This November will be my first foray into the thrilling and terrifying experience of writing 50,000 words in 30 days. That's because November is National Novel Writing Month, and I apparently haven't punished myself enough by writing my 15,000 word dissertation over the last few months. So before my sanity returns to me, wish me luck, and have a peek at this prologue I just threw together. I know, I know, it's not November yet, but I need some idea of what I'll be writing come Monday, don't I?
NaNoWriMo Prologue
Eight Years Ago…
The city lies under foreign stars, abandoned longer than anyone knows. Scavengers prowl its streets, outlaws hide in its shadows, and terrible beasts prey on anyone or anything foolish enough to cross their paths. But the life that flows through the city now is peripatetic and temporary, a far cry from the bustling, long-lived civilisation that raised its walls.
The basin in which the city sits, an enormous satellite dish pointed at the sky, is thought to have been carved by the hands of a million slaves, and the red of the rock is said to be the blood of a thousand human sacrifices, offered to the gods for the glory of the city. This may be true. The colour of the stone gives the basin a hellish feel, and in a place like this, every story could be true. There is a column of rock left standing at the centre, almost as high as the rim of the basin, down which darker streaks of red-brown spread like old blood running from the summit. And at the top of this column, visible from every house, courtyard, and park in the city, sits a marble hall, white as any stone can be after centuries of neglect. It has no roof, and one soaring wall at the northern end. The remaining three sides are delimited only by long, low walls, chest-height to a man and punctuated by tall, graceful columns. In its day, it must have dazzled and gleamed. Even now, grey and decrepit, it draws the eye. This is a place of power, it says. This is a place for the powerful.
In this place, there are signs of more permanent, sedentary life. The floor is clean, there is a long, faded carpet leading from the entryway at the south towards the northern wall. A statue by the northern wall is as clean as the day it was carved, a masterpiece of a woman in pink marble and rose quartz. The only movement in the hall is a short, greying lady, holding a cloth in one hand and a stick in the other. Carefully, she wraps the cloth around the end of the stick, and runs the makeshift duster over the head and shoulders of the statue. She wipes the dust from the front and back of the stone woman, and creaks her way onto her knees to rub dirt from the feet. It takes her a while to stand again. Eventually, after a lot of cracking and muttering, she hobbles over to one of the small altar stones on either side of the statue, and picks up a smaller, softer cloth. With much more care, the lady reaches up to a gold and copper disc held in the hands of the statue, and reverentially polishes the already shining metal. Cleaning finished, the lady walks down the raggedy carpet and out of the hall.
By dawn the next day, the gold disc is gone. A day later, the old lady is dead.
NaNoWriMo Prologue
Eight Years Ago…
The city lies under foreign stars, abandoned longer than anyone knows. Scavengers prowl its streets, outlaws hide in its shadows, and terrible beasts prey on anyone or anything foolish enough to cross their paths. But the life that flows through the city now is peripatetic and temporary, a far cry from the bustling, long-lived civilisation that raised its walls.
The basin in which the city sits, an enormous satellite dish pointed at the sky, is thought to have been carved by the hands of a million slaves, and the red of the rock is said to be the blood of a thousand human sacrifices, offered to the gods for the glory of the city. This may be true. The colour of the stone gives the basin a hellish feel, and in a place like this, every story could be true. There is a column of rock left standing at the centre, almost as high as the rim of the basin, down which darker streaks of red-brown spread like old blood running from the summit. And at the top of this column, visible from every house, courtyard, and park in the city, sits a marble hall, white as any stone can be after centuries of neglect. It has no roof, and one soaring wall at the northern end. The remaining three sides are delimited only by long, low walls, chest-height to a man and punctuated by tall, graceful columns. In its day, it must have dazzled and gleamed. Even now, grey and decrepit, it draws the eye. This is a place of power, it says. This is a place for the powerful.
In this place, there are signs of more permanent, sedentary life. The floor is clean, there is a long, faded carpet leading from the entryway at the south towards the northern wall. A statue by the northern wall is as clean as the day it was carved, a masterpiece of a woman in pink marble and rose quartz. The only movement in the hall is a short, greying lady, holding a cloth in one hand and a stick in the other. Carefully, she wraps the cloth around the end of the stick, and runs the makeshift duster over the head and shoulders of the statue. She wipes the dust from the front and back of the stone woman, and creaks her way onto her knees to rub dirt from the feet. It takes her a while to stand again. Eventually, after a lot of cracking and muttering, she hobbles over to one of the small altar stones on either side of the statue, and picks up a smaller, softer cloth. With much more care, the lady reaches up to a gold and copper disc held in the hands of the statue, and reverentially polishes the already shining metal. Cleaning finished, the lady walks down the raggedy carpet and out of the hall.
By dawn the next day, the gold disc is gone. A day later, the old lady is dead.
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