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Akibel Mowar is on his way home from the blacksmith's when he spots it. People are shrieking and fleeing from it, which seems reasonable, as it's a fuckoff huge snake with a mirror for a face. A big mirror.
Kib can't so much flee. He can shriek - he can lurch in the direction of the nearest house and try the door - it's locked. He can amble briskly...
He can break into a run when the snake gains on him and fall flat on his face.
And he can get eaten up.
And it's too bright too bright too bright and he flings his arm over his eyes.
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secondchance
secondchance
"Nah, I'm good for another sixty years or so if nothing happens to me. And I do need to sleep."
"I know! My father does too, which is why he tolerated the interruption. He does not like interruptions."
"You needn't feel too worried about it; anyone who has seven children has to learn some tolerance of interruption."
"Small Elves are very disruptive," he says, "and tend to go look for their parents when bored or hungry or upset."
secondchance
"Well, they have two apiece, right, I didn't know that it wasn't customary to shoo the work onto whichever one wasn't busy."
"Both of my parents are always busy; I do not think they'd be content if they weren't."
"It is! Sometimes Valinor is hardly busy enough to keep us so. My father was of course horrified by your world but I think he's also delighted in equal measure, you know, to have a problem that actually demands solving."
"Good night, Kib."
adebarsteine
- reads the second half of a novel in Harthanic.
- has lunch with a friend.
- is the only kid in her class paying attention to how to conjugate, everyone else thinks Harthanic's dying out, but the teacher she wants speaks it -
- trips into a puddle, ruins her trousers, is cold all afternoon because they're not by the creche and she can't change.
- has lunch with a friend.
- is the only kid in her class paying attention to how to conjugate, everyone else thinks Harthanic's dying out, but the teacher she wants speaks it -
- trips into a puddle, ruins her trousers, is cold all afternoon because they're not by the creche and she can't change.
secondchance
- wakes up.
Yawns. The dreams are coming really thick and fast now. Goes and shaves, carefully, doesn't want to be slightly furry-looking.
...is he dawdling?
He wasn't meaning to dawdle, just to be careful, but something feels weird -
It's probably nothing, probably just dream-logic or something, but he was going to make a clock anyway.
He finishes shaving a bit less carefully and goes looking for a suitable backing for a clock. Flat bit of wood will be fine.
Yawns. The dreams are coming really thick and fast now. Goes and shaves, carefully, doesn't want to be slightly furry-looking.
...is he dawdling?
He wasn't meaning to dawdle, just to be careful, but something feels weird -
It's probably nothing, probably just dream-logic or something, but he was going to make a clock anyway.
He finishes shaving a bit less carefully and goes looking for a suitable backing for a clock. Flat bit of wood will be fine.
There are plenty of shops in Tirion where he can wander in and acquire a flat bit of wood.
secondchance
Excellent. He acquires one and then goes looking for colored glass, he doesn't need to walk off with it, just needs a few shines.
People are fascinated to watch him.
secondchance
He can show off with the shines a little -
...
- a little and then he sets out to reconstruct how to make a clock with them. Red shine can be seconds. He writes a simple repeat instruction, beginning and end, on two pieces of paper, pilots the shine onto the wood, gets it into a metronomic rhythm that he thinks is a second manually, and then tucks the instruction into place so the shine will slide over it, start recording his puppetry as a behavior, and then hit the second instruction when it's spent two seconds going right, then left.
So far so good.
The hours and minutes can go around the seconds where they tick by in the middle. He marks, lightly, making sure it'll rub off, fifteen markings around one quarter of the very edge, six just inside from there, he's not going to mark out the whole circle. Minutes can be blue. If he were doing this really precisely he'd actually sit here for an hour to line up the minutes but if the blue shine wanders off it's not a disaster. He eyeballs it: travel so many degrees, change angle, repeat.
And then he sets up a white shine for hours, ready to be ticked over as soon as the blue one comes full circle.
And he tucks the clock under his arm and heads back for the palace workshop, and checks every few minutes, and it feels like he's doing it every couple and it's more like every five and that's concerning but that's why he has a clock.
...
- a little and then he sets out to reconstruct how to make a clock with them. Red shine can be seconds. He writes a simple repeat instruction, beginning and end, on two pieces of paper, pilots the shine onto the wood, gets it into a metronomic rhythm that he thinks is a second manually, and then tucks the instruction into place so the shine will slide over it, start recording his puppetry as a behavior, and then hit the second instruction when it's spent two seconds going right, then left.
So far so good.
The hours and minutes can go around the seconds where they tick by in the middle. He marks, lightly, making sure it'll rub off, fifteen markings around one quarter of the very edge, six just inside from there, he's not going to mark out the whole circle. Minutes can be blue. If he were doing this really precisely he'd actually sit here for an hour to line up the minutes but if the blue shine wanders off it's not a disaster. He eyeballs it: travel so many degrees, change angle, repeat.
And then he sets up a white shine for hours, ready to be ticked over as soon as the blue one comes full circle.
And he tucks the clock under his arm and heads back for the palace workshop, and checks every few minutes, and it feels like he's doing it every couple and it's more like every five and that's concerning but that's why he has a clock.
Maitimo comes by again in the mid-afternoon to ask questions while he works.
secondchance
By then the hour shine is at work. "Hey," Kib says, "do you know if there's any reason time should feel weird here? Besides it always being bright and the days being longer than I'm used to and stuff. Systematic bias in estimating how many minutes it's been, I always feel like it's been less."
"Maybe your world is differently paced? I'd have to go there myself to say, I should think..."
secondchance
"What would it mean for a world to be differently paced, and not just differently - lit and demarcated?"
"Hmm, I think Valinor's designed to the sensibilities of the Valar, since they made it, with respect to time as with respect to everything else. I don't know how worlds would manifest having a pace, but if it feels somehow different than home there might be some way. Or could your clock be fast?"
secondchance
"My clock could be a little fast but it should not be off by a factor of two."