here he found a glade, and it was here he found the maiden made of night and winter, dancing the leap-and-dance of the hunting wolves.

"Beauty so cold he trembled, grace so silver he wept, love so terrible he cried in terror! He might have fled, for he feared he had disturbed a goddess, but she looked at him with her eyes made of night and winter and he did not move.

"Who can say why she deigned to speak? She was not divine, but she was born of the divine, Winter's Daughter, too great for the greatest kings of men. Who can say why she offered her voice, soft echo of the first snow, to a mortal? Perhaps she thought him strange, warm in the coldest place, colours in his red-gold hair and grey-green eyes. Perhaps she thought of her mortal father, centuries gone, and wished to know him more.

"None can say why Winter's Daughter spoke, but speak she did, and asked him why he had come."

The evening winds heaved again, strengthening as they always did in the river valley when the westerly shift came. A gust of it flooded through the window, imperfectly sealed, and madly ruffled both the man's hair and a few tight-tucked strands of the girl's before it died. He shook his head and raked away hair until his face was open to the chilly air again, and then did the same for the child, flicking a freed black lock back from her eyes.

"Hope the glass stays put," he said, still looking at the window. "Could be a bit of a squall coming soon.

"The King gave honest answer; what fool would dare otherwise? He spoke of a long search, and a longer despair, and a final night in his heart, for no love lived for him in the mortal world. Winter's Daughter listened to his words, and found them curious, for she understood neither despair nor love. She told him that neither such thing lived in the snows under the furthest mountains, and he had best go home to find them quickly before the brief span of his years played out.

"The King did return to his kingdom, but the colours of the world seemed glaring and garish, a giggling child's attraction after the older, regal beauty of white and black.

"And Winter's Daughter danced with the oldest wolves again, but the ageless monotones seemed tired after the clear shout of green, and she began to wonder at the tides of time.

"After only a year, the King returned to the glade in the forest in the mountains. Winter's Daughter delighted in the colours; the King delighted in her dance. But he was a good man, and devoted to his people, and although he returned to her every year, every year he returned to the affairs of his kingdom. Winter's Daughter was no less a devoted child; every year she waited, but every year she refused to leave her mother's place.

"Stay with me, stay with me, she told him every time.

"Come back with me, come back with me, he begged her every time.

"The people of the kingdom were afraid, and pleaded with their King to leave the mountains to the gods, for mortals cannot find love with the divine. And wild Winter herself was troubled, and warned her daughter to show herself no more, for mortals have nothing to offer the divine.

"But just as they would not break faith with country and kin, they would not break faith with each other. Every year the King returned to the mountains, and every year Winter's Daughter greeted him there.

"And the years went by, and the King grew old, and lost much of his colour; but he made the same journey, and she welcomed him in the same way.

"And then the King died, and the mountains, like all the world, were closed to him, and his final journey was in the final dark, to Dros."

The man tapped his foot lightly on the floor for a moment, then stood up and went to peer out of the window again. Pressing an absent hand to the loose-rattling window frame, he stared outside past rhythmically bowing pine-branches and early little spittings of rain.

"Your mother shouldn't be out in this," he remarked suddenly. "I'm sure they'll bring her back soon, but she should have stayed in the first place ..."

He stood there a while longer, still peering out, then waved a hand and went to sit down in the chair again, back under the focus of the little girl's stare. "Sorry. Bad place to leave the story," he said.

"Winter's Daughter did what the divine cannot: she wept, the tears granted by her father, and pleaded long with her white mother for aid. But Winter would not answer her.

"Winter's Daughter went then to each of the Divine Families, heedless of alliance and descent and enmity, begging every god and goddess in all the heavens and hells for their clemency. When they would not move for her, or could not, she went at last to the place of the hopeless, to the land of the Judge himself, Even-Handed Dros of the Dead.

"How many suppliants has Dros looked upon, hands raised and craving his intervention? How many petitioners has he seen, pleading with him to turn back the fate the divines ordain for a loved one? How many of those begging mercy were themselves divine?

"Dros is Law, moved only by the Rule and the Oath, and never-near-never by pity alone.

"But Winter's Daughter is one of the few - the very few, countable even now by name - to have moved him.

"Perhaps it was love that swayed him, though the pleas of lovers shower daily upon his unturned head. Perhaps it was the privilege of the divine, though the Queen of Heaven herself begged him on her knees for her son and heard no answer. Perhaps it was the lonely fate of the half-divine, neither this nor that, neither of this world nor the ethers, which moved Dros to bend the Rule.

"Or perhaps it was the bargain. Dros gives nothing for nothing, for that itself is unjust. Winter's Daughter begged for the King to be reborn of her own divinity, for her own self to be halved for his sake, to share all that she was with him - a mortal to be made more divine, and a divine-born to be made more mortal.

"Dros deemed it fair. He granted her request.

"The King returned to life, more than he was, youth restored and power greater than it had ever been - a man with a taste of the very ethers. And his kingdom was overjoyed, and he took Winter's Daughter for his wife, for truly she was the most beautiful, the most graceful, the rarest and most devoted of maidens in all the mortal world. She became his Queen.

"And they lived ... ever after."

The pine tree scratched lazy fingers on the wall outside, like the fingers that the man was lightly drumming on his knee.

"Just one word missing, eh?"

The child was silent.

"That's real stories for you," he chuckled, glancing at the door this time as louder noises struck up on the lower floor - juddering door-hinges, heavy footsteps, jingling mail. "Amazing how crucial the little details can be."

"Tintauri!" came a muffled shout. The voice was resonant, authoritative. "Hells, are you still up there? Whichever of your giggling games you're playing, leave it! I can't find her on my own, and if we don't find one survivor in this ratpit we'll have come the whole way for nothing."

The pale man in the chair glanced at the door again, his smile curling at one corner for a moment - a hooked grin, a barbed contempt. Then he looked back to the silent, empty-staring child under the bloody covers.

"Well, come on, sweetheart," he said. "Time to wake up and go find mother."

Break time

ladylight — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:58:10 GMT

Hm. I've spent a fascinating day reading through different source materials again as I work out my muddled arguments (which is only going to get worse when I translate it into so-called Japanese). And I do actually say that without irony - not so much for the subject matter, which I find interesting but not in such excruciating detail, but for the way the subject matter is presented.

My British Sources: This happened in Europe, and this happened in Europe, and this happened in Europe, and at last, the Germans surrendered. - Oh, yes, and then there was some business outside Europe with the Japanese, or some such.
My American Sources: Damn right we nuked the bastards, they had it coming! Only idiots and Communists argued against it!
My Australian Sources: No rly we were SO important! Other nations don't notice all the stuff we did in all their histories but we were so TOO important! In fact for all you know the fighting in the Pacific there could've saved the whole war! Probably!!
My Japanese Sources: We did regrettable things like everyone else was doing at the time, and others have alleged that we did other regrettable things, and although we wouldn't dream of contradicting them, [lengthy polite contradiction], and ... wait, that's the ten-page description of the Unfortunate Occasion already spent - let's move on to the last sixty pages covering the effects of the cruel atomic bomb and the imposition of the Occupation.

Bear in mind that the only sources I have reference to here are rather broad-aimed, sometimes high school-looking textbooks, and they're very limited in number if we're talking 'serious sample sets' here, but it's still rather interesting to watch the perspective on exactly the same war leap around like that. People, eh? Rather subjective bunch.

I've always been fascinated by the concept of everyone's own viewpoint colouring everything they see. Pretty interesting topic for writers, too ;) If anyone out there actually has space on their reading list, there's a really cool and famous (very) short story by a guy called Ryūnosuke Akutagawa - "In a Grove". Either that or you could watch the "Rashoumon" movie version of it, as long as you promise not to become a fan-for-the-sake-of-being-arty Kurosawa fan ;P

*only watches things for fake swords* XD

Japanese History Essay Status Report

ladylight — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 02:57:14 GMT

Day One, 12pm-6pm. Step One - Preparation. Collect and read relevant reference materials. Decide on essay structure. Write essay plan. Feel Prepared. Nod in smug satisfaction to self.

Day Two, 8:30am. Alarm beeps.
Day Two, 10:15am. Liss rises.
Day Two, 10:16am. Liss goes back to bed until the heater heats the room properly.
Day Two, 10:45am. Liss wakes up again.

Day Two, 10:50am. Step Two - The Draft

Compare the Meiji pre-war Japanese constitution to the modern post-war Japanese constitution.

Major points of difference: Emperor versus Diet, Duties versus Rights, revocation of right to wage war,

reinstate King/Queen? Hundred Years' War-like thing? many winterknights gone. all? Mordeglievron? most paladins from eastern lands, influence historically eroded in northern kingdoms by conflicts

That is what my page says after an hour.

COMPLY, BRAIN. It is due Monday and you suck at Japanese, so it will very, very likely take that long.

(*cough* on the other hand I really am horrendously bored and would like to write something again and could one itty bitty afternoon reeeally make a difference I'm not going to write this essay today am I no probably not oh damnation)