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Fresh Thyme #4 [The Year Universe]
May. 4th, 2025 02:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
paradoxcaseName: Naming Day
Story: The Year Universe
Colors: Fresh Thyme #4: Countdown
Styles and Supplies: Panorama, Life Drawing, Gift Wrap, Parchment, Resin (Three weeks for Dreamwidth), Watercolors ("In his introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2019, guest editor Anthony Doerr lists several dos and don’ts one often hears about writing short stories and describes his love for reading and writing stories that break those very rules. Some of the rules Doerr mentions are: “Don’t start with a character waking up. Jump right into the action. Exposition is boring. Backstory slows you down. Stick with a single protagonist. Make sure he or she is likable. Don’t break up chronology.” This week, think carefully about the reasoning behind one of these oft-cited rules, then write a story that explicitly goes against it. How can the incorporation of an aspect of experimentation or innovation effectively push against the possibly clichéd rationale behind the original rule?" - This breaks both "Backstory slows you down" and "Don't break up chronology.")
Word Count: 3847
Rating: T
Warnings: Brief discussion of sex/sexuality
Characters: Ghefairh, Zheinnau, Dhashtu, Kheosaid, King Izalla, Vozkhunh
In-Universe Date: I haven't decided on exact dates for this one, but this takes place a couple decades after Qhoroali's time in the Fulcrum.
Summary: Ghefairh Nhorei Kondi attends a Naming Day.
Notes: Slight break from the Fulcrum for a couple posts. Since I think we just got all the Tharse worldbuilding we're going to get in the Fulcrum, and I need to use up this prompt that doesn't really work well with a time travel story, I'm posting this now. This is the first part of a story in the same universe as the Fulcrum that takes place in Tharse and Meandhshen and is (eventually) going to be about the Cothas religion that was mentioned at the very beginning of the Fulcrum. I haven't outlined it anywhere near as thoroughly, and I don't know exactly how everything here will tie into the rest of the plot, but I had a very clear idea about how the story was going to begin. There will probably not be more of this until I finish the Fulcrum, however.
A note about the spellings: In the Fulcrum, I was using an apostrophe for the retroflex consonants, but for this story I am switching to using h, because it looks way less cursed when there are multiple of them in the same word (imagine if I had written "D'as'tu" up there, for example). Kh and gh are actually velar fricatives here, but all other h indicate retroflexes. I'll continue to use the apostrophe in the Fulcrum, since there are only two Tharsi names there and one of them is actually a fake name invented by Mázghwent.
Gift Wrap here is for the Naming Day, the wedding, and the two wedding anniversaries, and Parchment because I actually did write something for this story fifteen years ago when I first got the idea for it. The worldbuilding has changed so much now that it's almost completely unrecognizable, but it was the same basic story idea. I might rewrite that particular piece later for Reimagining credit here.
( Naming Day )
Story: The Year Universe
Colors: Fresh Thyme #4: Countdown
Styles and Supplies: Panorama, Life Drawing, Gift Wrap, Parchment, Resin (Three weeks for Dreamwidth), Watercolors ("In his introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2019, guest editor Anthony Doerr lists several dos and don’ts one often hears about writing short stories and describes his love for reading and writing stories that break those very rules. Some of the rules Doerr mentions are: “Don’t start with a character waking up. Jump right into the action. Exposition is boring. Backstory slows you down. Stick with a single protagonist. Make sure he or she is likable. Don’t break up chronology.” This week, think carefully about the reasoning behind one of these oft-cited rules, then write a story that explicitly goes against it. How can the incorporation of an aspect of experimentation or innovation effectively push against the possibly clichéd rationale behind the original rule?" - This breaks both "Backstory slows you down" and "Don't break up chronology.")
Word Count: 3847
Rating: T
Warnings: Brief discussion of sex/sexuality
Characters: Ghefairh, Zheinnau, Dhashtu, Kheosaid, King Izalla, Vozkhunh
In-Universe Date: I haven't decided on exact dates for this one, but this takes place a couple decades after Qhoroali's time in the Fulcrum.
Summary: Ghefairh Nhorei Kondi attends a Naming Day.
Notes: Slight break from the Fulcrum for a couple posts. Since I think we just got all the Tharse worldbuilding we're going to get in the Fulcrum, and I need to use up this prompt that doesn't really work well with a time travel story, I'm posting this now. This is the first part of a story in the same universe as the Fulcrum that takes place in Tharse and Meandhshen and is (eventually) going to be about the Cothas religion that was mentioned at the very beginning of the Fulcrum. I haven't outlined it anywhere near as thoroughly, and I don't know exactly how everything here will tie into the rest of the plot, but I had a very clear idea about how the story was going to begin. There will probably not be more of this until I finish the Fulcrum, however.
A note about the spellings: In the Fulcrum, I was using an apostrophe for the retroflex consonants, but for this story I am switching to using h, because it looks way less cursed when there are multiple of them in the same word (imagine if I had written "D'as'tu" up there, for example). Kh and gh are actually velar fricatives here, but all other h indicate retroflexes. I'll continue to use the apostrophe in the Fulcrum, since there are only two Tharsi names there and one of them is actually a fake name invented by Mázghwent.
Gift Wrap here is for the Naming Day, the wedding, and the two wedding anniversaries, and Parchment because I actually did write something for this story fifteen years ago when I first got the idea for it. The worldbuilding has changed so much now that it's almost completely unrecognizable, but it was the same basic story idea. I might rewrite that particular piece later for Reimagining credit here.
( Naming Day )
