#virtival

[virtival]

Recent journal pages

[luwianskies]

Whirlpool excerpt

A recent and lovely conversation (always nice to chat with you Pear!) has inspired me to post the opening of my ‘Whirlpool’ story after such long neglect.

Here it is! :

The sails were straining against the stormy wind, pulling them ever forward. The arcwood catamaran was made from the best and by the best, but even the best could handle only so much. The sky was dark and blank, its only light coming from the streaks of lightning snaking their way across the gray clouds.

Virtival, stubborn and strong as she was, was also straining against the wind, trying to hold her little ship together. Behind her, her first mate Zaruo held the rudder steady among both rushing currents and gale-force gusts, shoving her entire body against the handle.

But shoving suddenly became dangling as their catamaran seemed to fall downward, as if going over the edge of a wave.

They were no longer going forward, but inward, downward, sliding along the sides of a wall of water. The currents were suddenly unidirectional, the winds flowing as one. Virtival moved to bind the sails in place, and when she looked up again she could finally see it clearly. The shape of it.

The Whirlpool. They were in it. Going down its throat, an ever darker tunnel of churning seawater swallowing the world around it. There were no words for the immensity of it, for its power. And they were skimming around into it.

Elsewhere along the funnel other small ships, catamarans like theirs, were also making their way downward, spiraling into the beast’s gullet. Their colorful sails identifying them as fellow Divers, or scholars in search of knowledge of the sea. All of them daring the waters together, with a common goal: go as deep as possible.

Some were already deeper in than Virtival and Zaruo, others with less luck had already strained their boats beyond endurance, and shattered them. The current would drag them beneath the water and likely hold them there.

Try as they might, the attending Lammerdei could not reach them in time. Not even their wings could resist the strength of the funnel’s current. The sailors would drown.

Another ship fails, but its sailors are quick enough to shed their weight and launch their parachute: at the very center of the funnel, the wind suddenly goes back upward. It is the only means of escape in an emergency. Every catamaran had one, but to escape the funnel’s currents the little ships had to jump off of the water’s surface into the central updraft. The was always a few seconds of being pulled down before their jump’s momentum pushed them into the updraft, and keeping a cool head during those seconds were crucial. Failure meant falling back into the funnel, into the water. And then into a watery death.

Some had tried abandoning their boats entirely and jumping with only a personal ‘chute. But this only worked, and only rarely, if one was deep enough into the funnel that the entire passage narrowed, and their weight was enough for them to cut through the wind. It was a tight space of opportunity that allowed it since the deeper they went, the stronger the currents became. Wind and water both seemingly wanting nothing more that to go down, down, down...

They were not there yet. Virtival’s ship was holding its own, its arcwood sections flexing but not breaking in the pull of the currents. Zaruo had managed to get back into a useful position, looking as determined as ever. No amount of saltwater spray, wind or storms ever fazed her. Virtival once again felt the extent of her luck in meeting and befriending the giant woman: Zaruo was fearless even now, holding the rudder steady, watching for debris, for other boats...

Virtival spared a glance upward, looking for the attending Lammerdei...1…2...3.... five as promised. Flying gracefully even in this fierce wind, watching for distress signals among the ships.

But not hers, she knew. None would ever come for her boat.

The memories and bitterness washed over her suddenly again. The memories of sun and sky and wind under her, of such freedom and joy... and the bitter loss of it, torn away, the pain in her back and spine, of freedom lost and abandonment, and the soul crushing knowledge that she was worse than hated: she had been discarded, like so much failed and hole-filled net, a torn and unsalvageable sail.

Well fuck them. No shallow-lunged, self-righteous old hags were going to be the end of her.

Gripping the ropes in her hands tighter, she returns her attention on the funnel. Shuts away the longing the winds inspires in her. Shuts away the bitter pain of memories and scars on her back, and refocuses on the now.

And right now, she was going down the gullet of the ocean itself in nothing but a hollow twig bound by string and cloth.

It was madness. But it was her madness, and she would pursue it as surely as she did everything else in her life.

With furor.

...

And here we have two of the main cast! Why, one may ask, would anyone risk getting swallowed up into the deepest waters in the world?

Zaruo is in it for the prize, and stubborn loyalty to her best friend Virtival, with whom she’s been through so much...

And Virtival...is in it for a lot of reasons, some of which are not quite sane. But she is what most would call driven, and what drives her can be for good or ill.

Hopefully she’ll learn to steer herself for good rather than ill, because a lot more than her personal feelings are riding on this Dive than she might realize...

To be continued!

[helpimstuckindreamland]

Nov. 23-24

I'm in a big, old stone library. It looks like it's at least 300 years old. multiple stories tower up and tunnel below, making it impossible to really know how many floors there were. I'm on the ground floor, in the lobby, looking for a book. I don't really have anything in particular I'm looking for so im mosying through aisles of shelves and walking around round tables with both young and old sitting, reading, or typing. I guess the addict in me has decided it's time for a break so I step out for a cigarette. I try to stand on the edge of the library property to keep from bothering anyone but someone comes up to me and asks me to walk across the street anyway. I shrug and step off the curb and hop over the train tracks, keeping the library in sight so I wouldn't get lost. from across the street the library looks like a huge medieval church. I pull out two ceramic bowls full of food from my backpack. I'm sitting on the curb munching away with my chopsticks when I get this weird feeling that I need to go back inside. I put my bowl back in my pack and make my way across the tracks again. I pass an old raggedy man who points across the street, where I left one of my bowls. I shrug at him and go inside. Its dark inside and I'm worried everyone's left and I've been locked in. But the lights turn on when I get to the lobby desk and everything looks exactly as it did when I had left for my cigarette break. I remember why I came across the street again; I'm supposed to go see all of my siblings tonight for a get together but I'm over the river in the city so I'll have to take a train. Im a well-versed city dweller, so I've taken the train more times than I care to admit but things are different this time. They've recently done renovations and nothing looked the same, save for the train tracks themselves. The tracks to specific destinations are all color coded and there's at least 6 different lines of tracks. I'm not sure which way they go but I know I need to go over the river and not deeper into the city. I'm sitting there trying to figure it out when my older sister and a mutual friend comes up. They ask me if I've figured out what train to get on. I look up at the lighted signs above the terminals. There's no words, just colors and symbols. After 10 min I start getting anxious, the train is gonna be there soon. Our mutual friend finds a map and we figure out we need to get on the green train. We race across, looking both ways so as not to get flattened by any incoming trains and get to the terminal just in time. 

All of the trains arrive at once but there's no vocal announcement as to where they're headed. However, they came from the direction I didn't want to go so I get on confidently.

and it's like we're suddenly plopped out, onto…. nothing? We're hundred of feet above the river below us but it's so dark out that everything looks black. I'd panic but we're not falling and it seems like theres a line of people in front of me all crouching on the same invisible bridge. we start to scootch forward and I catch glimpses of a corner to my right. There must be a wall. As my eyes adjust I can just barely make out what it is we're on. something like jello, except its surface doesn't break when you put pressure on it, and it's almost entirely invisible save for the little light that highlights it's surfaces and corners. Despite my eyes adjusting, there was almost no light, making the view in front of me look black. It was beautiful. I could see where the blackness of the water met a deeper, matted black was of the hills on the other side. Putting my hand on the invisible wall I start scooting forward, in awe of it all. the stars above start to give the bridge a glittery appearance and as I move forward, a brighter light starts to peek out from behind the hills and it illuminates the ripples in the water. as we keep going the moon becomes more visible through the trees. I'm so happy to see her I start to sing. Everyone around me is smiling at my goofy expression of joy and as I sing her aura takes on an array of colors like blue and pink and yellow. I'm so happy.

We're about halfway across when we can see the steps leading up, off the bridge and into the hillside. There were people walking down it and crossing the bridge in the opposite direction as us. They were kind of like people but I wasn't sure if they were. As I get closer I can see they're completely metallic and it shown in a liquidy kind of way. Like mercury. They moved so gracefully and chatted quietly with one another. I had a feeling they were on a higher plane than the rest of us. I got a little worried, this is the first time everyone coming over has used this bridge and the only people returning were these mercury beings.

I decided to stay on my toes and keep alert. We get to the bottom of the staircase and, looking up, it's beautiful, but in a dark, starry, ancient knowledge kind of way. It was still dark around us and the stairs were made of the same invisible Galaxy gelatin as the bridge, but there are shiny metallic guard rails going down the center of the stairs. Words are engraved into it at the top like some kind of logo. Then a voice, female and kinda commercially robotic in the background, thanks us for coming to virtiv, from unseen speakers. I'm still suspicious but honestly in awe of it all. I must've gotten to the top cuz soon I was at my friends house, where she was baking me the cookies I won from a bet between us. She seems flustered so i end up following her while asking how she is. She walks to a conveyor belt where sweets are being moved and then dropped off, onto the floor, which happened to be a cloud I guess. I catch a cake as it falls anyway, not wanting to see such beauty splattered onto the floor. My friend grabs a stick with a ball at the end. But she drops it and it comes apart revealing the ball to be a bread roll and the sticks to be like a four piece chopstick set, held together in the center by string and used for making unique designs in pastries. She gets really upset by the fact that it fell apart. But my mind is elsewhere, the bread roll and 4 piece chopsticks a strong visual in my head. 

I start to think of the other pastries it could be used in and soon my mind drifts off to cake decorating and dessert shaping

I wake up