To be continued?

This week is going to be a little different. We'll be back to Tee next week, but I wanted to take some time out to get some feedback from you guys and discuss where the Project is going. I'd really appreciate your thoughts.

In a few weeks I'm going to be putting the blog on a short pause. A mini summer vacation, essentially. The break will be a few weeks long, 3-4, and then we'll be back to our regularly scheduled (sorta) Tuesdays. I need some down time, and I want to get to work on where the Project is going.

Now, here where I really want your feedback: do I keep going? The entire reason this blog exists is so that I can share my headworld with you guys. It's essentially a presentation of the planet whirling around in my brain. The world exists regardless, and I will continue to develop it and create for it. But a presentation is only worth it if someone watches.

So, do you guys like this enough to want to keep reading? Are you enjoying the Project? Or am I putting hours and hours of my life into presenting to an empty audience? I'd really like you guys' feedback.



Regular entry will be back next week.

Loss

We huddled in the cave for what felt like eternity. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t actually very long. Tornados don’t generally sit in one place for more than a few minutes, but it really didn’t feel like a few minutes. Then again, keeping track of time was the last thing on my mind.

At some point Nandi must have come into the cave with us. I have no memory of it. He may have been inside before we came in. I don’t know. But at some point I realized there was another warm body pressed against my side, and the spiky bristles of his shorn mane were prickling my neck. It was oddly centering; a tiny piece of normality in the middle of a howling nightmare.

Eventually the wind died down and we got up the courage to move. Nandi moved off to look out the cave entrance, and I slowly unhinged my stiff limbs from around poor Eyani. The poor little guy was looking thoroughly squashed, but he didn’t seem to notice. He looked up at me as if he was expecting the cave to come crashing down on top of us. His pupils kept dilating and contracting like a confused pair of camera lenses. I bumped his forehead and it seemed to help; his ears relaxed, and he let out a funny little huffing snort. Then his eyes tracked up to my cheek and he flattened his ears again.

“What is this?” he asked, sniffing up at me.

I felt at my cheek and realized the cut I’d gotten earlier had left a mess of crusted blood down the side of my face. I was so scrambled by everything that happened that it took me a minute to realize why he was concerned.

“Your blood is green,” I said. “My blood is red.”

His eyes grew huge and he stared at me for a long, long time as if I’d grown a second head. I wondered if he was suddenly registering just how very alien I am to this world. It made me feel lonely.

“Tee is hurt?” he finally asked.

I smiled at him and bumped his forehead again. “No,” I said.

We made our way after Nandi to the entrance and my stomach lurched. The sun was still up, but the smoke and ash and dust in the air made everything feel smothered and hazy. There was a huge, winding path of ground in front of the cliff face that was completely littered with debris; twisted, shattered pieces of wood, broken bits of rocks, whole shrubs, roots and all, flung everywhere. Even the grass that had managed to stay rooted looked warped. Everything was covered in a fine layer of grey ash. There was less burned than I had feared, though. Perhaps the fire wasn’t able to catch well at such high speeds. There were areas of grass that were clearly smoldering, and some of the broken logs had red coals glowing balefully from their centers. Gusts of smoke kept billowing in on the wind, carried from the larger fire on the plain.

It was incredibly disturbing. This wasn’t D’Keda as I’d come to know it; this broken, horrible mess. Then I began to register the cries in the air, and the disturbing factor went through the roof.

Amidst the ash and twisted debris were shapes, bodies.

Eyani disappeared out from under my arm and vanished down the hill. I scrabbled to follow him, but Nandi was suddenly grasping my arm. I looked up at him, confused.

“Many hurt. We must find them,” he said. He looked absolutely haunted. I nodded and we touched foreheads in a feeble attempt to rally our courage.

As we made our way down the cliff I could see others of the clan heading down into the wreckage as well. The cries of pain began to mingle with cries of horror and anguish. My throat closed and I felt like a lead weight was squeezing down on my chest. I had a sudden horrible image of Kohric lying dead flash through my head; I shuddered. He had to be safe. They all had to be safe. Please.

Without really any planning, the entire clan fanned out of its own accord. There was a kind of unspoken nervousness that coursed through them. The sun was starting to set, and I knew they were afraid of it growing dark before everyone was accounted for.

Nandi and I trotted out into the grass that bordered the beach, ears pricked for voices calling for help. Several trees had been downed, a few completely thrown or twisted into pulp. One was neatly severed down the middle where it had been shoved up against a boulder.

We come to the edge of the damaged area without finding anything, and we swung around to follow the other side of it back to the caves. I was almost beginning to think things may not be as bad as I’d feared when Nandi suddenly stopped abruptly in front of me, sending me sprawling into his hindquarters. I heard him exhale sharply; he let out a horrible little whimpering moan. I looked over his head and felt my blood freeze.

Oshtik.

She was a little, huddled pale lump on the ground, dusted with ash. No, my brain said immediately. This wasn’t what it looked like. No, no! She was sleeping, she’d been knocked unconscious; she was too hurt to walk. My eyes slid over the pointed slice of wood buried between her shoulders, and I found myself stumbling toward her.

This couldn’t be happening. This could not be happening. My mind refused to accept what was in front of me. No, no, no! This was a nightmare. This couldn’t possibly be real. This was a research mission. It wasn’t supposed to be this way! This could not be happening!

I sank down to my knees in front of her, my hands clutched at my chest. I know I was moaning, sobbing, but it didn’t feel like they belonged to me. I was alone with my grief. I rocked back and forth, shaking my head. Tears were streaming down my face, down my chin. They made little damp pills in the ash around Oshtik’s cooling body. I kept wondering when I would wake up, praying I would wake up, and that this was all a horrible nightmare.

But the sun continued to set, and Oshtik was still dead.

I wailed my grief to the burgeoning stars.

---

I realized too late that the last two entries parallel real events in the midwestern US. I just wanted to make it clear that this was unintentional. This plot turn was planned over a year ago. Apparently I have terrible timing.

Sirens at the End of the World

Fire.

Eyani, Oshtik and I whirled at the word, and began heading back toward the caves and the rest of the clan. We weren’t the only ones; the entirety of D’Keda swarmed away from the normal chores and moved to cluster near the edge of the cliff face, facing out toward the open grass.

I was surprised to see the fire was so big, considering how wet it had been for the last two weeks. Even from close to a kilometer away, I could easily see it crawling across the areas with dried grass, roiling plumes of dark smoke rising up from the flames. The wind was probably helping. It blew strongly toward us, riding the storm front, and bringing the scent of ash and char to our noses. The sky was an odd shade, even for Minerva; gray-green, with thick grey anvil-head storm clouds rolling across the sky. The horizon was quickly shading to orange as the fire grew.

I don’t have the first clue about fighting a grass fire. My brain was rifling through every incidence I’d ever heard of using fire breaks and removing fuel sources, but none of it seemed applicable to the spreading orange mass consuming the plain in front of me.

The clan was becoming incredibly skittish. I didn’t blame them. Except that most of them were turning their eyes to the sky and not the fire. I began to hear murmurs. “The clouds dance.” I didn’t understand. I looked down at Oshtik; her gaze was riveted skyward too.

At first I didn’t see it. I’ve seen thunderstorms all my life, and the clouds often swirl and roll as they sweep through. I thought nothing of the circular shapes twisting through the sky now. Lightning continued to crawl across the sky; the thunder sounded unnaturally loud to me. I raked my eyes across the clouds. The wind was getting very strong. Tiny bits of grass and leaves stung my legs. I could feel my heart beating faster: what was wrong? Where was it?

Then, almost like a living creature, a portion of the biggest anvil-head suddenly swept downward, forming a dark, roiling funnel shape.

My skin crawled. I felt the hair on the nape of my neck rise, and goose bumps rose along my arms and legs.

Lighting outlined the funnel cloud just as it touched down, throwing up a plume of debris. It twisted slowly, almost gracefully, and danced straight into the worst of the grass fire.

I’ve seen footage of tornados before. Everything seems almost like it’s in slow motion. Your brain can’t wrap itself around the immense scale of what you’re seeing. For a brief moment the scene in front of me felt like that. The tornado enveloped the flames, slowly pulling a column of fire up into the funnel. Pieces of burning debris flared around the base, orbiting the column in lazy circles.



It was eerily beautiful. There were a few flashes of blue or green snaking up the burning column, as the tornado rolled over a patch of ground rich in chlorine salts. It moved inexorably toward us, a fascinating, terrifying monster out of a meteorologist’s nightmare. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. The entire clan seemed frozen and the world felt silent. We stared in awe at the destruction moving toward us.

Then someone screamed. My brain shuddered to life. The clan exploded into a surging mass of shrieking, panicked bodies as everyone raced for the relative safety of the caves. I scrambled to grab the kids. Oshtik immediately slipped away and disappeared into the surge. I was screaming after her. Eyani was frozen, his eyes still riveted on the oncoming tornado. I picked him up bodily and pelted along the cliff face, toward shelter.

Debris from the storm swept past us in the high wind. A particularly sharp piece of something sliced past my cheek and I faintly registered that blood was dribbling down my face. I didn’t even feel the cut itself. My entire being was caught up in getting away from the horror behind us. I wasn’t thinking at all. I could feel my lungs surging, and my feet pounding the ground as if they belonged to someone else. There was nothing left of my mind except the need to run, run, run!

There was a growing roar behind us. I sprinted up the path to my cave. Larger debris was flying past now, and the world was narrowing to a hazy grey mass of ash and smoke. I ducked into my cave and crushed Eyani into the farthest corner, behind a bend in the rock. I wrapped myself around him and faced us away from the cave entrance. We huddled together, shuddering, as the roaring of the wind seemed to devour the world. It raged across the cliff face, making a loud shrieking sound as it passed between small flutes of rock.

It sounded like a siren heralding the end of the world.

Fives

Oshtik is really pretty cute when she’s in her element. I’d always taken her for a little bit snobby. But now I’m realizing that she’s just very, very bright, and she gets frustrated when others don’t pick up on things as quickly as she does. She absorbs information like a sponge. We’ve had our impromptu tutoring sessions the last three afternoons, and she is soaking up practically everything I say.

Poor Eyani was actually rather unhappy with this change at first. We reached a compromise by having our lessons under one of the trees at the edge of the beach. I sit across from Oshtik, and Eyani plasters himself to my side and dozes, his head on my leg or lap. Though, I’m beginning to think the dozing is a ruse, since yesterday he, quite out of the blue, corrected Oshtik’s pronunciation when I was teaching her “friend.”

Today, though, was a little different.

I’d gotten it into my head that basic numbers would be an easy concept to teach them. I started off simply enough. I collected a half dozen stones to demonstrate with, settled under the tree with Oshtik, and started teaching her one through ten. Except that once I got to five I realized I couldn’t count any higher in their language.

By now, though, Oshtik was well aware we were doing numbers, so when I put down the sixth stone and said “six,” she looked at me a little oddly. She pointed to the sixth stone and said “shota’a-ha.” What?

Okay. Quick lesson in Azu numbers so you understand why I was confused.

One through five in Azu-nah is so:



There are two different methods of writing them. A formal version, that’s all graceful curves, and a kind of tally-mark version shorthand that faintly mimics an Azu hand and tail. So “shota” is five, right? And “ha” is one. Essentially the number six in their language is five-one.

Apparently the Azu-nah have a quintal base number system.

So, instead of gaining a new digit at number ten like you’d expect, they get one at five. It makes counting a little confusing, since I have to convert everything in my head.

The sociologist gurus we trained with before heading out to Minerva had told us to be on the lookout for a quartal (base 4) counting system, since the Azu-nah have four fingers on each hand. It’s rather funny to see them turn the prediction on its ear. I guess no one realized how important that tail would be (that or they thought they would have a base 9 counting system and didn’t give us a head’s up).

Poor Oshtik had a bit of difficulty wrapping her brain around a decimal system. Eyani had given up by six and was snoring at my hip. Oshtik was starting to get frustrated. I was considering calling the rest of the lesson off when a shout from one of the clan lookouts interrupted.

Dark, brooding clouds were rolling in again. Another storm. There were flickers of lightning crawling along the bottoms of the darker anvil-heads; the sky was a weird shade of gray-green.



They’d called warnings for storms before, but this time was different. Other Azu-nah were running through the grass now, repeating the lookout’s shouts. They looked frightened, their eyes wide and flickering. I almost didn’t register what they were saying, because it wasn’t at all what I’d expected.

Sodo. Fire.

---

This week's cameos are Tsosanonon by Marjask and an unnamed male by RattusMaximus! Thank you for submitting them!

Also, thank you for putting up with the delays this week. There was a death in the family, and it came up very, very suddenly. So thank you for your patience.

Sketch Dump

As you can imagine, things have been a little hectic around here. I apologize for how sporadic the project's been. You guys have been very patient with me. This will be the last week of delays and whatnot for (I hope) a good while.

Since I don't have enough time to put together a proper entry this week, here's a few bits of concept art and sketches yanked out of my sketchbook.



Anyone have questions about the blog or the Azu-nah? Now's the time to ask. :)

See you all next week for a real entry.