#the trees would be used for building new structures and stability of the city and to make fabrics/textiles

[girlscience]

alien be upon ye

[solivar]

The Left Hand Path: Three Years Ago

aka the One In Which Genji and Zenyatta meet.

The Standing Stones of Santa Ana Pueblo

Location: Just above the Red Line off I-25 N/Old New Mexico Route 68 N, Sandoval County north of the Albuquerque Military Exclusion Area.

Before the Crisis, Santa Ana Pueblo was a thriving Tamayame reservation, part of the Greater Albuquerque Metropolitan area, and a major tourist draw in the region owing to its world-class golf courses and club, a well-regarded spa resort, a casino and Michelin-starred restaurant, and a multitude of easily accessible cultural sites and events spread throughout the year. All of that changed on the afternoon of August 13, 2046 when Omnic forces advancing on Albuquerque breached the containment cordon along Route 40 and the US military, massed there to stop them, unleashed experimental high energy weaponry designed for that task.

Once the dust settled, the city of Albuquerque and much of the surrounding area, including the Sandia and Santa Ana Pueblos, was almost completely leveled. In the aftermath, the military cordoned off the ruins of the city inside the Albuquerque Military Exclusion Area, which remains under heavily patrolled Federal military control to this day. Evacuees from the surrounding area were strongly encouraged not to return, with offers to purchase their land at pre-Crisis market value to sweeten the deal. Many accepted, a handful did not, and those that chose to do so returned to a pueblo whose buildings were reduced to rubble and scattered with wreckage -- and something weird that was neither.

The Standing Stones of Santa Ana Pueblo occupy a relatively compact chunk of land on the grounds of what was once Santa Ana Golf Club, shielded from casual view by a stand of cottonwood trees that somehow survived the explosions that leveled the clubhouse and most of the other course structures and did significant damage to the surrounding area. There are nine of them, standing in a geometrically perfect circle, varying in size from from well over six feet to a little over five, perfectly hexagonal in shape, crafted of a dark stone that at least superficially resembles basalt. The inner surface of each stone is densely carved with petroglyphs incised deeply into the rock. The outer surface of each stone is carved with one petroglyph unique to that stone and which cannot be found on any of the others, inside or out. Local experts on Native American petroglyphs continue to research this topic but, as of this writing, none of the petroglyphs that appear on the Standing Stones resemble any glyphs that appear on historical sites in the region.

Nor were the Standing Stones a feature of the area before the Omnic Crisis, as confirmed by surviving photos and video of the course and local residents of the area, including the former owners of the golf club. At some point after the evacuation of Santa Ana Pueblo, the Standing Stones appeared in their current location, unnoticed by anyone despite the heavy military presence and regular patrols of the area, and despite the amount of effort such a project would entail. The stones, though tall and relatively slender, are still estimated to weigh several hundred pounds each -- not something that could be loaded, unloaded, and placed by a single person working by hand alone.

The hundred or so families who make Santa Ana Pueblo their home give the Standing Stones a wide berth, citing weirdly colored lights that appear close to the ground around them and occasionally in the sky above, strange disembodied sounds, and a deep thrumming hum that periodically rises from the area. These phenomena have appeared on official reports from area law enforcement and also on official notices issued from the Albuquerque Exclusion Area’s patrol base. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, most of these phenomena have been observed around the anniversary of the Battle of Albuquerque on August 13th.

If you want to try to catch the weirdness in action, make certain you’re prepared to handle high desert summer weather and get your permissions in order accordingly. The former grounds of Santa Ana Golf Course are private property posted against trespass and the area is periodically patrolled by both the US military and tribal coalition police.

“Tonight’s the night, everybody. August the thirteenth. The anniversary of the Battle of Albuquerque. It’s taken months to get my uncle to trust me enough to go out on perimeter patrol but this is our pay off.” Cody Peshlakai lowered his voice, dramatically, because there was no real danger of being heard, to hype up the audience watching his live HollaGram stream. “Tonight I will investigate the Standing Stones and tonight you will be with me.”

He flashed a grin and a V-for-victory sign into his camera then clipped it to the stabilizer harness strapped around his shoulders and across his chest, one more piece of survival equipment among the molle pouches carrying the rest of his gear, no different from anyone else’s. It sat there, neatly hidden next to his cellphone and the primitive walkie talkie his uncle insisted the security crews carry, through the team muster and meeting at the pueblo ranger station, broadcasting all the while. Nobody objected when he called dibs on one of the spiffy little hybrid hover/wheels ATVs, a good chunk of the all-volunteer patrol crew being old enough to value the superior shock absorption of the service’s Jeeps and trucks. The ATV yielded a much better POV for the viewers as he jetted out across the scrubby desert hardpack on the eastern bank of the Rio Grande toward his goal: the grounds of the former Santa Ana Pueblo Golf Club.

Which was, unfortunately, on the western side of the Rio Grande.

On the way, he passed clusters of habitation: the small, self-contained farmsteads of single families, an artist’s commune, the little solar farm that served the area and its caretaker’s hacienda. He paused at each and exchanged a few words with the residents, radioed a handful of coyote sightings back to base, and continued on, the excitement churning higher and higher in his gut the closer he came to his goal, as his numbers climbed on his viewership monitor.

“So, yeah, that’s my job, stream -- I help keep my community, my friends and neighbors, safe. Sometimes that’s chasing off coyotes that are getting a little too comfortable raiding the compost bins but sometimes...sometimes it’s a lot weirder.” The remains of the old Highway 550 bridge loomed out of the twilight, crumbling concrete pilings jutting out of the shallowest, siltiest part of the river and he pulled to a halt, executing a slow pan to give the stream the best view possible. “On the other side of the river and a few miles west is what’s left of the Santa Ana Pueblo Golf Club. It used to be a world-class course, fancy-ass hotel and casino inclusive, made a lot of jobs and money for the community. All that, of course, came to an end during the Omnic Crisis.”

He revved the motivator, fired up the hoverpods to their highest yield, and skimmed across the surface of the river and up the opposite bank. A vista of devastation, stained in shades of sunset and shadow, spread out before them and the stream chat went absolutely wild. The residential neighborhoods south of 550 had been utterly flattened during the Battle of Albuquerque, hardly a brick left stacked or a wall left standing, blown all-but-flat by some incomprehensibly massive force. That, combined with the occasional blast crater and random scattering of unexploded ordnance, had discouraged resettlement so thoroughly nobody even wanted to risk putting up a solar farm. Wreckage still lay scattered as far as the eye could see and the eye could see quite a distance, even with twenty-plus years of desert scrub overgrowth blurring the harshest edges.

“Nobody really knows what happened here that day -- August thirteenth, the Battle of Albuquerque,” Cody narrated as he kicked the ATV back into motion, navigating carefully down the cracked and pitted remnants of 550 toward his goal. “Just about everybody was evacuated and the ones that stayed behind...well. Let’s just say that, when all was said and done, there wasn’t anyone left to tell the tale.”

The bombed-out, burned-out remnants of the old hotel-casino came into view, its parking lot still filled with the rusting hulks of abandoned vehicles. “The casino and golf course were used as a rallying and evacuation point for the nearby communities on the west bank of the Rio Grande in the days leading up to the battle. The US Army and local militia forces were massing along I-40 -- the Red Line -- and the Air Force and Air National Guard were flying refugees out by helo, the National Guard had commandeered every bus, van, and free personnel carrier they could get their hands on to get people out of harm’s way. This entire area was an absolute hive of activity, you can find video of it all over the internet.”

He paused long enough to link some of his favorites in the chat as he turned off the main road, easing the ATV along something that was once a paved maintenance access point, running roughly parallel with the river. He hit the first scraggly bits of “green,” grass genetically engineered to survive the heat and dry of a high desert summer, a few minutes later and he pulled up onto the flat, opened up his holomap, and pinged his location for the audience. “I’m here -- just south of the lower water trap which is, at this point, completely dry. Our objective is...here.” He touched the copse of cottonwood trees a mile and a half to the north. “The Standing Stones. No one knows how they got here -- they weren’t here before the battle and they weren’t here during the evacuation. But when the recovery teams swept through to see what, if anything, had survived...there they were.”

He gunned the motivator, turned the headlights up to maximum, and muted the call trying to come in from his uncle, likely demanding where the Hell he was. Oh, he was getting fired for this. So very, very fired. But very soon that wouldn’t matter, because after tonight his career was going elsewhere.

The stream picked up every jounce and bounce as he skimmed over ruts and bits of wreckage flung miles from their origins, swerved around scrub becoming less and less scrubby as he went and the wild descendants of decorative plants that had somehow survived despite it all. The cottonwood stand was still the tallest thing around and he slowed as it came into view. “My plan is to set up motion-activated cameras in a perimeter around the Standing Stones and several inside the circle of the Stones, as well, along with a super-sensitive microphone pickup and electromagnetic monitoring equipment. If something happens tonight, we’ll see and hear it.”

He stopped as the ATV’s headlights washed over the trees and struck glints from the Standing Stones themselves, dark stone reflecting darkly -- and more. Cody froze, still straddling his seat. “Oh, fuck -- there’s someone else in there --”

Cody killed the headlights and the motivator and rolled off the ATV into the relative cover of the underbrush in one smoothish and only mildly panicked motion. He even managed to avoid squeaking too much as he whispered, “Chat, did you see that? Did anyone else see that?!”

Yes!

Me, too!

I saw it -- it was TALL

Dozens of messages bubbled up in the chat as his audience scrolled back and scrutinized every frame for him. For his part, he dug his brand new Panopticon binoculars out of gear bag, clipped them into place on his tactical visor, and tried to get a better look of his own, zooming in on the Standing Stones so closely he could clearly see the petroglyphs incised into their surfaces, even with the last of the light bleeding out of the sky behind them. None of the grainy-green of old school low light optics with these babies, and he scanned the area and slow and careful, looking for some hint of what he saw, something, anything --

A flicker of motion caught his eye, something moving among the Stones, mostly obscured by their mass.

“Fuck.” This...was not a complication he had considered, much less prepared for. This whole area in general and the Standing Stones very much in specific were so far out of bounds that he never imagined encountering another person out here at all much less…

On the night of the anniversary of the battle of Albuquerque.

He had to physically resist the urge to facepalm. “Chat, I...think I know what this is.” He crawled back out of the brush and hunkered down next to the ATV, tried to get a better angle on the inside of the circle. “You know how every year there’s a remembrance ceremony at the big Crisis Memorial up in Santa Fe? Well...what if I told you that some people come down to the pueblo for their own private remembrances, too? It’s the anniversary, after all. Let me see if --”

A shriek of audio distortion drilled his ear with the enthusiasm of an icepick straight to the brain and it was all he could do not to howl as he clawed his audio pickup out. “Holy fuck, what was that?”

The chat, in the corner of the heads-up display on his visor, was losing its entire fucking mind -- whatever it was, they had heard it, too, and --

A second pulse of sound, deep and resonant, punched him in the chest hard enough to make both his heart and breathing stutter, and the chat went absolutely apeshit again as it fed through to them, as well.

“You know what, Chat,” Cody said, as soon as he got enough breath back to speak, “I think I’m going to take your advice and get the Hell --”

Golden light blossomed inside the circle of the Standing Stones -- for an instant, to his eyes, it looked as though the petroglyphs themselves were lighting up, searing their patterns into his retinas with a single unwary glance. He reeled back and looked away as he clawed both the tac visor and the binoculars off his face, blinking afterimages out of his vision, the light washing out of the stone circle, over him, over everything, and --

Calm flowed over him, over him and through him, a wave of perfect serenity that stole away all his fear between one breath and the next, left him wobbling on legs made of rubber, legs that folded up underneath him and left him sprawled on his back, eyes and camera both pointed at the swiftly darkening sky, hazed in golden light. He could hear the pinging of his stream’s chat freaking out a few physical inches and a couple thousand conceptual realities away, but couldn’t bring himself to care. That sweet golden light was all he knew and that majestic bone-deep music, and he allowed himself to drift away on it, blinking away like a pinched-out candle between one breath and the next.

It was some time later that the rescue team found him, sprawled out next to the ATV, boneless, blissed out and drooling. But not, as they feared, dead.

“I told you this little moron was up to something,” Julia Tso nudged him in the ribs with the tip of one hiking boot. “He’s been streaming crap on HollaGram for months, Joseph.”

“Yeah, I know.” Joseph Peshlakai sighed and signaled the medical evac team to come in from the road. “Keep an eye on him until they get here, yeah?”

Julia rolled her eyes but nodded and Joseph crossed the remaining distance to the Standing Stones, where a golden light still pulsed among them, within them, the petroglyphs alight. He stopped outside, cleared his throat, and said, “Thank you for not killing him, Wanderer. He’s an idiot but he’s my kid brother’s favorite child.”

Youth and folly are not offenses punishable by death, my old friend. The voice echoed in his mind, warm and amused, but not less awesome because of it. Thank you, as always, for watching over them in my absence.

“My honor, Wanderer. I’m honestly a little surprised to see you this soon. It’s only been, what, five years?” Five years to the day, Joseph thought but did not say.

Yes. I...think I will be staying for a time. Not here. But close. I feel...A frisson of unease passed between them, mind to mind, a chill crawling down his spine. I feel that I will be needed, sooner rather than later.

Joseph took a deep, steadying breath and nodded. “Things have been...a little stranger than usual, I will admit. It will be good to have you back, even if only for a time.”

It will be good to be home. Farewell for now, old friend.

The golden light blinked out, and Joseph knew he was alone. The Stones faded more slowly at his back, as he walked back down the shallow rise to his lieutenant and his idiot nephew and the knowledge growing in his mind that things were going to get worse before they got better.

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space Orcs, “The Voiced.”

Hope you guys like this one :) 

The flight in atmosphere was quite smooth, with predictable air currents and soft winds. It seemed as if he barely had to touch the controls to maneuver downward onto the planet.

It was probably good the air currents were stable and predictable, otherwise landing the shuttle would have been more than treacherous. 

The area of the planet which they had been called to, did not have open ground to speak of. Instead, it was all just massive spires of rock sticking up thousands of feet into the air, so tall that he couldn’t see from where they originated, as the canyons between the pillars were covered in a dense layer of fog. The plants here were a pleasant blue green color and sprouted thickly at the top of many of these spires.

The closer he got, the more he could see, and noted that some of the pillars, while they had looked small from a distance, could have held an entire football stadium on top if you were to clear the rocks and vegetation.

They were skimming low now, coming up just beside one of the massive rock formations . Turning his head, he got a better look at the alien vegetation: tree like structures with large softball sized blue orbs instead of leaves, mushrooms taller than a man, with twisted trunks like threes and caps larger than a table umbrella. Colorful pink stocks with bright blue flowers --or at least something similar-- and of course, great hanging blue vines spanning the chasms between the massive pillars.

They were just rounding another corner when the final pillar rose up in his vision.

It was a massive pillar, standing out as a good hundred feet taller than the others, and atop its crown sat a shining city of white marble.

The marines behind him gasped in awe at the soaring pillars, graceful spires, and delicately spinning footpaths, all sat precariously atop this one massive pillar. Squinting, he could just make out dozens of little black forms crawling across its surface and flocking in small groups through the open air.

He slowed the shuttle even further, and was surprised a moment later as they were intercepted by a large black shape.

It  was sort of birdlike, though it reminded him more of ancient flying dinosaurs than anything else, though it had a short beaklike face rather unlike its ancient earth counterpart.

Wind ruffled through the creature’s hair and it banked slowly to the left.

He followed after assuming he was supposed to follow it.

His hunch had been correct, and with the guidance of their new friend, they set down just off one of the massive marble spires. He cut the engine glancing out the windscreen at an assembled party of colorfully dressed creatures assembled just to the side of their landing pad.

He grew nervous all of a sudden, worried he would foul things up upon first interaction.

He glanced over at the diplomatic team hoping they would know what they were doing when he did not.

He stood as the marines jumped into a flurry of motion and were already spilling out the back of the aircraft and onto the cold marble surface weapons ready, Ramirez at their head.

Commander Vir took point for the diplomatic team and filtered out into the half circle led by the marines. Once the area was cleared he was allowed to move forward at the head of their line flanked by the diplomatic team and a couple of marines.

The figures remained still as they approached.

That gave commander Vir time to look them over at his leisure. They were tall about as tall as your average human, with spindly legs and arms, and massive wings which they rested on the back of their forward hands so as to avoid dragging the on the ground. Their heads were birdlike, their beaks shaped almost like what happens when a human uses the hand gesture to denote someone is talking to much, four fingers on top the thumb on the bottom, which makes it look almost like a bird head.

However their beaks were not made out of anything hard, like bone or keratin. Looking at their faces, he could see they were surprisingly flexible, the black skin stretching and un-stretching over their faces. The feathers, or hair, came in a variety of grey from black almost down to white, and while some of them wore no clothing to speak of, the vast majority of them wore brightly colored robes.

They stopped a few feet away, and the line of Kree delegates bowed low, dropping their long necks and small heads with a drawn out bob.

Commander vir did something similar urging the rest of the humans behind him to do the same.

There was silence for a long time as the two groups stared at each other, and he worried that he was expected to speak first, and by not doing so he was offending the or something, but instead one of the most colorfully dressed stepped forward, “I am T’lau leader of the voiced nations.” He bowed again, “you must be commander Vir.”

He nodded his head, “I am.”

“We are pleased to welcome you the the voiced capital, please follow us.”

Glancing over his shoulder he watched as two of the marines fell back to stay with the shuttle while the rest followed him inward towards the massive marble halls of the Kree capital city.

T’lau turned her head towards him, motioning him forward with a raised wing, “Please commander, walk with me.”

He stepped forward a bit faster to catch up with her walking steadily as compared to her stilted gate, on her long gangly limbs. He imagined she would be more graceful in the air, and that was something he understood.

“We are pleased to finally be meeting with a representative of the GA.” her feathers ruffled in a light breeze, “I am afraid our history till now has been rather strained.”

“OUr history.” He wondered 

“YEs, you have met ebers of our race before have you not?”

He frowned, “I don’t seem to recall. I would remember a flying species. I am sure of it.”

“Oh no, they would not have flown. The cursed do not fly as their wings were taken long ago, their transgression condemning their children to walk the land forever.” They walked over a small marble bridge, and he watched in fascination as a small stream trickled through bubbling and gurgling past little domes of blue plantlife sticking up from the stone and dirt.

The breeze around them was cool and tranquil, sharp and clear. He closed his eyes to breathe it in listening to the soft silence that hung about the peaceful city.

A memory struck him, “Oh…. perhaps I do recall…. The ‘cursed’ as you call them, are they a different species, or?...”

She shook her head, “No, genetically they are Kree, though they do not fly. There are many different types of Kree, commander. The cursed, the blessed, the voiced, the voiceless, and the sorrowful.”

“And you are?”

“THe voiced.”

“May I ask why you are called as such?”

She turned her head to look at him, her dark eyes twinkling, almost as if she was smiling.

“Why, because we have a gift, a gift that we only share with your species, commander.”

HE blinked in surprise, “And what is that.”

She turned her head, tilting it slightly to the side. 

She stopped, and the others around her stopped. He froze too, not sure what was happening. She raised her wings, and he watched, the others spilled outwards towards the pillars their feet tapping against the stone. A soft tapping began somewhere above, and looking up, he could see a few of the kree sitting in the rafters of the massive arching building, their feet tapping against the columns.

And that is when the echoing rose up round him, as the kree opened their mouths.

And began to sing.

He stepped back in shock, having never seen an alien that could match a human in vocal quality, but they did harmonize and bring their voices higher in ethereal echoes up towards the pillars before them. Their voices reverberated and echoed weaving in and out through each other like an angelic choir.

The longer they sang, the more voices joined in, until the sound echoed from everywhere and nowhere all at once leaving him confused and disoriented as to where he was.

He continued to spin in a light circle staring around towards the beautiful architecture and hidden voices that seemed to spill over the sone like water spills down a cliff face. The voices went on for a moment before fading back into quiet rapture.

T’lau turned to look at him, “Is this like your singing, human.”

HE nodded dumbly, “It’s beautiful.”

Her feathers ruffled in pleasure, “Perhaps later, you humans may grace us with a song.”

“Yes…. yes perhaps I can work something out.”

She motioned him forward, and he followed , “I am afraid that this is not a time for sharing songs, as we have a greater matter to attend to.” The soft singing continued in the background of their conversation, giving a strange surreal quality to his conversation, as if he had stepped into another dimension’.

As if he wasn’t even real. “Is something wrong.”

They had walked towards the edge of one of the open walls, standing between two pillars and looking down at a small waterfall, and a long drop plunging downwards towards the distant pillarside and it’s blue flora 

She sighed, her feathers ruffling slightly, “The Voiceless.” She spat, “The voiceless have betrayed us, and I am afraid they are seeking to ally with your enemies. I would not have called you here were things not so dire. We must-”

A shrill shriek rang out.

Commander Vir turned on the spot and saw only an eruption of black feathers before he took a hit to the chest like being hit by a car. The impact was powerful enough to throw him off his feet and pitch him backward.

His stomach dropped suddenly and his hands flailed as the cold marble of the beautiful city receded backwards, and he found himself plunging downwards towards a rocky death. Overhead gunfire and screaming, a colorful shape leaped off the cliff and dived downwards, but it was going to slow.

Heart racing, he flipped onto his stomach, hands and legs out to stabilize his fall. Wind whipped up past his face and chest making his eyes burn.

The side of the spire was coming up to meet him, and quickly. With one hand he quickly engaged the jetpack. 

Come on come on.

Air resistance suddenly changed as the wings engaged.

The rock rose up to meet him.

He gritted his teeth squinting, and the engines fired.

He rolled to the side at the last moment wingtip clipping the rock face as he rolled to the side and pulled up hard. Sparks flew as the engine roared and shot him skyward. He reached up, flipping up his eyepatch and pulling the goggles down over his face as tears leaked from his one human eye.

The ground receded behind him as the city bloomed in his vision. Altitude and targeting vectors materialized in his field of vision from his mechanical eye.

He pressed his arms and feet together, turning himself into a missile as he shot upwards.

Halfway there, he met a colorful figure hovering in mid air.

T’lau looked close to paic. He couldn’t hear her over the roaring of the angines, but the situation was clear.

They had been attacked.

“Commander, commander come in, are you there!” The voice was near a shout when it came through his comms.

“Fine Marine. Krill better be FUCKING glad I bought this jetpack.”

“Thank god. Commander the Voiced are under attack. Targeting figures without colorful clothing.”

“You got it, marine.”

He fired the engine and shot upwards towards the city spinning in a tight loop searching for enemies. He caught one ducking out of one of the buildings. He reached back whipping out two guns that had been attached to the Iron eye armor at his hips.

He lifted them before his face allowing the Iron eye suit to stabilize his arms and integrate the two weapons with the targeting system in his eye.

The Kree dived, and he dived after it.

The little green targeting circle shifted this way and that as it tried to get a lock. Commander Vir rolled, dived and banked in quick succession.

The circle went red: LOCK

He squeezed the trigger on his right hand, the suit still stabilizing him as he flew.

An explosion of blue icor showed his goggles as he rolled to the side, the Kree body plunging downwards.

Two more figures were marked as friendly.

He banked to the side locking on another figure who darted into the city.

He plunged after it ducking into a building and slowing his pursuit only slightly cutting left past a pillar, than right banking hard flipping his wings up to the right and then up to the left.

They took a sharp corner and the green circle went red.

He fired.

Blue everywhere.

Something stinging hit the back of his calves, and he quickly looked over his shoulder to see a pair of voiceless right behind him, and in their hands they held lengths of sharp razor wire, which at this speed could cut him in half.

He turned back forward just in time to take another corner, his left wing sparking on the wall 

Behind him the Kree screamed.

He tried to lose them, cutting through pillars left and right, over and under. He Couldn't turn around to engage as close as the space was. 

Razor wire nicked at his boots.

Up ahead light flickered in through a window, no bigger than three feet wide and four feet tall sending a shaft of light down onto the marble floor.

They were gaining.

He was coming in high.

They snatched at him, and at the last moment he disengaged the jetpack. The wings snapped inward and he pulled his hands into his chest spinning like a bullet with the momentum of his retracing wings.

The stone wall rose up before him…..

TO BE CONTINUED. 

[trying-to-work]

Apparently my 13-year old wrote this. It's fucking great!

Oscar was heading back to his home. He had just finished his day of Education System 7. He went back home with high spirits, knowing that his friends would have something interesting on their minds. Oscar had very individualistic friends. Likewise, he was strange and unusual. But his friends always made life interesting, with their points of view.

Oscar and his friends liked to always go to the Sitting Garden. The Sitting Garden was a place where people could go to have a nice time and entertain themselves. It had lots of trees, benches, beautiful landscapes, structures and fountains. And the shrine to the Government leaders. All of the Government leaders were very respected and a huge part of their society.

Oscar headed to the Sitting Garden. As he was passing through to his favorite opening, he noticed that the vegetation around one of the trees was turning yellow. He went to further investigate, and found his friend James Conducting another one of his experiments. This time it was a flying device. He saw that the flying device was an electric hover engine, using propulsion fans to fly.

“Tell me, just what is this supposed to be?” Said another one of Oscar's friends, Kate. She was just as confused as Oscar as to what this was.

“This is a propulsion system that I came up with. By spinning fan blades to make the machine fly, it stabilizes the mechanism and steadies out the torque anomalies. I also use the energy of our impending doom to help.”

“What is our impending doom?” asked Oscar.

“Oh, you haven’t heard of the Supernova that is coming? Our very star is going to go into its Giant Phase in just 9 years, and the Government officials have yet to say anything.”

“What? Why was I not told of this! My family literally works for the System Stability Corporation. Am I the only one who this is news to?” exclaimed Occar.

“Oh calm down, this crisis has only been going on for 40 or so hours. You are not the only one left in the dark here. Our star is enormous. It is very unpredictable and a crisis like this is something that we prepared for.”

The trio discussed this matter further in the Sitting Garden, until the late night came. Walking at night in the Sitting Garden was always a very fun thing to do. The reflections of all the lights had such a magic effect on the fountains, and all the taller vegetation. As Oscar, Kate James walked back, they thought about the star that they lived by, and the evacuation process that had been formed for situations such as these. Oscar thought about what system the species would travel to, and what all would be different.

“Do you think that we will still have something like the Sitting Garden at our new planet?” asked Kate. She was the one who showed them the Sitting Garden. On the first week of Education System 7, Kate found her friends and told them of the most amazing place she had ever seen. They walked down with their parents to the Sitting Garden Entrance, and walked around the vegetation, fountains, statues, brick pathways, and open areas that brought the Sitting Garden so much life.

“I will miss the Sitting Garden. I wish we could bring it with us to our new planet. Then it would feel just like we were home.” said Kate. She had that look on her face that she had when something was not going well.

“Perhaps if we got a warrant of code 12758, we could legally move the object from one planet to another.” replied James

This was true, but would not change now. James had always been one to look at things as if they were able to be changed. He had grown up like that, he excelled at looking at technology in new ways. Innovation was his specialty. He was the Smart One.

Kate was the person who could make you feel anything. She had that way of communication that not many other people had. She always wins arguments. But that is what they did.

Oscar, he was the one who had a million thoughts going in in his head at once. He rarely spoke out. He was the kind of person that would not let you down, except when he realises that you are the useless person in a group project. He literally has you lie down and take a nap, so as to not have the useless person interrupt.

On his way out, Oscar picked a flower from the Sitting Garden, put it in a containment bag, and went home. The Supernova would not take the whole garden from Kate.

A few months later the government officials announced that everyone was to board the ships. Everyone did, and the planet was evacuated. The ships had many rooms, 1 for each family. Once everyone was on board, the rumbling began. The Ground slowly got further and further away from the window. Everyone looked forward to the Captain. He Said that everyone was to stay in their rooms for the lift off sequence. Everyone did as they were told, and hoped for a better tomorrow.

~ 10 Years Later ~

Oscar looked out the window of his office. He saw the tall buildings, tens of stories tall. Almost all of them were painted a blue gray color. The pops of color in the new city were the luscious trees and light post filled streets. He focused back on his work. He was a worker for the manufacturing organization. He was placing an order that the company had requested. It was a very boring job, but it was his responsibility. He took a final glance at the window, and this time saw something intriguing. It was a small black dot in the sky. Just there. The atmosphere of the planet produced a light green haze, but here was a random black dot. He stood up to look closer. It looked like a meteor. This was odd. The moon base usually shot down all meteors. It seemed to be getting larger as well. Oscar realized that it would crash into the planet. He quickly grabbed his things and ran to the bottom of the building. He told the guards what was happening, and they said they would try to alert everyone.

Meanwhile, James on the moon base, looked at the supposed meteor, and told the officials to shoot it down. They aimed their weapons, and took fire. The object exploded, and a fire of smaller rocks rained down. The intercoms came on.

“Please take shelter immediately. We are experiencing some temporary meteor problems.”

Everyone did as they were told, and sought out shelter. On the moon base, James knew something was wrong. Usually the targets like that were shot down automatically. He and a team went to investigate. They entered the room, and 3 people lay dead on the floor. The system was sabotaged.

“Oh dear.” said one of the shocked guards.

“We seem to have an imposter among us.”

There was then a red alert. The alarms were going off. Everyone was rushing, falling down, trying to get to their station. A huge man made object was rushing their way. It then sent a message to every screen on the planet. It was only a few words, but everyone was aware of what it meant. It said:

“Did you miss us?”

Everyone thought back to the official day of evacuation. Not everyone made it onto a ship. There just simply was not enough room. Some people volunteered to stay behind. Some were just unlucky. Oscars parents were some of those unlucky people.

Back down at the planet, Oscar was rushing towards the nearest shelter. The huge gray metal object slowly loomed closer and closer. It was almost like a bomb of some sort. The planetary guard began to fire at the object, but it only made a small dent. The city was still in a panic. Oscar got caught up in a large crowd of people. The chaos of the crown overwhelmed him, and in their stampede, Oscar Tripped and fell. His arm got most of the fall, but it still hurt. He was not even angry, he just wanted away from the awful thing in the sky. A small pod came down from the large ship, and boarded. Oscar ws silent among the screaming crowd.

The shuttle then engaged audio on the screens it took over.

“Look at this. This is chaos.” said the speaker. The person's voice was calm. Void of all emotion at all. It just stated this, as if it was an average conversation.

“This wouldn’t seem familiar to any of you. All of you were able to board a ship, and escape your problems. Hmm. You all make me sick. Nobody here is coming to oppose this little visit of ours.”

Everyone was silent now. The children all looked, awed and terrified at this person's words.

“My message to all of you is simple. 1,700 people are still significant, even out of 12 billion. Now, my life is almost meaningless, so I have one last act.” He signalled to the ship. The ship responded. And then grew very hot. It then exploded. The ball blinded Oscar. He couldn’t witness the final moments of his life. The ship detonated with an incredible bang. So loud, it shook the doomed planet. Someone grabbed his hand. It was Kate. Oscar’s final act was giving a flower, the one he had picked 10 years ago. then it all went black

[tomasorban]

Jantar Mantar – The Ancient Astronomical Observatories of India

The Jantar Mantar refers to a group of five astronomical observatories built in India during the 18th century. The largest and best-known of these observatories is located in Jaipur, a city founded by and named after Jai Singh II. This ruler was extremely interested in astronomy and therefore had an observatory built in the city he founded.

The Jantar Mantar in Jaipur is such an amazing feat of human ingenuity that it was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2010. Each Jantar Mantar contains various astronomical instruments , one of the most notable being the sundial. In fact, the Jantar Mantar in Jaipur boasts having the largest stone sundial in the world.

Origin of the Jantar Mantar

The word ‘Jantar Mantar’ is derived from a combination of two Sanskrit words, ‘yantra’ and ‘mantra’, the former meaning ‘instruments’, while the latter means ‘to calculate’. Therefore, the Jantar Mantar quite literally means ‘instruments to calculate’.

Indeed, the instruments built at these observatories were meant to perform various types of astronomical calculations. While the sundial is the instrument most are familiar with, there were also other more complex instruments. Some of these instruments will be discussed later on.

As already mentioned, there were five Jantar Mantar built around India. Apart from Jaipur, smaller observatories were built in Delhi (specifically in the area that later became New Delhi ), Ujjain, Varanasi, and Mathura. The earliest of these five Jantar Mantar was the one in Delhi, which was constructed in 1724, and the other four in the years that followed. The four subsequent Jantar Mantar were built in order to reaffirm the astronomical readings that were being recorded in Delhi.

One remarkable aspect of these observatories is that although some of the instruments, for instance, the sundial, are found in the different observatories, each Jantar Mantar is unique. None of the five Jantar Mantar are the same in terms of size, layout, and style. Today, all of the Jantar Mantar, apart from the one in Mathura, is still in existence and may be visited by the public.

The observatory in Mathura, incidentally, was demolished just before 1857, along with the fort that housed it. The Jantar Mantar were built on flat ground, free of trees, so that no shadow would obstruct the use of the instruments. The situation, however, has changed today.

At the Jantar Mantar in Delhi, for instance, accurate readings can no longer be made due to the tall buildings around the observatory. Nevertheless, some of the instruments are still being used to forecast weather and crop yields.

Jai Singh Builder of the Jantar Mantar

The construction of the Jantar Mantar was possible thanks to an extraordinary individual, Jai Singh II, the Hindu Rajput ruler of the Kingdom of Amber (known also as the Kingdom of Jaipur or Jaipur State). Jai Singh was born in 1688 in Amber, in what is today the state of Rajasthan. In 1699, Jai Singh’s father, Bishan Singh, died, and was succeeded by his 11 year-old son.

When Jai Singh succeeded his father, the Kingdom of Amber was a feudatory of the Mughal Empire , which was the dominant power in the Indian subcontinent at that time. Since 1658, the Mughal Empire was ruled by Aurangzeb, widely considered to be the empire’s last great ruler, though also notorious for his political and religious intolerance.

Aurangzeb pursued an expansionist policy and it was during his reign that the Mughal Empire reached its greatest extent. The predecessors of Jai Singh preferred dealing with the Mughals through diplomacy, rather than through force of arms, as their kingdom was situated not far from Delhi and Agra, the power centers of the Mughal Empire.

Therefore, when Jai Singh became the new ruler of Amber, he continued serving as a vassal of the Mughals. Nevertheless, he was a shrewd ruler and managed to gain the favor of Aurangzeb. Soon after his ascension, Jai Singh was ordered by Aurangzeb to serve in his military campaign against the Marathas in the Deccan.

Following his capture of the fort of Vishalgarh from the Marathas, Jai Singh was awarded the title ‘Sawai’, which means ‘one and a quarter’, which signifies that he was a quarter greater than his illustrious ancestor, Jai Singh I. In 1712, the title was officially recognized by an imperial edict, and in commemoration of this recognition, Jai Singh initiated the practice of flying two flags, one full and one quarter-sized. This practice, along with the title ‘Sawai’, was inherited by Jai Singh’s successors.

According to another story, it was Jai Singh’s wit that earned him the title ‘Sawai’. In this tale, Jai Singh was summoned by his overlord for contravening an agreement of not waging war against the Marathas. When the king arrived at Aurangzeb’s court, the emperor clasped his hands in greeting, while demanding an explanation for his actions.

Jai Singh, who was 15 at that time, replied that since Aurangzeb had extended his hand, it meant that the emperor would protect him and his kingdom. Aurangzeb was pleased with the reply and granted Jai Singh the title of ‘Sawai’.

After the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, the Mughal Empire went through a period of political instability, despite having an emperor, Bahadur Shah, on the throne. The intolerant policies of Aurangzeb resulted in various rebellions across the empire, while palace intrigues and political conspiracies were rife in the Mughal court. In 1719, for instance, there were four successive emperors on the Peacock Throne .

That year also saw some sense of stability returning to the empire, when Muhammad Shah became emperor in late September. Compared to the last few Mughal emperors, Muhammad Shah had a long reign, as he ruled the empire until 1748. In the meantime, Jai Singh, being an astute ruler, was able to maintain his political importance in the turbulent years following Aurangzeb’s death.

In addition, when Muhammad Shah came to power, Jai Singh became a favorite of the emperor, just as he had been during the time of Aurangzeb. It was thanks to Jai Singh’s instigation, for instance, that Muhammad Shah abolished the Jaziya tax that was imposed on the empire’s Hindu subjects.

Jai Singh was not only a capable ruler, but also expressed great interest in various areas of science, most notably in astronomy. It was Jai Singh who brought to the attention of Muhammad Shah that there were certain astronomical discrepancies that may have an effect on the timing of both Hindu and Muslim holy events. In addition, the king expressed his desire to rectify these errors.

Muhammad Shah, being a cultured man, and a great patron of the arts, supported Jai Singh’s endeavor. Therefore, having received the emperor’s backing, Jai Singh built his first Jantar Mantar in Delhi in 1724. In 1728, the construction of another observatory began in Jaipur, Jai Singh’s new capital, which he had founded in the previous year.

Instruments of the Jantar Mantar

This Jantar Mantar in Jaipur was built on a plot of land just outside the City Palace and is situated within the walls of the original city. This is the largest of the five observatories that Jai Singh’s built, and is one of the best-known and most visited Jantar Mantar, since it is located in a major tourist destination .

More importantly, the Jantar Mantar in Jaipur is the most complete and elaborate of Jai Singh’s observatories, as it possesses the greatest number and variety of instruments. Some of the instruments, it may be added, are unique to this observatory. In total, the Jantar Mantar in Jaipur houses 22 astronomical instruments, 16 of which are masonry instruments, while the other six are made of metal.

One of the most impressive astronomical instruments at this observatory is the Samrat Yantra, which is sometimes called the ‘Supreme Instrument’. This is an equinoctial sundial and is little different, in terms of design, from other sundials that were being used in the preceding centuries. Jai Singh’s sundial, however, exceeds these other sundials in its precision, being capable of measuring time to an accuracy of two seconds.

In order to achieve this level of precision, the size of the instrument had to be huge. Therefore, standing at a height of 88 feet (27 meters), the sundial at Jaipur’s Jantar Mantar is the largest in the world.

While the sundial is one of the simpler instruments at the Jantar Mantar, Jai Singh also had more complex pieces made for his observatories. One of the most complex of these is the Jai Prakash Yantra (which translates to mean ‘Light of Jai Instrument’). A description of how the instrument works is as follows:

“The Jai Prakash is a bowl shaped instrument, built partly above and partly below ground level, …. The interior surface is divided into segments, and recessed steps between the segments provide access for the observers. A taut cross-wire, suspended at the level of the rim, holds a metal plate with circular opening directly over the center of the bowl. This plate serves as a sighting device for night observations, and casts an easily identifiable shadow on the interior surface of the bowl for solar observation. The surfaces of the Jai Prakash are engraved with markings corresponding to an inverted view of both the azimuth-altitude, or horizon, and equatorial coordinate systems used to describe the position of celestial objects.”

Yet another instrument found in the Jantar Mantar is the Rama Yantra, which consists of “a pair of cylindrical structures, open to the sky, each with a pillar or pole at the center. The pillar/post and walls are of equal height, which is also equal to the radius of the structure. The floor and interior surface of the walls are inscribed with scales indicating angles of altitude and azimuth”.

This astronomical instrument is used to “observe the position of any celestial object by aligning an object in the sky with both the top of the central pillar, and the point on the floor or wall that completes the alignment”. It has been claimed that the Rama Yantra, along with the Jai Prakash and the Samrat Yantra were devised by Jai Singh himself, and that to some extent, their design ought to be attributed to the king’s personal ingenuity.

Decline of the Jantar Mantar

When Jai Singh died in 1743, his kingdom began to enter a period of decline, as his sons fought each other for the throne. At the same time, the Mughal Empire was weakening and was in fact breaking up. As a result, northern India became vulnerable and various powers seized the opportunity to attack the region.

Delhi was especially targeted, due to the riches it contained. For instance, the city was sacked by the Iranian ruler, Nader Shah, when he invaded northern India in 1739. In 1748, after the death of Muhammad Shah, the Marathas overran almost all of northern India. The Jantar Mantar at Delhi fell victim to these invaders.

The natural environment is also responsible for causing much damage to the Jantar Mantar. Due to their outdoor situation in a tropical area, maintenance and restorations had to be frequently carried out on the Jantar Mantar.

As a result of the political turmoil in the region, however, the successors of Jai Singh had more pressing matters to attend to. As a consequence, maintenance of the observatories was neglected and they were simply left to deteriorate.

During the 19th century, even the Jantar Mantar at Jaipur was temporarily abandoned. Fortunately, reconstructions of the instruments were made for this Jantar Mantar, and in the subsequent decades, efforts were made to maintain the site.

Today, this Jantar Mantar functions as a tourist attraction, and is used also as a public park and outdoor museum. Nevertheless, the deterioration of the instruments remains a problem even today. Weathering, the wear and tear of materials, as well as vandalism pose a threat to the site.

In 2010, it was reported that the biggest issue is the loss of the fine, calibrated markings on the instruments, which are eroding. These astronomical instruments demonstrate the ingenuity of Jai Singh and his achievements in the field of astronomy. Therefore, their deterioration needs to be addressed as soon as possible, so as to preserve these remarkable instruments for future generations.

[greenman-lucas]

| The Real Illusion |

It was a wasteland, dust swept up at Lucas’ feet and harsh winds threatened to blind him. Every intake of breath he took would have choked him, the polluted air that was strung with the sickness filled his lungs, infecting everything that it touched. His skin should be hurting, should have been licking fire across his skin freely as he stood centrefold to what used to be his city. 

This wasn’t Grimstone; it wasn’t even close, it was what was left of his former home. It was what every horror movie dreamed to capture on the screen; buildings had fallen to crumbling remnants of the monumental structures they once were. Vehicles were abandoned, hollowed out to metal shells and scattered haphazardly in the roads. There was no sign of life, no greenery; trees were gone, withered to dust and debris. Fires roared in the distance, capturing the last of the flammables in desolate structures.

It was Lucas’ definition of the apocalypse. 

As his eyes moved, more chaos appeared, the dystopian ruin was littered in ashen bodies; disfigured; unrecognisable; dead. He hadn’t realised he’d been breathless, that panic had invaded every fibre of his being, it shouldn’t have been there either. None of it should have been, but even as he slowly turned to survey his surroundings, it was everywhere. The chaos and ruination of the place he’d once known so well - his vision was blurred, or perhaps it was the world that was, he couldn’t quite tell in his haze. 

What he could figure out was that he’d heard the announcement. He’d seen the news and he’d been cut off from technology in the same instant. Much like this world that he was now gazing upon; everyone was gone. The shaking of Greenman’s body was a cross between fear and anger; two things that weren’t ever part of him, but what had just happened; the crushing disappointment, the pandemonium that it promised had made Lucas’ imagination, and ability flow into a state of overdrive. It was the feeling of hopelessness, grief and loss. 

Hence why he was standing in the midst of the decimation of what the announcement promised the outside world would eventually look like. Grimstone had been the apparent safe haven and they were powerless - for the first time, to do anything about it. They were to hide and allow what Lucas’ illusions were speculating and he’d never lost the grip on his ability like he had now, he’d never taken images from the news reports, fictional movies and the town he was standing in and formed the terrifying false reality that was surrounding him right now. If he didn’t know better and he hadn’t spent years honing his ability to what it was, he’d say it was real. Real enough. 

The only reminder that it wasn’t real was that he wasn’t choking on the sickening air that was floating poisonous particles past him, that the blood and dust weren’t staining his black boots and that he wasn’t able to truly touch the dead that covered the floor for miles. He couldn’t determine if they were strangers or his closest friends; he couldn’t do anything but stare at the powerful illusion that he’d formed for everyone in the nearby street he was standing in to be consumed in. 

The pressure on his mind reminded him that there were limits to how far he could project the realistic portrayal of the future outside the walls and despite the silver lining that he was ‘safe’ within the walls of Grimstone, everyone outside wasn’t. Lucas wasn’t used to feeling the way he was but he couldn’t bring himself to stop crafting the false reality around him. He needed to do something and he already knew that if he’d heard the announcement, then so had everyone else. 

And there were far more dangerous and unstable individuals in Grimstone than him; his own friends that had been thrilled to leave the place were likely taking it out somewhere - or on someone and instead of using rationality and forward-thinking when told that a superflu outbreak had plagued the outside. All that was likely running through their minds, was the same thoughts running through Lucas’; they were prisoners to Grimstone again. 

“We can’t let this happen,” he murmured, crouching down to hide that his knees wanted to buckle at the sight of every new detail his mind had formed. He could feel a migraine pushing at his skull, warning him to lay off the complexity of the illusion he’d created. But he wasn’t ready to let it go yet, it wasn’t scorched into his mind enough yet that the consequence of ten years time if the superflu was left untreated. Grimstone could help; they were gifted, someone must be able to help whilst offering the freedom and transition back into the real world. “They’ll find a cure quickly, right?” he added with a little of his own venom; a little gravelly and uncaring for the ones suffering out there. He did care, a lot. But he also cared about the stability of his own friends at Grimstone. 

Even if Greenman knew what fictional plain he’d surrounded himself with was farfetched, the result was just the same. If the superflu was fatal in all of its hosts, then the world would cease to function; there would be no one left for the residents at Grimstone to meet with. They would be as alone out there as they were now. “We cannot let this happen.” and this time, when he repeated the words, they were almost growled as his fists slammed into the ground beneath him, it didn’t kick at the dust that wasn’t there. It hurt like hitting concrete, but Lucas didn’t let himself feel it, he just stayed crouched, calming himself down enough so he could disassemble the illusion without damaging his mind in the process. 

[secrecykept]

█║❯ @lachalaine || jackie & kyrin!!

Night well and truly surrounded him with its dark, endless blue and guiding, but ever-distant, stars. Wisps of clouds floated in loose groups, scattered and carefree, doing nothing to successfully conceal much of anything, but he had no worry about being seen, given his altitude and the late hour.

The powerful beats of his wings eased as he neared a new area, and he allowed himself to glide with the air current and admire the sight. Exhilaration flowed through him with the refreshing coolness of glacier water, heightening the clarity of the view far below and widening his smile.

Humans made such impressive settlements! The golden lights of the city were uncountable and spread out like a shimmering web against the darkness of the land. And that web expanded greatly as he descended to get a better look, the shapes of the city starting to define themselves in the forms of large blocks of what he knew were buildings. Lights of other colours became more noticeable as he continued to lower himself, and he marvelled at the variety.

How many people inhabited this place? The city was so alive, even at this time! What were they all doing now?

The urge to learn all about them had him considering finding a place to land, so his wings took him further downwards at a smooth angle. The buildings became more distinct, such incredible towers of metal and glass. How many people lived or worked in there?

Ribbons of well-lit roads lay winding and complex between the multitude of structures. How did anyone navigate them?

He puzzled over it as he flew between the top floors of several skyscrapers and over an intersection below. Never mind the navigation, what was more bemusing was the sheer number of vehicles. They moved purposefully on the roads and highways, headlights blaring. Cars were everywhere. What were they like to be in? How did they work?

It seemed like only yesterday that the ‘horseless carriage’ was a thrilling new invention and rare commodity. (He really needed to get out more)

The rise of the television was another expansion of popularity that he had somewhat missed. But oh, it was impossible to miss them now. Was the side of that building one big television? And that one too. How did they get there? How did they work?

He had to wonder how much power it took to keep them going all the time, and to keep the sea of gigantic signs glowing. The brilliant colours and flashing lights delighted his eyes, and he could have easily stayed hovering around the shadows between them, but it wasn’t exactly wise. He needed to keep moving, to keep away from the humans and all their fascinating (and dangerous) technology.

With one last look at a neon sign of a particularly nice shade of purple, he propelled himself through the air and set his destination towards the edge of the city. For a little fun, he attempted to follow one of the wider roads, imagining travelling alongside the humans. What if the sky also had ‘roads’? What if the Angels followed road rules and had traffic jams too?

The wind stole his laugh at the idea. He shook his head and sighed as his smile faded. The Angels would do well to learn from the humans (perhaps not road rules, but many other things), it was too bad they thought themselves too superior.

…but did they still?

It was the thought that niggled at him so very often. There was no way to know if they had changed in his absence or not, unless he dared to go back.

He rubbed a hand over his chest as it started to ache.

Don’t think about them.

Through focusing on his surroundings and the road below, he was able to push the thoughts aside. He catalogued the details of everything around him. The icy touch of the wind gliding over his skin and wings, the sounds of traffic below, a patch of dark forest among the glittering lights, and how the buildings stopped reaching so high into the sky.

And yet he could still feel it.

The weight in his chest.

It began to press more heavily against him, like a giant’s fist wrapping around his torso. His breathing quickened and he adjusted his wings to direct himself towards the park he’d spotted. It would surely be a quiet and private place even at this time, somewhere safe for him to land.

He never made it.

Didn’t even come close.

Pain crashed into him like he’d slammed into an invisible wall. It centred on his chest and stole his breath, halting him mid-air as he tugged at his shirt desperately with one hand and rubbed his neck with his other. The ache in his throat burned him like acid and begged to scream with each jagged breath. His wings spasmed and strained to support him, dropping him lower in jerky motions as his vision blurred.

Was this because he’d thought of the Angels earlier? Could he really not control himself as he used to?

Pathetic. Disgusting. No wonder they wanted him dead. He couldn’t do anything right. He was too selfish to help them. He’d run away from their experiments, the plans they had for him. They wanted him as their puppet. They were the bad ones, not him. They were twisted and cruel and self-serving. It was all their fault. It had to be. It couldn’t be him; it wasn’t his fault they had hurt all those innocent people, was it? Those men and women, the children that had been used…they could have been spared had he just stepped in, if he’d just been stronger…

The memories swirled in his mind, adding further pressure to his chest and dripping more tears down his face. He gasped for air and rubbed at his eyes. Several white feathers tumbled downwards and spiralled slowly along the current. Air rushed around him and he extended his wings to try stop his fall.

Oh no.

His wings were changing, starting to strip themselves of the pure white.

If he didn’t stabilize his emotions now, the darkness would reign, and this bright and colourful city would feel it deeply.

…his emotions?

No, that wasn’t right. They were one’s he certainly related to, one’s he’d had before (which was no doubt partly why they affected him so strongly), but they weren’t his.

But then…who-

A bolt of overwhelming emotion lashed him like a whip as his magic instinctively located the person and tapped into the full heartache of them.

He shook with it and struggled to move his wings. They seemed to want to drag him down, becoming heavy and cumbersome, barely allowing him to avoid collision with a tall apartment. His stomach lurched and his heart felt shredded and raw.

This person…whoever they were, he didn’t know how they could stand to have such feelings. He could only hope they had someone to comfort them…

…Only hope?

No, he could do better than that. He would make sure they had someone.

He scanned the nearby houses, his eyes stinging and still watering. Instinct took him on an unsteady flight towards one building.

He knew it was the right place when the wave of pain knocked into him with the greatest intensity yet.

He hit the top of the tree before he even had a chance to try pulling his wings in. Branches clawed at him, displacing feathers and yanking at limbs. A chorus of snaps and cracks resounded as his body ploughed through the finer aspects of the tree. He scrambled to grab onto one of the larger branches as he fell, but his hands slipped.

His heart jolted at the sudden, unwilling descent and he instinctively spread his wings to halt the drop, only to become tangled like a bird in a trap. He had to get out of there! Panic made him twist to try escape, he wrenched his wing and the momentum flipped him down to a narrowly forked branch. It cracked as his shoulder hit it and bounced him off, but remained strong enough to catch his left wing as he tumbled downward.

Sharp agony knifed down his back. His head bounced hard against the tree trunk as his body swung, stunning him for a moment while he hung from his ensnared wing.

The muscles along his back screamed in protest at the position and threatened to tear from the strain. Gods, it had been such a long time since he had ever experienced so much pain. It was too much. He was going to pass out. It was too much. Especially combined with the emotional pain still emanating so strongly nearby.

He was hurting. But they were hurting too, whoever they were. He’d come to help them, hadn’t he?

There was only one thing he could do, and it took everything he had. He focused on his wings and willed them to return to his body.

He immediately dropped to the grass below with a significant thump and groan.

[dispatchesfromafghanistan]

Kabul: then and now

Kabul: Then and Now                                           August 19, 2019                                                                                                                                                                                Today's Kabul is vastly different from the city I grew up and worked in as a youngster and a young adult. Then, I loved the city. Now, I hate it.The Kabul of 1960s and 70s was much smaller, compact, simple, quaint, clean, green, exotic, freer, stable, peaceful, safe and secure. The city then was sectioned into identifiable precincts such as Shahre-nuw where the royal palace, the ministries, nice homes,  a few businesses, and the few embassies were. Kartae chahar where the professional class lived. Kartae Sakhi where the few hazaras lived. And Darulaman, renowned for its clean fresh air, the park and picnic places, the clean fresh water, the majestic palace, the famed tree-lined road from Dehmazang to the palace, and the open green fields all over. Kotae Sangi, was an extension of Kartae Chahar. LIfe and living was simpler, but much happier, safer, secure, stable, peaceful,  and manageable. Except for the ministry of education,  the Spinzar hotel, the Kabul hotel and two or three other high rises, all buildings were simple one or two story buildings surrounded by walls. Most structures had courtyards with trees, vegetables and vineyards.There were streams of clean water, or springs in many parts of the city. The Kabul river had plenty of clean water year-round. We used to swim in it. There were no police checkpoints, no blast walls, no barbed wire, no watch towers, no armed security forces patrolling the streets, no armored SUVs,and no sirens. Official buildings, educational institutions, even embassies were easily accessible. No body-searches. There were no buildings scarred by bullets. We never heard of K9s, cameras, scanners, suicide bombings, magnetic bombs, IEDs, complex attacks, hostage taking, kidnappings, gun battles, etc.  And we felt completely safe anywhere any time. The only beggers you saw were the few disabled men. There were no drug users or pushers in public and the few who smoked hashish, did so discretely and in private. By night fall, everyone went home.There were no homeless individuals left on the streets. There was quiet, calm, stability, and peace  Neighbors and neighborhoods were stable and familiar.You knew and trusted your neighbors and you socialized with them on certain occasions. The local shop keepers knew and trusted you, so if you did not have the right change or amount, he would say 'you can pay me next time.'.People went out into the streets or parks to walk, socialize, picnic, or enjoy the scenery. No one  bothered no one; no sexual harassment of women. There was mutual  respect, trust, tolerance, common courtesy, and a certain code of conduct regulating all public and private life. There were no armed robberies, and no snatching your phone or handbag in broad day light and in public. You heard about petty victimless crime. There was very little violence. Complete strangers were entitled to discipline misbehaviour. The young respected the old and would for instance, give their seat away on a public bus. The majority of the some half a million people were 'authentic Kabulis' who were polite, considerate, urbane, and you might say 'civilized'. You felt like a part of a community. Kabul was  picturesque and it was intertwined with green spaces, parks, small farms, unused open spaces, hills, and mountains. There were no buildings on the surrounding hills and or mountains and the city was small, more like a town. There was no garbage on the streets, or open sewers, or  the stench of open drains. There were no internally displaced people squatting and living in flimsy tents under horrible conditions. The gap between the haves and have nots was narrow. There were differences in the style and standards of living, but no extremes. With about 10,000 vehicles, there were no traffic jams. There were no high rises, wedding halls, mansions, commercial billboards,  big crowds, street hawkers, fancy restaurants, mountains of globalized garbage, opulence next to destitution. The air was fresh and clean, with intense blue skies in the day and dark skies studded with visible stars at night. All in all, it was a very nice city to live, study, and/or work in. It was quite manageable-- socially, psychologically and physically. You did not feel or see any mass  anxiety, fear, panic, paranoia or distrust--all so visibly common today. Kabul Today:What a monstrosity! Today's Kabul has grown and expanded all the way to Paghman, Baraki Barak, Bagrami, Arghandi, and Sarobi. There are an estimated six million people living in the city and the vicinity. It resembles a vast shanty town, with some out of place high rises and some huge gaudy mansions. The six  million people living here struggle for space, services, opportunities, parking, walking, doing business, studying, entertainment, and just sheer survival. Gone are all the green open spaces, most of the parks, the small  farms, even some of the sidewalks. Land grabbers and/or squatters have built illegal structures wherever they can find a piece of land, even way up on the hills and mountains. Strong men have taken over public and some private  lands. In some cases, people have built on top of graveyards, parks, or public spaces. As far as the eye can see, all the surrounding hills and mountains, have been 'developed', most of them very precarious and unsafe. The once  clean Kabul river has been reduced to a stream of an open sewer, filthy and stinky garbage dump, and refuge for drug dealers and addicts.There are no laws and/or standards governing development in the city. The other day the minister of Urban Affairs said on TV that 90% of Kabul's buildings are substandard, without plan, and against building codes. The city is studded with high rise apartments -all the way up to 30 story. There is no urban planning; people just build wherever there is a piece of land, and the structures range from fancy homes and apartments to shacks and simple dwellings. Most streets have no names and most buildings have no number; no address! Finding places is an arduous task.The old architecture has been replaced with massive  gaudy Dubai and Pakistani styles. The old court yards are gone; people build on every square inch of the land. where neighbors can almost touch each other across the common walls. There are no zoning laws to govern building heights,  purpose, requirements or use. Therefore, you have a high rise next to a one, 2, or three story house; and/or you have a  business outfit in the midst of residential neighborhoods. Or you have internally displaced people living in some cases with their animals, and  in some cases for years, in clumsy tents next to fancy mansions and/or public establishments. Paradoxically, the extremes are next to each other, but worlds apart.There is no privacy left, and most everyone is exposed.The city still has no sewerage system, regular electricity, or regular running water. The city is sitting on improper septic tanks, latrines and/or  open drainage canals which do not drain. As  a result, Kabul's water is seriously polluted and depleted. The city is growing both vertically and horizontally turning into a dusty, dirty, smelly, crowded, polluted,  and ugly concrete jungle. Any structure of consequence is surrounded by a regular wall and then a high concrete blast wall. Most sidewalks are taken over by these walls, barriers, and/or small sellers forcing pedestrians into the street thus complicating walking and driving. And the main streets today are the same narrow streets when Kabul was a town. There are heaps of rotting and stinky garbage on the streets where animals, children and/or adults scrounge to salvage what they can. The city center has horrible traffic jams all the time, where people, vehicles, animals, peddlers, and beggars compete. Daily, streets are blocked when some of the thousands of VIPs  travel in armored cars followed by armed escorts. And there. seems to be a lot of VIPs-government officials, wealthy people, foreigners, and crime bosses. There are numerous criminal syndicates/mafia whose bosses maybe former or current government members or contractors or independent criminals. Some of these criminals are indeed stronger than the government thus roaming  around freely. There are very few traffic lights, traffic police or traffic rules.  Security is big business in this city/country, and you see a lot of legal and/or illegal gun-toting men protecting the few from the many. There are essentially no traffic lights or laws; either that  or drivers and pedestrians simply ignore them, with the police watching helplessly. And of course, you can always bribe your way out of trouble with police. Given the war, violence, volatility, crime, and VIP presence, there are police posts and check points all over the place. And yet, serious and petty, organized and retail crime flourishes and the city is gripped by organized and/or retail crime. frightening everyone. Assassinations, armed robberies, kidnappings for ransom, pick-pockets, purse and/or telephone snatchings, break-ins, and/or vehicle theft are common night and day. Street prostitution tabooed earlier, now goes on in broad daylight. Drug use and dealing are normal and visible all over, all the time. Kabul is perhaps the most violent capital in the world, with frequent suicide bombings, improvised explosive devices, mines, magnetic bombs, complex attacks, random and/or organized political violence, targeted and random  assasination. For example the suicide bombing at the wedding in Dubai Hall in the hazara section (Dashte Barchi) last night (August 19), not far from AUAF,  killing at least 63 and injuring 185. There were about 35 so-called complex suicide attacks in Kabul in 2018.  A complex attack is a new insurgent technique, which means that a suicide bomber explodes himself or the vehicle he drives, at the entrance to a  building, whereby another group of  accomplices storm  the building or an adjacent structure,  killing people and fighting  to the end. This is what happened yesterday when five insurgents attacked Mr.Saleh, Dr.Ghani's running mate and head of the 'Green' movement in Kabul. Random and organized violence and crimes are rampant in the city. You are not safe and do not feel safe anywhere-on the street, in your home, place of work, school, university, sports club, in your car, the bus, the mosque, the restaurant, the conference, at your wedding, wake or funeral, or any place else. People are petrified. We the expatriates at AUAF are like virtual prisoners. Many buildings still have scars of war. People appear anxious, worried, fearful, and stressed. More than half the people suffer mental illness. Extremes of wealth, power, and privilege are obvious and paraded constantly. A few travel in luxury and armored SUVs with armed escorts; the majority struggle to get from place to place. There is no organized public transport system. This is why people buy a car before food. The country is the second largest market for used cars after Baghdad and there are no laws governing automobile exhausts or the quality of fuel. This is the main reason for the extreme pollution, which according to the minister of public health, kills more people than the war. There are fancy five star restaurants in a country where 60% of the people are desperately poor. The aristocracy shop in fancy department stores, boutiques, and supermarkets where everything is imported. Or they actually shop in Dubai, Tashkend, or N.Delhi.The majority buy second hand clothes or cheap and poor quality goods from sidewalk peddlers.. Kabul is the largest market for second-hand clothes in the world. The rich and powerful, which is to say members of the plutocracy, comprador, and thieving class (Afghanistan's 1%) marry in fancy and expensive wedding halls, the rest stay unmarried or go to do slave labor abroad to save for marriage. In the morning, there are hundreds-thousands  of day laborers at every major intersection looking for a 3-4 dollar- a -day job; but there is no work, because the war, poor governance, and corruption  impede economic activity.There are tens of thousands of child workers, beggars or prostitutes swarming Kabul's streets. Children of the elite are sent abroad, or chaufored to  boutique private schools; while the majority are warehoused in a substandard public school system being miseducated. Like Beirut or Baghdad, Kabul is divided into ethnic enclaves, so most Tajiks live in Khairkhana, the Pashtoons in Udkhail and the Hazaras in Dashte Barchi; and the city has its own 'green zone'. There is very little mutual trust, but much paranoia.There is very little mixing amongst the various ethnic-class members. Today's Kabul is a very noisy place with nonstop sound of military planes and helicopters, sierons from police cars and/or ambulances, normal traffic, street peddlers, and magnified azans from mosques. The city's air, water and ground are heavily polluted. Furthermore,  there is heavy visual pollution as well with signs and billboards advertising cosmetic surgery, politicians, internet cafes, pizzarias, Kalvin Klein underwear, and 'energy drinks'.everywhere. Kabul is dusty in the summer and muddy in the rainy season. There is no regular or effective garbage collection or systematic sanitation so it is always smelly. You still see men relieving themselves in public. In short, today's Kabul is sick and sickening. Those who could, and are entrusted with helping cure the city, seem to lack the ability, will, commitment or dedication to do so. Since the entire rentier state apparatus is based on a corrupt, nepotistic and patronage and peonage system. It is not really their city.Their families are most likely living abroad and they themselves are here as transient/ migrant/opportunistic exploiters. They are the expatriates working on some short term project. Or returnees from the Afghan diaspora here to earn quick money and return to their adopted countries. Or they are the local comprador class, whose sole purpose is to plunder and pillage.These imperial-neocolonial agents are  sheltered from Kabul's filth and ugliness by their sanitized protected mansions or luxury apartments,  tainted window armored SUVs with TV sets, their laptops, or numerous paid vacations abroad. Those who are victimized by Kabul's brutality lack the unity, power,  time, energy, initiative to alter the city situation. Like sheep, most people have habituated themselves to the conditions. Kabul desperately needs saving.

[script-a-world]

So I'm plotting a story in which an entire Canadian city is dropped into a fantasy world. Besides the obvious mad scramble for food and the other raw resources needed to support a city with a very large population, and the inevitable out break of devastating diseases and plot related events such as encountering the local cultures, can you think of any other events / catastrophes that would result?

Miri: Well, your city has likely been cut off from its power supply network and communications network, and you’ve got a lot of broken structures along the edges. A lot of angry and displaced wildlife as well. Sewage, that’s a problem. How complete was the city-napping?

Feral: How literally is it dropped? How is it removed in the first place? How is it transported? What do you mean by "entire city"? The population? The buildings? The trees in the parks? The streets and the soil everything is built on?

Is the location a similar climate? Presumably the air breathable but at what altitude is the city now compared to where it was?

If "the city" includes the buildings, how much of the city foundations are removed? What is the topography of where they land? Does the city perfectly graph to it's new landscape?

Bina: 1) People taking advantage of the chaos to gain power over others. If people are scared and the future is uncertain, they're much more likely to follow charismatic folk who offer any kind of stability. Even if said charismatic individual is, say, trying to build a cult, or just wants to form a gang, or wants to recruit people to an ideology that already existed on Earth but nobody took that seriously before.

1 cont.) It doesn't even have to be someone consciously seeking to take power. Maybe someone has responsibility thrust onto them by other desperate people. That kind of responsibility, having people depend on you to lead and care for them without wavering, can change a person. Some may rise to the challenge, others may snap under the pressure. Depending on how many people have placed their faith in the individual, there could be serious consequences for that person cracking or failing to keep the peace.

2) If the scramble for food and other raw resources was indeed mad, I'd expect a lot of trust to be broken inside communities as people in proximity to each other compete for resources. Trust that may take a long time to build back up as the chaos settles and people realize they're in for the long(?) haul and have better chances banding together.

3) Once people start condensing into teams and communities, tribe mentality may take hold. Established groups may not trust anyone outside their group. They may even kill others for the sake of their own "survival," severely limiting their survival chances as a whole as fear makes them shun those who may want to cooperate. 

4) If the city-drop happened during the school year, during the day, that's a LOT of children who are effectively stranded amidst the chaos, and a LOT of parents who'll do anything to make their way to them to see if their children are safe.

5) Are there any groups of people who may have been forgotten about in the initial chaos? Assuming your infrastructure is still intact, consider a prison for example. Maybe all the guards fled when the disaster happened. Those prisoners are effectively on their own. Some may be stuck in their cells for a good long while, depending on those outside their cells to give them food and water. What happens to them? How do they survive? What happens when other people come across them again? How many are left when that happens? How much do they know of the strange world they were dropped into?

Constablewrites: The circumstances of the transportation itself are going to have a significant impact on what follows. Getting thrown violently and suddenly through time and space will have you starting off the next step in a very different mindset than you'd have if you woke up one morning and everything around you looked normal but the sky was orange and there's a forest where Queens used to be.

Speaking of, how do suburbs factor in? Say you want to steal Los Angeles. That could mean:

- the City of Los Angeles (where your street address says Los Angeles, CA, one city government) covering 469 sq mi

- Los Angeles County (one county government, multiple city governments sometimes nested inside each other, basically no boundaries or distinguishing features between cities other than the map) covering 4083 sq mi

- the Los Angeles metropolitan area (the entire contiguously populated region) covering 4850 sq mi

- the Greater Los Angeles area (recognized as the portion of the state where everyone who lives there is all part of one single economy) which covers 33954 sq mi 

As a former Angeleno, I'd probably assume you meant the third one. (Because, after all, I considered myself an Angeleno even though my street addresses during that time were Claremont, Anaheim Hills, and Anaheim.) But there's a couple of orders of magnitude difference between what you'd be dealing with in terms of population and resources depending on which direction you take. There's also a big psychological difference between "all the populated areas look normal but what the hell happened to the desert" and "guys everything east of Alameda stopped existing." So which effect you want will probably help determine where you draw your lines.

[theparadorinn]

Esplanad, Christmas Lights, Wholey’s Redevelopment, West Ohio Street bridge and road work

Hi All,

I guess it’s about time wanted to post my Christmas pictures before I take them down later next week. Everything’s pretty much the same. I did replace the wreaths on the side porch with pendants and like them a lot better.  So much so that I added them to the front doors.  I’ll make my own next year.

Here’s an outside picture showing the parlor tree and front lights and wreaths.  Pretty festive?

Here’s the side porch:

Here’s the parlor tree from inside (my more traditional tree The colorful blobs in the windows are coconuts, I spray painted and the painted Christmas themed images-OK call me wierd.:

Here’s my Caribbean tree. It’s all hand painted fish, seashell and novelty ornaments:

Here’s a close up of my newest ornament a glass palm tree;

This picture is the garland in the library over the leaded glass window:

And this one is the Victorian buffet all gussied up:

This is the festive main staircase:

Here’s my decorated leather Christmas mice:

This is my snow village with a few new additions replacing tired old ones:

This is the fireplace in the dining room with my favorites the glass box gift boxes made by a very dear friend who’s no longer with us:

A good Christmas story.  I’ve been putting the lit garland up on the both porches for over 15 years now.  There’s a challenge when I go along the front and need to put my ladder on the other side of the sign.  There isn’t a flat space on that corner post I can get the ladder safely laid.  I’ve been through this for 15+ years and know how to deal with it.  I climb up the side of the ladder that’s flat on the post and keep my weight there  It’s always a challenge getting the last front hook in and then the first one on the side..  As usual, when I stretched to the the side hook in the ladder “kicked”  I immediately put my hand on the post to stabilize the ladder and me.  I’m right on the front sidewalk and can see vehicles traveling Western.  This pick up truck was going eat on Western and quickly pulled into a spot just past my Inn.  He got out of his truck and came up the side walk.  He looked like a tradesman (contractor sort) and I assumed he was stopping at Peppis for lunch.  But he walked past the meter and came up to my ladder.  He said “Can I spot you”.  I said sure, but that I was fine, had gone through this for years and everything was OK.  He foots my ladder and at that point I was ready to move to the side.  I came down the ladder and when I went to move it, he said “what else do you have to do?”  I said just the straight way over the porches side steps.  He offered to hang out and spot me over there.  I thanked him and said I would be just fine.  I was wrong he then went back to his truck, got in it and drove away.  He wasn’t stopping at Peppi’s , just stopped to be sure I was safe.

Onward to new topics. The West Ohio street bridge has been closed for a number of years.  The finally re-opened it.  It doesn’t look too bad, it’s high enough for the evil railroad company got it high enough to run double stacked trains.  They plan on doubling the number of trains going through my neighborhood and they will be higher than the valley our forefathers that respected their residents, so they made the railroad company put the tracks below grade.  Now our politicians caved in to the profits the railroad wants to make.  The great news is at least the London plane trees that are 100 years old were saved.

While we’re talking about the Commons Park, with the bridge finally finished the city has the road closed so they can change the traffic patterns around the old Allegheny Center Mall.  Do you think they may have had some foresight to do this while the road was closed for the bridge replacement?

They got the approval to build that tall office structure in the Strip where Wholey’s old Icehouse was. That big building with the neon smiling fish on it.  I hear it’s not going to be 28 stories, just 25-gimme a break.   They finished tearing down the smaller building next to the 16th Street Bridge.  Nex they ae going to start on the bigger building.  They will probably have to close Smallman and Penn during this. Here’s the smaller one’s ruble.

If you’re not here, next time you’re in Pittsburgh be sure to plan to drive down Smallman and Railroad Streets to see all the construction done and going on, totally massive.

Speaking of massive, the Urban Redevelopment Authority agreed last week to sell Millcroft Industries the lands they own for the Esplanade Project behind the casino.  Looks like that project’s getting ready to get underway.  I think that will be as transformative to the Northside as Bakery Square was to East Liberty was a few years back.

That’s it, I hope you had a great Christmas and have a safe and happy New Year,

ed

[architectnews]

Zhuhai Cultural Arts Center, China

Zhuhai Cultural Arts Center by MAD, Guangdong Province Building Design, Chinese Architecture Images

Zhuhai Cultural Arts Center in Guangdong Province

20 May 2021

Zhuhai Cultural Arts Center Buildings by MAD

Design: MAD Architects

Location: Jiuzhou Port, Zhuhai City, Guangdong Province, China

A Village under the Dome

MAD unveils their design of Zhuhai Cultural Arts Center

Beijing, China – May 20th, 2021 – Over the past 30 years, cities in China have experienced rapid urbanization and growth. As a result, entirely new cities, districts, and public buildings have emerged, often emphasizing a large scale, and become homogenized. In recent years, old cities and villages have been demolished and new ones built in their place, leading to an inevitable cyclical repetition of major urban change. The phenomenon urges us to reflect and ask – what is the core focus of urban renewal?

With this question in mind, MAD Architects, led by Ma Yansong, participated in an international design competition for the Zhuhai Cultural Arts Center, where they proposed a solution titled “Village Under the Dome”.

Situated within China’s Pearl River Delta, the history of Yinkeng Village dates back to the Northern Song Dynasty; a centuries-old village formed naturally by the sea. In 2018, the Zhuhai municipal government began the demolition and relocation of Yinkeng Village, making way for a planned municipal cultural and art center.

MAD began by conducting historical research and fieldwork of the area. However, when the competition began, the entire village had almost been demolished.

Through the narrow lanes, there remains traces of history in the ruins. These include door plaques dating from the last century, plants in front of houses, and an ancient banyan tree with over 500 years of history at the edge of the village, under which the ‘God of Land’ was once worshipped. These poignant details carry the marks of people’s lives in Yinkeng until the moment the village was torn down, embodying a strong sense of emotion and memory.

During this time, some families had still not moved out. One old man said that his family had lived here for generations and would not leave, no matter what.

MAD’s proposal is unique within the competition, being the only design that opposed complete demolition and loss of the village’s memory. Rather, MAD adopted a conservation and renewal approach that transforms the role and function of the original site, but also respects the history of the village, and the emotional aspirations of the people who once lived there.

Rather than overlay a large new building on the ruins, MAD chose to respect and keep the original layout of Yinkeng Village. With meticulous research, bold imagination, and precise updates, MAD’s proposal is one that will restore the public life of local villagers who gathered here for hundreds of years, while also “protecting” it with a large dome.

MAD’s design celebrates daily life within the old village and amplifies the community atmosphere of its people. Rather than flaunt the “muscle” or “power” of new urban economic development, the scheme seeks to reflect the true civic and humanistic sentiments that have naturally developed over time. As a result, it is hoped that this civic center will be truly human-oriented, and although low in profile, will be more iconic, contemporary, and pioneering in spirit.

“Urban renewal in China, especially in historic districts, should be preserved, revived, and re-created, instead of being completely wiped out and rebuilt over.” –Ma Yansong

The multiple large volumes and complex functional requirements of the cultural arts center are reorganized and arranged to fit the original village streets, topography and layout, and recreated in the form of scattered, small-scale, block-like buildings. This approach intends to create a sense of community based on the existing protective ruins. Based on this setting, MAD envisions a floating dome that gathers small-scale spaces with a sense of stacking.

Throughout the center, visitors approach different functional areas along the original road network of Yinkeng Village, where the elaborate landscape design transforms the streets themselves into a new visiting experience. The overall planning and design are also a combination of old and new, with the village’s original plaza, green space, pond, and the iconic ancient banyan tree all preserved. Underneath the tree, the outdoor plaza has been redesigned to echo the reverence for nature that has always been present in the Southern Guangdong region.

In dialogue with the small-scale street layout is a surreal “floating” dome, which unites the entire cultural center as a symbol of preservation and renewal. Reaching a maximum height of 45 meters, the dome is formed of a main arch and cable membrane structure to ensure its stability; protecting the past while imagining the future.

While the dome’s primary structure is rooted to the ground, the membrane remains open towards the base, allowing people to enter from all directions. In addition, the roof is equipped with an openable feature for further flexibility.

The dome is composed of a translucent membrane material, appearing almost as a layer of mist floating above the village, blending with the sky to blur reality with imagination.

At the same time, the dome embodies a sustainable design approach with energy-saving features. The project takes account of the local climate and ecological environment of Zhuhai, and follows the principle of “generating resources while reducing expenses.” The scheme makes full use of renewable energy, with the proportion of use between efficient systems and equipment in municipal infrastructure reaching 80%.

Architecture is closely linked to human behaviour; it carries emotions and memories. Without “people”, there can be no continuation of culture and civilization. Architecture should not convey cultural values that lack human feelings or a respect for history. Massive demolition and construction risks erasing historical traces, replacing it with vast squares, and buildings without roots or soul. We should focus our attention back on history, and the extension of our existing cultures. We must avoid the cultural fault lines, so that people, nature, the past, and the future can coexist in a harmonious world.

Zhuhai Cultural Arts Center in Guangdong Province, China – Building Information

Title: Zhuhai Cultural Arts Center Location: Zhuhai, China 2021

Typology: Public Site area: 296,200 sqm Building area: 179,030 sqm

Principal Architects: Ma Yansong, Dang Qun, Yosuke Hayano Design Team: Xiao Ying, Dayie Wu, Punnin Sukkasem, Luo Man, Guo Xuan

Client: Zhuhai High-Tech Construction Investment Co. Consultant: China Academy of Building Research

Renders by Slashcube

Zhuhai Cultural Arts Center images / information received 010221

Location: Jiuzhou Port, Zhuhai City, Guangdong Province, China

Zhuhai Architecture

Contemporary Architecture in Zhuhai

Zhuhai Jinwan Civic Art Centre, Jiuzhou Port Design: Zaha Hadid Architects render : Slashcube Zhuhai Jinwan Civic Art Centre

Zhuhai Museum

Jiuzhou Bay Waterfront Neighborhood Design: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) image © ATCHAIN New Waterfront Neighborhood for Zhuhai

Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge for HK Port Architects: Aedas and RSHP image courtesy of architects Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge for HK Port

Intercontinental Hotel, Gongbei Area, Xiangzhou District, Zhuhai City Interior design firm: CL3 Architects image courtesy of architecture office Intercontinental Hotel in Zhuhai, Guangdong

China Architecture

Contemporary Architecture in China

China Architecture Design – chronological list

Chinese Architecture News

Chinese Architect – Design Practice Listings

Yiwu Cultural Square, Zhejiang Province Architect: The Architectural Design & Research Institute Of ZheJiang University Co,Ltd photograph : Qiang Zhao Yiwu Cultural SquareBuilding

Shuyang Art Gallery, Suqian City, Jiangsu Province Design: The Architectural Design & Research Institute Of ZheJiang University Co,Ltd photograph : Qiang Zhao Shuyang Art Gallery Building

Chinese Architecture

Comments / photos for the Zhuhai Cultural Arts Center page welcome

Website: China

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[discet]

World Building June - Aeth

From these prompts

Day 5. What sorts of civilizations and architecture fill your world?

oooh fun so for this lets bring back THE MAP 

So lets go from West to East, and since this will take forever to do by nation were going to do by larger cultural. 

Yamun Culture 

Para Empire / Khakata Kingdom / Durai Dynasty 

Yamun is names for a large river that cuts through the subcontinent (The tail end of which you can see in Para’s borders). It has a massive mountain range south of it and is thus largely isolated. The Lich King Cataclysm led to a deep seeded fear of magic in society. There is little trust in Mages and are controlled obsessively by religious leaders in communities.  

While arguably first populated in the foothills of the mountains by the talon-legged Saek, most of the lowlands were populated by seabound Harc in the north by sea and by nomadic Senn in the south. While overlooked, evidence exists that the Dwem tribes in the deep jungles seemed to predate all these groups. This makes Yamun one of the most genetically mixed cultures in the world. 

It is one of the most religiously diverse cultures as well, several religious beliefs were founded in Yamun and have spread through trade routes. While there is some tension between the differing religions, its so mixed that no government can afford the strife of stoking those tensions through oppressive action. Which is good because-

Governance

Yamun governance is very unstable historically. Its caste system is a left over relic of the age of sorcery, which served fine under the unyielding rule of an infallible (or at least dominant) sorcerer king, it has become increasingly seen as oppressive by scholar described “rabble rousers”. As such attempts of uniting the sub-continent has been difficult as rival kingdoms are often dealing with internal strife as often as external conflict. Thus borders are often shifting and new kingdoms spawn from charismatic opportunistic individuals.

Architecture

The Capitals: The capitals refer to the great cities that are a holdover of the old Age of Sorceries. Enchantments that are maintained but not understood. Self cleaning roads, glittering changing mosaics that shift with the day championing long gone royal lines. The Capitals, as they became more populace and out grew the old enchantments boundaries left stark differences between the rich center of the cities and the poorer slums. 

Shaded Roads: The shaded roads are an attempt by the current kings and the Age of Empires to capture a bit of the glory that the old Sorcerer kings. The roads are maintained by proto-sentient trees who spread, giving traders shade across the hot humid roads of Yamun. They weave together bridges from their roots and replant any trees that are cut down or destroyed by acts of nature. 

Myr Freeholds Culture

Myr is an offshoot of Yamun culture that occurred early into the Age of Empires. The Myr freeholds are a series of islands that are largely too rocky for natural cultivation that are not united in any way shape or form, they are filled with mages who escaped the oppressive culture of Yamun. Its economy is largely built on piracy with mages maintaining great defensive fortresses on the islands. They plague trade in the Aeth sea and are increadibly difficult to crack. Most of the local kingdoms are too busy with land conflicts to build up a navy capable of rooting out the fortresses and other Aeth nations are too far away to make such an expedition anything other than financial suicide. 

It is the closest remaining vestige of the old sorcerer king cultures, as it was founded by the last heir of a Sorcerer king culture in Yamun, establishing the first fortress. Being the new master of this ancient fortress is a great honor and influential in the largely prestiege based politics of Myr. 

Architecture

Arguably some of the most impressive post-cataclysm magical structures are found in Myr. The Myr fortresses are the nightmare of the siege engineers. The harbor is built inside, ships magically shrunk between the coast and the internal harbor. the few landing sites of these islands are overlooked by hundreds of murder holes. As the fortresses are all internal, there are no walls to really scale. The one or two entrances lead to long winding halls that delay attackers. All  giving the masters and their apprentices the ability to cast from safety. The interior harbor are great grand halls filled with inns, brothels, and the homes of their ship wrights. They are decorated with the stolen luxuries from all across Aeth. Much of the city is hewed from the rock with the home of the master more ornate and set apart. Generally called the academy. 

Sacre Culture

High Kingdom of Sacre / Sacre Hinterlands / Sacre Orda

The Sacre is the homeland of the Senn and are full of nomadic herding culture. While there are many differences between its widely ununited cultures, it has a few things that unites them. The pantheon of the Alter of Flames and language being the broadest. (Though how the religion is practiced varies wildly).

Sacre culture was a big innovator in the Age of Sorcery, discovering and utilizing mundane inventions that gave them a leg up on the settled cultures over reliance on magic. As long as they steered clear of the sorcerer kings or their heirs, Sacre bands could raid and pillage just about anywhere they could reach. This also made them saviors during the Lich Cataclysm as their forces were largely mundane and supported by magic rather than depending on it. Especially in Basalt and in some cases in Yamun and modern Tyre Sacre bloodlines sat at the head of government for centuries. 

Governance 

Wealth in Sacre culture comes from one’s herd. Power in Sacre culture comes from the loyalty of one’s Shepard. As with the nomadic nature of the people Sacre governance is fluid. Inheritance of title and wealth is split evenly among living children on a parents death and thus is territory in the case of a leader. This leads to many kingdoms not surviving one’s lifetime. If heirs are not capable, they are often abandoned for stronger leaders. While often derided as bloodthirsty warlords, Sacre politics is often cited as the inspiration of early democracies. Gaining a title in Sacre culture was functionally an election, in which a powerful warlord would call a Kurultai and tribes would either come in support of the warlord or not come to show their lack of support. 

Architecture

As a nomadic nation the architecture is far more practical than grand. While there are some permanent buildings in the religious bonfires, maintained by their religious leaders, most structures are able to be backed up and packed onto a horses backs.

Basalt Culture

The United Houses of Basalt / House Hiran

Basalt culture is inseparable from the Imperium of Basalt. The Imperium was a giant on the sage of Aeth for most of the Age of Empires. Founded by a Sacre warlord overthrowing the local Lich. This Lich was the most successful of his brothers who convinced many of the local lords as allies, maintaining power through more sane subordinates at the cost of their peasants. Once this broke down the southern lords who saw the tide of death they invited a powerful warlord to overthrow the Lich. After their success the warlord adopted the parts of local culture to adapt to a settled society while bringing in Sacre practical beliefs that made the Army of Basalt the most powerful military in Aeth. 

Its major religion, the Order of the flame started as an offshoot of Sacre Pantheon, which has changed radically in the millennia of the Imperiums existence. The pantheon has been dropped in favor of a nebulous spirit of humanities ideals. The core belief of the religion calls for believers to do good deeds to combat the chaos that threatens a larger war for humanities soul, staging the defeat of the liches as a great moment in this struggle. The righteous monarch is seen as a guiding hand for humanity to provide structure and stability to allow humanity to do these good deeds without worrying as much about survival. As a result the monarch is partly seen as holy. 

This has recently broken down. The line of Magus, the group who founded the Imperium was overthrown for abuse of authority. While the Shah’s who allied with the rebels were seen as hereos, none of the rebel Shah’s could manage to seize total power and settled into an uneasy alliance between their realms. This alliance fragility proven when House Hiran, one of the rebels broke off to be their own kingdom. Long enemies of the Empire like Tyre and Sur wait for the cracks to grow, to seize territory they long coveted. 

Governance

Basalt is deeply seated in the feudal structure that has existed since before the cataclysm. Shah’s rule their territories, loyal until recently to a central Padshah. Now long rivalries between bloodlines threaten to dissolve the legacy of Magus and. It has a deeply embedded bureaucracy that is holding things together, but without a central government to provide oversight, it is rapidly becoming corrupted and will rote away the heart of the empire beneath the feet of its once heroic Shahs. 

Architecture

The Obsidian Keep: The heart of the Imperium. The Obsidian keep was once the throne of the Lich, built into the side of a volcano, it is enchanted to use the lava within its home in its defense, able to flood its empty moats in its defense. The Keep itself is a massive fortress with three rings of walls backed by the steep side of the volcano. Its walls before the rebellion was engraved with the various triumphs of Basalts Padshah’s. The summit of the volcano serves as one of the greatest Temple of Fire in Basalt.

The Marble City: A luxurious city on the Penninsula is a city carved from a marble quarry. Starting as a great trade city for marble. Its position made it wealthy enough to carve luxury buildings from the quarry. It has since become a city of grand fireproof libraries and academies, dedicated to the training of Alchemists, Mages and other scholarly pursuits. The density of geomancers allow the marble to be restructured as needed, rather than stagnant. It is often the sight of experimental architecture and a shifting skyline that sailors can catch as they come to harbor. 

Acrean Culture

Sur Dynasty / Citystate of Acre / Tanu Tradeposts

Acrean culture is born from an ancient culture of city states. These were religious states who saw their sorcerer kings as their gods come to earth. Each state had a different patron god. In the cataclysm most of these cities fell alone rather than joining together. With the exception of the last readout of Acre. Its godking brought the refugee’s flooding into his streets and forged a army to combat the oncoming undead. After retaking the city and the tragic death of this heroic lord, the culture elevated the god of Acre to head of the pantheon. The defeat of the Liches requiring the sacrifice of the Gods mortal connection to the world.

In the age of Empires Acre holds a position as a religious pilgrimage site. Natural Mages are seen as divine tools of the gods while those who are brought up as priests. Acrean culture is often seen as a trading culture, who are some of the most adept sailors in Aeth, countered only by the Myr Pirates. Masters of desert warfare they were the main enemy of Sinai until the rise of the Tyrean Empire bottled it to the north penninsula. 

Governance

The citystate is run as a theocracy by the priests of the main temple, while Sur resembles a more common monarchy with legitimacy of lords confirmed by priests.

Architecture

Great Temples: While many of the original city states were destroyed in the initial conquest of the lich and then again in their retaking, Acre stands shining and untouched. Its skyline is dominated by the great ziggurat of the God of Acre. While made of simple stone, it floats above the ground two stories off the ground. One of the early enchantments of the last sorcerer kings. 

Tanu Culture

The Tanu by legend originated as a group who were driven to the brink of extinction, pushed to the very coastal mountains by the horde of monsters that dominated the Hunting Grounds to the East. This was until one day when the great hunters invented the first spears and bows of the world, something to put them on even ground with the monsters. They have since regained the territory of the peninsula, now going into the hunting grounds is a badge of honor and the harvesting of its creatures is the main source of income for the Tanu city states 

Tanu, as a Shaman majority culture were little effected by cataclysm. did take it as an opportunity to take the lich held territory in Acre to give them a place to stage trade from. The Tanu have a host of many beliefs that they have absorbed through trade, some bleeding over into each other and has created a very pluralistic culture. Its traditional pantheon has been adopted and inducted into Mythical canon. The Acrean pantheon has become a big influence on the Tanu trade posts. Arashin from Basalt is one often taken by Tanu Chiefs.

Governance

Tanu in general have fairly insular territories, a unified fear of a monster horde keeps most wars from breaking out and they are generally too far away from things to worry about foreign invasions. While there are no true wars there are several yearly competitions that focus on proving the strengths of cities top hunters. These are generally beloved competitions and move from city to city over the years. 

Architecture

As a nation of shamans they do not have any of the awe inspiring great structures from the A.o.S, they have many innovative buildings unique in construction and materials. Brightly painted and ornately carved. 

Vinrum Culture

Tyre Empires / Sinai Dominion / Nov Republic

Oh god near the end. So Vinrum is a a descriptor for the coastal around the smaller Vinrum Sea in the east. Its closer territories has made it a much more conflicted territory All of their histories far more interconnected. 

The greatest commonality is the widespread of the Mythic Canon. A aggressive polytheistic cult that seeks to adapt and induct all pantheons. Sorting the gods and their myths into various monolithic archetypes who represents single gods acting in many cultures. While largely successfully in their attempts of conversion, it has run up to severe resistance in the Acrean territories who take their attempts to sort their gods as an insult. 

[theonyxpath]

This week we present an excerpt from the introductory fiction of Exalted Third Edition.

Once upon a time, two girls lived in a dark place: a place of stagnant water at the bottom of the world.

Above them were stacks of ancient buildings; new buildings, piled up upon the old; and endless criss crossing walkways, so many you could hardly see the sky. The sun was just a distant glitter. The moon’s faces, just the same.

There in that place the sea was still; its waters were stopped up, its currents were broken. The sluice-streets down in the bottom-most layers did not run wet and then dry three times a day, like in the better districts, but simply sat there pooling, seeping, gathering bugs and gunk and plague. They who lived there were scarcely recorded by the men and women who kept the books in Heaven. “Some number of little people reside below,” they’d say, or write, “—and bugs,” and nod their heads.

When Suzu, the younger of the two, was four, she went out into the sluice-streets to play; only, instead of dying to the hungry dead, or falling into the hands of some fleshtaker, scavenger, or priest, she found a white pig (that her father said was likely sacred), with an earring that was a bell. She’d led it home, she’d loved to keep it, she’d ridden on it and confided in it and drawn great swirling patterns of black ink upon its flesh. She’d tugged on Sabriye’s sleeve—that was the older girl—and told her all about it, and it was a precious pig to little Suzu, and come the winter when they cut it open they found oracles in silvered letters on its bones.

Sabriye grew older. She left, and she came back changed. There was all manner of consternation among the bookkeepers in Heaven at that change; it provoked great flurries of paperwork, anguished tugging of the beards, and Heavenly commotion—for in some moment, while they had not been paying attention, Sabriye had joined the ranks of legends; had done some great unrecorded deed and won Exaltation: drawn down into her body a portion of the essence of the divine Unconquered Sun. It was a legacy and a power that had been Liam Island-Tamer’s before her, and Red Dove’s before him, on back to the beginning of the world.

They’d found it burnt into the tapestry of fate that they kept in Heaven; no longer was she “Sabriye, a gutterurchin,” but rather, “of the Solar Exalted.”

Such a to-do! And she scarcely even had records.

…for who in Heaven even bothered to track the gutterfolk of Wu-Jian? Sabriye had been named a Solar in the books of Heaven but of course this datum had not reached her. Not one of the memos that flew about was even addressed to her. She understood only that she had changed. That her steps had lightened, her eyes gone clearer, and a sun-mark glittered on her brow. If she were to try to explain it— …there was no explaining it. Words would fail her. Was it some sun-borne curse? The blessing of some small god of river, grass, or tree? Was she, as the Immaculate Faith would surely tell her, shamed and shameful beyond all measuring: indwelt, possessed, inhabited by some Anathematic demon-god?

If she knew the truth of it, deep in her soul, then to her mind it yet remained a mystery: a secret that lived beneath her tongue and in her throat. That stuck there, that weighed her down, that pooled in her like stagnant water.

The words would not come out.

And so, like anyone who has words they cannot speak, she sought out a kindred spirit to not say them to. She returned to Wu-Jian, hunting for the nameless house on the nameless street that her cousin had used to live in—rehearsing as she searched for Suzu all the words she would not say.

In this, she was not alone.

Ten floors above her, at that time, and three wards left, Jin chewed. Jin swallowed. “I don’t even know how to describe this,” Jin said. He put down his meat bun. He made an ancient finger sign against evil—most specifically, against Anathematic demon-gods—in its general direction. His partner Toad Rat snorted a laugh. “I want to describe it,” said Jin, “but—there are no words.”

“The Anathema aren’t exerting a sinister influence upon your lunch, Jin,” Toad Rat said.

“All I ever wanted—” Jin started to say; but then he sighed, and cut the thought short, and shook his head.

He stared at his meal. He shrugged, and picked it up again, and took another bite.

“One day,” he said, around it, waving the meat bun with a hand, “we will die, if we keep doing this. If we keep hunting these sun-marked monsters down. If we keep going to these terrible places. For what do we do this, Toad Rat, Eastern Star? Why do we risk our lives for things like this—for cities like this, where you can’t even get a half-decent meal?”

And he was looking at Eastern Star when he said this, because she was the one who’d dragged them there; but it was Toad Rat who’d answered.

“I think we are drawn to what we want least in life,” he said. “… That is courage.”

Let us speak of deeps and gutters; of starlight hidden in the darkness; of city piled on city: Of Wu-Jian.

Its roots sink into the ocean, unto the beginning of the world. It hides that glory, shelters it like a watchman covering his red lamp up: you cannot see it when you sail nigh. Rather the jagged piles and stacks that comprise Wu-Jian heave up from the horizon and give the impression, not of ancient grandeur, but of a slum of beggars’ slouching hovels, all leaned and tumbled over one against the other: written large.

Yet it began in the first days, nearly the very first days, as the outcast islands.

They roamed free.

They swum like a pod of whales playing in the ocean. They knew no stability and no order. They drifted on the currents and the waves. Red Tiger tells us that they were renegade humans who had cast off the shackles of their subservience, grown tall as the smaller mountains, tossed their heads, proclaimed their anger at the earth, and swum off into the sea. The Scholar Clad in Irons tells us, rather, that they were untethered, unrooted, but… ordinary… islands, in the keeping of unruly gods. They did not rebel against the order of things, but partook in it neither; therefore, the great demon-gods and goddesses, the “Anathema,” came out to bind them to the sea.

Do they not groan now, in remembrance of that awful day? Do they not heave, and shudder, and tremble, because the city weighs them down?

The demon-gods came for them—so the Scholar writes. They stood upon the surface of the water and they were clad in vestments of gold.

The chiefest of the islands roared out a challenge. It came at them on the lip of a tsunami, hung over it like a ship at wave’s-edge, and then plunged down; its fists were like the boulders of a landslide, like a trampling of great oxen, they tumbled down one after another and they were crested by the foam of waves. Not two of them but hundreds rather, each a writ of war and murder—but a young and slender demon-god, standing towards the front of them, took his pipe from his mouth, reversed it, and blocked each fist consecutively with its slender end. The island flew past him, lost its balance, flipped itself over like a turtle flounders and it was helpless then; in that moment of its defenselessness he replaced his pipe, seized a shaft of sunlight from the sky, made it gold, and plunged it like a pillar, like a needle, like a spear, through the body of the island, through the stone and through the sea beneath the island, and made it anchored to the ocean floor.

Each and all of them, then, all the wild islands: they pinned them with nails of jade and sun and shining metal until they ceased to move.

Such were the deeds of the “Anathema,” before the Dragon-Blooded cast them down.

Atop that dusting of pinned-down land amidst the endless waters they built a crisscrossing maze of bridges, an iridescent web and stronghold, rising, falling, slanting, sloping, reminiscent in its many angles of a brokenlegged spider crouching, injured, on the sea.

Lesser builders would later build their work upon it; would spread their warrens and their rookeries upon it; until the iridescent spires were hidden behind rough and modern structures, wood and stone. They burdened the islands down with city, weighted them down as if under a prisoner’s yoke with it, and the city spread until the islands blurred with one another and the sea-lanes were as the sewers beneath the fortress: beneath Wu-Jian.

Find out more about Sabriye and the Creation in which she lives in Exalted Third Edition, now available in PDF and print from DriveThruRPG.

[luckylq35-blog]

Fox and Terwilliger scrambled to find the jewelry

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[dazzledbybooks]

After the War of Kinds ravaged the kingdom of Rabu, the Automae, designed to be the playthings of royals, usurped their owners’ estates and bent the human race to their will. Now Ayla, a human servant rising in the ranks at the House of the Sovereign, dreams of avenging her family’s death…by killing the sovereign’s daughter, Lady Crier. Crier was Made to be beautiful, flawless, and to carry on her father’s legacy. But that was before her betrothal to the enigmatic Scyre Kinok, before she discovered her father isn’t the benevolent king she once admired, and most importantly, before she met Ayla. Now, with growing human unrest across the land, pressures from a foreign queen, and an evil new leader on the rise, Crier and Ayla find there may be only one path to love: war. Crier's War (Crier's War #1) by Nina Varela Publisher: HarperTeen Release Date: October 1st 2019 Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, LGBT Links: Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41951626-crier-s-war Amazon: https://amzn.to/2SVjF57 B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/criers-war-nina-varela/1129558376#/ iTunes: https://books.apple.com/br/book/criers-war/id1448154886 Bookdepository (CD): https://www.bookdepository.com/Criers-War-Nina-Varela/9781094025483?ref=grid-view&qid=1564567702509&sr=1-1 Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/hk/en/ebook/crier-s-war Google Books: https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Crier_s_War.html?id=JuGBDwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y Favorite Quotes: “Fever and fervor”, said Junn. “There is very little difference, in the end.” “Humanity is how you act, my lady,” said Jezen. “Now how you were Made.” "Like she was more than a human girl. Like she was a summer storm made of flesh." "Crier was beautiful. Created to be beautiful, but it was more than that. [...] It was the way her eyes lit up with interest, the way her fingers were always so careful, almost reverent, as she flipped the pages of a book." "A thought came to her: a story of its own, one that only just began writing itself in her mind: a story of two women, one human, one Made." "A drop of water gleamed on Ayla's lower lip. Strangely, it made Crier want to--drink." Excerpt: Original link/Excerpt extracted from: https://www.epicreads.com/blog/criers-war-sneak-peek/ Alternative links: https://aerbook.com/books/Criers_War-227827.html?social=1&retail=1&emailcap=0 Crier’s War FALL, Y E A R 47 A E Chapter 1 When she was newbuilt and still fragile, and her fresh-woven skin was soft and shiny from creation, Crier’s father told her, “Always check their eyes. That’s how you can tell if a creature is human. It’s in the eyes.” Crier thought her father, Sovereign Hesod, was speaking in metaphor, that he meant humans possessed a special sort of power. Love, a glowing lantern in their hearts; hunger, a liquid heat in their bellies; souls, dark wells in their eyes. Of course, she’d learned later that it was not a metaphor. When light hit an Automa’s eyes head-on, the irises flashed gold. A split second of reflection, refraction, like a cat’s eyes at night. A flicker of gold, and you knew those eyes did not belong to a human. Human eyes swallowed light whole. Crier counted four heartbeats: a doe and three kits. The woods seemed to bend around her, trees converging overhead, while near her feet there was a rabbit’s den, a warm little burrow hidden underground from wolves and foxes . . . but not from her. She stood impossibly still, listening to four tiny pulses radiating up through the dirt, beating so rapidly that they sounded like a hive of buzzing honeybees. Crier cocked her head, fascinated with the muffled hum of living organs. If she concentrated, she could hear the air moving through four sets of thumb-sized lungs. Like all Automae, she was Designed to pick up even the faintest, most faraway sounds. This deep into the woods, dawn had barely touched the forest floor—the perfect time for a hunt. Not that Crier enjoyed hunting. The Hunt was an old human ritual, so old that most humans did not use it anymore. But Hesod was a Traditionalist and historian at heart, and he fostered a unique appreciation for human traditions and mythology. When Crier was Made, he had anointed her forehead with wine and honey for good fortune. When she came of age at thirteen, he had gifted her a silver dress embroidered with the phases of the moon. When he decided that she would marry Kinok, a Scyre from the Western Mountains, he did not make arrangements for Crier to take part in the Automa tradition of traveling to a Maker’s workshop, designing and creating a symbolic gift for her future husband. He had planned for a Hunt. So Crier was not actually alone in these woods. Somewhere out there, hidden by the cover of shadows and trees, her fiancé, Kinok, was hunting as well. Kinok was considered a war hero of sorts. He’d been Made long after the War of Kinds, but there had been numerous rebellions, large and small, in the five decades since the War itself. One of the biggest, a series of coups called the Southern Up-risings, had been quelled almost single-handedly by Kinok and his ingenuity. On top of that, he was the founder and head of the Anti- Reliance Movement—a very new political group that sought to distance Automakind and humankind even further. Literally. Most of their agenda centered on building a new Automa capital to the Far North, in a territory that was uninhabitable to humans, instead of continuing to use the current capital, Yanna, which had once been a human city. It was, frankly, ridiculous. You didn’t have to be the sovereign’s daughter to know that building an entirely new city would require ten thousand, a hundred thousand, a million kings’ coffers of gold, and why would such a vain effort ever be worth the time and cost? It was a fantasy. Before Kinok had begun the Anti-Reliance Movement, about three years ago now, he’d been a Watcher of the Iron Heart. It was a sacred task, protecting the mine that made heartstone, and he was the first Watcher to ever leave his post. Which, of course, had caused much speculation among Automakind. That he’d been discharged, banished for some serious offense. But Kinok claimed it had been a simple difference of philosophy regarding the fate of their Kind, and no one had uncovered any reason more sinister than that. The one time Crier had asked him about his past, he had been elusive. “Those were dark times,” he had said. “So few of us ever saw light.” She had no idea what that meant. Maybe she was overcomplicating it: he’d been living in a mine, after all. Still, the secrets he held—about the Iron Heart, how it ran, its exact coordinates within the western mountains—made him inherently powerful, and different. Many of her father’s councilmembers—the sovereign’s “Red Hands,” as they were called—seemed drawn to Kinok. Like Hesod, Kinok had a certain gravity to him, a certain pull, though where he was serious, Hesod was jovial. Where Kinok was controlled and quiet, Hesod was loud, quick-tempered, often brash. And determined to marry off his daughter to Kinok, despite all the whispers, the speculations. Or perhaps because of them. Months before Kinok’s arrival, Crier and her father had taken a walk along the sea cliffs. “Kinok’s followers are few and scattered, but he is gaining influence at a rate I hadn’t thought possible,” he’d explained. She had listened carefully, trying to understand his point. She had heard of Kinok’s rallies, if “rallies” was even the right word—they were essentially just intellectual gatherings, where small groups of Automae could share their ideals, talk politics and advancement. “Scyre Kinok is a philosopher, Father, not a politician,” Crier had said. “He poses no threat to your rule.” It had been late summer, the sky clear and delphinium blue. Crier used to treasure those long, slow walks with her father, hoarding moments like pieces of jewelry, pretty things to turn over and admire in the light. She looked forward to them every day. It was their time—away from the Red Council, away from her studies—when she could learn from him and him alone. “Yes, but his philosophy is gaining traction among the Made, the protection and rule of which are my—and your—responsibility. We must convince him to join a family structure. To bridge the divide.” Crier stopped short of the seaflowers that had just begun to bloom by the cliff’s edge. “But surely if he does not agree with the tenets of Traditionalism, he will not agree to the kind of union you propose.” She couldn’t bring herself to say marriage yet. “One might think so, but I have reason to believe he will accept the opportunity. To him, it will provide power and status. To us, it will provide stability and access. We will be able to track what the Anti-Reliance Movement is attempting to accomplish, and better rein it in.” “So you disagree with ARM,” Crier said. Hesod hedged. “Their views on humankind are too extreme for my taste. It is one thing to subjugate those who are inferior and another thing entirely to behave as if they don’t exist. We must build policy around the reality of where we came from. We were not created in a void, history-less. It is ignorant to think we cannot learn from humanity’s existing structures.” “You find ARM too extreme. . . . Would you consider its leader dangerous, then?” Crier asked. “No,” Hesod said coolly. Then he had added: “Not yet.” And so she had understood. Crier was the bandage to a wound—one that was minor, for now, but had the potential to fester over time. A hairline fracture in Hesod’s otherwise ironclad rule, his control over all of Zulla, everything from the eastern sea to the western mountains—except the separate territory of Varn. Varn was part of Zulla but still ruled by a separate Automa monarchy. Queen Junn, the Child Queen. The Mad Queen. The Bone Eater. Hesod didn’t need any more splintering. He wanted union. He wanted to keep the same thing Crier knew Kinok wanted: Power. Now: the branches above Crier’s head were half naked with approaching winter, but the trees were so densely packed that they blocked out almost all the weak gray sunlight, shrouding the forest floor in shadow. Overhead, the leaves were like copper etchings, a thousand waving hands in shades of red and orange and burnished gold; underfoot, they were the pale brown of dead things. Crier could smell wet earth and woodsmoke, the musk of animals, the sharp scent of pine and wood sap. It was so different from what she usually experienced, living on the icy shores of the Steorran Sea: the tang of sea air. The taste of salt on her tongue. The heavy smells of fish and rotting seaweed. It took half a day’s ride to reach these woods, and so Crier had been here only once before, nearly five years ago. Her father enjoyed hunting deer like the humans did. She remembered eating a few bites of hot, spiced venison that night, filling her belly with food she did not require. More ritual than meal. The core of her father’s Traditionalism: adopting human habits and customs into daily life. He said it created meaning, structure. Under most circumstances, Crier understood the merits of Hesod’s beliefs. It was why she called him “father” even though she’d never had a mother and had never been birthed. She had been commissioned, Made. Unlike humans, all Automae really needed was heartstone. Where human bodies depended on meat and grain, Automa bodies depended on heartstone: a special red mineral imbued with alchemical energy; raw stone mined from deep within the western mountains and then transmuted by alchemists into a powerful, magickal substance. It was how Thomas Wren, the greatest of the human alchemists, had created them almost one hundred years ago when he’d Designed Kiera—the first. Automae were modeled this way still. Crier crept through the underbrush, keeping to the darkest shadows. Her feet were silent even as she walked across twigs and dry leaves, a red carpet of pine needles. Nothing would be able to hear her coming. Not deer, not elk. Not even other Automae. She paused every few moments, listening to her surroundings: the sounds of small animals skittering through the brush, the whispers of wind, the back-and-forth calls of the noonbirds and the old crows. She was careful to keep her heart rate down. If it spiked too suddenly, the distress chime in the back of her neck would go off at a pithc only Automae could hear, and all her guards would come running. The ceremonial bow was heavy in her hand. It was carved from a single piece of dark mahogany, polished to a perfect sheen and inlaid with veins of gold, precious stones, animal bone. The three arrows sheathed at her back were equally beautiful. One tipped with iron, one with silver, and one with bone. Iron for strength and power. Silver for prosperity. Bone for two bodies bound as one. Snap. Crier whipped around, already nocking an arrow and ready to shoot—but instead coming face-to-face with Kinok himself. He was frozen midstep, partly hidden behind a massive oak, half his face obscured and the other half in watery sunlight. Every time she saw him, which was now about ten times per day since he had taken up residence in her father’s guest chambers, Crier was reminded of how handsome he was. Like all Automae, he was tall and strong, broad-shouldered, Designed to be more beautiful than the most beautiful human man. His face was a study in shadow and light: high cheekbones, knife-blade jawline, a thin, sharp nose. His skin was swarthy, a shade lighter than her own, his dark hair cropped close to his skull. His brown eyes were sharp and scrutinizing. The eyes of a scientist, a political leader. Her fiancé. Her fiancé, who was aiming his iron-tipped arrow straight at Crier’s forehead. There was a moment—so brief that when she thought about it later she was not sure it had actually happened—in which Crier lowered her bow and Kinok did not. A single moment in which they stared at each other and Crier felt the faintest edge of nerves. Then Kinok lowered his bow, smiling, and she scolded herself for being so silly. “Lady Crier,” he said, still smiling. “I do not think we’re supposed to interact with each other until the Hunt is over . . . but you’re a better conversationalist than the birds. Have you caught anything yet?” “No, not yet,” she said. “I am hoping for a deer.” His teeth flashed. “I’m hoping for a fox.” “Why is that?” “They’re quicker than deer, smaller than wolves, and cleverer than crows. I like the challenge.” “I see.” She shifted, catching the faraway scuffle of a rabbit in the underbrush. The shadows dappled Kinok’s face and shoulders like a horse’s coloring. He was still looking at her, the last remnants of that smile still playing at the corners of his flawless mouth. “I wish you luck with your fox, Scyre,” she said, preparing to track down the rabbit. “Aim well.” “Actually, I wanted to congratulate you, my lady,” he said suddenly. “While we are out here, away from—from the palace. I heard you convinced Sovereign Hesod to let you attend a meeting of the Red Council next week.” Crier bit her tongue, trying to hide her excitement. After years of near-begging, her father had agreed to let her attend a council meeting. After years of studying history, philosophy, political theory, reading and rereading a dozen libraries’ worth of books, writing essays and letters and sometimes feverish little manifestos, she would finally, finally be allowed to take a seat among the Red Hands. Maybe even to share her proposals for council reform. As daughter of the sovereign, the Red Council was her birthright; it was as much a part of her as her Pillars. She was Made for this. “I think you’re right, you know,” Kinok continued. “I read the open letter you sent to Councilmember Reyka. About your proposed redistribution of representation on the Red Council. You are correct that while there is a voice for every district in Zulla outside of Varn, there is not a voice for every system of value.” “You read that?” Crier said, eyes snapping up to his face. “Nobody read that. I doubt even Councilmember Reyka did.” She couldn’t help the note of bitterness in her voice. It was foolish, but she had thought Councilmember Reyka, of all people, would listen to her. Her argument had been that in places with higher-density human populations, the interests of those humans should be somehow accounted for in the Hands who sat on her father’s council. Though she had to wonder if when Kinok mentioned her phrase, “systems of value,” he was more interested in his own values—those he was attempting to spread through the land, via ARM—than those of the human citizens. Still, it flattered her that he’d read it. It meant her words had more power, greater reach, than she’d realized. She hoped Reyka had read it too, but with no reply, she’d been left to believe the worst. That Reyka thought her naive and foolish. Sometimes, Crier wondered if maybe her father thought that, too. He’d refused her for so long. But Reyka had always shown something of a soft spot for Crier. As the longest-serving member of the Red Council, Reyka had always been a fixture in Crier’s life. She’d visited the sovereign’s estate quite frequently. When Crier was younger, Reyka would bring her little gifts from her travels: vials of sweet-smelling hair oil, a music box the size of a thumbnail, the strange dark delicacy that was candied heartstone. Crier had come to think of her the way human children in storybooks thought of their godmothers. She couldn’t say that to Reyka, or to anyone. It was such a weak, soft-bellied idea. So she just thought it to herself, and it made her feel warm. “Well . . .” Kinok stepped forward a little, light sliding across his face. His footsteps were silent amid the blanket of dried leaves. “I read it twice. And I agree with it. The Red Hands shouldn’t be based on district alone; it leads to imbalance and bias. Have you mentioned this issue to your father?” “Yes,” Crier said quietly. “He was not incredibly receptive.” “We can work on that.” At her look of surprise, Kinok shrugged one shoulder. “We are bound to be married, are we not? I am on your side, Lady Crier, as you are on mine. Right?” “Right,” she found herself saying, staring at him in wonder. What new opportunities might come to her in this marriage? For months now she had thought of it as nothing more than a prolonged political maneuver, unpleasant but ultimately bearable, like the stench of rotting fish in the sea air. It had not occurred to her that she might be gaining an advocate, as well as a husband. “And if we are on the same side, there is something you should know,” said Kinok, lowering his voice even though they were entirely alone, no living things around but the rabbits and the birds. “There was a scandal in the capital recently. I know only because I was with Councilmember Reyka when she learned of it.” Crier almost questioned that—it was no secret that Council-member Reyka hated everything about the Anti-Reliance Movement, including Kinok himself. But another word caught her attention. “A scandal?” she asked. “What kind of scandal?” “Midwife sabotage.” Crier’s eyes widened. “What do you mean, sabotage?” she asked. Midwives were an integral part of the Making process. They were created to be assistants to the Makers themselves, a bridge between Maker and Designer. They helped newly Made Automae adjust to the world. “What did the Midwife do?” “Faked a set of Design blueprints for a nobleman’s child. It was a disaster. The child was Made wrong. More animal than Automa or even human. Their mind was wild, violent. They had to be disposed of for the safety of the nobleman’s family.” “That’s horrible,” Crier breathed. “Why would the Midwife do such a thing? Was it madness?” She knew the condition plagued some humans. “Nobody knows,” said Kinok. “But, Lady, there is something you should know.” There was something strange in his voice. Warning? Trepidation? “This was not her first Make,” Kinok continued, meeting Crier’s eyes. “She had been working with the nobles of Rabu for decades.” A pit seemed to open in Crier’s belly, but she was not sure why. “Who was she, Scyre?” she asked slowly. “The Midwife. What was her name?” “Torras. Her name was Torras.” Crier gripped her bow so tightly that the wood creaked in protest. Because she knew Midwife Torras. She knew it, because that was the Midwife who had helped Make her. As soon as the Hunt was complete—two rabbits and a fox ensnared—and their party had returned to the palace, Crier retired to her chambers, poring again over the Midwife’s Handbook, a thin, leather-bound booklet she’d come across in a bookseller’s stall in the market last year and bought with so much enthusiasm that the stall owner seemed a little alarmed. She reassured herself that an infraction of the kind Kinok had mentioned was nearly impossible. There was no way her own Design had been tampered with, of course. She was far too important. And besides, if there were something off, something Flawed, something different about her, she’d know it already . . . wouldn’t she? Chapter 2 Luna was killed in a white dress. A week had passed since her death, and the dress that had been stripped off her body and dangled from the tallest post was still fluttering in the faint breeze. It was some kind of symbol, or warning. By now the dress was soaked through with rot and rainwater, but there were still some parts white enough to catch the sunlight. Catch the eye. Ayla could not stop glancing over, and every time she did, she felt the gut-punch of what had happened to Luna all over again. And now, days later, the reminder rippled through the other humans like the dress itself rippled in the summer wind. No one even knew what Luna had done. Why the sovereign’s guards had killed her. Ayla continued on her way through the marketplace. She usually worked in the orchards at Sovereign Hesod’s palace, sowing seeds and collecting bushels of ripe apples, but one of the other servants was practically delirious with fever and Ayla had been ordered to fill in. For the past week she’d joined the group of exhausted servants who left their beds halfway through the night, just so they could make it to the closest village, Kalla-den—a good four leagues of treacherous, rocky shoreline from the manor—and set up their wares by dawn. It would’ve been miserable no matter what, but being greeted in the marketplace by Luna’s empty dress made it all the worse. It was like a ghost. Like a pale fish in dark water, flickering at the edges of Ayla’s vision. Ayla had worked in some capacity at the sovereign’s palace for the past four years. And it had been months since she’d finally made it out of the stables and into the orchard-tending rotation. Some days she was so close to the white stone walls of the palace that she could smell the burning hearth fires within, taste the smoke on her tongue. And yet . . . she still hadn’t managed to get inside. Nothing mattered until she got inside. And she’d vowed to do so to exact her revenge—even if it killed her. But now Ayla stared out at the marketplace, at the crowd of sleek, beautiful Automae—leeches—and tried to keep the hatred and disgust off her face. Nobody bought flowers from a girl who looked like she’d rather be selling poison. “Flowers!” she called out, trying to keep her voice light. It was almost sunset, almost time to give up for the day, but there were still far too many unsold garlands in her basket. “We’ve got seaflowers, apple blossoms, the prettiest salt lavender up and down the coast!” Not a single leech glanced in her direction. The Kalla-den Market was a kingdom’s worth of chaos stuffed into an area the size of a barn, and it was so noisy you could hear it from half a league away. The marketplace was vendors’ stalls shoved up against each other three deep, their carts and baskets overflowing with candied fruits, pastries, fresh-caught fish, oysters that smelled like death even under the weak autumn sun. It was leeches huddled around baskets of heartstone dust, dipping the tips of their fingers into the powdery red grains, bringing them to their lips to test the quality. It was whole chickens or goat legs rotating on spits, roasting slowly, smoke filling the air till Ayla’s eyes watered; it was wine and apple cider and piles of colorful spices; it was a crush of grimy, skeletal, desperate humans hawking their wares to an endless stream of Automae. And of course, the rows and rows of Hesod’s prized sun apples, gleaming like so many red jewels—nearly as crimson and bright as heartstone itself. But the majority of the Automae seemed to treat the market like one of those traveling menageries—Step right up, folks. Gawk for free. Look at the humans. Look at the flesh-and-bone animals. Point and stare, why don’t you. Watch ’em sweat and squeal like pigs. The only good thing about the market was Benjy. She looked over at him as she called out Flowers! again. He was the closest thing to a friend that Ayla would allow herself. She’d known him since she was twelve years old and haunted, hollowed by grief. In the thick of it, still. Unlike Ayla, Benjy was used to the madness of Kalla-den. He even seemed to thrive in it, his brown eyes bright and sparkling, the sun bringing out the freckles on his brown cheeks. The first day Ayla had joined him here in the market, he’d nearly taken some eyes out while pointing at all the exciting things he wanted Ayla to see—colorful glass baubles, mechanical insects with windup wings, twists of sugared bread shaped like animals. On the second day, Benjy showed Ayla the secret underbelly of the market: Made objects. These were forbidden items created by alchemists—Makers—and passed from hand to hand in the shadows, hidden by the dust and the crowd. Objects smaller than Ayla’s little finger but worth double her weight in gold. For humans, possessing a Made object was forbidden, as Made objects were the work of alchemy and considered dangerous, powerful. After all, Automae themselves were Made. Perhaps they didn’t like any reminder that they, too, were once treated like trinkets and playthings. Made objects were completely illegal, and therefore incredibly tempting. Ayla had no use for temptation—except in one single case. The locket she wore around her neck. The only remnant she had of her family—a reminder of the violence they’d suffered, and the revenge she planned to take. She didn’t even know how it worked, if it even did work, but she knew it was Made, and that it was forbidden, and that it was the one thing she could call hers. “Are you going to help me or not?” Ayla said now, prodding Benjy in the ribs. He yelped. “I’ve been yelling my head off for an hour; it’s your turn.” He looked down at her, squinting in the dying sun. “Take it from someone who’s done this a hundred times. The day is over. All anyone’s willing to buy right now is heartstone.” Ayla huffed. “You of all people know if we don’t sell every single one of these flowers, we won’t get dinner.” “Trust me, I’m aware. My belly’s been growling since midmorning.” “You got any food squirreled away back in the quarters?” “No,” he said mournfully. “I had some dried plums stowed away in the old gardener’s lean-to, but last time I checked they were gone. Guess someone else found them.” He tugged at his messy dark curls, wiped the sweat off his forehead, fiddled with one of the garlands they had yet to sell. That was Benjy—always in motion. It would make Ayla anxious if she weren’t so used to it. “The world is just full of thieves, ain’t it,” Ayla said with a hint of amusement. Benjy picked a petal off one of the seaflowers. “Like you’re not a thief yourself.” She grinned. When Ayla first met Benjy, he had looked more like a deer than a boy. Long-legged and awkward and perpetually wide-eyed, sweet and young and angry, but a soft kind of angry. A harmless, deathless kind of angry. His family hadn’t been killed by the sovereign’s men. He’d never known them at all—his mother had left him on the doorstep of an old temple, still wet from birth. If it were Ayla, she knew she’d be consumed by the need to track them down, to find her birth mother, to ask her a thousand questions that all began with why. But Benjy wasn’t like that. He’d survived under the care of the temple priests for nine years, then ran away. Three months later, Rowan took him in. Benjy’s anger was different now—he’d grown, learned more about this broken world, learned about the Revolution. Some bitterness had seeped into him; some passion. But he was still soft. Would always be. For years, that softness had annoyed the hell out of Ayla. Made her want to grab his shoulders and shake him till some fury came out. After all, it was fury that had kept Ayla alive all these years; fury that had lit a flame inside her chest and made her keep going out of sheer anger. When she had no hearth fire to keep her warm, she’d picture the look on Hesod’s face when his precious daughter lay in Ayla’s hands, broken beyond repair. On the days her belly seemed to crumple in on itself from lack of bread, she’d picture some older, stronger version of herself looking Hesod right in his soulless eyes and saying: This is for my family, you murderous leech. Ayla scanned the crowd, feeling horribly small and soft, a mouse surrounded by cats. Automae looked human the way statues looked human—you might be tricked from far away, but once you got up close you could see all the differences. Most leeches were around six feet tall, some even taller, and their bodies, no matter the shape or size, were graceful and corded with lean muscle. Their faces were angular, their features sharp. They were Designed in Automa Midwiferies, each one sculpted to be beautiful, but it was a chilling kind of beautiful. Some sick practice in vanity: How big can we make her eyes? How cutting her cheekbones? How perfectly symmetrical her features? There was also something odd about the look of a leech’s skin. It was flawless, sure—no pores, no peach fuzz, no freckles or sunburns or scars, just smooth, supple skin. But more than that, it was the way they looked carved from stone, indestructible. It was the way their skin stretched over their hand-designed muscles and bones. Like it could barely keep all the monster inside. The leeches had let themselves forget that they’d been created by the same humans they now treated worse than dogs. In the forty-eight years since their rise to power, they’d conveniently let themselves forget their past. Forget that they were once merely the pets and playthings of human nobility. Ayla did not let herself think about her own past, either—the fire, the fear, the way loss lived in the cavity of the chest, the way it chewed her up from the inside out. Thinking like that wasn’t how you survived. She and Benjy packed up the stall before sundown, aiming to be long gone by the time darkness fell over Kalla-den. As they took a shortcut through a damp alley, baskets of unsold sea-flowers strapped to their backs, someone fell into step behind them. Ayla glanced back and, despite herself, she almost smiled when she saw Rowan. Rowan was a seamstress who lived and worked in Kalla-den. At least, that’s what she was on the outside. To people like Ayla, she was something else entirely. A mentor. A trainer. A protector. A mother to the lost and the beaten and the hungry. She gave them refuge. And taught them to fight back. You wouldn’t know it from the looks of her. She had one of those faces where you couldn’t quite tell how old she was—the only signs of age were her silver hair and the slight crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes—and she was short, even shorter than Ayla. She looked rather like a plump little sparrow hopping around, ruffling her feathers. Sweet and harmless. Like so much else, it was a carefully constructed lie. Rowan was no sparrow. She was a bird of prey. Seven years ago, she’d saved Ayla’s life. She was so cold that it didn’t feel like cold anymore. It didn’t even burn. She barely noticed the winter air, the snow soaking through her threadbare boots, the ice crystals that whipped across her face and left her skin red and raw. She was cold from the inside out, the coldness pulsing through her with every weak flutter of her heart. Dimly, she knew this was how it felt right before you died. It was comforting. She was so cold, and so tired of being alone. So tired of hurting. The last thing she’d eaten was a scrap of half-rotted meat three days ago. Maybe four. Time kept blurring, rolling over itself, going belly-up like a dead animal. Ayla wasn’t hungry anymore. Her stomach had stopped making noises. Quietly, it was eating what little muscle she had left. There was a patch of darkness up ahead. Darkness, which meant something not covered in snow. Ayla stumbled forward, the ground tilting in strange ways beneath her feet. Her eyes kept falling shut against her will. She forced them open again, head pounding, vision reduced to a pinprick of light at the end of a long, long tunnel. The darkness—there. So close. Gray, a stone wall. The dark brown of cobblestones. It was a tiny gap between two buildings. A sloping roof caught the snow, protecting the ground beneath. Ayla dragged herself into the dark snowless space and her knees gave out. She hit the wall sideways and fell hard, skull cracking against the cobblestones. And there she lay. “Hey.” Her eyes were closed. “Hey! Wake up!” No. She was finally warm. “Wake up, you idiot!” A sound like striking an oyster shell against rock; a sharp, stinging pressure on Ayla’s cheek. Heat, for a moment. Someone was talking, maybe, but they were very far away, and Ayla couldn’t make out the words. The exhaustion closed over her head like water, and she let go. It was only later that she learned just how far Rowan had dragged her body to warmth and safety, before nursing her back to health. Back then, Rowan’s hair had still been brown, streaked silver only at the temples. But her eyes were the same. Deep and steady. “You were ready to die,” she had said. Ayla didn’t answer. “I don’t know what happened to you, exactly,” said Rowan. “But I know you’re alone. I know you’ve been cast aside, left to die in the snow like an animal.” She reached out and took Ayla’s hands, held them between her own. It felt like being cradled: like being held all over. “You’re not alone anymore. I can give you something to fight for, child. I can give you a purpose.” “A purpose?” Ayla had said. Her voice was weak, scraped out. “Justice,” said Rowan. And she squeezed Ayla’s hands. “The moon is full,” said Rowan now, looking straight ahead, in the hushed, coded tone Ayla had come to know so well. The three of them moved easily through the crowd of humans, used to dodging people and carts and stray dogs. The chaos of the Kalla-den streets was a strange kind of blessing: a thousand human voices all shouting at once meant it was the perfect place for conversations you didn’t want anyone to overhear. “Clear skies lately,” Ayla and Benjy said in unison. Nothing to report. It was Rowan, of course, who had taught them the language of rebellion. A sprig of rosemary passed between hands on a crowded street, garlands woven from flowers with symbolic meanings, coded messages hidden inside loaves of bread, faerie stories or old folk songs used like passwords to determine who you could trust. Rowan had taught them everything. She’d saved Ayla first, Benjy a few months later. Took them in. Clothed them. Taught them how to beg, and then how to find work. Fed them. But also gave them a new hunger: justice. Because they should never have needed to beg in the first place. “What news?” Benjy asked. “A comet is crossing to the southern skies,” Rowan said with a smile. “A week from now. It will be a beautiful night.” Benjy took Ayla’s hand and squeezed. She didn’t return it. She knew what the code meant: an uprising in the South. Another one. It filled her gut with suspicion and dread. They turned onto a wider street, the crowd thinning out a little. They spoke more softly now. “Crossing south,” Ayla repeated. Her heart sank. “And how many stars will be out in the southern skies?” Rowan didn’t pick up on her skepticism. “Oh, I’ve heard around two hundred.” “Two hundred,” Benjy repeated, eyes gleaming. Two hundred human rebels gathering in the South. “High time, loves.” Rowan was gone as swiftly as she had appeared, leaving only a crumpled flyer in Benjy’s hands—a religious pamphlet, something about the gods and believers. Ayla knew it would be riddled with code—code that only those in the Resistance could decipher. Part of Ayla worried that Rowan was still harboring hope for these uprisings, for what she called “justice,” because of her grief for Luna and Luna’s sister, Faye. After all, they’d been two of Rowan’s lost children, just like Ayla and Benjy. It was known within the village that any orphan kid could find food and comfort with Rowan. Ayla remembered when Faye and Luna had come to Rowan’s after their mother had died. Ayla had taken to Luna immediately, a girl with shy smiles and sweet questions. Faye had been pricklier, distrusting, far too much like Ayla for the two of them to get along. But still, they’d grown up around each other. And Ayla knew that Rowan’s soft heart grieved for the two sisters. Those two girls she’d tried to save. Two girls who, in her mind, she had failed. And in that grief, Rowan was willing to send more innocents off to find more of her “justice.” Over the years, they’d received word of a few uprisings here in Rabu, but each one had been bloody—and quelled quickly. The Sovereign State of Rabu was controlled by Sovereign Hesod. His rule had come to extend to all of Zulla except for the queendom of Varn. Though he claimed he did not hold all the power, as the Red Council—a group of Automa aristocrats—was supposed to share governance of Rabu, Ayla hardly believed that to be true. Hesod was enormously wealthy and influential. He was also power-hungry. It had been his father who led the Automa troops in the War of Kinds. It was he who first declared humans should be separated from their families. And it was on his personal land, the vast grounds of his seaside palace, that Ayla, Benjy, and four hundred other human servants lived and worked. The Red Council was cruel, merciless, and worst of all, creative. That was part of the reason the Revolution was so slow-going—people were just so damn terrified of the Council and its ever-tightening laws. Even Ayla had to admit their fears were well founded. Luna—and her disembodied dress—was proof of that. Benjy looked at Ayla as they hiked up the steeply sloping path toward the palace, his eyes full of hope and excitement. The message was clear: he wanted to join. Even after the disastrous uprisings of last year. She shook her head. No. He knew better. He knew she couldn’t leave now, tonight. Not when she was this close to the inside of the palace. And Crier. Benjy’s smile vanished. “Ayla.” “No,” she said. “I’m not going.” Did she want what he wanted? Did she want the leeches dead? Of course, but not like this. Not when it only meant a trail of human blood, not when it was doomed to futility. She was not ready to lose anyone else. The last time there had been an uprising in the South, it was quashed almost immediately—and that uprising had been massive, with nearly two thousand humans marching through the streets of the city Bram, armed with torches and saltpeter, aiming to take the heart of the city where the most powerful Automae lived. They had been defeated in a single night. The Automa who had led the counterattack—who had destroyed them—became a decorated war hero. A household name, a household monster. Kinok. Benjy fell silent, but Ayla could finally feel his anger—could tell that it was now directed at her. His strides grew long, determined, as they reached the narrow path that curved up toward the palace. She could see the peaked roofs of the palace towers now in the distance. She hurried to catch up with him, panting in the heat. By now they were farther from the crowd. She grabbed his shoulder, and he stopped walking so suddenly she nearly crashed into him. “I know what you’re going to say,” he said through gritted teeth. Ayla struggled to catch her breath. “You could always . . . watch the comet without me.” The words grated in her throat like she’d swallowed a mouthful of salt. His dark-brown eyes locked onto hers. The breeze danced in his messy hair. He’d grown taller than her, and broader too. She held his gaze. For a full minute, he said nothing. They just stood there, breathing hard, looking at each other. Thinking the same thing: it was too soon. Ayla wanted to say: Don’t leave me. Ayla should have said: Leave me. Because maybe it would be better that way. Benjy’s anger seemed to transmute into sadness, his lips parting. Finally, he said, “I won’t do that. I won’t go without you, and you know it.” She did. And that scared her more than anything. He wouldn’t leave her. It made her heart rage. Leave, she wanted to scream. Don’t stay for me. But then another part of her, buried so deep it had almost, almost, gone silent, knew she couldn’t do this—do any of it—without him. His lips were still slightly parted, as though there was more he wanted to say. She knew how badly he needed this. Revolution. Blood. Change. She waited for him to keep going, to try again to convince her. But he also knew how much she wanted what she wanted: Lady Crier’s blood on her hands. So in the end, Benjy just sighed. More and more servants began to pass them on their way up the narrow path, and Ayla put a few paces between herself and Benjy, kept her eyes on the rutted path as they marched the rest of the way back to their quarters in silence, the past piling into her thoughts like shovelfuls of dirt. After what Ayla had come to think of as that day, the day that changed everything, the splitting point in her mind, the thing that cracked her life into a before and after, the waking nightmare, the bloodstain, the splintered bone that would not heal, that day, Ayla had allowed herself one week to mourn. Even at nine years old, she’d known that it was all too easy to drown in grief—get pulled under and never come back up. One week, she told herself. One week. One week to mourn the deaths of her entire family. Mama. Papa. Her twin brother, Storme, who had loved Ayla more than anything else in the whole world. Who had been wrenched away from her, trying to protect her from Them. Storme, who, from the sounds of his screaming cut short, had met his end then and there, just beyond the walls of what had been their home. You couldn’t depend on much in this world, but you could depend on this: love brought nothing but death. Where love existed, death would follow, a wolf trailing after a wounded deer. Scenting blood in the air. Ayla had learned that the hard way. Now she was sixteen, and everything she wanted was just inches from her fingertips. When Rowan had first rescued her, Ayla only had her pain and her anger. But one day, about a month after being with Rowan, a group of nomadic humans had come into town. Rowan had given Ayla a choice. Leave with these traveling humans, leave all of her pain and her memories behind and start anew. Or stay under Rowan’s wing. Rowan would care for her until she could find work. And Ayla would learn to fight, learn to live, and plan for justice. Ayla had chosen the latter. And Rowan, keeping her promise, had found Ayla work as a servant of the palace. Hesod. The leech who’d ordered the raid of Ayla’s village. It was Hesod’s men who had broken into Ayla’s childhood home, who had murdered her family just because they could. Hesod prided himself on spreading Traditionalism throughout Rabu—the Automa belief in modeling their society after human behavior, as though humans were a long-lost civilization from which they could cherry-pick the best attributes to mimic. Family was important to Sovereign Hesod, or so he and his council preached. The irony was not lost on Ayla. And now she worked for him. It disgusted her, every second of it, but it was the only way she could get close to Hesod. She’d come so far. She was not going to throw it all away for some doomed dream of revolution. Rowan had always told her that justice was the answer. And for a long time, Ayla had believed her. She’d believed that revolution was possible, that if humans just kept rising up, refusing to submit, they could really change things. But Ayla knew better now. Over the years, she’d seen how hopeless Rowan’s dreams were. Every uprising had failed; every brilliant plan had been crushed; every new maneuver just resulted in more human death. Justice was a god, and Ayla didn’t believe in such childish things. She believed in blood. Review: Crier's War by Nina Varela is definitely a unique book. It makes me feel slightly torn because I don't think this book was for me. With that being said, it is not a bad book just not something that I loved. Crier's War is getting a ton of great five star reviews so don't let me discourage you because if this is a book you want to read, then I say go for it. I am going to go through the things I liked and disliked. Let's start with all the positive thoughts. Likes: The Concept: I though the concept of Crier's War was great. In a lot of ways it makes you wonder if our world would ever end up completely ran by machines. There is so much machine learning out there that it has you wondering. That is a tangent for another day. In Crier's War, the machines rule. Humans are trying to fight their way back to the top of course. Why would we want to be ruled by machines? This world is so interesting because the Humans used to be on top and now they aren't.  The Humans: I really liked that the story didn't show the humans taking everything as a oh well this is our world but instead they were fighting to make things better for themselves. They wanted better. They didn't agree with the machines taking over the world. I think it was all the humans that kept me going. I wanted to know what would have to this society. Dislikes: The Plot: I didn't find myself invested in the plot. I didn't understand where it was going most of the time either. There was no surprises. I just felt like it was a let down. The Romance: I felt like this was all pretty forced. People are saying how much they love it but I just don't see it. The characters never really got together. I feel a big part of this is to satisfy a LGBTQ+ quota and I don't think it did a good job of it. It all fell really flat and boring. I just didn't get the connection. Crier: Her chapters were not the best. I felt she was super whiny and I just didn't want to commit to her. She was not a character I liked. All the angst she has is exhausting. The Pacing: This book was super slow. I felt like it was dragging on. Neither Like or Dislike: The Setting: I am putting this one in the neutral zone because I feel indifferent. I love when a world is described to me. I usually thing it is beautiful. I felt like the descriptions in Crier's War were really drug out. I love beautiful fast pace descriptions and I just didn't get that with this book. Most of the book was super slow to me.  Overall: Crier's War is not a bad book. It just wasn't the book for me. I still encourage you to pick it up and try it for yourself because everyone is different when it comes to reading a book. You always have to try things that you may not like so that way you know what you like. You can always disagree with me. I encourage it actually. About the Author: Nina Varela is a nationally awarded writer of screenplays and short fiction. She was born in New Orleans and raised on a hippie commune in Durham, North Carolina, where she spent most of her childhood playing in the Eno River, building faerie houses from moss and bark, and running barefoot through the woods. These days, Nina lives in Los Angeles with her writing partner and their tiny, ill-behaved dog. She tends to write stories about hard-won love and young people toppling the monarchy/patriarchy/whatever-archy. On a related note, she’s queer. On a less related note, she has strong feelings about hushpuppies and loves a good jambalaya. CRIER’S WAR is her first novel.  You can find Nina at any given coffee shop in the greater Los Angeles area, or at www.ninavarela.com. Links: Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18450258.Nina_Varela Website: https://www.ninavarela.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ninavarelas Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ninavarelas_/ Tour Schedule: October 1st The Unofficial Addiction Book Fan Club - Welcome Post October 2nd Kait Plus Books - Interview Luchia Houghton Blog - Review + Favourite Quotes It Starts at Midnight - Review Jrsbookreviews - Review Some Books & Ramblings - Review October 3rd NovelKnight - Guest Post Bluestocking Bookworm - Review + Playlist + Dream Cast Writing with Wolves - Review Unputdownable Books - Review BookCrushin - Promotional Post October 4th Damn Mysterious - Interview Utopia State of Mind - Review + Favourite Quotes Flipping Through the Pages - Review The Reading Corner for All - Review The Hermit Librarian - Review + Favourite Quotes October 5th Pooled Ink - Guest Post The Layaway Dragon - Review + Favourite Quotes Here's to Happy Endings - Review Morgan Vega - Review + Favourite Quotes everywhere and nowhere - Review October 6th Library of a Book Witch - Review Portrait of a Book - Review Moonlight Rendezvous - Review + Favourite Quotes Dazzled by Books - Review + Favourite Quotes Sometimes Leelynn Reads - Review + Dream Cast October 7th The Shelf Life Chronicles - Guest Post Jessica Writes - Review + Favourite Quotes The Clever Reader - Review Mahkjchi's Not-So-Secret Books - Review + Favourite Quotes JHeartLovesBooks - Review

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Making a Garden That Welcomes the Birds (Published 2020)@|how to get birds in your garden@|https://ift.tt/3E6smRi

IN THE GARDEN

Using native plant species helps, but there are two other things you can do to make birds feel at home — and they don’t involve any planting at all.

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A young rose-breasted grosbeak spent part of a summer afternoon on a leaf in the back garden.Credit…Margaret Roach

June 17, 2020

In this most isolated of springs, birds have kept me company. I’ve watched their mating games and turf wars, listened to their serenades and tagged along as they shopped for just the right piece of garden real estate (as long as I was very quiet; no kibitzing, Margaret). Some even let me meet their newborns when the big moment came.

All the things I cannot do with my people so much lately, we’ve been doing as usual; the birds remained in my bubble all along. I cannot imagine life without the 70 or so species that visit or reside in the garden each year. As I often say (and write): The birds taught me to garden — or at least to do it smarter.

When I first came as a weekender decades ago from New York City to the rural spot where I now live full time, there were unfamiliar voices and flashes of color in the surrounding shrubs and trees as I hacked through multiflora rose and wild blackberry to make vegetable and flower beds.

I got a field guide and learned their names: scarlet tanager, indigo bunting, American redstart, rose-breasted grosbeak. In the same way that my beginning-gardener self coveted every plant in her first garden catalogs, I imagined attracting every bird in that book.

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The characteristic nest of a red-eyed vireo, fashioned of twigs, plant fibers and birch bark and lined with pine needles, hangs in the fork of a branch of one of the winterberry hollies at the garden’s edge. Some vireo nests have wasp-nest paper, too.Credit…Margaret Roach

Like most beginners, I sought the answer in fancy feeders and every manner of well-designed birdhouse — designed from a human aesthetic, that is, although not necessarily meeting bird specifications. Eventually I came to visualize this place as their refuge: shelter and water within a giant, living bird feeder that offers appropriate sustenance for breeding season, to fuel migration’s big energy demands or to survive the coldest months for those who choose to spend them with me.

Studying my growing collection of field guides on the life histories and diets of birds that I’d see — the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds site and its online courses are good resources, as well — I reduced lawn areas to make room for native plants and to support more insects and, in turn, birds. Nearly every organism in the food web eats insects or eats someone who eats them — or benefits from the pollination services that insects provide.

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Two in-ground water gardens like the one in the foreground attract all manner of wildlife to my land — including many birds — year-round. Uphill, islands that were once lawn are now unmown, and native grasses and forbs like little bluestem, goldenrods and asters are gradually laying claim, sustaining insects and, therefore, birds.Credit…Margaret Roach

Thinking of plant choices not as just ornament but as ecological workhorses is not where I began. But it’s where I came to — to think in terms of habitat.

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Something I heard the ornithologist Pete Dunne say has stuck: “Birds are almost always where they are supposed to be.” Mr. Dunne, a longtime leader in New Jersey Audubon and the author of many books, was offering a tip about bird-watching: The habitat where you spot a bird is an important clue to its identification. But his insight is also key to setting realistic expectations and planning what to do to enhance your site.

Reality check: No matter what I do, waterfowl or grassland birds won’t favor my garden — although both pass time nearby. I am on a steep uphill site, surrounded by second-growth forest. Forest birds, including migrant songbirds looking for breeding ground, plus lots and lots of woodpeckers, think it looks just swell and are among those I need to think about.

In addition to mowing less, I have adopted two particular actions on behalf of the birds — on behalf of habitat — that involve no planting at all.

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A very old twin-trunk birch was losing large pieces of its crown and dying back. It was transformed into a snag, or wildlife tree, where it will continue to contribute to the habitat and food web for many years.Credit…Margaret Roach

No. 1: Leave Dying Trees Alone

These days, I never take down a dead or dying tree lower than the level required for safety.

A friend texted a photo recently of a declining, massive old oak in a prominent spot in her suburban backyard. She had consulted an arborist who suggested removal and grinding out the stump, standard practice in residential environments.

“I guess trees have a life, and unfortunately this beauty is at the end,” she wrote.

I begged to differ, and quickly shot back photos of an old birch that had been dropping big pieces of its canopy out back years ago, and a massive maple by the driveway that had been doing likewise recently. My arborist had helped me stabilize and transition them to wildlife trees, or snags — a critical part of habitat that we homeowners too often erase in the name of neatness.

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It didn’t take long for woodpeckers to begin to excavate the birch snag enthusiastically.Credit…Margaret Roach

As long as they pose no danger to people, power lines or structures, dead and dying trees have an afterlife as a place for wildlife to nest or den; a lookout perch for a raptor seeking dinner; a food source for insects (who, in turn, feed the masses). Lichen, fungi and mosses grow on them, providing food and shelter.

Removing their tons of biomass deprives the food web of all of that life-giving potential. According to the National Wildlife Federation, the removal of dead material from forests can mean a loss of habitat for up to a fifth of the animals in the ecosystem, and more than 1,000 species of wildlife nationwide use snags. That includes woodpeckers, whose excavating efforts in dead trees help not just their own species.

“More than 40 bird species in North America depend on woodpecker carpentry for their nest and roost cavities,” writes Stephen Shunk in “Peterson Reference Guide to Woodpeckers of North America.” These secondary nesters — among them, tree swallows, bluebirds, titmice, wrens, flycatchers and some owls and ducks — cannot create cavities, but quickly adopt abandoned holes.

“Having a more healthy woodpecker population buys you more than just woodpeckers,” John Marzluff, an ornithologist and urban ecologist at the University of Washington, told me in an interview a few years ago on the publication of “Welcome to Subirdia,” his book about rich habitat opportunities in developed areas. “But they need dead trees.”

Too-tidy landscapes offer no invitation to the woodpeckers, keystone species or facilitators others rely on. Besides nest cavities, some woodpeckers create sap wells where hummingbirds and butterflies, like the red-spotted purple, like to drink. Migrating ruby-throated hummingbirds follow yellow-bellied sapsuckers to ensure an early food source before many plants are providing nectar.

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I was able to salvage a candelabra-like arrangement of branch stubs in addition to the entire main trunk of the declining maple by my driveway, which is better from the wildlife point of view than merely topping the tree.Credit…Margaret Roach

The bigger the snag, the better for wildlife, but safety must be considered. The safe height in my open, rural garden exceeds what works elsewhere, which may be less than 10 feet (where my friend’s oak, rescued from destruction, now registers). Big pieces of the upper carcass of each of my snags lie near where they once stood, mimicking how they would fall and decompose in a forest — which, again, might not work in some yards.

Some twiggy parts could form an out-of-the-way brush pile, though, another wildlife attractor. Even a high stump can support a lot of life, compared to a ground-level cut or ground-out one.

Yes, there can be birdhouses — but not the models I started with. Choose them not for cuteness, but according to the specifications preferred by local cavity nesters. Cornell’s NestWatch site, with its All About Bird Houses section, will guide you to your area’s cavity-nesting species, ranked in order of urgency of need for more nest sites, with downloadable plans for boxes and nesting shelves. Build one or have it built, or use the dimensions to buy the right box.

Be a good landlord, siting the proper unit in the location that the instructions indicate. Secure the birdhouse against predators, by adding a stovepipe baffle on the pole mount, for instance, in the case of bluebird boxes. (More on bluebirds is at Sialis.org.) Clean nest boxes in late winter to offer a fresh start.

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No. 2: Provide a Water Supply

Maybe my biggest non-planting contribution of all: I provide water 12 months a year.

For entirely selfish reasons — to create the sound of running water — I dug two in-ground pools lined with thick rubber sheeting early in my weekender days. I had no idea the effect they would have on wildlife, particularly because I keep a hole in the ice all winter with an electric floating de-icer, a contraption adapted from cattle-tank defrosters used so livestock can have drinking water in winter. The smallest versions will keep a birdbath open for business.

I calculated the required device wattage with help from a water-garden specialty supply company, by considering the severity of the winter temperatures where I live, plus the total surface area of each pool, and installed weather-resistant GFCI outlets adjacent to each pool. (An important safety note: De-icers cannot run on extension cords.) The idea is not to heat the water or keep the entire surface open, but merely to keep a drinking hole open in the ice.

The warbler called Louisiana waterthrush is a regular customer, bobbing the back of its body up and down to some unheard dance beat as it forages for insects. One winter, the bigger pool (and the fruit of a group of crab apple trees just above) drew a flock of irruptive pine grosbeaks visiting from Canada, who spent some weeks there.

I can look up from my desk at any time of day, any time of year, and there is hardly a moment when someone — feathered, fur-bearing, amphibian or otherwise, including a diversity of summer dragonflies — is not partaking.

So much so that when people ask me what my favorite “bird plant” is, I often reply, “Water.” (The real answer: One of the many native flowering-then-fruiting winterberry holly shrubs massed around the perimeter, which bring in winter flocks of cedar waxwings and robins. Your most effective bird-supporting native plants can be found in a ZIP code-based search on the Audubon Society website.)

The only other place in the garden that competes with the little pools for such nonstop activity? The older snag, that birch, where even as I write this, a pileated woodpecker is having at it.

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A young robin finds itself in the backyard on a tentative first adventure out of the nest one spring.Credit…Margaret Roach

Bird Safety: A Few Tips

If you provide bird feeders, as I do in winter, when resident black bear are not active, keep them clean and consistently well stocked.

And mitigate the two most serious dangers to birds in our human environments: cats and window glass.

The American Bird Conservancy urges us to help reduce window strikes, which kill up to a billion birds a year in the United States. Exterior screens, netting and certain decals, and even retrofitting with new patterned glass, are among the recommended options.

To reduce the danger of high-speed impacts, place feeders and birdbaths closer than three feet to a window or farther than 30 feet away.

Domestic and feral cats kill some 2.4 billion birds annually in the United States, according to the American Bird Conservancy — “the largest human-caused mortality to birds.” There is only one solution: Keep pet cats indoors.

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