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edenfallingThe following ficlet is sort of exploratory noodling for a paranormal romance mystery/thriller story I will probably not ever write (on account of absolutely sucking at standard genre romance). That book, "Cobweb Maze," is set in Ithaca and is actually the second in a series of loosely connected stories I have semi-outlined. The idea is that some people in this world have 'paranormal' abilities of various types, known as 'touches.' These people are called the Touched, and are currently discriminated against in America, though their legal and social status has varied from culture to culture and era to era.
The basic abilities are shifters (shape-shifters), channelers (energy-manipulators: telekinetics, pyrokinetics, electrokinetics, etc.), doors (psychics and mediums), bounds (people linked to an aspect of their local environment), voids (can suppress touches), and magicians (can manipulate both their own and other people's touches). People without touches are called nulls. The strength of touches is ranked as follows: minor, magnus, and maximus aka force majeur. Sometimes 'minor' is split into three subcategories: minimus, minor, and medium. Touches are also classified as voluntary, semi-voluntary, and involuntary, depending on people's level of control.
"Cobweb Maze" deals with the relationship between Lia Reynard, a mysterious woman haunted by the ghosts of her two dead friends and pursued by a shadowy figure, who has opened an 'occult' shop on South Cayuga St., and Takeshi Fitzroy, a high school librarian who moonlights as a police consultant, since he's the most powerful magician in the Finger Lakes region. But this ficlet is just a conversation between Lia and one of her ghosts. (550 words)
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Cobweb Maze: In the Still of the Night
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"Takeshi's going to find out sooner or later," Blaise said, drifting down through the ceiling into the shadowy, moonlit shop. "You should tell him before he runs into your psycho stalker and jumps to the worst possible conclusion."
"The worst possible conclusion is accurate," Lia pointed out. She closed her eyes and focused her othersight on the electric web she was slowly and laboriously weaving around the shop door, set to snap active if her shadow's aura brushed it. The upper right corner had unraveled again. Damn.
"The worst possible conclusion is first degree murder," said Blaise. He folded his smoke-shadow arms and leaned back against nothing, an annoyingly unreadable expression fixed on his face. "It was manslaughter, nothing more. Maybe not even that -- you were provoked."
"I panicked for no good reason," Lia corrected. In the back of the shop, the police scanner crackled to life, reporting an altercation outside a Collegetown bar. One squad car responded, and the scanner returned to its baseline white noise hiss. "And then I didn't stop myself."
"Bullshit."
Lia spun another wisp of static from the electromagnetic pulse of the world, hooked it into the pattern over her door, and began weaving it over the broken section. "I'm a magician force majeur, among other things. I could have stopped. I have that level of control. I just didn't care enough to try. Whoever my shadow is, he or she has every justification to seek revenge."
Blaise drifted forward and wrapped his chill, intangible arms around Lia's shoulders, resting his chin on the top of her head. "There is no justification for revenge. And I still think you should tell Takeshi. He works with the police -- he can keep an eye out for this psycho a lot better than you can."
Lia tucked the strand through one last loop, then doubled it back on itself and let it bleed into the greater structure of the trap. She closed her eyes again, checking for weak points. So far, it was holding. Good. "Maybe I will," she said. "Maybe he'll save me -- I think he's infatuated enough he might go that far. But Takeshi's a good man. He won't kill in my defense. He'll just turn me and my shadow in."
Blaise made a skeptical noise.
"He will," Lia insisted. "And he'll be right. I deserve prison." The police scanner crackled again, proclaiming the arrest of a white man with a full beard and a possibly illegal concealed handgun.
"Oh, for the love of little green apples." Blaise slid around Lia with the frictionless grace of the dead until he could laugh in her face. "Give up the martyr act, Lia. It doesn't suit you any better now than it ever did. Besides, I think you're underestimating Takeshi. He's not nearly as inflexible as you think."
"Takeshi is a good man," Lia repeated. But slowly, her mouth curled upward in a wry smile. "I didn't say I'd go to prison, you know. What's the point of being Touched if I can't use my knacks to get the life I want?"
Blaise met her smile and matched it. "There's the Lia I grew up with! Welcome back, foxy lady. I still think you're wrong about what he'll decide in the end, but until then, I'm going to love watching you make Takeshi dance."
Lia threw back her head and laughed.
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Inspired by the 2/7/10![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
15_minute_fic word #129: scanner
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Someday I should post the world-building I've done for this 'series,' since I think it's rather interesting and I highly doubt I'll ever get around to writing the books said world-building is supposedly in service of. (Maybe if I call them urban fantasy and mostly ignore the romance element? I think all the stories except the one about Takeshi's sister Hikaru could work as platonic friendships...)
The basic abilities are shifters (shape-shifters), channelers (energy-manipulators: telekinetics, pyrokinetics, electrokinetics, etc.), doors (psychics and mediums), bounds (people linked to an aspect of their local environment), voids (can suppress touches), and magicians (can manipulate both their own and other people's touches). People without touches are called nulls. The strength of touches is ranked as follows: minor, magnus, and maximus aka force majeur. Sometimes 'minor' is split into three subcategories: minimus, minor, and medium. Touches are also classified as voluntary, semi-voluntary, and involuntary, depending on people's level of control.
"Cobweb Maze" deals with the relationship between Lia Reynard, a mysterious woman haunted by the ghosts of her two dead friends and pursued by a shadowy figure, who has opened an 'occult' shop on South Cayuga St., and Takeshi Fitzroy, a high school librarian who moonlights as a police consultant, since he's the most powerful magician in the Finger Lakes region. But this ficlet is just a conversation between Lia and one of her ghosts. (550 words)
---------------------------------------------
Cobweb Maze: In the Still of the Night
---------------------------------------------
"Takeshi's going to find out sooner or later," Blaise said, drifting down through the ceiling into the shadowy, moonlit shop. "You should tell him before he runs into your psycho stalker and jumps to the worst possible conclusion."
"The worst possible conclusion is accurate," Lia pointed out. She closed her eyes and focused her othersight on the electric web she was slowly and laboriously weaving around the shop door, set to snap active if her shadow's aura brushed it. The upper right corner had unraveled again. Damn.
"The worst possible conclusion is first degree murder," said Blaise. He folded his smoke-shadow arms and leaned back against nothing, an annoyingly unreadable expression fixed on his face. "It was manslaughter, nothing more. Maybe not even that -- you were provoked."
"I panicked for no good reason," Lia corrected. In the back of the shop, the police scanner crackled to life, reporting an altercation outside a Collegetown bar. One squad car responded, and the scanner returned to its baseline white noise hiss. "And then I didn't stop myself."
"Bullshit."
Lia spun another wisp of static from the electromagnetic pulse of the world, hooked it into the pattern over her door, and began weaving it over the broken section. "I'm a magician force majeur, among other things. I could have stopped. I have that level of control. I just didn't care enough to try. Whoever my shadow is, he or she has every justification to seek revenge."
Blaise drifted forward and wrapped his chill, intangible arms around Lia's shoulders, resting his chin on the top of her head. "There is no justification for revenge. And I still think you should tell Takeshi. He works with the police -- he can keep an eye out for this psycho a lot better than you can."
Lia tucked the strand through one last loop, then doubled it back on itself and let it bleed into the greater structure of the trap. She closed her eyes again, checking for weak points. So far, it was holding. Good. "Maybe I will," she said. "Maybe he'll save me -- I think he's infatuated enough he might go that far. But Takeshi's a good man. He won't kill in my defense. He'll just turn me and my shadow in."
Blaise made a skeptical noise.
"He will," Lia insisted. "And he'll be right. I deserve prison." The police scanner crackled again, proclaiming the arrest of a white man with a full beard and a possibly illegal concealed handgun.
"Oh, for the love of little green apples." Blaise slid around Lia with the frictionless grace of the dead until he could laugh in her face. "Give up the martyr act, Lia. It doesn't suit you any better now than it ever did. Besides, I think you're underestimating Takeshi. He's not nearly as inflexible as you think."
"Takeshi is a good man," Lia repeated. But slowly, her mouth curled upward in a wry smile. "I didn't say I'd go to prison, you know. What's the point of being Touched if I can't use my knacks to get the life I want?"
Blaise met her smile and matched it. "There's the Lia I grew up with! Welcome back, foxy lady. I still think you're wrong about what he'll decide in the end, but until then, I'm going to love watching you make Takeshi dance."
Lia threw back her head and laughed.
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Inspired by the 2/7/10
15_minute_fic word #129: scanner---------------------------------------------
Someday I should post the world-building I've done for this 'series,' since I think it's rather interesting and I highly doubt I'll ever get around to writing the books said world-building is supposedly in service of. (Maybe if I call them urban fantasy and mostly ignore the romance element? I think all the stories except the one about Takeshi's sister Hikaru could work as platonic friendships...)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-08 02:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-09 03:21 am (UTC)Lia is extremely gray, and also the dominant personality in her relationship with... oh, I give up. *edits post* In her relationship with Takeshi.
(The name problem is because I kind of kidnapped Lia and Takeshi from a different story with different rules of magic, and then tried to eat my cake and have it too by renaming their counterparts in this world to Leah Drake and Hajime King so I could write both stories. But it won't work; they are Dahlia "Lia" Reynard and Takeshi Fitzroy, and trying to call them something else does my head in. I was done with this ficlet before I realized I'd been using the 'wrong' spelling of Lia's name, and you will also notice that I used Fitzroy instead of King without even noticing.)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-08 07:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-08 08:01 am (UTC)Also, my experience with urban fantasy vs. paranormal romance has often been that in a romance 'series,' it is normal and expected to have different protagonists in each book, whereas with an urban fantasy series, there is more of an expectation of a continuing storyline with the same main characters. (This is, I assume, because romance has only one basic plot whereas urban fantasy can follow a relationship past the 'happily ever after' part of a genre romance plot.) And my stories switch main characters with each book; they are more a set of stories in the same universe and location, with a loose temporal sequence, than a proper series.