A fascinating exploration of freewill versus dependence. This book was so beautifully written, I did not want it to end. Four, self wound, clockwork stars.

Sandersen not only saves the WoT series, but writes amazing action fantasy to boot. Four very satisfied stars.

Poor character development and ungainly pacing mar this otherwise exciting story. The refreshing change of setting for a fantasy novel is not a gimmick, it really adds a lot. Two stars.

But it’s a new year. I’ve done significantly more writing this year than I did last, and I feel more solid about my skills.

However, I have no story. The story I attempted in 2005 was so under developed, that I just started from scratch and tried it again in 2008. While I didn’t get far in 2008 with it, I did get far enough that I couldn’t really justify picking up where I left off, that would be cheating. So I need to come up with something else I guess.

I’m considering online plot generators or even just character generators and go from there. Oddly enough, for the moment, I don’t have any spare characters just sitting around collecting dust, waiting for a story. But there are a few things I’d like to avoid this year. Vampires, out. Zombies, definitely fucking out. Fey folk, probably out. Elves, dwarves, halflings, out. What’s left? I’ve nothing against fantasy, and while I wasn’t completely wowed by China Miéville’s, “Perdido Street Station,” I did like that it wasn’t bound to many of the standards (maybe clichés?) of fantasy fiction. Or at least the ones I’ve restricted myself to in the past.

So, I got to get to it. Only like 10 days to go to get brain storming, and character creating, and world building, and all that fun shit before I get to the frustration that is actually writing.

Anyways, this was just a little bit of flash fiction I started this morning, and finished this evening. It might be a prologue to another story I’m kind of percolating right now, but that will have to wait a while, if it ever appears at all. This is really my first attempt at a modern, urban fairytale.

The failing light of day lay across the great park, losing its futile battle through the thick summer leaves of the various oaks, elms, and cypress trees, casting great pools of shadows over the nondescript barrow mound that formed around one of the side entrances to the Seelie Court’s stronghold. Occasionally when some of that same failing light found its way between the leaves it struck the unmoving gossamer wings of a pixie, approaching that side gate on foot. She kept her wings folded and against her back, some of the light scattering prismatically and sending warm pastel lights dancing on the rich trimmed grass, and the trunks of the old guardians.

Her nerves would not allow her to fly with any certainty that afternoon.

Two figures pulled themselves from the shadows of the entrance, not more than a hole in the side of the mound, and stood abreast, blocking her way. One was a brag, a short, maybe two and a half feet tall, fat, pitiful example of a goblin. His skin was brown like the earth he defended, and rubbery looking. A hulking hook of a nose, speckled with pimples thrust out of a squished face, small black eyes set like bits of coal in a valley formed by his bald, splotchy forehead, and hanging jowly cheeks. Skinny arms stuck out from his pudgy body, and he stood with his hands planted firmly on his hips, a dry stick held like a club in his right hand was his only evidential weapon. A loose dirty loincloth the only thing covering what was probably the most disgusting part of the loathsome creature.

The appearance of a goblin, even one as pathetic as a brag, for a guard gave Chyrelle a moment of pause. Technically the goblins were greater fey, a sort of upper class among the courts. But, being as gross as they were, and their stupidity was legendary, they certainly represented the lowest of the upper echelons of fairy culture.

What was left of it.

The other creature wasn’t too different than Chyrelle. A duster, he was slight, and approached a foot and a half tall, and clad all in dark colors. His jeans were black denim, which he tucked militaristically into his black combat boots. A simple dark brown tee shirt covered his skinny upper body. It had holes cut in the back to accommodate his own wings, which were a pale translucent brown, and twitched slightly at the pixie’s approach. His jet hair was cropped close, and spiked slightly, and small black sunglasses prevent her from seeing his eyes.

Many of the more intelligent fey had long adopted more human choices in clothing and weapons. His was a miniature AK-47, with a collapsible wire stock.

“Halt!” the duster called out, “Who approaches the seat of the Seelie Court of New York?”

The authority and seriousness of his speech caused her to pause a moment in her mission. The lesser fey were very rarely official in their demeanor, even the ones taking full part of the war of succession.

She clenched her tiny fists, and hoped her own sobriety of manner didn’t give her mission away. “Wot?” her old accent came out in full force as a result of her nerves, “I am the Seelie Court.” She skipped and used a quick flick of her wings to cover the distance and plant herself directly in front of the two guardians.

The brag took an anxious step back, gripping his club tight.

The duster examined her thoroughly through his dark glasses. Her scruffy short hair was a bright orange, the color of the Free Alliance, but the hair color of an air sprite could change easily, and had little bearing on their politics in that time. She wore tight green pleather pants, and a halter vest of black lace. The bright green of her eyes was typical of her kind, and though it could change as easily as her hair, like most air sprites she often forgot her control over her eye color. So they simply appeared naturally.

The duster tensed up a touch, bringing his weapon in front of his body, intent on blocking her entrance until he was convinced she belonged. “What do you mean, you are the Seelie Court?”

The brag took inspiration from his partner’s certainty of action, and stepped closer, his beady eyes flitting from sprite to sprite, trying desperately to comprehend what was going on.

“How do we know you’re not a spy?” the duster added.

She took a deep breath. The time to try Rialle’s trick had, come. What sounded like a great trick of words when she heard them suddenly seemed a thin excuse, and one that might end her mission quickly.

“I bleed green,” she said, simply.

The duster stood fast for a moment, and then removed his glasses, and inflicted upon her a squinty eyed glare that convinced her for the moment that she had not only failed, but failed enormously.

“You may pass.”

Relief flooded through her, as the eyes on the brag looked as though they were going to burst out of his skull.

The duster dashed him cruelly on the chest, and stood aside himself, “Welcome home cousin, you will have to leave your piece here, the King is in court.”

She almost corrected his misstatement, but decided against it, and reached behind her back. She pulled her Gloc from the waistline of her pants, cleared it, and handed it to the duster with the slide locked back, “I will be wanting this back when I return cousin, it is my favorite.”

He flashed her a quick smile, and offered a wink as he took the weapon, “Of course, it will be very safe with me.” He allowed the slide to go forward, and gently tucked it in his own waistline. “How long will you be home?”

She placed a hand on his cheek as she slipped past him, ignoring the antics of the brag, who was horrified she was being allowed to pass, and for just a moment she felt like a pixie again, “Just a few hours, see you soon cousin.” She returned his wink.

And she was in.

Her mission took her almost immediately to the throne room. It was difficult for her pixie nature to ignore the goings on around her. All around her many of the lesser fey of the Seelie Court were playing games, telling stories, making out, reveling in the delights and debauchery of their kind.

“I have a mission to accomplish,” became a mantra, repeated in her head to keep her from lighting off to frolic with her enemies.

The throne room was a great burrowed space under the earth, chandeliers hung from the crossbeams of the ceiling, casting dull yellow light on the goings on in the court. Very few of the lesser fey could be found there, the room mostly filled with elves, and dwarves. A few goblins, much less loathsome ones than the brag outside, but disgusting none the less, and even a troll or two.

For just a second she faltered, and almost turned to leave, but a loud chortling, followed by a belly laughed that irked her to the core echoed through the dark chamber, many of the other attendees of the Seelie Court faked a laugh along with the loud one.

She whispered the beginnings of a soft spell under her breath and took flight, launching herself into the throne room, and landed a few paces before the Seelie prince. He was a great fat elf in fancy clothes of royal purple, and regal reds, stained with food and drink. His fat cheeks puffed with rage at her appearance, and he bellowed, “Who allowed this creature in my presence, this enemy of mine?”

The dwarves, and other elves of the court, along with a goblin or two started to move menacingly towards the pixie, who stood proud before the angry prince, and defiantly ignored the others’ existence.

“Has something changed? Are the lesser fey no longer allowed to petition their royalty?” her voice chimed through the room.

Even though the greater fey had much clearer thinking heads than their lesser cousins, they were still often victims of the same intense curiosity, and an honestly asked question could not go unanswered. The room filled with a vile tension, the fairies wanted to both honor their fealty to the prince by attacking the enemy who so skillfully infiltrated their court, and hear the answer to her query.

The prince glared, hatred of the pixie and all she represented seethed from his drunk eyes, but he laughed cruelly, and uttered, “You claim no allegiance to me, but regardless of your rebellion, you are still my subject.” The prince was not so easily fooled as the guardians outside, and Chyrelle’s nature as a member of the Unseelie Court was immediately evident to him. “What would you ask of your King?”

Her eyes narrowed, and she gritted her teeth in anger, “Prince, Sire, prince. The war of succession in New York has not been decided yet. Until today.” With that she uttered the last few phrases of her spell, and a silver sword, barely bigger than a dagger, appeared in her tiny hand. She leaped valiantly at the shocked prince, as the rest of the court closed in on her.

What they removed from the court many minutes later could hardly be recognized as the pixie Chyrelle Binkbottom.

I feel like there are a dozen worlds, all closing in on mine, all at the same time. Now I don’t mean that this world is mine, like I own it, I just mean the one I’m currently occupying. I even think this is the one I was born in, though it does look a lot different these days than I remember. When I was born this world was warmer, and the colors were softer. Browns and yellows and oranges, sometimes swirling patterns. Soothing wood paneling, and thick rugs. The world is now colder, harshly angled glass and metal, cracked cement, and spiky digital waves that pierce my ear drums.

I think there was screaming in this world when I was born. It could have been me screaming though. Babies scream don’t they?

Not the same screaming like Chelsea is right now. She yelling her damn head off at me. It’s a pretty head, her hair a mess of bleached blonde, and blue-black dye, frazzled around her chubby cheeks. She’s thinking of having her hair done in dreads, and if she does I think it’ll look fantastic.

And not just her, there’s three other people yelling at me too. One is an old man, he looks like he might be homeless, his brown corduroys are too short and filled with holes, and his stained puffy vest is about two decades out of style. They have me backed up in the corner created by the coffee shop on the ground floor of some office building, and the jersey barriers securing a parking garage, keeping the crappy cars of people like me from parking next to fine upstanding business folks.

Another of the people screaming at me is a woman, she might be in her fifties, but knowing how the city can age a person, she also might be in her early forties. She’s got one of those ugly stringy old lady necks, and her make up is caked on dramatically, to hide her age, addictions, or fatigue, I don’t know.

My back strikes the jersey barrier behind me, and I sink to a crouch. Why won’t they stop yelling? My hands are full, but I want to run my fingers through my hair so badly, and tug on it, and cover my ears.

The coffee shop isn’t one of those nice ones, with World-Jazz-Fusion from Morocco or something playing lightly, while you dally over whether to get soy milk, or go nuts and get the full mocha experience. It’s one of those greasy spoon deals, when the coffee comes in regular and decaf. The sugar’s clumped rock hard in the glass containers, and the little lid thing is crusted shut by granite hard sucrose. I think the woman screaming at me works there.

Some of the people who go to the trendy Moroccan World-Jazz-Fusion-Folk-Americana, sorry I got carried away. Some of those people are standing several meters away, where the drive up to the parking garage (and the dumpy coffee shop, if you know it’s there) meets the street. Their coffee shop is on the corner. They’re not coming down the street though, they just stand there dumb, blinking blue lights hanging out of their ears, and double-mocha-soy-extra foam-latte-chinos clutched in one hand, and briefcases… er I guess laptop bags now, clutched in the other. They would never venture down the alley where Chelsea, and the homeless guy, and the waitress are all yelling, no, screaming at a confused guy with a gun.

I have a gun?

I guess I do, it’s black, and cold, and slippery in my sweaty palms. The damn thing is preventing me from covering my ears to stop their screaming from hurting my head. I stand up, pleading with my eyes for them to stop the screaming, ’cause for some reason the words coming out of my mouth stopped making sense minutes ago, I can only look, and beg, and rub the grip of the gun against my pounding forehead.

I don’t have to worry about it for long though. The other person screaming at me, remember I said there were three besides Chelsea? I remember that, just checking if you’re still with me. Ha! Well that guy tackles me from behind. He’s an attendant at the parking garage I was backed up against. He’s a black man, and I hate to point that out, because it fills a stereotype or something, but he is, and he’s quick as hell too.

The cement of the alley comes up on me quickly, and the gun goes flying. And for one blessed moment everyone finally stops screaming.

I say

grinning like a fool

in the Nevada desert

From the solid side of the magic wall Jernall studied the prisoner closely.  A young, possibly late thirties, female elf, dressed in loose fitting drab gray linens, she leaned back in her simple chair, liquid brown eyes scanning the interrogation room lazily.  Her hands rested on the table before her, limply clasped together, but bound at the wrist with thick hardened steel cuffs.

“She looks harmless enough, are the binders necessary?” his partner queried.

He raised a single eyebrow, and spoke without looking at her, “She’s a criminal, and she’s been in the dungeon…”

“Detention center.”

He sighed, and this time he did look at his partner.  She was young herself, eighteen years this coming autumn.  Her dark brown hair was coiled about her head, the perfect plaits held in place with a spider web of thin silver thread.  Her porcelain skin smooth and flawless, and crystal blue eyes trained on the elvish prisoner in the interrogation room.

“She’s been in the detention center for two years now, this time.”  He checked to see if there was a reaction, and continued when there was none, “And a half a dozen times before that.”

Her nod was short and singular, and barely perceptible, “Fine, leave them on.  But I’m going to talk to her, myself,” she looked up at him.

“Adept, I must protest,” he started.

“Protest all you want.  I’m speaking to her myself.  If she gets free of her bindings, then you may come in.”

His jaw sat clenched as he watched her stride off and enter the room from around the corner.  Next to the prisoner in her prisoner linens, his partner looked almost like nobility, in her soft brocaded silks, gilded with silver thread.  If there were such a thing as nobility in Leylin Drell.

The elf’s eyes scanned the approaching Adept.  And Jernall noticed her quick glance to the door as it swung shut.

“Trellessa Du’Bain,” his partner started, naming the prisoner.

“Magister,” the young elf uttered the wrong honorific in a trained respectful fashion.

His partner dropped a single hand to the solid oak table before the prisoner, “Why are you here Trellessa?”

The elf arched both eyebrows, “You didn’t send for me?”

The Adept did something Jernall didn’t often see.  She smiled.  “What I meant was, why are you here in the detention center?”

The elf furrowed her brow, and studied the younger human for a few moments before responding, “I’ve been convicted, and I’m serving my time.  They didn’t send a Magister down here to get me to confess to a crime I’ve already been found guilty of committing.”

The Adept tapped her fingers on the table, “Well, aside from the rather extensive list of thefts…”

The elf cleared her throat, “Alleged thefts.  I’ve never confessed to those, and if I recall, the alleged spoils were never found.”

When she finished speaking, the Adept continued as if she never uttered a word, “And you tried to kill a man.”

The elf smirked and squinted as she spoke, slightly raising her voice to be heard over the persistent Adept, “A particularly vile and notorious thief, and alleged murder himself,” the elf shifted in her seat ever so slightly, “I’m not sure why the Magistrate didn’t thank me instead of locking me up.”

Jernall leaned closer to the magic wall, it’s properties allowing all outside the room to see in, while anyone inside the room saw an otherwise common wall of stone, mortar, and timbers.  He didn’t think for a moment that the elf would really try anything against his partner, especially if she thought Dallia was a full Magister.  But life had taught him, a long time ago, about appearances, and complacency.  He eased himself closer to the corner, and the door, his eyes never leaving the prisoner.

The Adept allowed her uncharacteristic smile to remain, “I believe he is incarcerated too.  But unlike you, he doesn’t have the opportunity for early parole.”

The elf snapped her mouth shut, and glared at the adept for a few silent moments before leaning forward to rest her elbows on the table, “Tell me more.”

The adept was young, and her ward on the outside felt she was getting to her point too quickly, and not taking care of the few issues she was instructed to investigate with the elf before she freed her.

The adept’s smile faded as she slowly brought her hands together, almost as if offering a prayer, then slowly pulled them apart, revealing a thin sheet of stiff translucent paper.  The paper looked as though it swam in colors at any point it bent, but quickly the adept took charge of the creation, and while holding it in her left hand, she scrolled through many paragraphs of text and images until she came to her goal.

“It says here that when you were apprehended, you had thirteen tiny silver bells in your hair.”

The elf eased back in her chair, her eyes narrowing, “I did.”

The adept scanned a few more lines of text before looking back to the elf, “I need to know what those bells were for.”

“Decoration,” the elf’s single word answer did not satisfy, however it was not unexpected.

The adept gave the file one more quick glance before she asked, “And the man you tried to kill, he had three in his hair when you were found.  Were his for decoration as well?”

The elf cracked a slight smile, “He sometimes dressed like a girl, yes.”

The adept let free a barely perceptible sigh, and continued, “The report states that you cut six bells from his hair before the watch got to you…”

The elf’s face, clearly showed frustration, “and I cut a good chunk of his face off as well, what are you getting at?”

The adept’s angry glare after the outburst brought a hint of red to the elf’s fair cheeks, and she sunk a little deeper into her chair before offering a simple, “Sorry Magister.”

“The point is, Trellessa, that many officers in the watch have convinced the higher councils that there is a thieves guild operating in Leylin Drell, and they believe you and Cheddrest to be members.  There is talk that the number of bells in ones hair might signify a rank or position, and I need to know if it does before I can authorize your release into my custody.”

The elf took a deep breath, and steeled her face.  Any emotion that had once showed on it was gone, and she simply stared at the adept blankly, “I know nothing of which you speak.  I was, always, a solo operator, never working with someone for more than a job or two.  I wore the bells simply as fashion and hubris.”  At the end of her speech, she took a breath, and then asked, “I thought you said parole, why would I be released into your custody?”

The adept ignored her question, “Interesting, that explanation you just gave me is word for word the same thing you told every interrogator, magistrate, even your defender at your trial.  And you say Cheddrest wore them…”

“Because he’s a fag, yes.”

The adept glanced to the magic wall quickly, and then back to the elf where she heaved a shrug, “Good enough for me.  One of the conditions of your parole is that you come with me and my ward.  We are pursuing a unique criminal, and we feel someone with your talents may assist us greatly.  Once this criminal is in our custody, your parole is complete and you are free to go.”

The elf sat up a little straighter in her seat, her eyes widening as the adept continued, “Do not worry, this criminal is not a part of your non-existent organization, she wears no bells in her hair.”

The elf leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table, the mere mention of freedom filled her with energy and life, color was returning to her skin, and a twinkle to her eyes.

“Of course,” the adept continued, “you will receive your bells back, as well as your weapons and all things on your person at the time of your arrest.”

The elf swallowed, and nodded slowly.

“And Trellessa?”

“Yes Adept?”

“I need you to relock your binders, you still have to process out of the detention center.”

“Yes Adept.”