WTW Folio ~ Piece 1
May. 11th, 2006 01:10 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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yrae
Title~ Sixth Day
Author~ Annarti
Disclaimer~ Still mine
Notes~ Writing Text Workshop piece for my folio I have to hand up soon. The whole subject's about textual intervention--taking an original text and playing around with it to turn it into something original. Parodies are a great example, or turning a poem into a prose story, whatever. For this particular one, I've played around with one of the texts we looked at this semester, Robinson Crusoe. Basically, it's from Friday's POV, and I've ditched the 'island' idea and just thrown them in the desert.
Far as you're all concerned tho, it's just a random person lost in the Raykinian desert X3 The Sun is clearly Aeia XD Yes, I cheated, shuddup =P
~ ~ ~
Many may think I’m ungrateful of the life my family group granted me. I have been allowed to live, when I should have been given death. I should have had my head sliced cleanly from my shoulders for my actions. Instead I have received the worst punishment imaginable—freedom.
I have been ‘freed’ from my family group, cast away into the desert we call home, with nothing between me and the wavering red horizon but saltbush and spinifex.
The burning white furnace of the Sun demands more respect out here than the most vengeful of foreign deities could ever hope to. Her claws are sharper than the most ferocious of predators, and she never hesitates to use them. Out here, a man does not learn from his mistakes. He dies from them.
I’ve lived in the Sun’s territory for all my twenty-seven years, though it may appear more to look at how she has burnt and wrinkled my face. I know her ways. I know how to find water, how to find prey and how to find my way by the stars at night. I know how to do all these things with my family group, but alone, it can but delay the inevitable.
I know there is water nearby. Not the shimmering silver lagoon behind me, but just beyond the horizon ahead of me. Out here, there is always one sure way to tell the difference between a mirage and an oasis. Desert family groups never camp around mirages; they can always be found by the oases, spears and flint-bladed daggers drawn and threatening to anyone who dares cross the horizon into their territory.
I stagger on, struggling to lift my feet enough to take the next step. Scorching hot sand brushes over my feet with every dragging step, but I’ve lived out here for too long to notice it anymore. My soles are tougher than any daggers the Sun can throw beneath them.
I’m going to defy the Sun. I’m going to reach that oasis. The Sun won’t beat me. When I reach the oasis, I will either get water, or the family group will kill me. Both options are infinitely more desirable to leave my exhausted body for the Sun to play with. When she knows she has you, she plays. She is never merciful, never grows bored, never willing to just leave you alone to die in peace. There is no such thing as a swift death from the Sun.
I frown weakly in confusion, feeling the dry skin on my forehead crack with the movement. The horizon is suddenly vertical in my vision, and I stand there, wavering as I try to figure this out.
A hazy, shadowy figure appears, running sideways on the vertical horizon, and my parched lips crack into a painful half-smile. I beat you, Sun. The family group from the oasis has come to kill me. You lost.
But this man, as I can see when he approaches, has paler skin than any desert person I have ever met. Even newborn babies have a stronger complexion than he does. Has this man been so lucky as to have never seen the Sun’s unforgiving claws?
Rough fingers brush against the flaky skin of my cheek as the pale man rolls my head to the side.
And then water. Clean and beautiful and smoother than it has ever felt before as it spreads over my face. ‘Don’t drink,’ some lucid part at the back of my mind tells me. ‘Not yet.’
I think I can see worry on the man’s face as he squeezes my cheeks to open my mouth and pour water in, forcing me to drink. He says something. A different language? Or my Sun-affected mind? I can’t understand his words, but the meaning is clear enough.
He’s definitely not a desert man.
I will wait a moment before drinking. The Sun cannot tempt me so easily. I have won.
Author~ Annarti
Disclaimer~ Still mine
Notes~ Writing Text Workshop piece for my folio I have to hand up soon. The whole subject's about textual intervention--taking an original text and playing around with it to turn it into something original. Parodies are a great example, or turning a poem into a prose story, whatever. For this particular one, I've played around with one of the texts we looked at this semester, Robinson Crusoe. Basically, it's from Friday's POV, and I've ditched the 'island' idea and just thrown them in the desert.
Far as you're all concerned tho, it's just a random person lost in the Raykinian desert X3 The Sun is clearly Aeia XD Yes, I cheated, shuddup =P
Many may think I’m ungrateful of the life my family group granted me. I have been allowed to live, when I should have been given death. I should have had my head sliced cleanly from my shoulders for my actions. Instead I have received the worst punishment imaginable—freedom.
I have been ‘freed’ from my family group, cast away into the desert we call home, with nothing between me and the wavering red horizon but saltbush and spinifex.
The burning white furnace of the Sun demands more respect out here than the most vengeful of foreign deities could ever hope to. Her claws are sharper than the most ferocious of predators, and she never hesitates to use them. Out here, a man does not learn from his mistakes. He dies from them.
I’ve lived in the Sun’s territory for all my twenty-seven years, though it may appear more to look at how she has burnt and wrinkled my face. I know her ways. I know how to find water, how to find prey and how to find my way by the stars at night. I know how to do all these things with my family group, but alone, it can but delay the inevitable.
I know there is water nearby. Not the shimmering silver lagoon behind me, but just beyond the horizon ahead of me. Out here, there is always one sure way to tell the difference between a mirage and an oasis. Desert family groups never camp around mirages; they can always be found by the oases, spears and flint-bladed daggers drawn and threatening to anyone who dares cross the horizon into their territory.
I stagger on, struggling to lift my feet enough to take the next step. Scorching hot sand brushes over my feet with every dragging step, but I’ve lived out here for too long to notice it anymore. My soles are tougher than any daggers the Sun can throw beneath them.
I’m going to defy the Sun. I’m going to reach that oasis. The Sun won’t beat me. When I reach the oasis, I will either get water, or the family group will kill me. Both options are infinitely more desirable to leave my exhausted body for the Sun to play with. When she knows she has you, she plays. She is never merciful, never grows bored, never willing to just leave you alone to die in peace. There is no such thing as a swift death from the Sun.
I frown weakly in confusion, feeling the dry skin on my forehead crack with the movement. The horizon is suddenly vertical in my vision, and I stand there, wavering as I try to figure this out.
A hazy, shadowy figure appears, running sideways on the vertical horizon, and my parched lips crack into a painful half-smile. I beat you, Sun. The family group from the oasis has come to kill me. You lost.
But this man, as I can see when he approaches, has paler skin than any desert person I have ever met. Even newborn babies have a stronger complexion than he does. Has this man been so lucky as to have never seen the Sun’s unforgiving claws?
Rough fingers brush against the flaky skin of my cheek as the pale man rolls my head to the side.
And then water. Clean and beautiful and smoother than it has ever felt before as it spreads over my face. ‘Don’t drink,’ some lucid part at the back of my mind tells me. ‘Not yet.’
I think I can see worry on the man’s face as he squeezes my cheeks to open my mouth and pour water in, forcing me to drink. He says something. A different language? Or my Sun-affected mind? I can’t understand his words, but the meaning is clear enough.
He’s definitely not a desert man.
I will wait a moment before drinking. The Sun cannot tempt me so easily. I have won.