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The Chair of Wind and Darkness: Draft One [1-3]: Closed

Dream Deep · 2006-05-07T20:36:15Z

[Closed and Obselete.] . . . [To be disregarded due to numerous plot developments and a painfully poor grasp on the writing and characters - in my defense, this was a very early draft.. ^_~ Current draft in progress. ] -- Okay. I know some of you have already read the first draft of "The Chair of Wind and Darkness". This is a rewrite with the prologue and second part included, which compounds to make the first scene. I would be hugely grateful if anyone would comment on this for me (tell me if I'm getting a little too Dostoyevsky-ish, Imp). I'm not so sure about this, but what else are critique groups for, but critiques? Note: 'Hurraas' has been changed to 'Strazhas' in this draft. The very first Chair of Wind and Darkness was not so very different than the one you might be sitting in now. It was very simple, white wood and wicker, and it stood on four elegantly swooping legs before a desk so that it could spend its quiet days overlooking the prim green lawn, the stone courtyard and the stately trees outside. It sat, in all its years, in a little airy room beside a small white desk while the sheer, gauzy, white curtains blew in from the window and swept, billowing, against it. It was such a chair that, looking at it, you could easily imagine yourself sitting in it, could easily imagine that the book on the desk was yours as it ruffled from page to page, blown creamy and white into a chaotic flurry by the breeze. You could easily imagine that all those neat, black-inked, handwritten pages were yours, paragraphs and words that compounded to build personal secrets, dreams, hopes; all the good things in life and all the bad, unhappy things you only lived through by screaming your outrage at the sky - the things you’ve endured and looked back on and understood. And forgiven. You could easily imagine that, to see the chair. What you could not imagine would be that this plain, serviceable, simple chair reigning before an evenly plain desk and a single, beautiful book could be the Chair of Wind and Darkness, something that you’ve doubtless known about your entire life. Though I’m sure never by that name. In the dream it was raining. Raining was not ordinarily a bad state for the weather to be in, but in the downtown sector of the city Barduev, it was an inconvenience which made the Agra-Wazir District particularly challenging to get through, what with all the sunken sidewalks and the muddy, flooding gardens that were a level below the street. Shan Tefur’s boots and the bottom of his long black jacket were completely soaked as he stood beneath the looming columns of the Provincial Development Building, the only government building on this street and therefore the only one with a raised porch. He ran thin fingers through his dripping hair and looked left down the avenue towards the Kier District and the general direction of his apartment. He then looked right towards his destination and leaned forwards a bit to glance up a the stinging misty curtain that wasn’t allowing him to see either. He stepped back a pace on the porch and paced angrily for a moment in the pre-moonlight shadows, drying his hands uselessly on the soaking edge of his coat. As he turned once he caught a quick glimpse of the guards who had been following him since the Academy. They were huddled under a porch roof of some dark house, miserable in water that was up to their ankles in the depressed stonework. Shan counted five... no, six of them, right there across the street, soaking wet and probably having a good deal of a harder time than he was. Still, their presence irritated him, and he sighed, rubbed a hand across the back of his neck and took a step out from under the overhang. “Strazhas!” he shouted across the street, cupping his hands around his mouth so that the noise carried through the rain. Well, they had no choice now that he had seen them. They slipped around the corner of their building and disappeared into the alleyway as if they were just a handful of old friends out for a walk in the rain. They were still going to follow him, of course, they were just going to do it a little more discreetly. He swore and looked right and left again quickly, up and down the street through the downpour. He pushed his hair back and ran a hand down his dripping face, moving a bit and craning his neck to see down the now empty alley. He went to the opposite side of the porch, turned and ran for the edge, with the mind to jump far enough so as to get to the area of semi-dryness under the next porch, sunken though it was. He tripped pushing off the edge and landed on his hands and knees in the wide, soaking street in between, bruising his palms and getting himself thoroughly drenched. He pulled himself up with his long, once fastidious coat tangled around his leg and shin-deep in water, and he kicked the rain-water in an arch of spray towards the main street. Shan saw the movement beyond the rain as the inexpertly trained Strazhas dispersed and spread out, waiting for him farther up the avenue, drier than he and, for the moment, under a porch roof. He wished he had caught himself when he had fallen. He hated to fall. Bright glare from the window came across the pillow and into his eyes, unwelcome sunlight that had come too early. He turned away from it but the light followed him, illuminated the white wall and made it reflect light back to him. Morning - after all, there was no getting around it. He sighed and kicked off the sheet, which was tangled around his leg. Stupid sheets. He pushed himself up and sat on the edge of the bed, running his hands through his hair and studying the long, slim military coat that lay in a mess on the floor, a black puddle of heavy fabric. The three silver stars on the high collar were just barely from under a carelessly thrown fold, identical points of light in a night sky. Beautiful? Yes, it was. But it also stood for something in which he no longer believed. He began to wonder if through all the innumerable things he had done he had ever once believed it. The last time he had worn it; when was that? Well, he had worn it last night, but seriously went out and worn it as a uniform, worn it to show everyone who he was, what he stood for? Wearing something because it happened to be available and wearing something because you believed in what it stood for were two different things completely. He shook himself and chose not to think about it; of course he had believed it, so does everyone when they first start something. It’s not a condition of whether or not you go on believing it, you begin something and you get used to it. You never sit around debating about it. For crying out loud, there were better ways to spend his time than to sit here and debate about his life. Like it would matter. Shan got down and picked the jacket up, irritated with himself for being careless enough to let it lie there the whole night. He laid it over the back of a nearby chair, picking a bit of whitish lint off of the back with his finger nail, and the thick feel of the cloth brought back the memory of the dream. Where had he been going? He tried, and could not remember. It was the first coherent dream he had had in a long time, and now he couldn’t remember it. It had been raining, he recalled. Raining in Barduev. God, he wished it would rain. He wished the water would just pour down out of the clouds, wash away the dust on the street, in the gardens, in the air. They said that this was the worst drought since the Academy was built, and in his dream it poured. What was the sense in that? No reason, no sense. The rain, that brought him back to his coat, which had gotten soaked. The coat... ah the coat. Why couldn’t he forget about it? Shan Tefur fingered the silver stars on the collar and sat back down on the bed. Stars. Three silver stars, the rank of a Kasimov. Three ranks down from a general, at the age of twenty-six. Not like it mattered - no more days of glory and war for him, just commendation from the government, you did well but the military has a better use for officers that aren’t from old money. Sit around and do something interesting. And because you’re a war hero, you get to keep the coat. He had fought so many battles in heavy, long black. So many men had saluted him that day they had taken Peremid. And now here he was, waking up too late in an apartment that was too small, dreaming about rain in Barduev and wasting his life away. Three identical starts in the night sky indeed. And here he was sitting down again, right back in a circle. Disgusted, he got up and turned to go wash up in the cramped bathroom. As he washed his face over the sink, he thought about the falling in the street. He hated so much to fall. He hated more to fall in the street. Everyone could see you in the street. Of course, everyone would be right there, ready to offer help and to get you up and on your way. Ready to embarrass you. Private falls did not hurt so much. When you fell alone, in your apartment, in a deserted alley, your pride did not fall as hard. You didn’t have to get right up, dust yourself off and pretend it didn’t hurt. You could take your time. You could stay where you were, right where you were, until you could get your shocked muscles to stop hurting. First it would be the knees. Then it would be the arms. Then the legs. And you could put your trust in the ground until you could stand up again.