orchestra@wingedharper.com
Beginning version
Assignment # 5
Due July 11, 1999
Setting: A small, isolated, mountainous Gen Territory (I pictured it as near the Continental Divide but it could be anywhere relatively remote and surrounded by Sime Territories), somewhere around the time of ZD and Unity - give or take a few years. There are Householdings Somewhere but people in this area believe the tales of them are lies designed to get more Gens for the Pens.
Main Characters:
Jolie (Protag)
Brisha (Antag)
Mrs. Wimms (Schoolteacher)
The Sheriff
The Preacher of the local brand of Purity (Either Sheriff or Preacher is the parent of a child who is endangered by one of Jolie 's pranks - and the Sheriff and Preacher may end up being combined into one character)
The School Children (Use only 1 or 2 by name other than the one who gets hurt, to avoid confusion.)
internal conflict: She needs others and is terrified of needing others so she does all kinds of things to attract attention, equating attention with being liked.
external conflict: She wants Mountain Home to see and what a wonderful, funny brilliant person she is. She IS brilliant, but she lacks the experience and... "solidness"... to temper her imagination and originality.
GOAL: to secure a place in Mountain Home.
internal conflict: she equates being needed with being liked.
external: She thinks if she becomes the teacher, the citizens will accept her because they need her.
(Brisha is from a Rathorite-type community. Her mother is dead. She came with her father, who knew from her birth characteristics that she would be Gen, when her father came into the territory to check out the Shrines. She does not know where her homeland is in relation to Mountain Home. Her father had brought no maps except in his head. She lacks the basic fear of Simes that the people of Mountain Home have.)
Goal: To secure a place in Mountain Home
Both have a belief that no one who would accept the other would accept her. They see only each other's differences.
Jolie and Brisha both believe they must be extraordinary to be "good enough." They both have holes in their souls (as JL has put it, they "lack identity".) Each tries to fill her hole in different ways, and each finds through association with the other and the mirror reflection of the other that she is already complete. Brisha only has to act from her BEing to keep Jolie alive. Jolie only has to give up acting and BE to give Brisha slilbliss. Everything else is gravy. (And I think that their working out their own identities now will later be crucial to the survival of Mountain Home, though I don't yet know how.)
Jolie, upset about a dream where she becomes Sime and angry at being ignored when she tries to tell others (wanting both reassurance that she will be Gen and validation for her wonderfully bizarre dream), plays a joke on the people of Mountain Home (what?) and in doing so spooks the horse pulling a wagon through town. The man is killed and the girl (just a bit older than Jolie ) seriously injured. Brisha, the girl, becomes a permanent resident of Mountain Home because even if she were old enough to try to return to her homeland, she does not know where it is -- only "somewhere south." Jolie is assigned to help her cope with her injury (yes, reminiscent of Zeth). Unlike Zeth, though, Jolie does not become attached to Brisha. Instead she comes to resent her more and more as she sees reliable Brisha earn the trust of the town that Jolie is unable to win due to her thoughtlessness). The conflict heightens as the 2 become rivals for the unofficial job of Teacher's Assistant, which will grow into the position of Teacher when the teacher retires next year. The two vie for best grades of their own and best average grades for the groups of younger kids they teach. Brisha works to cover all ground for the cumulative tests at the end of the year, while Jolie escalates showy, flashy tricks to get the kids' interest, culminating in a student being injured. (The child or grandchild of the person who is to choose the teacher's assistant.)
Despite Brisha 's reputation as a Simelover (She has made various comments that have worried the townspeople), Jolie loses the job to Brisha. Jolie believes she will be ignored for the rest of her life. (Brisha wants to teach to be needed, Jolie for the attention.
(Brisha, a bit older than Jolie, has established, though no one would have realized it because no one nearby could zlin.)
Jolie changes over and realizes that if Brisha can give transfer without dying, she is Jolie's only hope of not Killing. She makes it to Brisha 's home and gets her attention. (How she does that without attracting the attention of the person or people Brisha lives with, I'm not sure yet.) After transfer, the two are stuck as partners, since Jolie must help Brisha keep the townspeople from realizing that Brisha is hiding Jolie out in a cave on the mountain. Jolie almost gives away the secret several times and finally realizes that in order for Jolie to survive, Brisha must be able to shuttle back and forth, -- not to mention to spend the last week of each need cycle WITH Jolie in case Jolie's intil raises dangerously high in the presence of another Gen. Jolie hates Brisha more and more (partly because she fears depending on Brisha for literally everything) and Brisha resents the danger Jolie has put her in, but each begins also to see each how their strengths and weaknesses balance.
One day Jolie, evading the agony of being alone, facing a lifetime of isolation, of not being admired, not being the center of attention) gets out her dulcimer (which she somehow managed to get from her house after she changed over - figure out how) to practice her music -using her new tentacles to play something new and complex. She gets so focused on it she gradually comes to the center of herself as she practices and forgets to think of the social strokes she'd have had as a teacher... she touches the core of herself in the music she creates from the depth of her soul - she moves from a "gee, let's see what I can do that if I wasn't Sime I could show off" to an outpouring of her soul to meet her loneliness. She "receives" a song from somewhere deep within (a song she only vaguely understands but which connects her to herself in a new, painfully glorious way). She goes completely hypoconscious, simply feeling the song and the emotions it evokes as she repeats it over and over. She knows for the first time that she Exists, independent of anyone's opinion of her.
What she does not know is that one of the Mountain Home citizens is passing the mountain (Out hunting? Bringing back a strayed cow? On the way home from another town?) This person hears her, recognizes her voice and twigs that Jolie has become a Demon Sime and is hiding out (Perhaps he even has a spyglass and sees her tentacles and all -- From there it's a small step to figuring out that Brisha, with all her high-sounding "crap" about Simes being people too, is the one keeping her alive (someone obviously is because no one's been Killed since Jolie disappeared.) The townspeople cage Brisha to try her as a witch. Jolie looks/zlins the proceedings from a distance. She estimates that if she starts immediately, she can probably make it to Sime Territory find a Pen Gen, and make a life for herself there. She races to the Saddleback between Mountain Home and Sime Territory to save herself. While getting around the town perimeter (the town is between her and Sime Territory).
Jolie gets to the border, is shunting between hyper- and duoconscious, is close in hard need. She zlins the Pen in the valley below her -- and recognizes the difference between Brisha 's nager and those of the Pen Gens. Then she envisions Brisha being murdered (what method would be used? Stoning? Starvation? Burning at the stake?)
She drops everything she had had with her and heads back over the mountain. By the time she arrives in Mountain Home she is into attrition. She demands the sheriff/preacher lock her into the cage with Brisha and bring everyone to observe their Transfer. (How does she force him? The child injured earlier attempts to save the man and the injury is reopened, this time life-threatening. But the man does put her in the cage. With Brisha 's nageric support, she just barely manages to hold off on her overdue transfer until the townsfolk arrive, by which time, she is unable to resist drawing in fullblown killmode, but Brisha matches her speed and the two tumble into slilbliss the like of which neither has ever known.
Because the transfer has been so good -- has opened her 2ndary system - she is able to find Healing Mode and to prevent the child's death and permanent crippling -- very, very important in a frontier community. The Preacher is forced to admit that no "demon" could have healed his child, and that if Jolie is not a demon, then Brisha is not a witch. He decrees that the two may live outside the town limits - together - and that as long as Jolie is never away from Brisha after her Turnover, they may come and go.
The entire town adjourns to the pub. Jolie, intensely Post, borrows someone else's dulcimer and exuberantly sings her song surrounded by people who zlin as still wary but proud of Their Own Sime.
I'm not sure but what this story needs to be dual-protag, dual POV between Jolie and Brisha.
IF it is dual-protag, Brisha faces her fears while in cage, believing that Jolie has deserted her. Because of facing her fear, she is able to meet Jolie 's Need despite the killdraw (she may realize that her own handling of Jolie had led directly to Jolie's disregard of safety -- for symmetry, something she knew she should have done to make the cave more endurable for Jolie -- perhaps she insisted on spending more time in town than was absolutely necessary because she was so ticked with Jolie) and thus to Brisha's own capture and Jolie's inevitably going junct or dying, and decide that yes, perhaps her life really IS forfeit for her mistakes) and so is responsible for Jolie being able to "find" healing mode to save the child.
If I want to make this a romantic story, I could change either Brisha or Jolie to male. I've lived with them as both female in my mind for so long I would do it only with great care, however. I'd need to sort out what is basic character/personality, what is gender, and what is larity.
Instructors Comments