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rainbowfic2026-03-10 03:40 pm
paradoxcase) wrote in rainbowfic2026-03-10 03:40 pm
Beet Red #30 [The Fulcrum]
Name: The Last Day of History (Nightmare Edition)
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Beet Red #30: Live to fight another day
Styles and Supplies: Reimagining, Nubs, Chiaroscuro, Panorama
Word Count: 2324
Rating: T
Warnings: Non-Graphic Gun Violence
Characters: Setsiana
In-Universe Date: Night of 1912.8.5.1
Summary: Setsiana has a nightmare.
Notes: I've been posting the early parts of this story (so far up through the very long chapter where Cusäfä is introduced) to a critique site, and the consensus was that the first part of this story (this post) was not a good opening. Since the worldbuilding that's introduced there is not strictly relevant until the end of part one, I redid that scene as a nightmare that Setsiana has after they come back from the T'arsi Fair and she is introduced to guns for the first time (so, basically between this post and this post). I do want to revise it again based on additional feedback I've received on this version, but I figured I would post this second revision here.
This is also the first installment of a Beet Red Nubs tapestry that I'm going to be using in the future to write missing scenes from completed stories or Tales From the Neighborhood plot threads. I have ideas for most of the prompts, but most of them are not scheduled yet, and thus won't be posted for at least another year. I figure this can be both Nubs and Reimagining, since it is a rewrite but is now also chronologically during a period of time that was skipped over, initially.
That night, Setsiana found herself back at Taleinyo in her dreams, working her normal schoolteaching shift at the temple.
The hour chime sounded for the first of the afternoon hours, and she hurried to a classroom door and pulled it open. The fall breeze gusting through the open temple arch rooted her in the moment; this was the very last class she would teach before the fall break began. Her students were the children of craftsmen and shop owners, and took their break from school in the fall, while the children of farmers and farm workers took their break in the summer, when they were needed at home. In Nwórza, there was a much smaller, more elite class of students who were the children of the Governor and his aides, and their season of freedom was the spring, but none of those privileged children would ever be educated in a small town like Syarhrít.
The last of the children were returning from the break, and for once, not a single one was late. No one was ever late for the last history lesson of Setsiana’s year. They had exchanged the clothing they had worn earlier in the day with a variety of costumes, some in fanciful suits of armor made out of painted stiff paper and outlandish helmets featuring animal horns and feathers with artistic streaks of dirt on their cheeks, others in more traditional outfits that had been modeled according to written accounts of the nobility of the ancient kingdom, their foremost a little king in the ancient green and gold regalia, his right hand glittering with rings of colored glass. A cluster of girls wore miniature versions of Setsiana’s own dress, all black with a careful branching timeline Tree picked out in silver embroidery. They were ten years old, some of them eleven, and they were ready for the best day of history class like they hadn't been all year long. They had studied the history this year, and now they would show off what they had learned.
Setsiana did one last sweep of the room to make very sure that no one was missing, and clapped her hands. They took this as the signal she intended; there was a flurry of commotion as they all got up from their seats at once, chairs and desks were moved away from the area that was to become the stage, props and backdrops were pulled out of storage closets, and friends were asked to check the state of each other's hair. Setsiana helped the little priestesses do up the braids the proper way, in the three braids. Some of them would have to be very small braids; they'd been instructed to grow out their hair, but some had forgotten until much too late. The braids were secured with rubber bands, as she did with her own hair, and would have to be removed at the end of the class, lest the girls’ parents wonder at them.
After sorting out the braids, she retrieved the larger chair from behind her own desk, cleared a space among the remaining students’ chairs, and sat down to watch, and take notes.
The play commenced. A child carried a title card across the area designated as the stage stating that it was the year of Sapfita’s Gift, the one traditionally numbered 0. The king was meeting with his advisers, who were telling him the news that the terrible Tuari horde was about to attack, and would surely kill every Cheanya man, woman, and child with the army they had amassed. The king bemoaned that had the threat been brought to his attention sooner, he might have been able to prepare; one of the advisers nervously reminded him that it had, many times actually, and was summarily dismissed from the meeting. Setsiana smiled; they had learned well the style of dysfunction that had characterized the ancient kingdom.
The scenery rotated; the walls of the king’s castle rolled away to the left on wheels, the king and little courtiers going with it, while the painted backdrop was rolled up on a spindle on the left at the same time that more backdrop was spooled out of another on the right, giving the impression that frame of view was moving to the right. The children dressed as the Tuari in their feathers and animal horns and dirt-streaked faces moved on stage with the backdrop, yelling and making threatening gestures with their wooden weapons.
Somehow, in the dream, they seemed more realistic, more dangerous, the weapons more real and the malice in their expressions more genuine. Setsiana gently tried to ease the dream away from this trajectory. It was often something that worked for her, and after a moment, the threatening feeling faded, and the Tuari returned to being rowdy 10-year-olds again.
The rolling backdrop had been the idea of Zlúnrays, the dark-haired girl operating the left spindle with a focused intensity. She was a quiet child who did poorly with loud environments and large groups, and she occasionally required one on one help, but she was quite bright and did well when her needs were met. She seemed to be doing well today, in spite of yelling of the Tuari warriors; the earplugs Setsiana had fashioned for her for this presentation must be working. There had been another one like this in Setsiana’s class two years ago. The priestesses classified it as a disorder of the senses, that made everything feel too much and too overwhelming, coupled with a difficulty with relating to others, and Setsiana had guidelines for what to do for such children to help them succeed.
The scenery rotated back to the left, and the king and his advisers came back on stage. Some new children entered the scene: the little priestesses. Their leader told the king that all was not lost and that the Eternal Source of Wisdom, the Past, Present, and Future, Sapfita, had blessed the priesthood with a generous Gift: a way to transport the entire Cheanya people back in time 200 years in order to better prepare for the attack.
The king dismissed the talk of time travel as arrant nonsense and returned to bickering with his advisers. Night fell as a new backdrop was produced. A new set of children came on stage from the left, a line of boys in stiff paper armor with the sigils of the ancient kingdom drawn on the chests and shoulders. A number of others crouched on the ground, playing the parts of frightened women and children. The soldiers swung their swords, seemingly as an experiment, and some of them fell over. Setsiana chuckled at this bit of humor; it hadn’t been quite that bad in reality, but the little soldiers seemed to be having fun with the act.
The Tuari came back on from the right and made another threatening display. Again, they seemed to become more real and more dangerous. For a moment, Setsiana saw what might have been a gun like the ones from the Fair. Again, she calmed the dream, and it became a children’s play once more.
The priestesses entered again from the left. There wasn’t a clear and precise description of how the first successful time travel had happened, not even for Setsiana, though it was something she’d always wondered about. Similarly, there weren’t very many consistent descriptions of what the Tuari had actually looked like or what they had worn to go to war, so their costumes were largely left to the imaginations of the children in these plays. Setsiana would not even be allowed to learn the technical details of the operation of modern Mirrors until she achieved status as a full priestess, and these children had never seen a Mirror at all and were not supposed to even know what it looked like. Setsiana rather enjoyed seeing the ideas the children came up with for this play.
This class had constructed a tall oval out of some wire, not unlike an elongated mundane mirror that might hang on a wall, wrapped with pale blue cloth. Two of the little priestesses held it upright, while their leader instructed the besieged Cheanya to enter the oval, which they did, one at a time. A child hidden behind the backdrop struck a metal pan with a spoon and made high-pitched eee sound every time someone stepped through. The Tuari acted confused, and then retreated from the stage.
The backdrop once again returned to daytime, and all of the children who had gone through the oval came back out, one at a time, this time with long ooo sound accompanying the clang. Soldiers were sent out, and came back reporting that they had found the Cheanya people of 200 years ago in a nearby settlement. A title card carried across the stage declared it to be 200 years before the year of the Gift.
The king called another meeting, with all the advisers, the soldiers, the priestesses, and the women and children. Plans were made, the adviser who had been sent out earlier was welcomed back and given a project to oversee, the soldiers made promises to improve and train future generations to face the battle they could not. The king even inclined his head to head priestess and thanked her. But then he said: “We look forward to using this technology in the future. Will the priesthood share its knowledge with their rightful king?”
The priestess said, “That depends on what our rightful king deems fit to share with us.” Most of the lines in the play had been written by the children, with occasional help, but these two had, as almost always, been written by Setsiana. This was the most important part of the play, explaining the origins of the priesthood’s fraught relationship with the Emperor, and it was important that the children understood it correctly.
All of the children exited the stage, and another title card declared that 200 years had passed. Tuari came back on from right. In the real play, they had been confused and frightened here, upon seeing the Cheanya warriors suddenly reappear in a different place, in greater numbers, with improved armor and weapons. But here in the dream, they had already transformed into grown adults with real weapons and real murderous intent. And instead of focusing on the children playing the Cheanya soldiers who would imminently enter from the left, they had turned to face Setsiana.
They did have guns like the ones at the Fair now, she saw, despite the anachronism of it. She sat rooted to the spot as their leader, who had now grown a head of curls that much resembled Cyaru’s, pulled out his gun and pointed it at her. The woman beside him seemed for a moment to be Qhoroali, but the vision wavered and she became a stranger once again.
“The priesthood of Sapfita will pay for the crimes it has committed,” said the leader, and leveled the gun at her.
In a sudden movement, she leapt aside as the deafening bang of the firework sounded, and reached for the knife, which she found was now in her skirt, which had transformed from the nurefye that she’d been wearing earlier. With only a slight hesitation, she threw it at the Tuari leader, but her movements were off and the aim was wrong, and she knew as it left her hand that it would not hit.
As the knife passed the assembled Tuari, however, their transformation reversed, and they returned to being disheveled children again, with harmless wooden weapons. Setsiana shakily rose to her feet and sat in her chair again, breathing hard, and watched as the play returned to its scripted course.
Setsiana calmed herself as she watched the remainder of the play. The children playing the Cheanya came back on stage, wearing different costumes and different fake facial hair to indicate that they were different people after the passage of two hundred years, except for the priestesses, who dressed in the same styles in every time period. The king gave out medals, accolades, and royal appointments, and declared himself to be an emperor, but ignored the priestesses.
The head priestess asked, “Have you forgotten about those who made this victory possible?”
The newly crowned Emperor said, “Of course we haven’t forgotten about your help all those years ago. But today belongs to the soldiers and the advisers who contributed in the present time. Perhaps if the priesthood showed us how the miracle was accomplished, they would be recognized as well.”
The priestess replied, “You will know how it was done when you appear to be properly grateful for it.” The line was delivered with just the right amount of stern indignation; there would be good marks for her this year… if Setsiana was ever able to return to 1647 to submit them.
It was probably not actually true that there was some chance that the priesthood would divulge the mechanism of time travel, but this line of dialog had been quoted from the actual event 1647 years before this play had been performed.
Setsiana couldn’t imagine any amount of good will that the Emperor could provide in the current day that would convince the priesthood to give up its secret. But the priestess who had originally said that had already known that no attempt would ever be made, because Yesora’s Grammar of QuCheanya had already been delivered at that point, and the whole history of the Emperor’s contention with the priesthood was already known.
Some who studied history outside the priesthood argued that if the Grammar had never been delivered and the priestesses had not been angered by it ahead of time, things might have happened differently, but the priesthood was generally uninterested in confirming or denying this theory.
Setsiana moved to staple her notes together, but the dream was already dissolving around her and dissipating into nothing.
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Beet Red #30: Live to fight another day
Styles and Supplies: Reimagining, Nubs, Chiaroscuro, Panorama
Word Count: 2324
Rating: T
Warnings: Non-Graphic Gun Violence
Characters: Setsiana
In-Universe Date: Night of 1912.8.5.1
Summary: Setsiana has a nightmare.
Notes: I've been posting the early parts of this story (so far up through the very long chapter where Cusäfä is introduced) to a critique site, and the consensus was that the first part of this story (this post) was not a good opening. Since the worldbuilding that's introduced there is not strictly relevant until the end of part one, I redid that scene as a nightmare that Setsiana has after they come back from the T'arsi Fair and she is introduced to guns for the first time (so, basically between this post and this post). I do want to revise it again based on additional feedback I've received on this version, but I figured I would post this second revision here.
This is also the first installment of a Beet Red Nubs tapestry that I'm going to be using in the future to write missing scenes from completed stories or Tales From the Neighborhood plot threads. I have ideas for most of the prompts, but most of them are not scheduled yet, and thus won't be posted for at least another year. I figure this can be both Nubs and Reimagining, since it is a rewrite but is now also chronologically during a period of time that was skipped over, initially.
That night, Setsiana found herself back at Taleinyo in her dreams, working her normal schoolteaching shift at the temple.
The hour chime sounded for the first of the afternoon hours, and she hurried to a classroom door and pulled it open. The fall breeze gusting through the open temple arch rooted her in the moment; this was the very last class she would teach before the fall break began. Her students were the children of craftsmen and shop owners, and took their break from school in the fall, while the children of farmers and farm workers took their break in the summer, when they were needed at home. In Nwórza, there was a much smaller, more elite class of students who were the children of the Governor and his aides, and their season of freedom was the spring, but none of those privileged children would ever be educated in a small town like Syarhrít.
The last of the children were returning from the break, and for once, not a single one was late. No one was ever late for the last history lesson of Setsiana’s year. They had exchanged the clothing they had worn earlier in the day with a variety of costumes, some in fanciful suits of armor made out of painted stiff paper and outlandish helmets featuring animal horns and feathers with artistic streaks of dirt on their cheeks, others in more traditional outfits that had been modeled according to written accounts of the nobility of the ancient kingdom, their foremost a little king in the ancient green and gold regalia, his right hand glittering with rings of colored glass. A cluster of girls wore miniature versions of Setsiana’s own dress, all black with a careful branching timeline Tree picked out in silver embroidery. They were ten years old, some of them eleven, and they were ready for the best day of history class like they hadn't been all year long. They had studied the history this year, and now they would show off what they had learned.
Setsiana did one last sweep of the room to make very sure that no one was missing, and clapped her hands. They took this as the signal she intended; there was a flurry of commotion as they all got up from their seats at once, chairs and desks were moved away from the area that was to become the stage, props and backdrops were pulled out of storage closets, and friends were asked to check the state of each other's hair. Setsiana helped the little priestesses do up the braids the proper way, in the three braids. Some of them would have to be very small braids; they'd been instructed to grow out their hair, but some had forgotten until much too late. The braids were secured with rubber bands, as she did with her own hair, and would have to be removed at the end of the class, lest the girls’ parents wonder at them.
After sorting out the braids, she retrieved the larger chair from behind her own desk, cleared a space among the remaining students’ chairs, and sat down to watch, and take notes.
The play commenced. A child carried a title card across the area designated as the stage stating that it was the year of Sapfita’s Gift, the one traditionally numbered 0. The king was meeting with his advisers, who were telling him the news that the terrible Tuari horde was about to attack, and would surely kill every Cheanya man, woman, and child with the army they had amassed. The king bemoaned that had the threat been brought to his attention sooner, he might have been able to prepare; one of the advisers nervously reminded him that it had, many times actually, and was summarily dismissed from the meeting. Setsiana smiled; they had learned well the style of dysfunction that had characterized the ancient kingdom.
The scenery rotated; the walls of the king’s castle rolled away to the left on wheels, the king and little courtiers going with it, while the painted backdrop was rolled up on a spindle on the left at the same time that more backdrop was spooled out of another on the right, giving the impression that frame of view was moving to the right. The children dressed as the Tuari in their feathers and animal horns and dirt-streaked faces moved on stage with the backdrop, yelling and making threatening gestures with their wooden weapons.
Somehow, in the dream, they seemed more realistic, more dangerous, the weapons more real and the malice in their expressions more genuine. Setsiana gently tried to ease the dream away from this trajectory. It was often something that worked for her, and after a moment, the threatening feeling faded, and the Tuari returned to being rowdy 10-year-olds again.
The rolling backdrop had been the idea of Zlúnrays, the dark-haired girl operating the left spindle with a focused intensity. She was a quiet child who did poorly with loud environments and large groups, and she occasionally required one on one help, but she was quite bright and did well when her needs were met. She seemed to be doing well today, in spite of yelling of the Tuari warriors; the earplugs Setsiana had fashioned for her for this presentation must be working. There had been another one like this in Setsiana’s class two years ago. The priestesses classified it as a disorder of the senses, that made everything feel too much and too overwhelming, coupled with a difficulty with relating to others, and Setsiana had guidelines for what to do for such children to help them succeed.
The scenery rotated back to the left, and the king and his advisers came back on stage. Some new children entered the scene: the little priestesses. Their leader told the king that all was not lost and that the Eternal Source of Wisdom, the Past, Present, and Future, Sapfita, had blessed the priesthood with a generous Gift: a way to transport the entire Cheanya people back in time 200 years in order to better prepare for the attack.
The king dismissed the talk of time travel as arrant nonsense and returned to bickering with his advisers. Night fell as a new backdrop was produced. A new set of children came on stage from the left, a line of boys in stiff paper armor with the sigils of the ancient kingdom drawn on the chests and shoulders. A number of others crouched on the ground, playing the parts of frightened women and children. The soldiers swung their swords, seemingly as an experiment, and some of them fell over. Setsiana chuckled at this bit of humor; it hadn’t been quite that bad in reality, but the little soldiers seemed to be having fun with the act.
The Tuari came back on from the right and made another threatening display. Again, they seemed to become more real and more dangerous. For a moment, Setsiana saw what might have been a gun like the ones from the Fair. Again, she calmed the dream, and it became a children’s play once more.
The priestesses entered again from the left. There wasn’t a clear and precise description of how the first successful time travel had happened, not even for Setsiana, though it was something she’d always wondered about. Similarly, there weren’t very many consistent descriptions of what the Tuari had actually looked like or what they had worn to go to war, so their costumes were largely left to the imaginations of the children in these plays. Setsiana would not even be allowed to learn the technical details of the operation of modern Mirrors until she achieved status as a full priestess, and these children had never seen a Mirror at all and were not supposed to even know what it looked like. Setsiana rather enjoyed seeing the ideas the children came up with for this play.
This class had constructed a tall oval out of some wire, not unlike an elongated mundane mirror that might hang on a wall, wrapped with pale blue cloth. Two of the little priestesses held it upright, while their leader instructed the besieged Cheanya to enter the oval, which they did, one at a time. A child hidden behind the backdrop struck a metal pan with a spoon and made high-pitched eee sound every time someone stepped through. The Tuari acted confused, and then retreated from the stage.
The backdrop once again returned to daytime, and all of the children who had gone through the oval came back out, one at a time, this time with long ooo sound accompanying the clang. Soldiers were sent out, and came back reporting that they had found the Cheanya people of 200 years ago in a nearby settlement. A title card carried across the stage declared it to be 200 years before the year of the Gift.
The king called another meeting, with all the advisers, the soldiers, the priestesses, and the women and children. Plans were made, the adviser who had been sent out earlier was welcomed back and given a project to oversee, the soldiers made promises to improve and train future generations to face the battle they could not. The king even inclined his head to head priestess and thanked her. But then he said: “We look forward to using this technology in the future. Will the priesthood share its knowledge with their rightful king?”
The priestess said, “That depends on what our rightful king deems fit to share with us.” Most of the lines in the play had been written by the children, with occasional help, but these two had, as almost always, been written by Setsiana. This was the most important part of the play, explaining the origins of the priesthood’s fraught relationship with the Emperor, and it was important that the children understood it correctly.
All of the children exited the stage, and another title card declared that 200 years had passed. Tuari came back on from right. In the real play, they had been confused and frightened here, upon seeing the Cheanya warriors suddenly reappear in a different place, in greater numbers, with improved armor and weapons. But here in the dream, they had already transformed into grown adults with real weapons and real murderous intent. And instead of focusing on the children playing the Cheanya soldiers who would imminently enter from the left, they had turned to face Setsiana.
They did have guns like the ones at the Fair now, she saw, despite the anachronism of it. She sat rooted to the spot as their leader, who had now grown a head of curls that much resembled Cyaru’s, pulled out his gun and pointed it at her. The woman beside him seemed for a moment to be Qhoroali, but the vision wavered and she became a stranger once again.
“The priesthood of Sapfita will pay for the crimes it has committed,” said the leader, and leveled the gun at her.
In a sudden movement, she leapt aside as the deafening bang of the firework sounded, and reached for the knife, which she found was now in her skirt, which had transformed from the nurefye that she’d been wearing earlier. With only a slight hesitation, she threw it at the Tuari leader, but her movements were off and the aim was wrong, and she knew as it left her hand that it would not hit.
As the knife passed the assembled Tuari, however, their transformation reversed, and they returned to being disheveled children again, with harmless wooden weapons. Setsiana shakily rose to her feet and sat in her chair again, breathing hard, and watched as the play returned to its scripted course.
Setsiana calmed herself as she watched the remainder of the play. The children playing the Cheanya came back on stage, wearing different costumes and different fake facial hair to indicate that they were different people after the passage of two hundred years, except for the priestesses, who dressed in the same styles in every time period. The king gave out medals, accolades, and royal appointments, and declared himself to be an emperor, but ignored the priestesses.
The head priestess asked, “Have you forgotten about those who made this victory possible?”
The newly crowned Emperor said, “Of course we haven’t forgotten about your help all those years ago. But today belongs to the soldiers and the advisers who contributed in the present time. Perhaps if the priesthood showed us how the miracle was accomplished, they would be recognized as well.”
The priestess replied, “You will know how it was done when you appear to be properly grateful for it.” The line was delivered with just the right amount of stern indignation; there would be good marks for her this year… if Setsiana was ever able to return to 1647 to submit them.
It was probably not actually true that there was some chance that the priesthood would divulge the mechanism of time travel, but this line of dialog had been quoted from the actual event 1647 years before this play had been performed.
Setsiana couldn’t imagine any amount of good will that the Emperor could provide in the current day that would convince the priesthood to give up its secret. But the priestess who had originally said that had already known that no attempt would ever be made, because Yesora’s Grammar of QuCheanya had already been delivered at that point, and the whole history of the Emperor’s contention with the priesthood was already known.
Some who studied history outside the priesthood argued that if the Grammar had never been delivered and the priestesses had not been angered by it ahead of time, things might have happened differently, but the priesthood was generally uninterested in confirming or denying this theory.
Setsiana moved to staple her notes together, but the dream was already dissolving around her and dissipating into nothing.