Author's note:
Hi readers, thanks for taking the time to check out my work!
In this piece, I chose to experiment with narrative tense more than I usually do. I want to give you a warning before you start, so you can decide if you want to read on.
In this piece, the POV character is narrated in second person, present tense. ("You look away." "She touches your cheek.")
This is not an accident. Whether it's a poor choice is certainly open for debate, but I wanted to know how it would read, and how it would feel to write.
The POV character in this story is still a distinct person, with a history and a unique set of traits. This character is not a "neutral mask" - it is not my intent to invite you to imagine them as a version of you, but rather to set yourself aside and imagine having their life experience.
Among others, one thing I was curious to learn was whether putting the reader in the place where they learn about 'themselves' (so to speak) through the course of the writing would be interesting and fun, or just confusing and frustrating.
If you have comments about this, please share them!
I understand that this will likely feel strange for some readers, it's not a common way to write (and maybe for good reason!)
I also understand that it could be uncomfortable for some readers.
It is not my wish to make you uncomfortable, so I'm adding this note in hopes that it will enable you to decide if you want to participate in this before you dive in.
If you would rather move on, you have my thanks for giving me your attention thus far, and I hope you find another piece that suits your interests.
If you have any interest in any of my other work, rest assured that while I tend to like to use present-tense, nothing else I've written is in second-person.
Thanks for reading <3
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It's on an unseasonably wet morning in late spring of the 203rd year of the Age of Smoke (by the Almajan calendar) when a glory-addled trio of tomb pillagers from the western reaches of the Starlight Dominion, following an ancient legend deep into the wild lands above the Vermilion Coast, stumble upon a particular mausoleum which was never meant to be found.
When they shatter the delicate binding on the doors, the divine miasma accumulated over seven thousand years from the rotten husk of the nameless demigod within erupts in a cataclysmic black wave that flows across the land, devouring all it touches.
This curse spills through the wild mountain valleys, seeking life like water seeks the ocean, until it belches forth upon the frontier of a remote kingdom at the northern edges of the known world.
Something less than a dozen years ago, you had spilled forth from another forgotten hole in the earth, a bedraggled black-haired adolescent, pale and silent as a ghost.
You wandered without purpose or strategy from alley to field, learning the language and custom of the land in bits and pieces in between stealing livestock to eat and doing petty favors for petty coin.
As you grew older and more jaded by the casual brutality of a life lived from gutter to field to alley, you began to learn instead to speak the language and custom of the trackless wood that crowds in on all sides around the ever-vanishing wagon tracks and remote towns and villages that you had roamed for survival.
So it came to be that four years hence you had abandoned the byways of that land and struck out alone into the deep forests on the frontier of that selfsame remote kingdom at the northern edges of the known world to make a home for yourself.
When the black wave spills down into the last wild valley before the settled lands that stretch to the west, it's a chance twist of fate that sends a warning to you in the form of a doomed wolf, running even as its flesh is eaten from its living bones.
It's likely worth your life that even after three years, you haven't learned to see your remote hermitage as a true home. Your instincts for the rhythm of the wood tell you something is terribly wrong, and you waste no moment agonizing over leaving the meager accommodations you've built for yourself. Taking to heel without hesitation keeps you ahead of the wave for the three days it takes to reach the first outpost of the Human lands.
Reaching the rotting wooden palisade that shields the sleepy, worn-out town of Thrinewell from wolves and winter wind a half day ahead of the black wave, you hammer on the rotted sally gate until a startled passing villager opens the door to see what the ruckus is.
You have little love for the place, remembering the little love they had for a strange-faced stranger with an accent nobody could place when you first passed through. However, you cannot help but see that this is a true home for them who call it such, and it sits ill with you to leave them to their imminent fates.
You spend a precious hour of the lead you have on the sweeping calamity on the horizon accosting people in the muddy streets of the village, insistently telling them that death is coming and there's nothing for it but to flee.
First, you're ignored. Then, a handful of peevish and poorly-equipped militia reservists attempt to threaten you into silence. After a protracted argument in the street, which clearly nobody is enjoying, they grudgingly agree to send a pair of scouts up the lookout trail to the tower on the foothill and report back. When they finally do, the lot of them immediately fall to arguing about what to do and who to tell.
Drawn by the raised voices, a crowd begins to grow in the street, with each new arrival demanding a summary of what's being said and why. The crowd swells and the arguing grows and you seat yourself nearby, waiting for a conclusion to be reached, hoping a mob doesn't form first from the unruly throng.
