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The stairs went far down, leaving the sounds of the city behind high above. Ardí carried an oil lamp and led his appointed novice to a small room on a landing, where he set the oil lamp on a small table. He pulled back a curtain and led her onwards. The next chamber was a short corridor, with another heavy curtain at the end of its left side. Its mirror followed, so dark now Sylvie could make out her tutor only as an irregular blotch. He gently pushed her into the final chamber, and lifted her hand to place something in it. A nut. She could feel its edges and uneven surface.

“See if you get anything from this. Don’t worry if you don’t, right the first time. Take as much time as you want. You can come out whenever you want, and try again another day.”

She nodded, too distracted to consider if he could make out the gesture. Once she’d sat down crosslegged on a smooth blanket, Ardí left, closing the curtains on the way to the outer chamber.

Sylvie stared at the nut as she turned it in her hands, willing to see something that wasn’t the random green and purple lights her eyes made up in the darkness. She imagined Ardí sitting in the lamplight and reading notes. He had to be very quiet; Sylvie couldn’t hear a thing, even though she thought she should hear the sound of a sheet of paper being turned even through the curtains, in the silence this far underground. After a while she held up the nut to her ear, and closed her eyes, in case sight wasn’t the way to go for her. It didn’t make any difference.

This wouldn’t be half as bad if she’d know what sense it would be. How could she tell she was doing something wrong if she didn’t know if what she was doing was the right thing to begin with? She twitched as she heard something, but caught herself. She had scratched over the shell of the nut without meaning to.

The thought of failing and being washed out of the school made her sick, so she tried to ignore it, and took some more time.

Even breaths. Sense, don’t think. It sounded easier than it was.

After a while there was a faint crackling sound, just at the endge of hearing, and her heart raced as her imagination suggested that the heavy curtains petrified, trapping her all alone in the dark. She got up quickly and touched the fabric, which moved easily under her fingers. Embarrassed – had she been dozing off here, into a nightmare? – she sat down again for another try, but it was just a token effort. Very soon she had a last idea – licking the object of this little experiment – but since that didn’t lead to any interesting impressions, she rubbed the nut dry on her tunic, and gave up for the day.

She told herself that she had been trying for a long time, but she didn’t look Ardí in the face when she came out of the silent chamber.

***
The practise was repeated, with different objects. A lump of clay. A piece of wood. A bowl full of water. A quarz crystal. A small silver ingot. One day, they went to the top of the highest tower, and she held nothing, there to feel the wind and sniff the air.

In between, her tutor talked with Sylvie. It was a bit odd, being asked what she liked, and why she did, or didn’t. At first she gave short answers, too busy wondering what Ardí wanted to hear to just say what came to her mind, but eventually she was drawn out.

“My favourite place is the spirit wood.” Sitting in one of the small gardens had reminded her of it.

“I’ve never been in there. What do you like about it?” Sylvie hesitated, looking for words, and Ardí tried to help her get started. “Can you describe what it looks like?”

She frowned. “It’s big, and green, and tangled.”

“And that’s what you like?” It hadn’t sounded enthusiastic.

Sylvie nodded and shrugged at the same time.

Another voice interrupted them. “Excuse me? I think you may be asking the wrong questions.”

Ardí got up and greeted, “Eda Eralai,” then respectfully waited for her to speak. Sylvie was on her feet, too, having followed his example, and stood a step behind him and to the side. She was a bit awestruck at having one of the senior teachers take an interest in a novice like her, but the older woman smiled, and spoke with a soft, warm voice. It helped, even over the surprise that Eralai addressed her, rather than her tutor.

“I have been at the edge of the Spirit Wood occasionally. The trees must be very old.”

Sylvie nodded. She had wondered about that. “Do you know how old?”

Eralai shook her head. Sylvie was surprised a grown-up, a teacher even, would admit to not kknowing something that easily. “It must be hundreds of years, maybe even thousands.” After a short pause she asked, “Have you actually gone into the wood?”

“Yes.”

“You weren’t afraid?”

“Yes, I mean no. I mean, not of the wood. I was running away. I thought they might not follow me inside. The wood felt safe.”

“What do you mean?”

Ardí asked, “Do you mean you thought you’d be safe because the others would be more afraid of it than you?”

“I did, but it’s not what I meant. It just felt safe. Good.”

“How did that feel?” Eralai ignored Ardí and watched the girl closely.

Sylvie spread her arms, and said the first thing that came to her mind. “It’s like warm water flowing up my skin. Or through me.” She frowned. That didn’t make sense, did it?

“Flowing up from the ground?” The teacher’s voice was soft, neither incredulous nor mocking.

“Yes.”

“And where does it go?”

“All through me.” Remembering the feeling, she smiled and stretched tall as she could, spreading her fingers high above her head. A moment later, she crossed her arms self-consciously and looked at the senior teacher, who still smiled.

“Very good; that should be helpful.” Eralai turned to Sylvie’s tutor. She spoke a little faster to him, more businesslike, but sounded cheerful. “Have you tried with something living yet?”

“We had a nut right on the first day.”

“Well, try again. The first try, pretty much everyone who hasn’t come into sensing already it too nervous to get it right. And if a live seed won’t work, get a small plant in a pot.” She addressed both of them before taking leave, “I’m sure you’ll manage.”

***
So, there they were again in the dark. At least it wasn’t the same nut. Well, Sylvie thought this one was shorter and rounder. She sighed, wondering if her elders were quite as smart as she’d thought, before concentrating on her task.

She stared at where she knew it was in the darkness, and saw nothing, strained her ears, and heard nothing. She concentrated on taking even breaths and being patient. The nut remained a lump in her hand, with a spark of warmth near one end.

What? Sylvie waited, but the feeling didn’t go away. With a bright laugh, she got up and bounced off the corridor wall in her rush to tell Ardí.

He raised his head from his notes, and his eyebrows high. It was a look of interested surprise, but it also reminded Sylvie she should act a bit less childish. She bounced on her toes, anyway. “I think I have it. Something, at any rate.” She lifted the nut to her eyelevel, pointed and said, “Here, it’s warm here. Inside the nut. It’s so odd…”

Ardí peered at the little thing for a moment and then smiled, and sighed. “I’m afraid we’ll have a different tutor for you, then.”

“What? Did I do something wrong?”

“Oh, no. Sorry I scared you. It’s just that someone who feels could help you more than I, because I see.”

Sylvie thought that over. Of course she had known about the principle, but never considered how it affected learing and teaching. “So, what does it look like, to you?”

“Like a light, yellow-green spark.”

“And what is it?”

“That’s the part that will sprout. Most of the nut is food for the new plant.”

“I should have known that.”

“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll learn.”

Thought I’d dump a bunch of links here I found funny or otherwise worth sharing. People who follow me on twitter will probably have seen most of those already.

Airline pickpocket strikes as passengers sleep – My mental picture was a pickpocket declaring he was on strike because his job was too easy this way.

Swandog in reply to a poll, about the roads in winter in Norway: “the main danger is running into moose licking salt off the road”.

Oil spill photo

A German student “mooned” a group of Hell’s Angels and hurled a puppy at them before escaping on a stolen bulldozer

Broccoli looks like fireworks if you take an MRI-picture. (From a blog dedicated to MRI-pics of food. Note that their main page (not the individual post linked to) can take a while to load, since it has a lot of those animated images.)

Recently there was an exhibition of various Elvis memorabilia at the shopping centre in Koblenz, so I got to see his last car, among other things. As far as memorabilia go, tools used in Elvis’ autopsy are pretty weird, though.

Counter-protest against Westboro Babtist Church picketing at Comic-Con

You heard about the Octopus predicting FIFA World Cup results? Here’s an explanation. (Link via drhoz)

The Difference Between a Door-to-door Sales Orc and a Door-to-door Sales Elf

To test a theory, Harriet built a catapult to throw sticks into thunderstorms. She carefully noted what happened to each – usually only the place where she found it again, rarely that it had been hit by lightning, in which case the result usually was a charred stick.
Finally a success: One came back with toothmarks.

First, the newest, namely the crop from the Sketch Fest this weekend. The angel ACEO is available for sale there to contribute to further site developments.

And here are the other three, one art trade and two random ACEOs. I’m planning to list the ACEOs in my Etsy shop.

And for the curious, previous angel-images I’d put in line with that one ACEO:
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On a walk along the edge of the woods, Manuel took a deep breath, and sighed. “You could almost imagine we were the only people in the world.”
Jessica politely refrained from saying that she could see airplane exhaust trails and hear cars – and that tarmac paths didn’t grow naturally. She found civilisation reassuring, nowadays.

This is one for the people who are interested in languages.

So, German, like some other languages, assigns “gender” to nouns. You can tell the gender from the article, which therefore should memorize the article with the word, if you ever have to memorize German vocabulary. “Der” is male, “die” is female, “das” is neuter.
Tables and the sky are male, vases and traffic lights female, books and windows neuter. There may be some weird logic behind it when you go far enough back in time, or maybe not, but it looks pretty arbitrary, and it has for most words nothing to do with biological sex. Since the same goes for animals, which often do have a sex, so that gets a bit confusing.

the dog = der Hund
the cat = die Katze
the horse = das Pferd

In consequence, any dog (and frog, and most species of bird) of unknown sex is referred to with “er” (“he”); any cat (and spider) of unknown sex is referred to as “sie” (“she”), and any horse of unknown gender is referred to as “es” (“it”).
You cannot just change the article to change the gender. “Die Pferd” isn’t a female horse, it’s a mistake. The word for a mare is “Stute”. And, yes, that is grammatically female, too; at least that much logic is in the system. Incidentally, a gelding is “der Wallach” – castrating a stud still leaves him male. Some people get weird ideas in that department.

One rather prominent example where the biological sex doesn’t match the grammatical gender is the German word for “girl”, that is, “das Mädchen”. That’s because that word is a diminutive (of “Magd”, meaning “maid”), and all diminutives are neuter.

There are some words that can be more than one gender. “Gelee” (“jelly”) can be male or neuter, depending on whom you ask. Other words mean different things depending on gender. I don’t know many examples, but here they are:
“Die See” is the sea, while “der See” is a lake.
If someone says she’s driving to Shanghai “mit ihrer Honda” (“with her(female) Honda”), she’s going by motorbike, if she says she’s driving “mit ihrem Honda” (“with her(male) Honda”), it’s a car.

So, “the Harley” is female. “The motorbike” is neuter. That’s because the German word, “Motorrad”, is a compound noun formed from “der Motor”, which means what you think it means, and “das Rad”, which means “wheel”.
This is one of the few hard-and-fast rules: In compound nouns, the gender is always that of the last component noun.

I’ve been trying to find some other patterns, but
Nouns formed with -heit or -keit at the end are always female – “die Dummheit” (stupidity, stupid idea), “die Wirksamkeit” (effectiveness), “die Menschheit” (humanity)

Talking about trees: There may be certain rules of the thumb you can find. While “der Baum” (the tree) is male, pretty much any species of tree whose name does not end in “-baum” and which is native to Europe is female – die Birke (birch), die Eiche (oak), die Buche (beech), die Fichte (spruce)… “Exotic” trees on the other hand are more commonly male: der Ginko, der Eukalyptus, der Baobab.
A similar pattern can be found with river names, although a bit more muddied. There are some male rivers around here, most prominently the Rhine, but a lot of rivers in Europe are female (including the Loire, Thames, and Volga). On the other hand I can’t came up with a female river outside of Europe. The word for river, “Fluss”, is male, too, so that might have something to do with it.

I’ll leave it at that for now, hoping conlangers or writers or just apprentice language geeks get something out of it.

It’s been 52 weeks since I started the “post a bit of fiction each Friday” thing. Once I didn’t post anything. Once you got a list of “very short stories” gathered from my Twitter account. Ten times I missed the Friday time window, though I think with one or two exceptions it was Friday somewhere in the world still. And forty times, it just plain worked. A few were rushed and half-arsed, but, over all, it worked.

I am very happy about this.

Since I am interested in tracing ideas, and at least one reader might find this interesting, here are some thoughts on the origins of my ideas:
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Another job well done. Kyara was happy with her trophies, Rogal with the valuables, and Taer with the festivities the liberated visitors had held. Only Maya was left brooding over her tattered diary.
Rogal, sensing an opportunity, asked, Hey, what’s dragginy ou down?”
“I think I am cursed.”
She waved off worried enquiries by the other two. “Nothing new or life-threatening, just… Look. The spellbook I got from that first affair was confiscated the next day.” She ignored Rogal’s muttering about how that could have turned out better and continued, counting on her fingers. “The whole library of the necromancer in Hallen fell into the swamp along with her tower. In Jarambale the lab and library went up in flames when the guarding golem got out of control. I thought there was something to liberate from that demonologist-hideout near Mount Wing, but that giant acid-spewing blob ran us out, and certainly destroyed everything besides. The mage messing with time around Foraen Town had rigged all his books to rot within hours if he was killed.” She threw up her hands and continued in a strangled wail, “And now those— people burned down the mill with all the notes and books still in it.”
Taer looked back over his shoulder, glad that Maya had bottled up that complaint until they were well away. “They were rightfully angry, I think.”
Maya titled her head, accepting the point, but not that it changed anything.
Kyara added, “They probably think nothing good can come out of magic, now.”
“Which is wrong.” They certainly could not deny that, considering Maya’s contribution to their work. “They’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And what happened just now is not the point. It’s half a dozen, do you hear me, half a dozen incidents of the same pattern: We keep going up against mages posessing either unique new spells they developed, or ancient lost knowledge lost to the rest of the world, and something keeps arranging matters so I don’t get to learn any of it!!” A bit belatedly she added, “At least the things that are not intrinsically morally objectionable would be nice to know.”
“You really believe there are powers steering us like puppets, like in a sort of game?” Rogal was not trying to hide his sneer anymore. Since it was met with two frowns and a glare, he modulated it with a shrug and said, still amused, “I’m sure the gods have better things to do, really.”
“With most of those, magic was the problem that lead to the destruction.” Kyara meant it as explanation and consolation.
“Or it could still be coincidence,” Taer suggested. “Bad luck.”
Maya nodded and gave a noncommittal hum, not wanting to talk about it further. She was not convinced.

I bought Soulless after coming across recommendations on a comment thread on Ursula Vernon’s Livejournal. Probably I should have paid more attention, but, oh, well. Let’s look at the blurb:

Alexia Tarabotti is labouring under a great many social tribulations.
First, she has no soul. Second, she’s a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette.
Where to go from there? From bad to worse, apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire – and then the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate.
With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia is responsible. Can she figure out what is actually happening to London’s High Society? Will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? Finally, who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart?

That blurb made me expect a mystery with a bit of romance thrown in. However, it’s at least half romance, including sex, and the mystery bits didn’t seem handled very well.

I get the kind of mystery where the reader is supposed to know more than the protagonists trying to figure things out, because some scenes are not from the protagonists’ perspective, and I get the kind of mystery where vague hints are dropped that the reader might figure out things faster than the protagonists.
In this book, there was a hint early on not only dropped, but highlighted with red flashing lights and a klaxon, so I was left with the impression that the supposed investigators were remarkably dense never considering something in that direction.
That leads to my main beef with the book: The plot is utterly predictable. The only suprises are of the kind “man with a gun enters the room”, metaphorically speaking; nobody turns out to be anything other than they seem.

What I like best about this book is the worldbuilding. It’s an alternative history in which the Renaissance was triggered by immortals (vampires, werewolves and ghosts) giving up their “masquerade”, and by the time of the book they are accepted sub-societies that people who survive the initiating bite get congratulated on joining, at least in Britain.
Another interesting bit were the mindgames Alexia was playing with herself at some point regarding her relationship (or not) with Lord Maccon.

As to the writing style, I think the author was mostly going for an amusing tone. There were a handful of places where the words themselves threw me right out of the story (most bizarre example: referring to penis-in-vagina intercourse as “he impaled himself”).
There were at least that many lines that struck me as particularly funny and/or clever, though, so over all not too bad.

For me it was OK to read fluff, but nothing that makes me want to buy following books. I suspect someone who has more interest in romance and sex might get more out of it than I did.

She lay cradled in a little nest that had grown for her, at the heart of a little world she had made using scavenged memories and wishes. The slight swaying of the tree caused by the wind she had summoned was soothing, as was the lack of voices. She liked being around people, but sometimes solitariness was good. From being pulled any which way until you were stretched so thin you barely knew yourself anymore, you could gather yourself into a compact drop, so each part of you kept all the others in its sights.
The downside was that too much navel gazing rotted your mind, and too much time alone led to boredom.
At some point, hurt and afraid after being betrayed in on of the bigger worlds she thought of as “outside”, the thought had crossed her mind that being a Creator meant that she could make people for company, too. She found the thought of being able to create a person to her tastes of company, and changing them on a whim sickening.
Her world felt less real than the outside worlds, and it would remain so. A temporary retreat, and a place to stash the few mementos she wanted to hang on to.
There could be no surprises in your own creation.