I recently had my first adventure in windsurfing. Okay, it was technically my second, but since the first included only a number of attempts to stand up on the board in the seven position, followed by a whole lot of wiping out and no actual windsurfing, I’m counting this as my first.
Anyway.
I wasn’t too sure what I thought of windsurfing before that. Sure, it looked cool, but, eh. How much fun could just going back and forth on the water be?
Wow! What a zing I got. Once actual windsurfing occurred it was a whole new game. I only took a few passes back and forth on flat water at minimal speed, but…what a first taste. Definitely whetted my appetite for more.
Write about your character experiencing their first taste, literally or figuratively, of something. Anything.
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Here’s mine:
“You’re not Imperial, are you.”
Kayla shook her head, unable to deny the obvious. The reawakening of her psi powers had been too catastrophic for him to miss, Vayne’s even more so. Their connection was live electricity, arcing back and forth, splitting through the crowd that separated them. They’d overloaded the brains of dozens of unshielded Imperials and their unconscious bodies laid a path between her and Vayne.
Only Malkor had known how to shield himself and now he stood beside her, careful not to come between her and Vayne. Malkor glanced back at her twin before his gaze locked on her.
“Wyrd.”
The word was whispered, and she couldn’t be certain if those backing away from the scene had heard him, but that mattered was that she had.
He knew.
She let out a breath, her chest emptying of air. The release felt like a hundred years washing away from her. When she expelled the last of the breath she’d been holding for 5 years, she drew in.
Air.
Fresh air.
Free air.
She was free.
The truth was so sweet tears came to her eyes.
She was herself again. She gasped, coughing the air out and breathing again, deeply, greedily. She was living, drinking in air as a free Wyrd citizen.
Lady Evelyn and Shadow Panthe died.
“Who are you?”
“Kayla.” The words, murmured, had more power than a shout. “Kayla Reinumon; ro’haar to Vayne and Corinth Reinumon.” She burst free of the crust of exile. “I am Wyrd.”
Her first tastes of freedom in five years would be her last as she entered another kind of imprisonment, but it couldn’t matter. She was free. She was herself.
And she was known.
A delicate blue butterfly danced above the golden tassels of prairie grass, coming to settle on the broad brown snout of a dozing Tauren.
ReplyDelete“Hrrrumph!” Jimbonereus jerked his head and exhaled forcefully through bison-like nostrils. He batted a massive shaggy hand at his face, then blinked open large, yellow eyes in time to see the escaping blue blur of the butterfly. The late afternoon light told the hulking buffalo-man he had overdone his nap. Propping up on his elbows he noted that the purple-feathered pet nestled against his leg had also been startled awake. She cocked her head to give a questioning look.
“Graww?”
“It was just a bug, Clawdia. But now that we’re up I reckon we should get back on the trail of those deer. We’ll be getting home late again and I don’t want to be empty handed.”
Jimbonereus was actually a decent hunter. He brought as much game back to Bloodhoof Village as did any of his peers. But while the more ambitious young tauren would efficiently bag their quarry and return early to do martial training or practice a trade, Jimbonereus’ ambling outings invariably consumed the entire day. On this day he’d hiked far up the hillside near the Western Pass, where a confluence of winds brought scents of the world beyond the prairies of Mulgore. It was the perfect spot to daydream of exploration and heroic adventure- ironic fantasies for a tauren of unusual laziness and timidity. Now, however, the waning afternoon and the stressful possibility of an unsuccessful hunt kept him focused on the game trail he followed. He suspected the group of deer he had seen in the morning had gone to graze the new growth in the recently burned area around the pass. As he approached the skeletal trees of that patch of hillside, he saw that he was correct.
Clawdia sniffed and flexed her legs, but Jimbonereus motioned for her to be patient while he stalked slowly to a hiding place behind a clump of spruce on the edge of the burn. Retrieving the bow slung behind his back, he readied an arrow and singled out a fat old doe with patches of grey in her coat. His aimed shot was interrupted by a peck on the shoulder from Clawdia. He turned a furious look at her, mouthing “BE STILL,” but the dinosaur bird was strangely agitated, shaking her beak and fluffing her feathers. Now unsettled himself, Jimbonereus began to look over his shoulder when,
“WHACK!”
A thrown axe collided with his left horn and spun to the ground. “Agh!” Shocked and pained, but acting on instinct that didn’t seem his own, the tauren whipped back his bowstring and sailed a quick arrow towards the shaking brush from whence came the axe. A dead Quilboar pig-man slumped to the ground, but with a round of snorts and squeals, three more charged from their hiding places. “Damn!” Clawdia leapt at the nearest, while Jimbonereus staggered backward clumsily, struggling to prepare another arrow. He hastily fired it at one of the attackers but it missed and stuck in the ground. In another second the Quilboar were upon him. He swatted one back with his bow, but the other jabbed an ugly knife in his thigh. “Rrrrraaaowr!” The assailed tauren stomped with pain and rage, shaking the very ground with the never-before-expressed power of his race. His aggressors were dazed- long enough for Jimbonereus to bloodily stomp the chest of one and fire an arrow through the face of the other. Clawdia, meanwhile, had gruesomely disemboweled the third, and the fight was over as quickly as it had started.
Jimbonereus’ leg wound would heal, but it would stand out among the many other scars he would accrue as the mark of his first battle.
Wow, this is excellent! This is very visual writing, and I can picture the entire scene from start to finish. I really feel like we're in the story with Jimbonereus from the start, living the somnolent afternoon, waking from a nice nap. I like the details you give on his character. You round him out by not making him the perfect hunter or typical lazy slug. He comes across as real to me because of the nice mix of capable and day-dreamer you’ve created.
ReplyDeleteI also love the exchange between Clawdia and Jimbonereus, very endearing. Can’t wait to read more about him!