I lived with my family a couple years longer. My grandmother passed away shortly after I left Wisconsin the first time and my grandfather was diagnosed with colon cancer shortly after. He’d had cancer of some other variety before that and pulled through it. He’d had a stroke and recovered some years before that, too. He’d been through a lot, but it was clear the cancer was going to get him this time around, so my parents moved in with him to take care of him until he passed away. I moved into the basement of my grandparents’ house in the meantime. The basement was nice. It was furnished and carpeted. I had a refrigerator and a stove. It made a good apartment. I paid a little rent. It was comforting and I could separate myself from the depressing goings-on upstairs when I was down there.

I had a job. I worked. I lived. I never thought about what my life was or where it was going. I did a good thing for myself, moving out to Minnesota, but I was terrified of just repeating that forever. Go out into the world, realize I’m not ready, end up crawling back home with my tail between my legs. I didn’t want to do that again, so I didn’t do anything particularly noteworthy. I worked fourty, fifty hour weeks. I came home and played video games or watched television.

Then, shortly after I turned 21, my grandfather passed away. We had to sell his home, because we couldn’t afford to buy it ourselves. My parents ended up finding an apartment for themselves and my little sister, but it became clear that there wasn’t room for me. They didn’t intend for things to play out that way, it was just what life dealt them and I hadn’t exactly put much effort into ensuring a place for myself anywhere at all. I probably could have afforded a small apartment for myself at the time, but I’d never actually rented a place on my own before, so I didn’t even know where to begin. I just resigned myself to having nowhere to go.

A pair of good friends of mine offered me their couch temporarily. In Michigan. I took them up on it. I loaded all of my belongings into one big box. One overnight Greyhound later, I was sleeping on their couch. I treated my time in Michigan more like a vacation than I should have. I did have some freelance writing that came with me from Wisconsin that brought in a little money, but I never treated my time there as seriously as I should have. I used my time there as an opportunity to just stop and think about what I was doing for once. I’m not sure if my friends realize how important my time there was to me. When I ended up leaving, I felt terrible — they’d offered me hospitality so I could get on my feet again. To them, it probably looked like I’d just abused their kindness for a few months and then ran back to the same silly situation they’d dragged me out of to begin with.

When I decided to depart Michigan for Wisconsin again, I loaded all of my things right back into that cardboard box. My friend, bless her heart, helped me carry that horrifically heavy thing down the street, onto a city bus, down another block, then into the Greyhound/Amtrak station. Do note that this box had my PC tower, monitor, and peripherals in it in addition to all of my clothes. It was not light.

She sat with me in the station. I had every intention of traveling via Greyhound. I’d been taking Greyhound for years at that point, commuting between Wisconsin and Minnesota. Greyhound was how I’d gotten to Michigan, so naturally I’d take the same method back. Except I didn’t. On a whim, I walked up to the Amtrak counter and bought a train ticket instead. I’d never taken a train.

“Why are you taking the train?” She asked, thinking me insane. “Adventure,” I replied, confirming my insanity.

So I got on the train. The train had far more stops than a bus did, which was surprising to me. You’d think it would be the other way around, but I guess not. The day was mind-numbingly boring, I didn’t have an iPhone or laptop  and I didn’t even have the foresight to buy a book for the trip. It’s all a hazy blur until my train reached Chicago. Union Station. I didn’t realize trains back to Milwaukee had to stop at Union Station. Greyhound didn’t. I had never been through Union Station and the entire experience was perfectly terrifying. It was massive and confusing and nobody seemed to understand the words out of my mouth when I asked, “Where do I find the connecting train to Milwaukee?”

Eventually, I found my terminal. Desperately pleading with bystanders for help amounted to nothing, but I figured out where to go once I finally bothered to look up from the ground and use my eyes. I wasn’t lost. I wouldn’t be stranded in downtown Chicago. I wouldn’t need to call my parents and beg them to drive south an hour to find me. I hadn’t made a terrible mistake. I just needed to stop expecting someone to rescue me. If I was old enough to end up in Union Station of my own accord, I was old enough to find my train.

I did find my terminal. I sat down in a very uncomfortable chair and set my box of things down beside me. My fingers had gone raw and started to peel from carrying the shockingly sturdy cardboard all over Union Station, but I was on my way home, so I didn’t care about that anymore.

My terminal had a little play area in it for children. Just the basics. A bright yellow slide no taller than the chair I sat in. A plastic tree house without the tree. That sort of thing. There were a few kids in there. It was late and there are better ways to travel between Chicago and Milwaukee so the terminal wasn’t the most populated places ever, but it wasn’t abandoned, either. There were kids there and they were playing and doing whatever it is kids that age do. There was one little girl that wouldn’t join in with the rest of them, though. She just sat beside her mom and watched them. No smiles. No laughter.

She was very young, seven or eight years old at the most, but probably younger. She hopped off of her seat and walked across the terminal. I don’t know why she chose me out of everyone there, I don’t make a habit of drawing attention to myself. She produced a deck of cards and held it out to me. “Go fish?” She asked. The words didn’t come easily to her, but she asked them anyway. Her mother watched me very nervously from across the terminal. I was a very large man who probably looked terribly agitated after running around the entirety of Union Station. I’m sure if your daughter with Downs Syndrome ran off to invite a scary looking man to a game of cards, you would be nervous, too.

I’d like to say I had a very kind, intelligent response to the girl’s invitation, but I made some sort of vague eh? sound instead. Her mother was not reassured. The girl asked, as politely as she could manage, “Want to play Go Fish, please?”

There were only ten or fifteen minutes left until my train home would be boarding, but I couldn’t turn her away. So I got out of my chair, turned it into a makeshift table, and we sat on either side of it playing Go Fish. She cheated a little bit. I let her. “Do you have any twos?” “No.” “I meant fours.” “Oh, sure, I have a four. Here you go.”

My boarding call rang out over the Union Station speakers before we could finish our game. I broke her the news as softly as I could, but there is no good way to tell a little girl that it’s time for you to leave when she wishes otherwise. She didn’t fully understand what I meant when I told her I had to leave. The game wasn’t over, how could I stop playing? I couldn’t just stand up and abandon her, though. “My train is here. I need to go home now. Why don’t we clean up these cards?” I explained again. She asked, “Do you have an eight?”

I am not a crying man, but I came close just then. She was sweet and wonderful and just wanted to play. How could I ruin that? Was there a way I could make this girl understand through my words? Probably not, I decided. She would do what she wanted to do and that wasn’t her fault at all. She simply didn’t understand. She couldn’t understand. Games can’t end before they’re over. So I stopped trying to explain to her. “We need to clean up now,” I told her. “You won.”

I laid my cards down. So did she. Then, with very careful, deliberate motions, she started picking up her cards one by one and putting them into her pile. Her cards were  very important to her. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t need to know. I helped her clean up our game, placing each card in her pile very carefully, knowing very well that my train could be pulling away without me at any moment. Clearly this girl and her mother weren’t taking the same train I was, because her mother didn’t seem to be in any particular rush. I could have asked her mom for help, but I didn’t. I helped the girl put away her cards, said goodbye, and walked her to her mother.

I didn’t miss my train, but I came close. I think that even if I had missed my train, I wouldn’t have been upset. I wouldn’t have missed it because I was lost and alone in Chicago. I would have missed it because I made the choice to do so. That makes all the difference in the world.

I ended up back in Milwaukee, yes, but I didn’t do it crawling with my tail between my legs — I did it with my fingers torn and bleeding from that damn box. I found a job again. I kept up with my freelance work, which transformed into an actual career. I have an apartment. My life is mine and while I appreciate having friends and family, I no longer expect them to rescue me all the time — and I don’t need the rescuing anymore.

I don’t entirely understand the significance of that game of Go Fish, but I think about it a lot. That game of Go Fish is the moment when I stopped thinking of myself as a child. It’s when I realized I needed to make choices. Things wouldn’t simply fall in my lap. Life doesn’t live itself. All of the things I’ve done to improve my life in the last few years, I link them back to that game of Go Fish.

Why? Who knows. Maybe there’s some metaphor hidden away in that game that I haven’t found yet, but it’s more likely it was just a moment of simple peace after a very long stretch of depression and uncertainty. The calm makes fonder memories than the storm.

One such recurring element is an idol or statuette. Ever since I was a kid, maybe 11 or 12, I would occassionally (once or twice a year) have an otherwise completely mundane dream interrupted. Someone, not always me, would notice a small statue reminiscent of a man built out of a substance I can only describe as greasy charcoal. It’s a dark, beckoning thing, and it would inevitably be broken. Smashed, thrown, dropped, whatever — it would end up broken by someone, usually intentionally. After it breaks, the statue would shatter into small cubes made of the same substance, floating in the air in ring formation. Touching either the statue or cubes would leave dark, black stains on your skin. Avoiding contact with these cubes, for some reason, was usually a matter of extreme importance. It would drive us into a panic at times. I remember one night, in this dream, I grabbed my sister away from these stones, looked her in the eyes and said very clearly, “Don’t touch them. Don’t ever touch them.”

Afterwards, my perception of human faces in my dreams ceases to function properly. Nobody looks like they should. Faces lose features, gain new ones, or completely lose all human proportions. I don’t mean that people become animals, I mean someone’s face pinches in half. I mean their forehead juts out a foot from their face. I mean their teeth become spikes of bone that pierce through their skulls.

I imagine this whole thing is my mind attempting to process what amounts to garbage data in the part of my brain that comprehends human faces and expression, so I attach no significant weight to it at all, but it does interest me. The mind creates all sorts of strange symbols to process loose thoughts and data while you dream, but these long-term, recurring symbols are so much more fascinating to me. What does the charcoal man signify to my unconscious mind? Is it a warning, that I am about to be subjected to something the conscious mind hates? Or is it completely meaningless? It’s certainly no omen or sign from beyond, I know that much.

It is true though that there are few things the human mind hates more than distorted human faces. It isn’t anger, it isn’t fear, it’s a base biological reaction to a thing that should not be. These faces constructed of garbage data or misfiring nerves, the mind knows they shouldn’t exist. It knows that a real human being should not have gaping holes where their eyes belong. It knows where your nose should and should not be. When things arent right, the mind rejects it. Somehow, for some reason, I’m given warning when it’s about to happen in the form of a greasy statuette of coal.

Even more fascinating to me is that these dreams have become progressively more lucid. Like I said, I put no effort into remembering, documenting, or controlling my dreams at all. But when I see the charcoal man, something changes. I can look away. I can stop myself (but not others) from breaking it. These dreams didn’t used to be that way, but my ability to manipulate them has grown with each time Ive seen that statue. Again, I see no deeper meaning in this, it’s just a game the mind plays.

I don’t consider this a nightmare. I don’t fear it, it doesn’t prevent me from sleeping, it offers no ill effects. It just sticks with me the same way it stains the skin.

Codex Alera

In my last “whatcha readin’?” post, I mentioned that I was just starting in on Codex Alera, Jim Butcher’s more traditional fantasy series. I mentioned that it didn’t grab me, and that continued to be true. I didn’t actually finish the first book. In fact, it contributed to me falling off the reading wagon — it had so little grip on me that I spent less and less time reading, until I didn’t want to pick up my Kindle at all. Maybe the series gets better after Furies of Calderon, but if I can’t get past the first book in the series, it’s very hard to find out if I’ll enjoy the rest. Maybe I’ll read a summary of #1 on a wiki and try out #2 one day, but that’s so far on the backburner that that day may never come.

A Song of Ice and Fire

I went into this series knowing I was in for disaster. One of my dark secrets is that I don’t really like Lord of the Rings. I like it in theory and I enjoy the base story and I appreciate it for what it is, but I don’t like to read things where I have to chew through every thick page to get to the next one. I want to be urged onwards constantly, and these massive fantasy tomes do not necessarily do that — that’s not their goal. They create something much larger, much more expansive. Still, I enjoyed watching Game of Thrones so I thought I would start in on Game of Thrones the novel. I read part of it, and I will continue to read it, but it isn’t something I’m going to be able to read cover-to-cover without any pauses. I read a good chunk of it and I’m taking a break by going back to an old friend.

The Tawny Man Trilogy

Robin Hobb’s The Farseer Trilogy was on my list last time — it was a trilogy that, despite its slow beginnings, I really came to enjoy, full of characters I really loved. After being in a reading slump for a few months, going back to that world was exactly what I needed. The first book in the trilogy, Fool’s Errand, picks up 15 years after Assassin’s Apprentice. Fool’s Errand is what I have in progress right now, and right within the first few pages it immerses you in the Six Duchies again. It’s like a homecoming. It feels good.

What next?

After I’ve wrapped up the Tawny Man Trilogy, I’ll go back and read a little more Game of Thrones. Ghost Story, the latest Dresden Files novel, releases on July 26th — top of my list, for sure. After those, who knows? We’ll see what time brings.

I think it also might be fun to provide a little information on my mindset when I was writing a particular piece. Maybe useful to all of you, definitely useful to me — I can look back down the road and see where I was coming from. So here is that for this part!

Forethoughts

This excerpt comes immediately after what I posted here previously. What I posted before is what I now consider the prologue. Originally the story kicked off right from there and we saw a child’s journey away from home to find her place amongst strangers in a place she’s never seen before, a place so massively different from her home that she needs to relearn how to live, essentially. Ultimately I ended up not being happy with that. That’s not the sort of person I am, writer or reader. One of my criticisms of The Farseer Trilogy was that the first half of the first book was completely dedicated to setting up the world Fitz lives in, and that wasn’t terribly exciting. Informative, yes. Exciting, no. I realized that I was repeating exactly what I didn’t like about those massive fantasy tomes: too much exposition for too long.

I scrapped all of that, kept the initial scene as a prologue, and restarted the story with the child already a young adult, living in this new world and accustomed to its ways. Essentially: she’s the same brave little girl, but she’s grown up, been through boot, and been exposed to What Lurks Below(tm).

Enjoy!

***

“You’re bleeding.”

“Oh, really?” Tylien, the elf I shared my apartment with, asked dimly. He had just climbed in the window and sat on a wooden crate in the corner. “I hadn’t noticed the blood leaking into my eyes while I walked clear across town with the gaping head wound.”

I replied with a grunt and dug into my crate on the opposite corner. You could hardly call our apartment such — in exchange for a little coin each week, an old widow let us stay in her spare, second floor bedroom. She didn’t want us walking through her home, of course, so she had nailed the door shut. Our sole entrance and exit was the second story window. Inconvenient, that.

It was a dark, damp little place with a low ceiling and creaky floorboards, but it was cheap and it was ours. There was only enough room for our beds, a chest each for our clothing, and a few small crates to hold our other belongings. Decent enough for sleeping in, but not a place for leisure. Certainly not where you’d host friends, either — and we never did. That was our rule. We never talked about this place. We never talked about where we lived at all.

While Tylien’s crate was a glorified stool that held nothing of worth, mine contained rows of rolled bandages and little brown pots: herbs, salves, and poultices. They were amateur, but they got the job done. The Academy didn’t leave much time for practicing these things over the years, but being forced out of the barracks drove me back to considering  to self-sufficiency. That was the whole point of being forced out of the barracks before ascension. The threat of living in a gutter is an effective motivator.

I took a few items from the crate and crouched near Tylien. He had removed his tunic and the cord holding back his long dark hair, so it could flow freely. He tilted his head back for me. This had become routine for us; he would come home beaten, and I would tend to it. We were both in training to be Champions and spent a lot of time together, even when we weren’t home. More people than I’d care to admit assume we’re lovers. It isn’t true. To be honest, he disgusted me, physically. He was decent enough company, but I’ve never managed to grasp the attraction to elves most of humanity seems to have. The angles of his face were all wrong, his limbs were too gangly, and the tilt of his eyes was unsettling. Beyond that, he wasn’t a bad person.He was strong. A warrior. He was kind, usually. All very admirable traits. I’m sure an elf would find him perfectly handsome. To me, though, he was another creature entirely. I couldn’t be attracted to him any more than I could be attracted to a bird or a fish.

I twisted the lid off of a jar of water and washed the blood from his face, rinsing the wound clean. We didn’t have a basin up here, so I just let it all spill to the floorboards. I set the jar aside, lifted the lid off of one of my little pots, and scooped some of the moist paste out with my fingers.

“You’re already squirming.” I scowled down at Tylien, just barely above eye level with him. He was tall. I was not. Even when he was sitting it was hard to call it looking down at him. “Stop that.”

“Do you have any idea how much it hurts when you use that?”

I pressed the poultice into the long cut — it ran straight along his eyebrow, which explained all of the blood. Forehead wounds bleed more than they have any right to. “It can’t be any worse than being beaten.”

“Yes,” Tylien said through clenched teeth, “it can.”

“If you would stop taking beatings, we wouldn’t have to do this anymore.”

I wiped the poultice remnants off of my fingers and onto a bandage, which I wrapped around Tylien’s head. He shrugged his shoulders and stood up, pushing past me. The two of us worked odd jobs for money now that we needed to learn how to live outside the barracks — you can’t take on an apprenticeship in a real trade, because that will never come to pass. You’ll be a Champion. That is your profession. There is no becoming a smith or an alchemist or a cobbler. So you make whatever income you can, where ever you can. You would be surprised how much you can make just by doing what nobody else wants to do. A housewife will give you a bit for sweeping up bedstraw for her so she doesn’t need to do it. Her husband will get angry with her for throwing good coin away on petty errances, but ask him about it later and he’ll give you a silver so he doesn’t need to lay the fresh straw himself.

Tylien did work as a translator. If an elf doesn’t live in the city, it’s unlikely that they know how to speak our tongue. They don’t teach it behind the Everwood. Any elves that come to the city for business or politics will need a translator — Tylien’s name is at the top of a short list of competent ones. In the minds of the elven nobles, however, he’s also a cultural traitor. He left his people’s ways behind for ours. Elven traditionalists will work with him, but they don’t like it. He gets beaten for it, and he just accepts it. He’s an idiot.

He rose from his crate and knelt down by the chest at the foot of his bed. “If the difference between being beaten and not being beaten is a sovereign or a silver, I’ll take the sovereign.”

That much was true, as the traditionalists tended to be among the nobility — those who held the vast majority of the wealth among elves. They’ve long forgotten the actual worth of a sovereign. Beg long enough and they’ll give you a sovereign just to make you go away.

I leaned beside the window. “Did you stop at the market at least?”

“What? No.” He pulled a clean shirt on over his head. “I didn’t think to stop at the King’s Market and pay for a meal while I bled out.”

“Damn it all,” I cursed. “It was your turn. What are we supposed to eat?”

He shrugged at me.

I shook my head, turned, and swung out the open window, climbing a rickety wooden ladder to the street below.

***

Afterthoughts

This situation is a bit absurd by design. After the heavy prologue, I wanted something less serious as an introduction to these characters. Their living situation is still a little dark, but it’s the sort of dark that, after having been through it, you look back on it years later and you can’t help but see how ridiculous it was and laugh about it. “Yes, that was awful, but I got through it.”

Some criticism I’ve received about this so far from my editor is that the world seems “dry.” My first thought was to say, “but you’ve barely seen the world yet. How can it seem dry?” Maybe that’s the problem, though. I haven’t shown anything particularly notable about the world yet, because I deemed it unnecessary — but I have shown things that aren’t that impressive. Maybe I shouldn’t show anything, until I’m ready to show the good stuff. It’s something I intend to keep in mind for future edits.

As usual, I would appreciate any feedback you all have to offer.

I picked up a Kindle quite awhile ago and I realized I’ve never really mentioned what I’ve been reading on it. Considering this blog exists, it seems like something I should do, no? I’m not going to review any of these titles, just yap about them very briefly.

The Dresden Files

I eased myself back into hobby reading by picking up a fun, simple series — Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files. It’s a series about a private investigator. Also, he’s a wizard. Wikipedia’s synopsis:

The Dresden Files is a series of fantasy/mystery novels written by Jim Butcher. He provides a first person narrative of each story from the point of view of the main character, private investigator and wizard Harry Dresden, as he recounts investigations into supernatural disturbances in modern-day Chicago. Butcher’s original proposed title for the first novel was “Semiautomagic”, which sums up the series’ balance of fantasy and hard-boiled detective fiction.

The series is an easy read and absolutely a cheesy romp — there’s plenty of gratuitous violence and sexual tension with a ludicrously powerful main character, but I’m cool with it. It’s fun and forgetting how to appreciate simple fun is one of the worst things you can do to yourself.

The Farseer Trilogy

Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy is a great fantasy series that starts off very slowly. It’s a rich setting and the trilogy as a whole was made better by it, but the first half of the first novel is all scene-setting. You’re given the background of the kingdom involved and are given an overview of the main character’s growing years, from being a small bastard child left in the care of his father’s right hand man, up to him being a teenage apprentice to the royal assassin. I have rather severe untreated ADD. My attention span and ability to focus is complete shit and it’s something I struggle with quite a bit. Muscling through the first half of the first novel was hard. Not only is my attention span shit, but there was also nothing reaching out and grabbing me and forcing me to focus — if books had a voice, the first half of Assassin’s Apprentice would have sounded entirely monotone to me. It gets better.

Once the series got going, there was no stopping the events in motion. I loved the series — and I hated the main character. You want to cheer for him, but he’s constantly fucking everything up for himself and everybody he comes in contact with. You hate him, but you still want him to win. It was an interesting feeling.

The Tawny Man Trilogy is a followup to The Farseer Trilogy, taking place fifteen(ish) years later. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s on my list.

Codex Alera

After wrapping up the most recent addition to The Dresden Files, I was curious how Jim Butcher handled a pure fantasy setting.  Codex Alera is his attempt at that — I’m currently reading the first novel in the series, Furies of Calderon. It’s … okay. It is far too early to say whether I like it or not, but it hasn’t grabbed me. It’s simply not interesting. I’m going to give Butcher the benefit of the doubt though, because I do love Dresden and early Dresden wasn’t the greatest material, either. Based purely on faith to the author, I’ll probably give it until book two to grab my attention.

Have any of you read this series? Does it get better?

What next?

After Codex Alera, I’ll either move onto The Tawny Man Trilogy or go back to the Vlad Taltos series. A good friend of mine recommended them to me a few years back and I very much enjoyed them, but for some reason I stopped reading right in the middle of Dzur and never picked the series up again. Considering the recent release of Tiassa, it seems like a good time to get back into them. Though I hear that reading Phoenix Guards before Tiassa is highly recommended — I haven’t touched those yet either. So perhaps Dzur, Jhegaala, Iorich, Phoenix Guards, then Tiassa? We’ll see.

Check it out, leave him feedback, chip him a few bucks via PayPal if you enjoyed it. He’s worth it. And unlike me, he’s actually a legit published author!

I’ve been working hard to reinvigorate my writing outside of World of Warcraft. As much as I love my work at WoW Insider, I can’t limit myself to that. Starting Nitpixels with a few friends was part of that renewal of my writing, but I’m working on another project as well, which I mentioned very briefly in my last post. It’s a fiction project. I’ve been building this world bit by bit for years now, and every time I take the project up I put a little bit more into it and spend some energy bringing it up to my current standards. What I expect out of my writing now is far above and beyond what I expected out of it four, five years ago. I’ve finally decided I’ve reached the point where I can try to tackle this seriously.

I’m still not completely happy with my writing, especially when it comes to fiction, but there comes a point where you just have to roll with it. I’ve decided to put a snippet of the story here for anybody to read. It’s the very beginning of this first story — the initial few chapters will cover this girl’s childhood, very briefly, to set the stage for who she is from that point forward. Who she is, where she’s from, and why she is where she is.

Enjoy! Or don’t.

***

My father was a shoemaker, and though I was just a girl, I spent my days toiling away, helping the man with his work. Countless hours were spent treating leather or piercing eyelets in half-finished boots. It hadn’t been that way until my grandfather died. While he still lived, he would whisk me away from my father’s grasp and my hours were spent learning my letters and other such things — herbs and medicines so I might never grow ill or the stars and moons so I might never be lost. All the while, he told me tales of gods and heroes If I learned well, he would teach me swordplay with branches he had whittled smooth. Father had never approved of such things. The daughter of a shoemaker could not live off of stars or blades. He supposed I would grow to be a brigand, poisoning and knifing my way through life. He put an end to my learning when my grandfather passed.

I hated my father for it. I hated my mother and my siblings just as much. Only my father had done a thing to earn my ire, but I hated them all because of it.

It was a dreary day, the day I decided to be done with it all. I merely stood up from my table and strode out of the dingy cellar, without so much as a word to or from my father, who had been working within arm’s length. Whether he didn’t notice or simply did not care, I was unsure. I kept a steady pace long enough to be certain he would not follow me, and then I ran.

Honeywind, the town where I lived, was once elven territory before humanity pushed them back behind the Everwood. It was sprawling but sparse, with homes dotting rolling green hills, each with a dirt and gravel path leading to the town square down in the valley. Travelers always admired the beauty of our village, but it seemed to me whatever beauty was in that land had been tarnished by the ramshackle cabins, barns and stables littering the hills in all directions. That beauty was also the last thing on my mind as I ran as quickly as I could down the dirt road to salvation.

The air had been cool and damp and it only got worse as I ran. Clouds grew thick overhead, dark and boiling. Just as quickly, the rain came. It poured over the hills, soaking me to the bone before I’d gotten anywhere near the town square below. I would not slow and pressed on, even as the dirt beneath my feet turned to mud. The winds howled and I could feel water running off of the end of my nose.

I ran for hours, and it seemed as if it would never end. By the time I’d arrived, the square had emptied. All of the folk that usually populated the town center during the day had retreated indoors to escape the weather. The man I was searching for, however, had not yet fled as the others had. He was exactly where grandfather’s stories told me he would be.

My run slowed to barely a walk as I tried to catch my breath. One of Honeywind’s inns stood tall before me. Honey’s Rest, it was called, and a bed was etched upon a sign above the door for those that hadn’t learned their letters yet. More importantly, a smalller sign hung low off of that one: Khalin’s Flame, a symbol proclaiming that traveling members of the Order could rest at no charge. Directly beside the inn was a small stable, large enough for only three, maybe four horses or mules. There was the man I sought.

“Theodor!” I shouted. “Grandmaster!” I tried to run again, but my legs refused, so I did little better than stumble forth until I reached the small stable.

The old man was tending to a horse, likely his own, for he was certainly no stablehand. He hardly cast me a glance after all of my shouting, he just continued on brushing the stallion — most certainly a warhorse — it was built much larger than anything we had around Honeywind.

“Grandmaster,” I called out again. I’d started to find my breath, but the man’s disinterested glance made me feel uneasy. “I wish to speak with you.”

Theodor turned, assessing me before he said one single word. It only added to my unease. I was just a girl. Short and thin, angles and lines, out of breath with muddy boots and dripping wet clothes, and my hair wrapped about my head in a sopping mess. Theodor, on the other hand, stood tall and proud despite the hunch age had brought to his back. Thinning hair and thick beard were both white as snow. His eyes were wrinkled, wisened and noble. He frowned at me, the frown even showing in his eyes and the lines of his forehead. “What is it, child?”

I shivered, both from cold and fear alike. I knew it, and I knew the grandmaster could see it. I weathered it. I knew I had no other option, or I’d have wasted my only chance to leave this dour little cillage.

“I wish to serve my king, grandmaster,” I spoke loudly, clearly — perhaps a little louder than necessary, as I drew on whatever courage I still had.

The man turned back to his horse and was quiet. The bridle and bit were hung on their rack. I stood cold and growing colder, damning myself for not taking an overcoat with me when I fled. Theodor was quiet for what felt like a very long time to a child’s mind. I endured. It was a bit longer before he turned to me again.

He clasped his hands behind his back. “How do you expect to serve your king, and how am I to help you?”

“I wish to join the Order. I wish to serve as my grandfather served, my lord.”

“The Order? You’re young yet, girl. Besides, I do not oversee the priestesses. You’ll need to run through the pouring rain to find my wife.” Theodor lost his frown and I could hear amusement behind his voice. “Lucky for you, she will likely have more pity for a soaking wet child than I.”

“No, sir. I told you,” my voice began to fade, but I forced it as clear as I could. Nerves were breaking into my words. “I wish to serve as my grandfather served. I wish to be a Champion.”

“A Champion?” Theodor did laugh, now. It was a true, jovial laugh. This was not a man that hid his emotions in his old age, I realized, if he had ever done so to begin with. “You have the blood of a Champion in your veins, do you?”

“I do, sir.” I licked water off of my lip in some foolish hope that the rain would understand the gesture, and cease running from my face. “My grandfather’s name was Michael. He died, sir.”

Theodor’s voice fell to a whisper. “Michael. The Lionheart?”

“I only knew him as Michael, sir, but his shield did have a lion upon it. I would show you if I could. It was given to me, but my father took it from me and sold it for coin.”

Theodor motioned me deeper into the stable, so I could fully remove myself from the downpour. He sat down upon a dirty and notched stool that had been left nearby. His joints popped and snapped as he lowered himself down. He beckoned me closer still. I obeyed. He spoke softer now, but it was more commanding than ever. “What is your name, child?”

“Arnesca, sir.” I began. “Though my grandfather would call me Arna and I liked that much better.”

“Your grandfather called me Theo,” the grandmaster said. He looked much older suddenly, and his wisened old eyes spoke of pain. His shoulders began to sag. “He was a good man, Arna. You say his shield is gone?”

“Yes, sir.” I nodded once. “My father sold it.”

Anger crept into Theodor’s words. “Why would he do such a thing?”

“He told me my grandfather was an old fool. A fool that cared only for himself. After he died, my father wanted no part of him near us.” I met the old man’s eyes. I added gravely, “I could not stop him. He is my father.”

“Your father is wrong,” the old man spoke more angrily.

“I know, but he is still my father.”

Theodor was quiet for some time again, sitting on that stool. The dark of the storm was becoming the true dark of night as I waited for him to speak again, but the man just looked between me and the ground, perhaps toiling in ancient memories. I knew that if my father wasn’t yet searching for me, he soon would be. I could not waste any more time. I chose to break the silence, repeating my earlier request. “I wish to join the Order. I wish to serve as my grandfather served.”

“Yes.” Theodor’s voice had fallen quiet enough that I could barely hear him over the falling rain. “Yes,” he repeated himself. “You are certain?”

“My grandfather told me to let no one decide my fate for me. It is my decision alone. I am to walk the path I wish to walk,” I licked water from my lip again. “I wish to walk this one, sir.”

“It will hurt you.” Theodor hesitated a moment before adding, “Your body and your heart.”

“I will endure.”

“You speak bravely for a girl so young, Arna. And well.”

“My grandfather taught me my letters.”

“I will go to your father. I leave for the City in two days. Can you say your farewells by then?”

I felt very tired suddenly. I don’t know if it was my body or my emotions making me so weary, but it didn’t matter. I was tired all the same, and I couldn’t hide my fear from the grandmaster any longer. “Can we leave faster? My father will be angry with me. I’ve gotten my shoes muddy.”

Theodor found humor in that.

I just wanted to pop in here and provide an update on what I’ve been up to recently. A few of my major side projects have shifted around, so I thought it was a good time to do it.

First, I am no longer working on the StarCraft II blog I plugged some time ago. It was fun while it lasted, but I’m moving on from that project.

Second, I’ve officially started up Nitpixels, a general gaming blog, with a few of the other guys from WoW Insider. So far it’s Mike Sacco, Mat McCurley, Matt Rossi and myself. We’ll be doing some writing, but the main focus is going to be the Nitpixels Podcast. It’s going to be an extremely laid back project — we’re all just nerds talkin’ ’bout vidya games. The first episode is up, so you should give it a listen.

Finally, I’m getting back into writing fiction. I realized some time ago that how I write fiction needs some serious work. With how much time I’ve put into my blogging jobs, I haven’t had much spare time to dedicate to improving that particular realm of my writing. I’ve decided that I will make the time for it because it’s something quite important to me. I haven’t decided whether or not I’ll post any of it, because I am writing it with the hope of eventually publishing it legit. Maybe there’s some sort of alternative income method I could use to make it available online. We’ll see!

That’s all, folks.

I’ve temporarily come into possession of my grandparents’ old hand-written cookbooks. Some of the cookbooks are fairly recent — things they were writing in only a few short year before they passed away, but each of the books becomes progressively older. Some of these recipes date back to when they were children, and the recipes were passed down to them by others. It’s highly unlikely that I’ll ever actually use these cookbooks myself, I’m not that much of a chef, but merely having them is somewhat thrilling. I haven’t decided whether I’ll do anything with them, but I find myself compelled to put at least one of the recipes online for no other reason than I put everything online.

I’ve opened the oldest looking cookbook here to a random page and this is the recipe it contained:

Felicity Black-and-White Cake

Ingredients:

• 2 cups sifted cake flour
• 1 3/4 cups sugar
• 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup Spry
• 1 cup less 2 tablespoons milk
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 3 egg whites, unbeaten

Directions

Sift flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt into mixing bowl. Drop in Spry. Add 2/3 of milk, then vanilla, and beat 200 strokes (2 minutes by hand or on mixer at low speed). Scrape bowl and spoon or beater. Add egg whites and remaining milk and beat 200 strokes. Bake in 2 deep 8-inch Sprycoated layer pans in moderate oven (360 degrees) 25-30 minutes. Spread Chocolate Frosting between layers and on top and sides of cake.

Done!

A cake recipe isn’t the most exciting thing ever, but the recipe makes it age apparent pretty quickly. Spry is a vegetable shortening that died out in the late 50s, early 60s — a competitor to the more widely known Crisco.

I’ve officially expanded my regular freelance work into the realm of Starcraft 2. This isn’t a brand new revelation, I’ve been doing it for two months now, but I realized I never actually mentioned it here. Currently I’m the sole content creator/contributor on that blog, so with the exception of the first blog post or two, it’s exclusively my work. Much like my work at WoW Insider, it covers content for all sorts of players and fans of the game, whether you’re a casual player just learning how to play or an esports enthusiast that knows the ins and outs of Starcraft. If you’re a Starcraft fan, head over to the site and check it out.

As a final note, I’m always looking for other opportunities for freelance writing gigs. If you know someone that’s looking for writers, let me know. You can contact me via the comments below or directly via email: alexziebart@gmail.com