The Sundered Sarcophagus – Part 2
Last night was a rough night at the keys.
Most of my time sitting before them was spent on every single pursuit I could find that wasn’t writing.
It’s often like that on the long and lonely evenings when there is nothing before me but the task of writing.
I don’t mind that task; I have crested three full years of publishing my work. If I were to find myself unequal to the act of writing, it would have been long before now.
I have long since moved past any fear of being unable to bend words to my will. Now, my writing sessions stall because of the problems which exist beyond the primary barrier of entry. I have finally made the bigtimes, because this year I have obtained the harpy which nests in every author’s heart:
Doubt.
My own personal torturer bends my ear and never lets up. It squawks endless remonstrances and nitpicks non-stop whenever I’m attempting to produce that which is the essence of an author’s pursuit.
“Am I good enough to do this? Why is my writing worth a reader’s time? What am I hoping to accomplish with my career?”
None of these things, none of them, are things you should be thinking about while your writing. They will sap you of strength, and you will find that one writing session after the next has been doomed to death by a thousand cuts. Writing is something that needs to be done without judgement or hesitation; things which sound good on first brush turn out terrible, and things which are deemed garbage upon landing often turn out to be pure gold.
I wish I could say that I knew some secret mental jujitsu to fling the nesting troll of doubt right the heck out of your head, but I only have my experiences to work with, and for me the only way to get past the bubbling tar of whispered inadequacy is to set aside my hopes and fears and pains and write for all I’m worth.
When I find the strength to do so, I realize that while I cannot know where my career will end, I at least know I had the courage and tenacity to find out.
The Sundered Sarcophagus – Part 2
Ifna’s mouth fell open and all that came out was an inarticulate gurgle as she absorbed the sight before her.
Desert was all she could see in every direction. The sun above hammered down without remorse, but it did not seem to bother her overmuch despite her lack of clothes and shoes. She could see the spires of the buildings she once called home, but the sun and wind had worn them beyond imagining.
She had been dead for a very, very long time.
Yet these observations, while startling, were not what had robbed her of speech.
Mouth still agape, she scrambled across the shifting sands, desperate for a better view, because unless her eyes deceived her, there was an enormous obsidian bowl floating across the desert far below her.
It was huge; miles, plural, from side to the other. Upon the exterior surface of the bowl were carvings and sigils coating every portion of the surface she could see. Every single one of them glowed a vivid teal, and Ifna was mesmerized by the beauty of it.
Reaching into the heavens were blocky spires of the same rune-clad obsidian material. Each one was enormous, taking up a sizable portion of the bowls surface.
Zipping between the towers and darting from the bowls surface to the sands below were small, runed-obsidian shapes. They flew through the air with the fluid grace of a bird of prey, yet they had no wings that she could see.
At one end of the bowl was an enormous cyclone of sand which reached from the ground below it up to the smooth curve of the city. As she watched, the cyclone never faded or shifted, remaining in constant contact as the city drifted along. Ifna burst out laughing, because despite being overwhelmed and scared, the only thought which ran through her head was that the bowl-city below had a tail made of sand.
Humor died a few seconds later when the silence of the moment was ruined by a sound like an offended avalanche escorted by a thousand snarling hounds. Her would-be assassin had reached a stationary and pure black version of one of the strange shapes that swarmed around the bowl, and it was apparently the shape which was the source of the noise.
It was oblong, and completely featureless. It looked like a river-rock would be if it were ten meters long. Her already strained sense of credulity was pushed further towards the breaking point once the man reached the side of the ship.
An entire portion of the smooth surface facing the man melted with startling abruptness.
Even more alarming than the wall flowing downward without warning was that its progress halted just as abruptly, and when it stopped it did so in the shape of a perfect set of stairs. The man scrambled up them with reckless disregard for his safety, tripping more than once as he did. Upon reaching the brightly lit interior which the semi-liquid wall had revealed, the stairs flowed back up to their previously vacated position with nary a seam or crease to indicate it had moved at all.
The sounds emanating from the ship grew in intensity, and without warning the ship’s exterior was covered in the same vivid carvings which coated the bowl and the other tiny forms whizzing to and fro.
The roaring sounds ceased the moment that the carvings appeared, and with gentle grace the glowing teal and black object lifted into the air.
Sand and hair whipped about Ifna’s head as she stood in rigid shock, oblivious to everything that wasn’t the sleek shape. Without a sound, the craft gathered speed and made it’s way across the sands towards the bowl far below.
For a few precious moments, Ifna forgot that her home and her lovers were thousands of years dead. She didn’t care that she’d been entombed, murdered, and somehow resurrected. It wasn’t important that she did not feel pain from the burning sand or feel much heat from the scorching sun.
She stood in the blazing sun without so much as a shirt to her name, and smiled from ear to ear.
“I have got to get me one of those.”
To be continued…
Bowlfully,
The Unsheathed Quill
