rix_scaedu | Entries tagged with saylie

This came from thnidu’s prompt on Dreamwidth. After taking a hard pivot around a plot hole, this piece came in at 683 words and did not end where I expected it to. It follows on from Saylie: Lesson Vignette 1.

Today's lesson was taking place under an irregularly shaped gazebo in the back garden of the home of Saylie's mentor, Magister Herotus Zallack. There was a collection of stools scattered around the covered over space and a small table sat in the middle of the room. A hammock was strung between two of the supports so that it occupied the length of one wall. Magister Zallack was wearing his usual outfit of a toga over a kilt, all of it undyed, while Saylie was wearing a greenish-blue sari over a dark blue bodice constructed of silk, knots, and firm twists.

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This came from thnidu’s prompt on Dreamwidth. After taking a hard pivot around a plot hole, this piece came in at 683 words and did not end where I expected it to. It follows on from Saylie: Lessons Vignette 1.

Today's lesson was taking place under an irregularly shaped gazebo in the back garden of the home of Saylie's mentor, Magister Herotus Zallack. There was a collection of stools scattered around the covered over space and a small table sat in the middle of the room. A hammock was strung between two of the supports so that it occupied the length of one wall. Magister Zallack was wearing his usual outfit of a toga over a kilt, all of it undyed, while Saylie was wearing a greenish-blue sari over a dark blue bodice constructed of silk, knots, and firm twists.

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So, this comes from

chanter1944 ’s Dreamwidth prompt for “… can I ask for Saylie Chaterhalm in the early days of learning about, and finally succeeding with, her magic once she was out from under the heel of her mother's insistence on order and control?”. This piece came in at 793 words. Other pieces about Saylie can be found with this tag.

Saylie's mentor was an older man with whose skew-whiff hair and beard were grey lightening into white. His clothing was, essentially, a toga over a kilt with fraying edges on both pieces of cloth. He was, as he had told Saylie, a chaos Magister, and his name was Herotus Zallack. Right now, he was trying to find out what Saylie already knew.

"So, your mother tutored you at home, but no-one has ever discussed your magic's affiliations or alignment with you?" He looked like he was trying to be hopeful and encouraging. "How far along are you in your training?"

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This is now followed by "Saylie: Lessons Vignette 2."

Crossposts: https://rix-scaedu.livejournal.com/326824.html

I wrote this to my Patreon patron, ColleenR's prompt "I'd love something positive and wholesome, please!" and "a glorious garden". It overlaps with the end of Travelogue: Part 4 and came in at 1,886 words.

Saylie Chaterhalm was in her front garden, taking an outside break from the tasks her mentor had set her, when her father arrived at her garden gate. His presence was so unexpected that she just stood there looking at him, in stunned surprise. He was, of course, inappropriately dressed for Bolton-on-the-Edge where sewn seams came apart due to the village's proximity to the Reality Ravine. Additionally, his finely tailored suit was made of wool and the waistcoat he was wearing was silk, so consequently he was beginning to look overwarm. For his part, he was looking at her as if he didn't know what to think and Saylie assumed that was because he'd never seen her wearing anything like her current garments - not only was she wearing a sari-like outfit with a bodice that relied entirely on heavy fusible lining and knots to do its job, but the colour of the sari was magically changing from green through to purple and back again.

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Crossposts: https://rix-scaedu.livejournal.com/324711.html

This runs on from Travelogue: Part 3 and runs to 2,547 words.

"Didn't you get a letter explaining everything?" The stewardess looked at her questioningly.

"There was a letter," Saylie admitted, "but I never got to see it. I don't think it was addressed to me, because my parents had opened it and read it by the time I got home from school. It had my train tickets in it, but I wasn't given those until we got to the station, and there were some checklists of things that I had to do and pack, so I got given those to do, but I didn't see the letter itself. My parents told me what it was about." Saylie sighed. What she didn't tell the stewardess was how her mother had discussed her annoyance and shame at having a child exiled for hours at a time.

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This is now followed by Reconnection.

Crossposts: https://rix-scaedu.livejournal.com/317829.html

This follows on from Travelogue: Part 2 and runs to 3,297 words.

Note: Everything has wound up blue, which was not what I intended and fixing it will take much playing with the formatting. Please let me know if blue on white makes reading this post too hard - if it is a problem then it can be fixed but I don't know whether it is a problem, so feedback, please.

Dry Happenstance, where they stopped at midmorning, seemed to be a town of wide verandas, shaded footpaths, and buildings made of red and purple stone, with only a little orange in the mix. The roofs were mainly made of corrugated metal, much of it unpainted and shiny. In the residential parts of town, the train went past walled properties, and the railway station had a tall wall on either side of it. Inside the walls of the station there was a lush garden, reminiscent of the railway cuttings along the line, but full of fruit trees, kitchen herbs and ornamental flowers. It seemed likely to Saylie that the tall walls around the town's houses enclosed similar gardens, and she wondered why the walls made the difference between no plants and this amazing lushness.

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This is now followed by Travelogue: Part 4.

Crossposts: https://rix-scaedu.livejournal.com/317536.html

This follows on from Travelogue: Part 1 and runs to 3,360 words.

The afternoon didn't drag on, but Saylie did pull out a puzzle book and some pens so she had something to do aside from gazing out the window. The sun was getting lower in the west and the shadow of the train was making the details of the near fields more difficult to see. There was more pasture in among the crop now too and Saylie noted that there were separate herds of black or white cows in some of those pastures. Darkness came as the train was pulling into Morphelstone and she realised that she couldn't see the colour of the buildings.

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This is now followed by Travelogue: Part 3.

Crossposts: https://rix-scaedu.livejournal.com/316710.html

In her prompt, kailing asked for "moar train journeys" and said that I could mix a few of her prompt suggestions together. Well, a few of the other prompts flavour this piece but I seem to have written a multi-part travelogue for a new setting - but with plot elements! This first part runs to 3,439 words. I hope that you all enjoy it.

Saylie was being sent into exile, there was no other word for it. The official letters for her post-school assignment had come, and her parents hadn't let her see them as they tried to get the decision changed or the blow softened. As they came to grips with their failure her mother's temper got shorter and rattier, and her father became more soothing and more distant. Instead of letting her read the official letter herself, Saylie's mother gave her verbal summaries and her own critiques of how Saylie's failings had led to a state of affairs that her parents couldn't get her out of. How her school and aptitude assessments had told the authorities that she wasn't someone that they wanted hanging around the city, and so, now she had finished her compulsory schooling, she was being sent away. Borasboom was a civilised place surrounded by tamed, cultivated and managed lands. How it wasn't just that Saylie's particular talents were messily explosive and barely confined but that she lacked the personal discipline and application to keep her magic in check.
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This is now followed by Travelogue: Part 2.