Chapter Twelve, Nixtamal
Jan. 8th, 2012 03:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kasihyaI actually really like most of this. Obviously the writing needs polishing, and parts need expansion, and I really need to quit adverbs cold turkey before they consume my soul like I'm fourteen years old again, but here it is.
NOTE TO FUTURE SELF: THIS IS THE PART WHERE YOU PUT THE COMMENTARY ABOUT CHAPTER DIVISIONS AND SAMBIYA AS A POV CHARACTER.
The downside of writing everything directly as a stream of consciousness, including when things are and aren't working and what things need to be changed, is that if I don't remember the context of the scene I interrupted to make that note, I'll have no idea where to find it. And once it's on paper, it is no longer in my head, so this is a problem. But to continue:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 12 - Tsuya
Texcoco – October 5172
The holding cells of Texcoco are even worse than those in Dantaidas, in the well-informed opinion of Tsuya Hiyuuya-dien. Tsuya has spent four of the last twelve days in prison; it’s his current record, and one that he hopes never to exceed. Dantaidas only had one window to it, but at least he had had someone to talk to.
Also, Nyali had been there when he was in Dantaidas. That had been a definite plus. Even if he had been allowed to talk without being shouted at by a grumpy, oversized Shanrien guard, there’s no one here to talk to. Well, except for Sambiya, he guesses. That might be worth a shot.
The family got their own cell, which could have been good for them, except that there’s so bleeding many of them, it hardly makes a difference. Tsuya distinctly hears one of the eagle warriors talking about ‘keeping the goods unspoiled’, which he has a whole host of problems with aside from having a feeling that they were talking about him like a sack of potatoes.
‘I’m bored,’ Jesiwe whispers to Meilen.
‘Ain’t we all,’ Tsuya snaps back as quietly as possible. He glances up at the guard standing at the inside of the doorway, pretending that he’s there of his own accord and not because he’s been ordered to and he’d rather be out there with his wife and children, spending quality time or some shit like that, Tsuya doesn’t really care.
‘Shut up, brat,’ says Meilen, which earns her a dangerous look from her father Tauno.
They are all seated in the far corner, (Tsuya avoids thinking about them as ‘his Andoin’ and ‘the other Andoin’ because that way lies madness) while the ones who’d come in with new supplies have gathered themselves against the other wall. He doesn’t quite understand what’s going on with them: he’s pretty sure the ugly one called himself the old woman’s son, so some bad blood there? And one of the women looks like a slightly younger version of Biemi, so he’s guessing she’s family too? There are two younger boys who bicker and fight amongst themselves, and Tsuya watches with mild distaste.
The first thing that Tsuya notices about the holding cell is that there is a window that has the spells on it that keeps anything but air from flowing through the window. Tsuya can’t get through – it was the first thing he tried. Trudged into the room along with the slavers, ran straight to the window, and woke up from unconsciousness on the floor with Sambiya and Biemi kneeling over him, five minutes later.
‘That was stupid,’ Sambiya says.
Tsuya shrugs and tries to sit up, which as it turns out isn’t the best idea; he promptly collapses against Biemi’s shoulder, head pounding. ‘Fuck off,’ he mumbles, pushing at her arm.
‘Gods,’ Sambiya mutters, and gathers Tsuya against him instead.
The action leaves a funny taste in Tsuya’s mouth, something choking (and not at all sexual-sounding) and not entirely pleasant. He squirms. ‘I’m fine, fine. Just give me a moment, yeesh. What the fuck kind of spell is that?’
‘A sensible one. I would have such a spell, too, if I was going to operate a holding cell that let in the light,’ says Biemi, because she’s a fucking spineless woman (Tsuya’s commentary, not mine.)
Come to think of it, maybe that’s what’s so bad about the Texcoco prison. It’s got a window, it’s got marginally more room and they don’t need to get tied up in order to stay there, but the window is an evil son of a bitch and Tsuya is stuck there with a spineless, creepy family and no Nyali. This is a problem.
Later on, Orezi and the ugly dude Dakiyo start to fight. It begins quietly, but once it comes to them standing up and shouting into each other’s faces instead of from across the room, the guard at the door calls someone else in to help break them up. It takes place in a confusion of shouts in both the common language and the Andoin tongue, so Tsuya has a bit of difficulty understanding it (to be honest, he only remembers a few minutes in that he should be trying to understand this, because he usually assumes that Nyali has got it covered but Nyali isn’t here right now).
Orezi: (to his sister, Biemi) It figures that the one time it might have been useful to not have him around, he shows up.
Biemi: Yes, but …
Dakiyo: What did you say? I’m sorry, brother, I had some difficulty hearing you.
Orezi: Something about how they could have really been helped if Dakiyo had just stayed away and minded his own business.
This descends into an argument about how there’s a problem with the world, and Dakiyo is just trying to protect his family. Fioren, the younger sister who also defected (she’s always been the black sheep, though) tries to defend their actions, and then she makes a comment about Tanwen and how this is all Orezi’s fault because he decided to sleep with that woman who turned out to actually be the meisutuya of Dantaidas.
Tsuya catches that, and then he’s sure that he misheard that, because seriously? Seriously, who does that? His mind is racing, and he wishes that he had Nyali here to tell him what this all means, because he’s not a subtle person and he knows it. He knows that he won’t be able to piece it together and understand what’s going on with this family, and it frustrates him. It’s not like it’s extremely important, but it might help when he escapes.
The conversation goes on, and encompasses things like how he did Tanwen a mercy by taking her in because otherwise her mother would have killed her, and now she has the chance to make change, and Dakiyo is like ‘Well, yeah, and then, conveniently, it puts you and yours into a pretty cushy position of power.’ That pisses Orezi off to no end: he hisses that this isn’t how it works, and they all have equal shares in the caravan, and Dakiyo has never found it in himself to understand that, and that’s why he went off and now he’s just pissed off that Tanwen didn’t get killed and his bet of leaving and staying safe didn’t work out.
At this point, they come to blows, and the guard calls down two of his fellows to intervene while everyone else gets the hell out of the way (Except for Fioren, who is just as pissed off but also, unfortunately, rather small and currently unarmed.) Tsuya presses himself into the curve of the wall farthest from the argument, behind Jesiwe and Meilen. He curls up and goes to sleep. He wakes up when Sambiya shakes his shoulder and shoves a small dough ball into his hand. ‘Wake up. Please wake up, Agioren is trying to convince me that you don’t need to be fed and I should give him your ration, and I’m not very good at not being convinced.’
Food. Tsuya is awake and has his teeth in the dough before he has fully processed what Sambiya is trying to tell him. Then he stops, and very carefully takes it out of his mouth to look at how small it is, and then at Sambiya. ‘This is it,’ he asks. For clarification. This is even less than he was given in Dantaidas. This is even less than he had left over after he gave more of his food to Nyali.
Sambiya shrugs. ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’
‘No problem. Leastaways here I get food, and it’s bland. I like bland food.’ Not like the spicy shit that he’s been cooking for the last week and a few-odd days.
Then he notices the guard posted; to be more accurate, the guard notices them, and tells them to shut up.
About an hour after he wakes up from the most uncomfortable sleep of his life (lies) he starts to get nervous. Nyali will come for him, he knows this like he knows that the bread he just ate was a little moldy around the edges, like he knows that the rainy season follows a drought. But, he thinks, he ought to hold up his end of the deal, too. He needs to be in the right place at the right time, and the right place is most definitely not in the holding cells of Texcoco on indefinite detention. (Oh yes, I really did just write that, and no, this is not going to turn into a political commentary on anything whatsoever.) What if Nyali isn’t expecting that? What if he knows that the Andoin caravan should be in the next city or town or godsforsaken hole in the ground in the middle of the jungle by a certain amount of time, and then they aren’t there, and then he gives up?
No, that’s ridiculous. Nyali would never give him up any more than he would sell his soul to [ironic remark that recalls Nyali’s employment in Oboureon, which subtly hints that perhaps Tsuya doesn’t know Nyali quite as well as he would have sworn he did.]
‘Problem?’ Sambiya settles down at his side; he’s been sitting and playing silent hand games with Agioren, which is pretty unfair of him considering that Agioren was just trying to steal Tsuya’s only scraps of food.
Tsuya hesitates. As much as he likes Sambiya, he’s still older, he’s still an Uzoma, and he’s still a mystery. Tsuya doesn’t like mysteries any more than he likes being stuck in a Shanrien prison with no idea what’s going to happen and a window that renders him unconscious when he tries to escape through it. ‘Nah,’ he says. Thus, our intrepid hero displays the first traces of common sense with regards to Sambiya that this author has ever seen him display.
Bravo, my little child, bravo. Now, does this in any way gel with his actions in previous chapters? Who the hell knows? Also, when I rewrite this, I’m going to organize the chapters differently. Instead of going Nyali, Tanwen, Tsuya, Meilen, it’s going to be Nyali, Tsuya, Tanwen, and Meilen. That way there’s more back-and-forth between the two theaters, and less of me forgetting what happened last time I was with this group of characters. Also when I revise this I am going to make Sambiya a viewpoint character because he don’t do a lot of ‘splaining, and the only way that his interactions are going to eventually make even a lick of sense, is with a shit-ton of ‘splaining.
Continuing.
Sambiya tilts his head to the side in a way that reminds Tsuya of the way that Nyali looks at him when he’s not going to say as much out loud, but he’s thinking, ‘I’m practically your brother, you can’t hide anything from me.’ Except that Sambiya actually whispers, ‘It’s all right. I’m scared too.’
Well, that gets Tsuya all riled up and no mistake. If there’s one thing he won’t stand for, it’s having someone think that he’s scared. (See, this is why Sambiya and Nyali wouldn’t be nearly so interesting. Tsuya is predictable, and he suffers from an overdeveloped sense of pride, whereas Nyali has zero pride and flits from persona to persona when he’s not with people he trusts completely. And now I am suddenly filled with the desire to change Nyali’s place with Tsuya, and see what happens. Tsuya wouldn’t think to follow Tanwen, that’s for sure, so the dynamics and tone of the story would be completely different, but it’d be interesting. You know how Tsuya is expecting Nyali to make a grand entrance, leap in, and they’d get out of there in a blaze of glory? He’d try to do that. It’d end about as well as one would expect. Ooh, that could actually be a really fun novella.) ‘I’m not afraid. Not of being in here and getting executed or anything.’ He isn’t, particularly; the thing about the guards treating them li
ke unspoiled goods means that whatever happens, he’s not going to be killed.
Oddly enough, being killed isn’t high up on his list of things about which he’s going to worry. Sambiya looks at him. He’s about to tell him that he’s worried that Nyali won’t be able to come get him in time, but then Orezi taps Sambiya on the shoulder from behind him, and he turns around and away from Tsuya, who sinks back against the wall, hugging his knees. Fuck that, then, he thinks.
He ends up spending a lot of time staring out the window watching the activities going on outside, so close and yet so far away. (Good lord, I really just used that in a serious way in a piece of writing.) Jesiwe joins him, but to his great relief she doesn’t try to say anything except to point out people of particular interest. This doesn’t bother him so much, and once or twice, out of sheer boredom, he joins in or comments on someone she’s pointed out. Of course, then this encourages her and she starts to get excited and calls him Alaet, and then that game is over.
It irritates him so much that he turns to one of the girls from the carrier caravan – not one of the psycho ugly dude’s children, another girl who’s about his age or a little older – as soon as she comes over to join them, and starts talking. He doesn’t even know what he’s saying: it could be that he’s telling her that the boy he saw staggering past under the weight of a basket full of wet corn looked like this friend he had in Dantaidas before the friend’s family decided that he shouldn’t be friends with a homeless rat and the onseito of a market whore. It could be that he’s telling her about the first time he met Nyali, when Tsuya’s parents found a boy paddling up an inlet of the river on a flimsy raft, discovered that he had no idea where he was or what had happened to him, and so they took him back to the hut where Tsuya lived with his blood sister (she got sick and died soon after that, and it took a while for him to forgive Nyali for replacing her) and told Tsuya that he had a brother now.
The girl looks at him like he’s a slug or one of those crunchy black bugs that he finds sometimes in some of the less savory places from which he’s stolen. He hugs his knees once more and returns to staring out the window and listening to the Andoin talking amongst themselves in the background. It’s returned to mostly civil levels, although the family is still griping because the Shanrien guards have their things in another room and everyone, Grandmother and Grandfather included, are worried that everything will be stolen by the time they are released.
News doesn’t come until the end of the first full day that they are imprisoned (a day behind schedule already, I might add) when the door opens and a woman wearing judiciary robes walks in with her hands folded and a stern expression on her lined face.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I don't care anymore! I've realized that even at my best, this is still only a rough draft, and very little of it will ever see the light of day once revision has taken over. So I've stopped trying so hard to make it a good rough draft, and focused more on the primary objective: get everything down, even if it's only in semi-prose form, as quickly as possible before I forget.
NOTE TO FUTURE SELF: THIS IS THE PART WHERE YOU PUT THE COMMENTARY ABOUT CHAPTER DIVISIONS AND SAMBIYA AS A POV CHARACTER.
The downside of writing everything directly as a stream of consciousness, including when things are and aren't working and what things need to be changed, is that if I don't remember the context of the scene I interrupted to make that note, I'll have no idea where to find it. And once it's on paper, it is no longer in my head, so this is a problem. But to continue:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 12 - Tsuya
Texcoco – October 5172
The holding cells of Texcoco are even worse than those in Dantaidas, in the well-informed opinion of Tsuya Hiyuuya-dien. Tsuya has spent four of the last twelve days in prison; it’s his current record, and one that he hopes never to exceed. Dantaidas only had one window to it, but at least he had had someone to talk to.
Also, Nyali had been there when he was in Dantaidas. That had been a definite plus. Even if he had been allowed to talk without being shouted at by a grumpy, oversized Shanrien guard, there’s no one here to talk to. Well, except for Sambiya, he guesses. That might be worth a shot.
The family got their own cell, which could have been good for them, except that there’s so bleeding many of them, it hardly makes a difference. Tsuya distinctly hears one of the eagle warriors talking about ‘keeping the goods unspoiled’, which he has a whole host of problems with aside from having a feeling that they were talking about him like a sack of potatoes.
‘I’m bored,’ Jesiwe whispers to Meilen.
‘Ain’t we all,’ Tsuya snaps back as quietly as possible. He glances up at the guard standing at the inside of the doorway, pretending that he’s there of his own accord and not because he’s been ordered to and he’d rather be out there with his wife and children, spending quality time or some shit like that, Tsuya doesn’t really care.
‘Shut up, brat,’ says Meilen, which earns her a dangerous look from her father Tauno.
They are all seated in the far corner, (Tsuya avoids thinking about them as ‘his Andoin’ and ‘the other Andoin’ because that way lies madness) while the ones who’d come in with new supplies have gathered themselves against the other wall. He doesn’t quite understand what’s going on with them: he’s pretty sure the ugly one called himself the old woman’s son, so some bad blood there? And one of the women looks like a slightly younger version of Biemi, so he’s guessing she’s family too? There are two younger boys who bicker and fight amongst themselves, and Tsuya watches with mild distaste.
The first thing that Tsuya notices about the holding cell is that there is a window that has the spells on it that keeps anything but air from flowing through the window. Tsuya can’t get through – it was the first thing he tried. Trudged into the room along with the slavers, ran straight to the window, and woke up from unconsciousness on the floor with Sambiya and Biemi kneeling over him, five minutes later.
‘That was stupid,’ Sambiya says.
Tsuya shrugs and tries to sit up, which as it turns out isn’t the best idea; he promptly collapses against Biemi’s shoulder, head pounding. ‘Fuck off,’ he mumbles, pushing at her arm.
‘Gods,’ Sambiya mutters, and gathers Tsuya against him instead.
The action leaves a funny taste in Tsuya’s mouth, something choking (and not at all sexual-sounding) and not entirely pleasant. He squirms. ‘I’m fine, fine. Just give me a moment, yeesh. What the fuck kind of spell is that?’
‘A sensible one. I would have such a spell, too, if I was going to operate a holding cell that let in the light,’ says Biemi, because she’s a fucking spineless woman (Tsuya’s commentary, not mine.)
Come to think of it, maybe that’s what’s so bad about the Texcoco prison. It’s got a window, it’s got marginally more room and they don’t need to get tied up in order to stay there, but the window is an evil son of a bitch and Tsuya is stuck there with a spineless, creepy family and no Nyali. This is a problem.
Later on, Orezi and the ugly dude Dakiyo start to fight. It begins quietly, but once it comes to them standing up and shouting into each other’s faces instead of from across the room, the guard at the door calls someone else in to help break them up. It takes place in a confusion of shouts in both the common language and the Andoin tongue, so Tsuya has a bit of difficulty understanding it (to be honest, he only remembers a few minutes in that he should be trying to understand this, because he usually assumes that Nyali has got it covered but Nyali isn’t here right now).
Orezi: (to his sister, Biemi) It figures that the one time it might have been useful to not have him around, he shows up.
Biemi: Yes, but …
Dakiyo: What did you say? I’m sorry, brother, I had some difficulty hearing you.
Orezi: Something about how they could have really been helped if Dakiyo had just stayed away and minded his own business.
This descends into an argument about how there’s a problem with the world, and Dakiyo is just trying to protect his family. Fioren, the younger sister who also defected (she’s always been the black sheep, though) tries to defend their actions, and then she makes a comment about Tanwen and how this is all Orezi’s fault because he decided to sleep with that woman who turned out to actually be the meisutuya of Dantaidas.
Tsuya catches that, and then he’s sure that he misheard that, because seriously? Seriously, who does that? His mind is racing, and he wishes that he had Nyali here to tell him what this all means, because he’s not a subtle person and he knows it. He knows that he won’t be able to piece it together and understand what’s going on with this family, and it frustrates him. It’s not like it’s extremely important, but it might help when he escapes.
The conversation goes on, and encompasses things like how he did Tanwen a mercy by taking her in because otherwise her mother would have killed her, and now she has the chance to make change, and Dakiyo is like ‘Well, yeah, and then, conveniently, it puts you and yours into a pretty cushy position of power.’ That pisses Orezi off to no end: he hisses that this isn’t how it works, and they all have equal shares in the caravan, and Dakiyo has never found it in himself to understand that, and that’s why he went off and now he’s just pissed off that Tanwen didn’t get killed and his bet of leaving and staying safe didn’t work out.
At this point, they come to blows, and the guard calls down two of his fellows to intervene while everyone else gets the hell out of the way (Except for Fioren, who is just as pissed off but also, unfortunately, rather small and currently unarmed.) Tsuya presses himself into the curve of the wall farthest from the argument, behind Jesiwe and Meilen. He curls up and goes to sleep. He wakes up when Sambiya shakes his shoulder and shoves a small dough ball into his hand. ‘Wake up. Please wake up, Agioren is trying to convince me that you don’t need to be fed and I should give him your ration, and I’m not very good at not being convinced.’
Food. Tsuya is awake and has his teeth in the dough before he has fully processed what Sambiya is trying to tell him. Then he stops, and very carefully takes it out of his mouth to look at how small it is, and then at Sambiya. ‘This is it,’ he asks. For clarification. This is even less than he was given in Dantaidas. This is even less than he had left over after he gave more of his food to Nyali.
Sambiya shrugs. ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’
‘No problem. Leastaways here I get food, and it’s bland. I like bland food.’ Not like the spicy shit that he’s been cooking for the last week and a few-odd days.
Then he notices the guard posted; to be more accurate, the guard notices them, and tells them to shut up.
About an hour after he wakes up from the most uncomfortable sleep of his life (lies) he starts to get nervous. Nyali will come for him, he knows this like he knows that the bread he just ate was a little moldy around the edges, like he knows that the rainy season follows a drought. But, he thinks, he ought to hold up his end of the deal, too. He needs to be in the right place at the right time, and the right place is most definitely not in the holding cells of Texcoco on indefinite detention. (Oh yes, I really did just write that, and no, this is not going to turn into a political commentary on anything whatsoever.) What if Nyali isn’t expecting that? What if he knows that the Andoin caravan should be in the next city or town or godsforsaken hole in the ground in the middle of the jungle by a certain amount of time, and then they aren’t there, and then he gives up?
No, that’s ridiculous. Nyali would never give him up any more than he would sell his soul to [ironic remark that recalls Nyali’s employment in Oboureon, which subtly hints that perhaps Tsuya doesn’t know Nyali quite as well as he would have sworn he did.]
‘Problem?’ Sambiya settles down at his side; he’s been sitting and playing silent hand games with Agioren, which is pretty unfair of him considering that Agioren was just trying to steal Tsuya’s only scraps of food.
Tsuya hesitates. As much as he likes Sambiya, he’s still older, he’s still an Uzoma, and he’s still a mystery. Tsuya doesn’t like mysteries any more than he likes being stuck in a Shanrien prison with no idea what’s going to happen and a window that renders him unconscious when he tries to escape through it. ‘Nah,’ he says. Thus, our intrepid hero displays the first traces of common sense with regards to Sambiya that this author has ever seen him display.
Bravo, my little child, bravo. Now, does this in any way gel with his actions in previous chapters? Who the hell knows? Also, when I rewrite this, I’m going to organize the chapters differently. Instead of going Nyali, Tanwen, Tsuya, Meilen, it’s going to be Nyali, Tsuya, Tanwen, and Meilen. That way there’s more back-and-forth between the two theaters, and less of me forgetting what happened last time I was with this group of characters. Also when I revise this I am going to make Sambiya a viewpoint character because he don’t do a lot of ‘splaining, and the only way that his interactions are going to eventually make even a lick of sense, is with a shit-ton of ‘splaining.
Continuing.
Sambiya tilts his head to the side in a way that reminds Tsuya of the way that Nyali looks at him when he’s not going to say as much out loud, but he’s thinking, ‘I’m practically your brother, you can’t hide anything from me.’ Except that Sambiya actually whispers, ‘It’s all right. I’m scared too.’
Well, that gets Tsuya all riled up and no mistake. If there’s one thing he won’t stand for, it’s having someone think that he’s scared. (See, this is why Sambiya and Nyali wouldn’t be nearly so interesting. Tsuya is predictable, and he suffers from an overdeveloped sense of pride, whereas Nyali has zero pride and flits from persona to persona when he’s not with people he trusts completely. And now I am suddenly filled with the desire to change Nyali’s place with Tsuya, and see what happens. Tsuya wouldn’t think to follow Tanwen, that’s for sure, so the dynamics and tone of the story would be completely different, but it’d be interesting. You know how Tsuya is expecting Nyali to make a grand entrance, leap in, and they’d get out of there in a blaze of glory? He’d try to do that. It’d end about as well as one would expect. Ooh, that could actually be a really fun novella.) ‘I’m not afraid. Not of being in here and getting executed or anything.’ He isn’t, particularly; the thing about the guards treating them li
ke unspoiled goods means that whatever happens, he’s not going to be killed.
Oddly enough, being killed isn’t high up on his list of things about which he’s going to worry. Sambiya looks at him. He’s about to tell him that he’s worried that Nyali won’t be able to come get him in time, but then Orezi taps Sambiya on the shoulder from behind him, and he turns around and away from Tsuya, who sinks back against the wall, hugging his knees. Fuck that, then, he thinks.
He ends up spending a lot of time staring out the window watching the activities going on outside, so close and yet so far away. (Good lord, I really just used that in a serious way in a piece of writing.) Jesiwe joins him, but to his great relief she doesn’t try to say anything except to point out people of particular interest. This doesn’t bother him so much, and once or twice, out of sheer boredom, he joins in or comments on someone she’s pointed out. Of course, then this encourages her and she starts to get excited and calls him Alaet, and then that game is over.
It irritates him so much that he turns to one of the girls from the carrier caravan – not one of the psycho ugly dude’s children, another girl who’s about his age or a little older – as soon as she comes over to join them, and starts talking. He doesn’t even know what he’s saying: it could be that he’s telling her that the boy he saw staggering past under the weight of a basket full of wet corn looked like this friend he had in Dantaidas before the friend’s family decided that he shouldn’t be friends with a homeless rat and the onseito of a market whore. It could be that he’s telling her about the first time he met Nyali, when Tsuya’s parents found a boy paddling up an inlet of the river on a flimsy raft, discovered that he had no idea where he was or what had happened to him, and so they took him back to the hut where Tsuya lived with his blood sister (she got sick and died soon after that, and it took a while for him to forgive Nyali for replacing her) and told Tsuya that he had a brother now.
The girl looks at him like he’s a slug or one of those crunchy black bugs that he finds sometimes in some of the less savory places from which he’s stolen. He hugs his knees once more and returns to staring out the window and listening to the Andoin talking amongst themselves in the background. It’s returned to mostly civil levels, although the family is still griping because the Shanrien guards have their things in another room and everyone, Grandmother and Grandfather included, are worried that everything will be stolen by the time they are released.
News doesn’t come until the end of the first full day that they are imprisoned (a day behind schedule already, I might add) when the door opens and a woman wearing judiciary robes walks in with her hands folded and a stern expression on her lined face.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I don't care anymore! I've realized that even at my best, this is still only a rough draft, and very little of it will ever see the light of day once revision has taken over. So I've stopped trying so hard to make it a good rough draft, and focused more on the primary objective: get everything down, even if it's only in semi-prose form, as quickly as possible before I forget.
