thisbluespirit (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thisbluespirit) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rainbowfic2025-03-15 09:06 pm
thisbluespirit) wrote in rainbowfic2025-03-15 09:06 pm
Dark Scarlet #6; Beet Red #9; Warm Heart #12 [Starfall]
Name: from the ashes
Story: Starfall
Colors: Dark Scarlet #6 (pure as the driven); Beet Red #9 (Do it yourself); Warm Heart #12 (Belief)
Supplies and Styles: Canvas + Chiaroscuro + Seed Beads + Charcoal
Word Count: 690
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Religious cults, arson, implied deaths.
Notes: 312, Westrever in Ennesland (what is now Emoyra's Northern District.) Another historical piece - a Maralonian cult that got out of hand at this time - Maralon is the Power associated with fire/heat.
Summary: Rodrice takes part in a ceremonial burning.
Flames leap at the sky, snapping and biting; tongues of fire lick at the buildings, consuming everything within and leaving empty shells behind. The blaze wars with the wintry night's sullen sky as it spits out half-hearted sleet.
"Burn well," Rodrice says. He pulls vivid robes close about him. They are reversible—the inner lining is black for the dark before the flames and the ash left after; the outer is fiery orange with crimson and brown edging.
People don't understand. They refuse to see how it is; that they have to give up the old to claim the new. Fire destroys, but it clears the way for the future to grow.
Too much love of the old is holding them back. The signs they have been given have shouted it out. Shara has tried for two solid years to wash it all away and still nobody will listen. They would rather drown first.
So, Rodrice stands here and feeds the errant past to the flames for those who cannot or will not let it go.
Rodrice didn't used to understand this, but he heard Marence talk—now he does. Marence is not their leader's real name. People call him all kinds of things—Ash-heart, Flame-Bringer, Fire-Imor, a priest of Maralon—but it's what he tells them that matters.
"It's the way of things," Marence had said. "The Powers are only to be approached in their element—through some form of death. It was a dead land they were able to shape. I've seen Maralon in the smoke, the embers. I know what she asks of us."
Here in the northernmost places, they cling to history everyone else has already left behind them. The Northlanders tell tales that stretch back hundreds of years before Starfall, and in Rodrice's own country of Ennesland, people go out of their way to gather and preserve articles from a whole other world—things that don't belong here. It's no wonder the Powers are protesting, when they did all they could to wipe that useless past away, even to giving their lives to make dead, barren land fresh and new and alive.
Marence says enough is enough.
Rodrice listens. He burns his unnecessary possessions and joins Marence in reclaiming their land and people through the burnings.
It's been hard work in this wet weather to get a real blaze going. Most of Rodrice's burnings until now have been small—only personal items, old books, broken ancient artificiary. After that, then, an odd craftworker's house or shop, or an outhouse full of lumber.
Tonight's fire is larger than anything he's set alight before. It's ravenous. It doesn't stop with the house they picked out. The sky has frozen, the sleet ceased altogether—the night holding its breath alongside them, to watch the burning. The flames race onwards, down Westrever's main street. There's hay in that barn, fences lining the road, a brewhouse here, a shop nearby full of Aliate concoctions—so many old wooden buildings. Westrever's barely more than a village, hidden up in the hills. It has hardly any stone houses, unlike the towns.
It's all to the good: Westrever will die, and then build anew on the cleared ground.
Rodrice stares into the heart of the conflagration, hoping to see Maralon there—oh, to enter by the flame! Marence says he has done so—it is possible.
But he sees only spots in front of his eyes from looking too hard into bright flames, and blinks, tugging his hood down. Very well. Let that be for others, then—they will look, they will hear and learn the way to dry out the land and end the deluge.
Rodrice closes his ears to the shouts of the Westrevans as they run out into the street, fighting the inferno swallowing their homes, or screaming out from within them. He steps back into the shadows, deepened in contrast to the burning settlement. There are other sparks to set to more woodpiles yet. The work is far from done.
"Burn well," he says again, out of the darkness. "Blessings of Maralon on you all."
Story: Starfall
Colors: Dark Scarlet #6 (pure as the driven); Beet Red #9 (Do it yourself); Warm Heart #12 (Belief)
Supplies and Styles: Canvas + Chiaroscuro + Seed Beads + Charcoal
Word Count: 690
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Religious cults, arson, implied deaths.
Notes: 312, Westrever in Ennesland (what is now Emoyra's Northern District.) Another historical piece - a Maralonian cult that got out of hand at this time - Maralon is the Power associated with fire/heat.
Summary: Rodrice takes part in a ceremonial burning.
Flames leap at the sky, snapping and biting; tongues of fire lick at the buildings, consuming everything within and leaving empty shells behind. The blaze wars with the wintry night's sullen sky as it spits out half-hearted sleet.
"Burn well," Rodrice says. He pulls vivid robes close about him. They are reversible—the inner lining is black for the dark before the flames and the ash left after; the outer is fiery orange with crimson and brown edging.
People don't understand. They refuse to see how it is; that they have to give up the old to claim the new. Fire destroys, but it clears the way for the future to grow.
Too much love of the old is holding them back. The signs they have been given have shouted it out. Shara has tried for two solid years to wash it all away and still nobody will listen. They would rather drown first.
So, Rodrice stands here and feeds the errant past to the flames for those who cannot or will not let it go.
Rodrice didn't used to understand this, but he heard Marence talk—now he does. Marence is not their leader's real name. People call him all kinds of things—Ash-heart, Flame-Bringer, Fire-Imor, a priest of Maralon—but it's what he tells them that matters.
"It's the way of things," Marence had said. "The Powers are only to be approached in their element—through some form of death. It was a dead land they were able to shape. I've seen Maralon in the smoke, the embers. I know what she asks of us."
Here in the northernmost places, they cling to history everyone else has already left behind them. The Northlanders tell tales that stretch back hundreds of years before Starfall, and in Rodrice's own country of Ennesland, people go out of their way to gather and preserve articles from a whole other world—things that don't belong here. It's no wonder the Powers are protesting, when they did all they could to wipe that useless past away, even to giving their lives to make dead, barren land fresh and new and alive.
Marence says enough is enough.
Rodrice listens. He burns his unnecessary possessions and joins Marence in reclaiming their land and people through the burnings.
It's been hard work in this wet weather to get a real blaze going. Most of Rodrice's burnings until now have been small—only personal items, old books, broken ancient artificiary. After that, then, an odd craftworker's house or shop, or an outhouse full of lumber.
Tonight's fire is larger than anything he's set alight before. It's ravenous. It doesn't stop with the house they picked out. The sky has frozen, the sleet ceased altogether—the night holding its breath alongside them, to watch the burning. The flames race onwards, down Westrever's main street. There's hay in that barn, fences lining the road, a brewhouse here, a shop nearby full of Aliate concoctions—so many old wooden buildings. Westrever's barely more than a village, hidden up in the hills. It has hardly any stone houses, unlike the towns.
It's all to the good: Westrever will die, and then build anew on the cleared ground.
Rodrice stares into the heart of the conflagration, hoping to see Maralon there—oh, to enter by the flame! Marence says he has done so—it is possible.
But he sees only spots in front of his eyes from looking too hard into bright flames, and blinks, tugging his hood down. Very well. Let that be for others, then—they will look, they will hear and learn the way to dry out the land and end the deluge.
Rodrice closes his ears to the shouts of the Westrevans as they run out into the street, fighting the inferno swallowing their homes, or screaming out from within them. He steps back into the shadows, deepened in contrast to the burning settlement. There are other sparks to set to more woodpiles yet. The work is far from done.
"Burn well," he says again, out of the darkness. "Blessings of Maralon on you all."
no subject
no subject
no subject
A fanatic who's an arsonist is never a good thing.
no subject
Well, that's a very dark and disturbing religious philosophy. I am kind of curious about the Powers "giving their lives to make dead, barren land fresh and new and alive", I don't know if you already posted about that before?
no subject
I am kind of curious about the Powers "giving their lives to make dead, barren land fresh and new and alive", I don't know if you already posted about that before?
Ahhh, that is a very difficult question to answer, because it's long-backgrounded stuff that's often referred to vaguely and not really explained as such. I think by this time, I must have mentioned this much: that this world's human population arrived (or the majority of them believe they arrived) through an event called Starfall which sounds like the crash of a spaceship into/through the Rift above/Boundary Paths below. Current theories of thought explain pre-Starfall people as actually-Starfall people who were cast back in time through the Paths. (These pre-Starfall people arrived in two main separate waves.)
The planet had previously suffered some sort of cataclysm, leaving the majority of (the known areas of it) unoccupied and barren. The Starfall event also created the Powers who transformed the barren area into fertile land. The Powers didn't live for very long, dying or 'dispersing' into the air afterwards, which is what that quote is referring to, but through the very particular lens of this Maralonian cultist.
In terms of direct pieces, there are two ficlets, about the earliest Pre-Starfall Powers and the creation of a particular Power during the Starfall event.
no subject
Ahh, neat!
no subject
Yeah, all of the red flags go up right there, even before the people do.
no subject
The terraforming aspect of the mythos has interested me from the start, along with the implications of the cataclysm.
no subject
If it doesn't spark joy... set it alight for real. XD And thank you! And, yes. <3
no subject
They are indeed both full of implications that will no doubt land somewhere if I keep on writing long enough, although it's fair to say that I'm clearer on the former than the latter at the moment.
no subject
This is really good!
no subject
I can wait until your brain catches up to its own patterning!
no subject
no subject
no subject
Also thanks because your comments turning up out of the blue always improve a week a lot, and this one needed some improving! <3