The Electric Soldier

So I'm starting this thing? And I'm really looking forward to it?
In essence, I'll be writing and publishing a novel all online, through tumblr. For the most part, it will be done fairly traditionally, considering the medium, but I do have a couple of surprises in store.
The Electric Soldier is about Mina Barros, an ordinary young woman seeking something incredible. She finds it in the form of a beautiful old painting in a strange antique store. Mina finds herself transported to Elasia, another world ruled by a cruel king and his vicious military commander. It's up to Mina and an army of friends in this strange new world to save everything and stop its collapse.
Going will be a bit slow, at least for now, but hey! It might be a cool thing for you to check out and enjoy!

It Was Quiet

It was quiet and soft and patient in the way it crept in. It was like the mute stretching of shadows as the sun went down and painted the world purplish-blue. It was insidious and fine and gossamer-light. One day, you'd be fine, and the next, you'd notice that things haven't been quite right for a long, long time.
While its origination was slow and subtle, the realisation was swift and terrible. It was the dark understanding that you haven't touched that doorknob with your bare palm in months. It was the shadowed knowledge that you ignored the ritual and were fine until you noticed. It was the black realisation that your shoulders have been hunched and the skin of your hands are cracked and dry and you have't taken a proper breath in days.
It was poison.
It was, quite simply, horrible.
And, while one may write or speak about it in the past tense, with some dull notion that it was somehow easier that way, it would never be anything other than hideously, constantly, persistently present.
It was something dark and grey in your veins, clinging sharply to the inner walls and gasping for your notice. It was in the pockets of the marrow of your bones, centred most thickly in the fine bones of your wrists and hands. It was in the deeply-worn creases of your overwashed, overdried, overlamented palms.
It was different for everyone, manifesting as counting and washing and coping and screaming and coping and screaming and coping and screaming and screaming and screaming and screaming.
It was a monster with endless jaws and teeth and whispers. Something that was okay one day was horrible the next. Something that you hadn't noticed yesterday was wrong today.
It was a battle you constantly lost, a problem you hated endlessly.
It was—it is—winning. And one day, lungs burned by bleach and skin washed down the drain of the bathroom sink and tear tracks etched into your face after all these disordered years, it would win.

The Soldier Who Did Not Kill

He was a typical soldier, he supposed. Well, anyone would suppose such a thing, really. He went in right out of school, with his mother tutting nervously while his father sat back proudly. He went to training and he learned everything he was meant to, and perhaps a bit more than he’d thought he would. He was, for the first time in a long time, exhausted to the point where happiness didn’t even matter.

He did everything a training soldier was meant to do, and he did it well. He learned so much, so quickly. He and his newfound brothers learned to shoot guns, clean guns, maintain guns. They learned how to kill.

It wasn’t until his unit was deployed that anyone learned how to die.

It was sand and heat and far too much sun sparkling on the sand and rippling in the heat. So much, always, all the time. It was constant and horrible and eventually, it was so, so red. Seeping into sand and boots and cracks in hands. It was everywhere. The coppery hotness under his tongue was everything.

Sprays of red stars and grey matter and shattered hearts shone in the sun like nebulas spinning together and screaming apart. The soft rush of air before a hot bullet slipped through the air was so quiet, but hideously, viciously loud in the hush before someone fell.

It was the most heinously unfair thing, he thought, that he had been taught so many things and that he hadn’t ever properly known what death was until he saw it in the blazing deserts and sand and red red red glitter of life forcibly expelled.

His finger was always on the trigger, as any good soldier’s would be, but he was something strange and wonderful and terrible.

He was the soldier who would not kill.

Never did a bullet explode from the muzzle of his gun. Never did he drive existence out of the body of, God, anyone, friend or foe.

And then.

And then.

Heat and pain and his accidental brothers yelling and he was being lifted off the ground on which he had collapsed. It felt like the end. It felt like the last few words of the novel of his life.

It felt like void.

***

He woke up two days later, and went home a month after that. He’d just been shot in the leg, and was, ultimately, fine. He limped for a while, but eventually, he was able to go back to work. He was never put on the front lines again, but he was still that strange and wonderful and terrible thing.

Over thirty years at that job, and he was still, always and forever, the soldier who did not kill.

For a Change, We Dance

So I kind of thought I'd start posting little snippets from The Willow Queen, because I'd like to be presented with a very good reason as to why I shouldn't.

That's right, you totally can't.

Ha.

All that aside, here are a few paragraphs from Chapter Five. I hope you enjoy!

Life drags on, no matter how awful everything gets. It keeps going, on and on, constant and full and so thick and heavy that I can hardly breathe. But I am the same. I am constant and ongoing. I keep my ladies distracted, especially if they have sweethearts in the army. I help Charlotte prepare for her wedding. I strategize with Mel and Beaufort. I slowly read my way through the library.

When the day comes, things feel almost bright. Most of the people in the church are either female, children, too old for the military, or simply uninterested in war games. There are so few people here. Yet every single face wears a smile. The music makes us thrive. Charlotte and Alec are bursting with light.

For a change, we dance. Just like the coronation, we dance defiantly. In the wake of horror and war and death, we dance.

I fall asleep feeling slightly uneasy, full to the brim with an uncertain mixture of utter joy and inexpressible dread. The dread is such a constant thing that I’ve almost grown accustomed to it. I’m unused to happiness. How strange. It’s been three months and already happiness feels unfamiliar. This is what war does. It drains you of everything good and leaves you empty. Anything that fills you up again feels strange and, I don’t know, wrong. It ruins and scars you.

Mel hugs me in his sleep, and suddenly, I know that I’m wrong. The war may wound me, but its damage will not be permanent. As long as I have this little moment, and moments like it, I know that I’ll survive.

Years and Years

I sort of feel like posting more short stories (and eventually a few serials) on here, and you know, I totally will. Gotta stretch those writing muscles, or something like that.
Anyway, here's a little thing I wrote this evening! Let me know what you think! I'd really appreciate prompts, as well. They can be as simple as words or ideas, or as complicated as vague storylines you'd like to see fleshed out. Feel free to share!

Years and Years

They had known each other for years and years and years. To the pair of them, the beginning of their friendship felt like the beginning of the universe. It was like the Big Bang, the spark that ignited every last little thing. It was intrinsic and absolute; no universe could exist without their friendship, and that was the thing.

The pair had known each other since before they were born; their mothers had been in the same expecting mothers group, and they had been born on the same day. He’d been a trouble baby, kept under close watch while she thrived on the outside world. Once he got past that, though, he was perfectly fine. He was simply perfect.

They grew up together, spouting like evergreens and daisies. He grew tall and strong and brave, and she grew fine and delicate and braver. She saved him from the bullies, and he saved her from her own self-destructive tendencies.

The pair celebrated every birthday together, and it was the celebration of their eighteenth that broke their hearts.

It had become quite obvious to each in turn, truth be told. It clicked almost simultaneously as they danced at their birthday party, hands warm on her waist and his shoulder. It was the finality or a camera shutter clicking shut, or coffin lid banging closed.

It was the absolute saddest thing either had ever known.

Each saw it flash in the other’s eyes, and each felt their heart break. She was leaving in the morning, and he was staying behind.

But still, in the soft light of dusk, grass brushing their ankles, their lips touched so lightly.

It was a kiss that had waited for years and years, and when it came, it was the saddest kiss the world had ever known. It was a kiss that said either tonight or forever, no in-between. It was a kiss like ashes in their mouths, burned and forgotten memories and what-ifs.

So she touched his lips once again, letting the song play out, knowing all the while that all she could do was leave.

Decades later, their paths crossed, and she tasted ashes in her mouth again. Her husband and daughter smiled cheerfully enough at the old friend, and they caught up on each others’ lives, hearing the impossible possibilities threaded between each word.

They both went home that night, and they did not remember.