Elizabeth Culmer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
edenfalling) wrote2011-02-28 02:57 am
edenfalling) wrote2011-02-28 02:57 am
Entry tags:
[Fic] "Toward Justice" -- original, Ironheart's War
Sometimes current events blow dust off old story ideas that I'd thought were lying dormant. This is from a universe I created back in 1999 as the side effect of a high school creative writing assignment. I was thinking mostly about Northern Ireland and the Palestinian territories at the time, but reading about Libya tonight brought my secondary world back to life, at least a little.
Ketchy Wicking, called Ironheart, is central to the history of the Tarranny Isles, but I've tended to write her sideways, glimpsed briefly in other people's stories. This is a slightly more direct approach. (150 words)
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Toward Justice
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Community is the only true foundation.
This is what the Shanish will never understand. They build towers on rock and pretend Tarra will never shrug them down. They sail the same paths on the sea and pretend the Lady will never send storms. They set some people over others, to ruin and despoil, and pretend that the debt will never come due.
All things pass away -- all things change -- except the will of the people to live, and to live free.
We are the will of the people given voice and steel.
The Shanish have kept us in fear for generations. They have beaten us down, taxed us into ruin, stolen our land, forbidden us free passage on our own roads, but they cannot hold us back forever. Not when we wake and stand together.
We will win our freedom.
And on that foundation, we will build our community anew.
--from Ironheart's speech to her troops, before the first battle of Waek Tower
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Inspired by the 2/27/11![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
15_minute_fic word #169: foundation
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And then, of course, she was captured and gruesomely executed. Which had the unintended side effect of making her a martyr and kicking off a more effective rebellion than she ever would have managed to rouse if she'd lived, though it took several long and bloody years before the Shanish king died and his heir, who had pressing internal problems to deal with, relinquished his claim to (most of) the Tarranny Isles and called his armies home.
...I really must do more with that world someday.
Ketchy Wicking, called Ironheart, is central to the history of the Tarranny Isles, but I've tended to write her sideways, glimpsed briefly in other people's stories. This is a slightly more direct approach. (150 words)
---------------------------------------------
Toward Justice
---------------------------------------------
Community is the only true foundation.
This is what the Shanish will never understand. They build towers on rock and pretend Tarra will never shrug them down. They sail the same paths on the sea and pretend the Lady will never send storms. They set some people over others, to ruin and despoil, and pretend that the debt will never come due.
All things pass away -- all things change -- except the will of the people to live, and to live free.
We are the will of the people given voice and steel.
The Shanish have kept us in fear for generations. They have beaten us down, taxed us into ruin, stolen our land, forbidden us free passage on our own roads, but they cannot hold us back forever. Not when we wake and stand together.
We will win our freedom.
And on that foundation, we will build our community anew.
--from Ironheart's speech to her troops, before the first battle of Waek Tower
---------------------------------------------
Inspired by the 2/27/11
15_minute_fic word #169: foundation---------------------------------------------
And then, of course, she was captured and gruesomely executed. Which had the unintended side effect of making her a martyr and kicking off a more effective rebellion than she ever would have managed to rouse if she'd lived, though it took several long and bloody years before the Shanish king died and his heir, who had pressing internal problems to deal with, relinquished his claim to (most of) the Tarranny Isles and called his armies home.
...I really must do more with that world someday.