SPOILER ALERT!!!
I've written a scrap of action from my sci-fi novel in progress, Pya, that will take place several months from now in the book. If you don't want the unfolding of the narrative to possibly be ruined for you, don't click on "Read More" below.
And Blue, it's not bad news, I promise.
To begin reading this sci-fi novel or for background information, go to my Chapter One post here. To read about the background of the first novel, read my post here, which will also direct you to appendices.
For more detailed information, posted elsewhere on this blog are:
Pya Dictionary from Skenish to English (complete up to present chapter), with some cultural notes included
Pya Cast of Characters (complete up to present chapter)
Map of Pya with Description of Each Island
Map of Skene (but not Pya)
Map of Saya Island and Environs When Pyosz First Arrived
Skene Character Lineage at Start of Pya Novel
Skene, Chapter One (With Cultural Notes in Links)
Pyosz would ever after remember that first night with Maar in flashes of pure sensation, not in clear chronological order. The most vivid was opening her eyes to the light of one and a half full moons silvering the new wood floors around her bare iron bed, pooling in her second-story room through her generous Dvareka-facing windows. She was ravenously exploring Maar's melt with her wide mouth and vigorous tongue, but even the flood of her own pleasure could not keep her from looking to watch Maar's surrender. Maar's knees were bent so she could lift herself to Pyosz's demand -- as if that was necessary -- and cords of muscle in her thick thighs were visible in Pyosz's periphery. Her head was arched back to the mattress, her mouth open for one shrieking moan after another. Through Maar's red thatch, Pyosz could see that Maar had hands clenching the iron rails of the headboard for traction.
Later, they guessed this is how the headboard weld was rattled loose from the bedframe.
Pyosz's second most intense memory was when the bed fell. She was on her knees, Maar behind her and in her, thrusting with a throaty yell at each push. Suddenly Pyosz was pitched forward at an acute angle, and she put her palms flat against the wall to hold herself back from it. She barely registered the crash, though later she would mourn the deep gouges left in her precious floor from the bedframe edge. She gasped only "Don't stop."
Maar closed the brief gap between her and Pyosz, and continued with measured abandon, trusting Pyosz's powerful arms to keep them both on the sloping mattress. When they both reached temporary release, they climbed out of their crevasse, laughing hysterically, and pulled the mattress flat onto the floor before flinging themselves back onto it, now flat but drenched in sweat.
Qala and Lawa downstairs and at the other end of the house, however, were awakened instantly by the crash. Lawa said "'Did a tree come down?" Qala pulled on pants as Lawa rushed past four curious katts to the front porch. Before she'd crossed the main hall, she heard the thumping from above and returned, scarlet-faced, to tell Qala "It was them" with a jerk of her head upwards. They decided to make tea and toast, talking over the intermittent sounds from Pyosz's part of the house. Clicker the kitten begged for a treat and Qala gave her a sliver of cheese as she remarked "She'll do the milking, nothing stops her from that, but they'll be worthless otherwise tomorrow."
"Not just tomorrow" agreed Lawa, grinning. "Good thing Maar has the day off."
"Remember that night in my little room off the Lofthall office?" reminisced Qala. "I fell off my cot more than once."
Giggling, they returned to bed for a few more hours' sleep.
When Pyosz's alarm rang, she and Maar had dozed off in a tangle of limbs only 15 minutes earlier. She struggled upright, then turned to meet Maar's kiss. "I'm going with you" said Maar hoarsely.
"You don't have to, my darling, you can sleep until -- " began Pyosz. But Maar was trying to find her otos, and Pyosz realized they could not separate, not right now.
Because of Maar's help, despite the heavy yield from a maximum number of does who had just kidded and the new lovers' easy distraction into passionate clinches, they were done before full light. As Pyosz led the swollen herd and frolicking kids to pasture, she turned to Maar and said "I've always wondered why this is called a kissing gate." They found a place to lean safe from Molars' reach, though not Killer's bewildered scrutiny. By the time they were done, the sun was over the horizon.
Pushing her cart down the streets of Koldok side by side with Maar was a thrill for Pyosz. Kolm took one glance at them and began laughing. "Finally" she said. "Does this mean we'll have Thleen among us permanently, then?"
"It does" replied Maar fervently. They took extra cheese and yogurt with them, and stopped at the grocery only to deliver bread, no shopping. Still, it was enough time for Gitta and another customer to grin at each other knowingly about the new couple.
Lawa was in the tillage when they climbed up from the dock. She called out "There's oatmeal and sausage on the aga." Qala had also vacated the house for the orchard. Pyosz and Maar ate heaping plates but did not linger to even rinse them afterward. Qala had to scrub the oatmeal pot half an hour after lunch to get it clean. Her grumbling was mild.
copyright 2009 Maggie Jochild
Saturday, October 31, 2009
PYA: SCRAP FROM THE FUTURE
Monday, July 13, 2009
BRIEF UPDATE: PAIN AND PYA
Map of Saya Island and nearby islands, part of Pya cluster; © 2009 Maggie Jochild.
Mostly, I've been dealing with some major health issues involving my GI tract and severe pain. I've have four bed-confining episodes in the past two weeks. Sitting up to write has been extremely limited, and I'm saving that time for my paying job, such as it is.
I've also been working on another enormous blog project, which I'll tell you about soonish. Working as in figuring out details and making notes on paper.
However, when lying in bed wracked with pain, considering politics/real world issues is not a helpful distraction. Nor are my usual narcotic, cooking shows. During the first knock-out, I also discovered I couldn't write Ginny Bates episodes in my head. I need to stop writing there and begin editing, and since I don't have a hook yet to launch that endeavor, my mind is now refusing to create new Ginny stories.
In desperation, I tried to think of another story, something that would take my artistic drive and run with it. What came to me was hopscotching ahead from my previous (Myra-related) novel Skene and beginning the next book in that series -- working title right now is Pya . I have only written a few paragraphs of actual exposition, but in my head I've outlined the book and even begun drawing maps on paper. It's been unlimited comfort.
Skene is a science fiction novel set over 500 years in the future. Plot synopsis is that Earth sends out a group of approximately 100 specialists (all races, genders, nationalities, ages) to an ocean planet in the constellation Alhena with plans to mine the sea and a single cluster of islands found amid all that water. As in most sci fi novels, this is a story of "when it changed" -- but it's not about the original colonization effort. Instead, I begin the narrative 500 years after first landfall. In the interim, three main developments have occurred:
(1) The original plan was for the colonists to make a 4-year commitment, one year each way in travel and two years setting up the planet for mining. At the end of their hitch, a new set of colonists will arrive to take their place. However, for reasons never known or explained, Earth never sends replacements. The original group is left forever on their own.
(2) Something about the water world begins altering human biology, specifically gender and procreative biology. Male fertility takes a hit and continues declining, and increasingly fewer numbers of male children are born. By the time my novel begins, only one in six births is male and of those, only 10% will be fertile enough to create a pregnancy. As a consequence of several factors (including mass insanity when the change is first realized), Skene culture now prohibits any identity based on gender. Your immediate family and lover/partners will know if you are X or Y, as they refer to it, but no one else. All sexual, occupational, community, familial, and even procreative behavior is based on individual traits, not gender categories. Further, with the collapse of the gender binary, along with other causative factors, class and race differentiation has also disappeared. Skene has created a progressive meritocracy combined with other forms of non-traditional repression.
(3) As if they didn't have enough problems, the original colonists discover that one of the indigenous life forms, all of which were presumed to be benign and barely sentient, is not simply a whale-sized fish but in fact a clever carnivorous predator. Humanity on Skene is confined to existence on its 39 small islands, 24 of which are truly tiny land masses. They have futuristic technology but extremely limited natural resources.
N.B. The name Skene is a lesbian inside joke.
Skene covers a period of about 15 years, following the lives of three women who bring profound change to Skene. There's a lot of great sex, political machinations, environmental dilemmas, alternative family life, and extreme adventure. I ended the book with an Epilogue about 20 years in the future, just as Skene is about to make another quantum leap of cultural reformation.
I begin Pya 25 years after Skene's epilogue, focusing on the grandchild of the three main characters in Skene (who was not born by the aforementioned Epilogue). She and her cohort are, again, caught at the moment after one set of "when it changed" has occurred, but another is poised to make demands of them. With Pya, I build on the social structure, language, lineage, geography, and memes established in Skene. However, it has required a whole new set of maps, family additions, and language amplification, all of which is delicious fun to create for me, the anthropology student.
If you want to read Skene, look in the labels in the right-hand column and begin with Chapter One. All the chapters in Skene are in numerical order. There is also a wealth of appendix material: A dictionary, an explanation of the culture, cast of characters, maps of the island, and more, all itemized under Skene in my labels and also accessible through Chapter One.
Once I get the actual writing under way, I may post chapters of Pya here, if there's interest. My web statistics have shown me there's a fair number of Skene readers out there, so let me know if you want access to the new raw material.
More update on other issues later. For now, I have to do some Work.
Posts
