Tag: About Writing
Cat Tales, 12
That big fluffy white rug is me of course, relaxing in the sun, while the pernickety old woman has her coffee and catches up on her social calls.
“Frog eggs?!” she said excitedly. “I have some too.” She laughed. “They’re no problem in my frog pond. I have an old cast iron bath now, that someone was tossing out in the white-goods recycling event.”
I pricked up my ears. Rolled over and sat up. Stared at the frog pond in the back of the yard. Reeds and a yellow flowering plant showed above the rim. On the white ledge nearest lay a bent piece of wood.
My human went on with her conversation. “There’s not a canetoad on Earth that can jump backward and over the lip. And they are not that good at climbing. Yes, I’ll teach my cat not to hunt them.”
Huh, I thought. We’ll see about that. I’ll hunt whatever catches my eye. And something did catch my eye just then. I stared.
The piece of wood on the lip of the pond moved! All by itself! Not a breath of wind!
This I needed to investigate. I hopped down from the deck and stalked silently toward the frog pond using all the cover at my disposal.
“Won’t do you any good,” the pernickety old woman called from the deck. “It’s the Frog Pond Guardian at her post.”
Her words made no sense. Belly to the ground, I leopard-crawled nearer, the nasturtium patch grew densely to well above my head.
I peered around the corner …
A large water dragon stared implacably back at me. I’d heard rumours about this lizard. In the backyard nextdoor it was supposed to have bitten off the head of a hen sitting on a nest of eggs.
The lizard moved! I backed up in a hurry! Waited there in the protection of the nasturtiums. Peered round the corner.
No. It just changed position. Lay there, immoveable.
“She’s just sunning herself,” the pernickety old woman said from behind me. What is it about her? She is always, always, giving away my hunting position.
Lodestar, 39.5 … A Crossroad
That is, the writer has arrived at a crossroad in the saga. A place where the forward movement of several characters intersect with consequences good and bad, depending on who they are.
Kes is on his way to rescue Ahni. Srese, the female avatar, is familiarising herself with the world just beyond the door. Her brother Sard, the remaindered avatar, has a hide-out nearby.
Also in the scene are Youk, still trying to best the twins, and half a dozen more people. Though none are expendable extras, they’re not viewpoint-characters in the present.
If you’ve read both The Remaindered Avatar and Lodestar Part 2 up to this point, you may know the problem that needs solving. In the former, it was Sard who rescued Ahni, with all his observations and feelings of what happened in CAVE. (Which is known as Rockeater’s Ridge by the herders.) In the latter, more recently posted story, Srese organises Ahni’s rescue. Same event. Different rescuers.
Which version is the most dramatic? Which version should I disappear?
Both have their merits. But I have to admit, that even as I’m writing this I’m deciding that the version that has Srese setting Ahni’s rescue into motion is the more informative, if not the more dramatic one.
Sard’s version can be shortened toward its end because somewhere along both these time lines, Srese and Sard almost meet.
Meaning that a couple of chapters of Sard’s story need to be rejigged, later, when I resume work on that again. In Srese’s version, Ahni can be left where she’ll be found by Sard after he catches up on what’s happening in CAVE, because Ahni will still need to be in Sard’s hands when she is rescued.
Links to the relevant chapters for your interest:
The Remaindered Avatar 16: Rescuing Ahni
Lodestar 34: What the Implant Did
Cat Tales, 4
First thing this morning the pernickety old woman called me ‘Maggy’. Huh? Well I know she meant me, no one else present. I ignored her. I am Hand-of-God.
What the pernickety old woman and I are engaging in now, I’ll call the struggle for dominance, because that’s what I am about. You thought that was a dog thing? Ever seen a cat and dog stand off?
I overheard her say to a friend that she’s getting me accustomed to being awake in the daytime, and if that wasn’t enough, she’s getting me used to spending the majority of my waking hours indoors?
Well! We’ll see about that! I lay down on the mat in front of the backdoor—where sunlight beat through the glass and warmed me wonderfully. How could I not sleep for hours?
I did. I woke in the late afternoon. We could’ve had another stand-off about me going outside except that the woman distracted me with that red feather on stick.
She twirled the stick and I jumped and leapt and rolled at the twirling feather. We had a great time but that can’t happen again. I can’t let her win me over like this.
Then she showed me where she will feed me, in the kitchen. A white ceramic bowl filled with my favourite kibbles. Water right there beside them. I felt mollified and ate far too much.
I had another sleep and when I woke, I vomited up my kibbles. What a waste! Despite that I’m feeling wobbly in the middle, the old woman scooped me up, and ran me to the laundry.
She set me on the litter tray and waited expectantly. “Go on,” she said. “Sick up the rest.”
How embarrassing. I walked back to the drinking bowl in the kitchen. I drank. Waited by the food bowl for her to refresh the kibble supply.
Grumbling at herself, she cleaned up the vomit. “No more kibbles today,” she said.
What??!!! I’m telling you I created havoc that night!
Cat Tales, 3
The pernickety old woman has many unnatural ideas about me, as I said. They cause a lot of strife and strangering between us, as you might expect.
Strangering is when someone pretends they are a stranger and they stalk away with their tail high and their self-respect intact.
Our first great struggle was about me intending to do my Hand-of-God work in the night. Let me tell you, I have stood hours at the back door, miaowing sternly, or piteously, begging, or forceful. “Open the cage door,” I would cry. “Let me explore the night!”
The first few times she told me about the nocturnal critters native to her backyard. She’d sworn that they’d go unmolested.
“I’m the Hand-of-God. I wanna get to know them,” I cried. She turned her back on me, got on with getting dinner.
The following dozen stand-offs at the backdoor, she told me about the little deaths delivered to her by a neighbouring tom. The morning he brought her a snakelet in three pieces, she decided that none of her pets would ever join in the nightly carnage.
“Pets?” I snarled. I’ll show her who the pet is in this house! I stalked into the bedroom and hid under the bed. Causing, I might add, a lengthy battle at her bedtime, with the easily deflected indoor broom.
“Go! Have the run of the house,” she said.
My last 20 or 30 attempts to gain the night, she served up several more excuses, the weakest one about the busy road out front where two of my predecessors met their demise. “I’m a super cat,” I cried. “The Hand-of-God!”
She apparently thinks she can wean me from my instincts. “If my instincts can be dampened down with enculturation,” she said. “So can yours!”
I showed her my teeth in disgust. Predictably, she laughed. “Like it or lump it,” she said.
About The Lodestar Timeline
The Star Wars chronology has been my go-to viewing for the past few weeks. The Mandalorian has just said auf wiedersein to his small charge and will be at a loose end.
The Mandalorian series got me thinking about novels, such as The Crystal Planet by Vonda McIntyre, set in the Starwars universe.
[All Star Wars related media produced pre 2014 are now referred to as Legends, while for post 2014 material and the original series, Disney+ claims the ‘Canon’ label.]
While they all have only a tenuous position on the original timeline, TV series and books have expanded the Star Wars universe.
The original timeline of the Lodestar universe has always involved timetravel. Not sideways to expand the size of the universe yet, to give more options where to set stories, as in the Star Wars universe.
The Lodestar universe began in the future … I even set a date for its beginning when I was still new at the business of writing a universe. But it turns out that in a story that involves a time travelling, forward falling, octohedrenal spaceship such as the Lodestar, there is no beginning or end.
Because that’s what happened …
Blogging
Blogging by mobile/cell phone is a new thing for me. Entering this one fingered …
My laptop is frozen and I need to find a repair place that I can easily get to.
In former times I used a business that sent technicians on house visits. The local one of that sort is silent at the end of the phone line. Not even a message service. Brrr brrrr. Brrr brrrr.
Just then tried to find the function with which to get an image … lol, went to Jetpack instead and had to sign up for that, to be able to get back to this.
So maybe not an image today!
Nope! Did get a pic! This fearless explorer motorbike riding mechanic suits my present state of mind.
Rita de Heer 