All the Right Things

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

— John Keats

Hello. My mother-in-law passed away, so I took last week off (as mentioned). I still found myself wanting to talk to you. Similarly, I often make creative progress on weekends when I'm supposed to be on break.

Anyway, during the first ~half of this year I figured out a great deal of Wanderverse plot. The material isn't polished enough yet for public release. I call this phase "semi-developed notes" — bits and pieces will stay verbatim till the end, but most of the draft is short and sketchy. The story needs several passes of elaboration + alignment. I may come up with new ideas or revive discarded ones.

Nonetheless I want to show you what I've got so far, safe and cozy here behind the paywall :3 If you haven't read "Meanderland" and "Aster Catastrophe," you may feel a tad lost. Even so I bet you'll get the gist.

The beginning is the labyrinth. The tinker built it on the spot where Elkatron used to be worshiped by the city of old. In his wanderings he happened upon that spot, and a psychosanth vision impelled him to make obeisance to the bereft behemoth. Generations hence, Aster tends it, and woodland creatures play about the subterranean queen, supping on her sloughings.

And before she ever became a queen — this time eons before — Elka was a maiden goddess whose divine aspect was cloaked even from herself, her psyche and marred and twisted mirror due to her father having granted this aspect her wish...

Ultimately, the fairy sovereign sighed, shimmered, and said yes. Red stars flew from his mouth, a torrent of them, and rushed to engulf her. Elka half-understood the droning incantation as her father decreed that she would appear to age naturally. Around her divine core, he crafted a simulacrum of normal humanity. Streaming cloud-hands slipped her into a forest in Wanderverse. Sighing, he withdrew back into the seat of himself.

Now Elka was unable to recollect any of the past concealed within her. She promptly wandered into a nice little village. The people there didn't worry overmuch about the source of this lovely, lively young woman. The priest blessed her solemnly and she stayed with the small colony of nuns nearby until an appropriate courtship could be arranged and initiated. Elka proved cheerful, sweet of disposition and diligent to the tasks she'd been set. Before long she was married to a clever, hard-working farmer.

In the beginning Elka and her husband had little to their names but toil, but the following years were fortunate and the new family thrived. The farm expanded production, bringing on hired men occasionally, during the harvest when bounty overflowing needed to be put up before winter arrived.

Elka bore her husband five healthy boys, first twins and then triplets. Them her womb fell silent. But the household was already rowdy with joy. The young family felt blessed beyond measure, and indeed they were.

So you must know what's coming next, right? Disaster struck.

War came to that land, and suddenly their hamlet was not so isolated; it was coveted territory in the middle of the world. This was a war over fertile lowlands and trade routes. The people who lived there were but pawns; the very resources that those who commanded armies sought like a prize purse.

Elka's husband was called away to fight, as were her two older boys, just sixteen; jaunty and jovial; gawky but strong. She reinforced their clothing with careful patches. Then she packed them off with nutty loaves of bread and an excessive quantity of good hard cheese.

That was all, it turned out. They were gone entirely. The war waned, eventually, but these three brave soldiers — one wary father, two eager young men — disappeared into battles unknown, noticed by no one able to carry back their names.

As the conflict petered out, nearing a ragged conclusion, Elka began learning how to mourn. She learned it looking into the bottom of the village well, down where the hidden water was cool and dark, swallowing her gaze. She dipped up her bitter dreams.

Then sickness afflicted the village, as often happens in times of strife. The triplets fell ill and one by one weakened, fading into fever, then died. Each was tenderly nursed on his deathbed by a heartbroken mother.

Elka's godhead is reawakened too late and she feels terrible survivor's guilt, a need that can never be slaked...

Aster had been treated most cruelly, and she knew it. Not by the fierce playful beasts, her performing companions, but by the bitter world. She had her fill of the disappointments it inflicts on anyone, but especially a girl born destitute with a queer sly beauty only visible sideways or in her radiant eyes, set slightly askew, met forthright and full in a direct gaze. Too few were so brave.

Maybe you or I would have stayed to stomach it. Who can be sure, truly? A thousand and one paths could have been trod, if mice and men were candy and nuts, as the old proverb goes.

You can bear whatever you wish — but only what you wish. Thus each of us still risks destruction by myriad torments that we could never choose to embrace.

Well, neither is it here nor is it there.

Aster decided against subjecting her guts to such a twisting. Aster decided to leave. She was only able to because of the cats. Calmly they padded on either side of her, quiet and menacing like a wraith. Later, witnesses would say demonfire glowed in their eyes and shimmered over their pelts. When it happened, no one saw.

The morning Aster leaves, she wakes with the copper pepper tang of finality in her mouth. It's like blood. It's like sea water.

Aster was alone now. Left in the morning with the cats + a few days' provisions + water. The cats quelled the city guards and kept her safe on the road. They walked out past the slums and hovels to the countryside, past farms and a small hamlet, performed with the cats to resupply. People scared but amazed / impressed, clearly appeasing her as much to get her to leave as any other reason. Then into the real wilderness. She goes toward the mountain because it is somewhere to go. The cats leave her at this point, melting off one night as she sleeps by the fire.

Aster was sweating and cursing and tripping and climbing. She was headed up the mountain, now scrabbling up dry rocky crumbling expanses, mounds of boulders and grey trees clenched against the incline like half-open fists.

Up high where there's little foliage she meets the sage hermit. Wizened old guy naturally. Neither is surprised to see the other. He takes her up to the very top of the mountain and tells her to look out and see what she can see. She sees all the land she's passed through including the city and the great river whose curve the city is nestled into — filthy up close, shining in the distance — and beyond. She tells the sage she sees the whole world. He nods and smiles and leads her down from the peak to the spare cave where he makes a fire and shelters and keeps his few possessions.

She goes deeper into the cave and finds a spring. Psychosanth flowers? Somehow Elkatron sends her a vision of her story — how she got her father to let her out and then the tragic consequences. How the tinker laid the labyrinth where the temple used to be and how it needs tending. That tinker was the sage's father?

In return Elkatron offers power and relief — psychosanth — and divine purpose, the possibility of resolution and apotheosis. The sage is rueful but doesn't try to dissuade Aster. She heads down the opposite side of the mountain, away from her city, toward the labyrinth by which she'd build a hut...

Everything I've got for the moment. Talk soon!