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platosshadowpuppet · 19 days

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Take the letters up up the barrow path

This is a story about the moors, about nature, and post-boxes in unusual places. It’s also a story about John.

John is a postman. He is also a walker, a watcher, a listener, a great consumer of tea, a successful if erratic gardener, and he is different. John lives alone, in a small cottage on the edge of the moors. The cottage has only two rooms, an outdoor toilet, and no electricity. Inside there is a kitchen, with a gasfired range, a potbellied woodburning stove, a deep sink, and a well-scrubbed wooden table. Next door there is a bedroom, with a single bed and a set of shelves for books, interesting stones, egg shells, and feathers.

In the morning it takes John precisely 5 paces to get from his bed to the kitchen sink, where he washes his face and fills a copper pan with water, another two to the range, where he sets his water to boil, and one more to light the stove in winter. He decants the water to a sizable white tea-pot - two teaspoons of assam leaves (not blended), three minutes to steep - and uses the rest for two eggs - softboiled for 6 minutes precisely. Two rounds of bread go under the gas grill and receive a strictly portioned scrape of salted butter. Replete with his repast and ablutions complete, the day now forks in front of John in two very different directions.

On a work day John sets out for the village shop. There, his load for the day will be waiting in the care of Mrs Stonehatch. There you are John, letters from your admirers, she’ll say. And more everyday, he’ll say, before setting out on his rounds.

The village first. Sturdy houses, built of gold coloured sandstone and roofed with slate. Huddled together over narrow snickets and flagstoned yards, they keep close to share their warmth and keep off the cold winds coming down off the hills. Here and there chimney stacks still send up streamers of acrid coal smoke, reaching tenuously for the lowering grey clouds above before being whipped off down into the dale below. Then further out.

The Big House, on the edge of the village. And the Vicarage, off by itself so that the villagers aren’t bothered by religion on a weekday, and then the out-lying farms.

Down rutted tracks, between hawthorn hedgerows. Grass springing up optimistically in the centre, between the hard packed tracks of tractors and battered landrovers. Disturbed by his passing, bull-finches, goldcrests, wrens and robbins call warnings and swoop low across his path. Flashes of colour among the deep green of the pasture land and hardy bark of the few windblown trees. John carefully doesn’t keep track of the species he sees and calls he hears, as he’s on the job. Just as he doesn’t notice the enticing deep blue gleam of sloes in a black thorn patch, or the brown banded feather of a sparrowhawk caught on a briar’s snags.

And sometimes, with no rhyme nor reason he can see, there are letters for the box on the Knowe.

On the days he’s not a postman, John is a scimaunderer. A walker, with no destination or set purpose. He packs a bag, pulls on his boots and departs. The day decides his direction for him.

Sometimes it’s up the moors, among heather and gorse and windworn mountain ash. Sometimes the dales, following deer tracks between copses of beach and oak, splashing through slacks and ings. Others the deep forest, where his feet sink into verdant moss and deadfall and cramble snarl the path. And he walks and listens and watches, until he finds his place.

Never the same place twice and he never knows his place before he finds it. There are some constants, the places are always quiet, always sheltered and always near water. That might be the rust red tarns up in the high places, lonely waters with only the sky for company. It might be the becks, burns and spouts of the upper-course, where water calls out ecstatically as it leaps from rock to rock. It might even be far down the dales, where he’s soothed by sill and keld, deep smooth waters with a voice that’s felt more than it’s heard.

Once in his place he sets down his pack, makes tea on his camping stove, and waits to become. It starts first with the sounds.

In his most recent place, a hollow on the moors between two stands of rasping reeds, it started with a curlew. The mournful, rising cry stilled him and pulled his mind away. His focus widened and found, distantly, the harsh, abrupt alarm call of a pheasant and the keening of a buzzard.

Underpinning everything was the susurration of the wind in the heather. Cresting over the edge of his hollow, the wind brought him the rich earthiness of mud, honeyed scents of heather flower and the sharper tang of bilberries in the sun. He sank deeper.

Beneath him roots reached and coiled in the earth. Around him branches swayed and spread in the sun. Voles and mice and beetles and worms, the desolate moorlands teemed with a myriad tiny lives. He drank it all in and became both less and more than a man.

An unknowable length of time passes. Slowly, he comes back to himself. His legs are cramped and stiff, his hands clumst with cold, and the sky has grown dark. With a groan he rises, packs, and sets out for home. By the time he reaches his front door he once again has a name he answers to, a house he owns, and a job to go to in the morning.

Once, way up in the high places, he became something deeper than he’d ever managed before. That time it began with the feeling of cold stone and warm lichen under his hands. Around him time poured like a force and he watched the lichen wage a terrible war. Battle lines were drawn, armies marshalled and yellow and grey came together in a deadly clinch. From the scrum, separate dramas unfolded. Two combatants duelled on an exposed spur, before both were worn away by the wind. Order broke down and swirling melees formed, wearing down the very surface of the stone as they fought and spun. A brave captain fought a rear-guard action in the face of a grey surge, courageous to the last until he was cut off and cut down.

Back and forth, across geological time, campaigns were waged and the man’s mind spread out and down and away. Finally, some banked ember of consciousness caught the air and flared. He came back to pain and cold. Too long sat cross-legged, he could not stand and had to drag himself upright against the rocks. Bright pain stabbed him as blood returned to his legs and he found himself too dry-mouthed to cry out. The sun shifted a full hands span across the sky before he could gather up his things and start the haik home.

For the first time he felt fear in his aloneness and sought out his peers. Slowly, in the village pub, surrounded by a babble of voices as welcome and meaningless as bird song, he came back to himself. Three pints of best cemented John firmly back in his body, but it was still a while before he went wandering again.

On some days he rises and the air seems different and John knows that there will be letters for the box on the Knowe.

No one else ever comments on these letters and they don’t come addressed. The thick, rich paper of the envelopes is as unbroken and featureless as a down-fall of snow on the upper slopes and the colour of sun bleached bone. On these days he’ll pick up his normal load, more letters from your admirers John, and walk his normal round. But when he’s finished, and only the letters for the Knowe remain, he’ll take the barrow path out past the outlying farms and up into the moors.

The Knowe box doesn’t sit on the Knowe itself, but in its lee. A burn comes splashing down from around the shoulder of the Knowe, through stands of mountain ash, silver birch and wych elm, before breaking on an obstinate rock and splitting in two. Set into the rock is the gleaming red of the Knowe box.

On John’s belt is a ring of keys. Two are for his cottage, one is for the village shop - for emergencies - and another is for the post-boxes on his rounds. All of them are brass and dull and plain. The last key is different. It has the slim ellipse shape of a single rowan leaf, an ornate ring handle in the form of twisting branches, and the bewitching gleam of silver. This key opens the Knowe box. The other keys came with John’s house, or from Mrs. Stonehatch in the village shop, but this one has just always been there. If John thinks too hard about when he got it, or who gave it to him, his mind grows foggy and the day dim, like a land-lash is about to break. So he doesn’t think about it, apart from on the days when he knows to take the barrow path.

The path, only packed earth to begin with, peters out when it reaches the burn. Handy stepping stones lead out to the water-festen box and John can normally keep his feet dry. On blashy days in the winter, though, the burn grows restless and breaks its banks and often John is forced to wade.

On this pleasant day in autumn, the burn obeys its bounds and John’s feet are safe. Letters for the Knowe go into a jaw-hole in the rock, left of the box. Whatever the weather, however strong the wind or heavy the pash, the fissure always remains dry and cool to the touch. Letters from the Knowe are collected from the box. John’s key turns smoothly in the lock and the door opens on oiled hinges. Inside the air is dry and scented with old paper and verbena blossom. It never occurs to John to wonder what’s in the letters, or where they come from or who they’re for. Just as he doesn’t expect to understand the song of the birds, the dance of the bees, or the barking of the foxes. It simply isn’t his place. And somewhere he knows that, should he ever wonder too hard, his mind will fog, the light will fade and the question will disappear like summer geese from the moor.

So he takes the letters, relocks the box, and silently leaves them with Mrs. Stonehatch on the morrow.

Except today the box contains only one letter. The same thick, creamy paper, the same sweet smell of dry decay. Except today, in a jagged hand like the stag-head of an old hawthorn, the letter is addressed. His name, written there. Stark against the whiteness. This time, when he wonders what it means, and why today, and what might be contained within, the fog doesn’t fall and the day keeps its colour.

He turns, letter heavy in his hand, to look back downstream. Beyond the stands of trees the sun is setting and a touch of coal smoke from the village taints the cooling air. Behind him, the Knowes’ presence has taken on a weight, stretching the fabric of the world like a pondskater on the water’s surface. John feels he has reached a fork in the road, forced, like the burn, to choose one path or the other.

Unless, like the burn, he chooses to break his bounds. With a smile John stretches his arm out over the water and lets the letter go. For a moment, it seems like it will refuse. It clings to the calluses on his palm, fighting gravity as John tilts his hand further and further. There is a pregnant moment, when the wind stills and the birds quieten and even the rushing of the burn seems to lessen. And then it falls.

A hand of spray reaches gladly up to take it and John watches as his name whirls and fades and disappears from view.

It occurs to him that this spot, in the lee of the Knowe and sheltered by the rock, would make an excellent place. He crouches and places his hand in the hill cold water and lets his mind run with the stream.

An unknowable length of time passes. Consciousness flares and flickers back to life. Smoothly he stands and stretches, the arch of his back mirroring the hills behind him. It is a pleasant day in autumn, the sun beginning to sink beyond the far side of the valley and a touch of coal smoke taints the air. He thinks he should probably go home, though he doesn’t feel tired, or cold or hungry.

The walk back down the barrow path passes quickly, and he revels in the bright colours of the birds that cross his path. He plucks blackberries from the brambles as he walks and finds a sparrowhawk feather trapped among the thorns.

The village’s snickets and yards are empty, and the light’s off in the shop. The coal smoke is thicker here and it catches in his throat. Further on, and to a cottage at the edge of the moors. His cottage.

Except that electric light burns in the windows and new rooms have sprung up around it like mushrooms after the rain.

A weight hangs heavy on him, that might have been loss, or might just have been the silver key that still sits on his belt. He leaves both on the doorstep and turns to face the moors.

A few steps takes him across the road and into the heather. A few more and he’s beyond the paths he used to take down into the dales. The sun passes beyond the western hills and gloaming takes the valley floor. He takes a deep breath of the night air, clear of coal smoke or the smell of verbena, and finally becomes.

#fantasy #low fantasy #magical realism #fiction #writing #microfiction #fae #micro fiction #stories #short story #creative writing #writeblr

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silcorynard · 5 months

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1BLE

The Collective has been growing. Not everyone is a part of it, because the Company was a chimera that not even one man’s word could control, and there had been threat of retribution by some of the investors and shareholders. Some of the miners were scared enough to stay with the status quo, to ask not to be part of what Silco was doing. But the breaks and adjustments to shifts were introduced for everyone, not just for those who were part of the Collective. That, Silco assured them, was the whole point of the Collective: better circumstances for all, and to prove that they would be stronger together, that life would be better arm-in-arm.

It also hadn’t been Silco’s idea to start pooling funds for new projects, but he encouraged the idea once he heard it at the meeting. There was so much that needed to be done in the mines, yes, but the Collective was made up of people. People had needs.

There were plenty of miners who couldn’t work: the injured, the sick, those with inherited conditions, and so on. Sometimes these people were compensated by the Company, but more often they were not. These people still needed to eat; the Collective began to see to it that no-one would be without a meal, or without work. And soon more ideas were offered at the meetings: these folk who could not work in the mines would not be out of work entirely. They could teach mathematics and language to the children who weren’t needed in the mines. Others could clean and maintain the masks and mining equipment, and share the techniques needed for such care and maintenance. There could be classes for literacy and mathematics, there could be classes for cooking and clothing repair and other basic needs, there could be classes for music and storytelling. And, one of the most eagerly-embraced ideas of all, there could be changes made at the mines to make the newly-implemented breaks a little more comfortable.

The Collective Canteen had been built with scrap and rubble, broken carts and rusted beams, squared-off blocks of discarded mine stone, and draped sheets held in place with rail spikes. It squatted near the mine entrance, puffing smoke from jerry-rigged chimneys. It was so beautiful in its ramshackle ugliness, because it had been made by a community with love.

Three months after its opening, Silco lifts the canvas doorway and looks inside with a small proud smile. The ovens, the benches, the shelf of battered pots and pans and implements, the jars of donated grains and spices… it wasn’t much, but all of it was the Collective’s. This hadn’t been his idea: look what the people had come up with on their own, as they pushed for things to be better, as the spark was shared between them. Those who couldn’t work in the mines took shifts here, making meals that children would deliver below to the crews. People could have proper hot meal to fill the belly, not just a smuggled crust of bread in a coat pocket to be eaten while the foreman wasn’t watching, like they used to. The Collective was growing. People were taking care of each other. Things were getting better.

“There’s coffee on the stove.” A voice interrupts Silco’s thoughts. The Canteen saw workers coming and going all the time, each taking their turn with service, but Maryam had been here the longest. An arm injury had brought her here, but a pregnancy had been a good-enough reason for her to ask if she could stay. She was too far along to swing a pickaxe, but she was organised, and trusted, and happy to help.

“I can smell it,” Silco says, letting the canvas fall closed behind him. “I’ve been thinking about a cup since my shift ended.”

Maryam waves her pen vaguely at the stewpot behind her, a huge battered thing, set on top of a broken and overturned minecart. “Then help yourself.” She is busy with tallying the day’s takings, flicking beads on an abacus and counting the thin tin and copper coins in front of her. Not everyone could pay, but those who did made it easier to fill the larder for the rest. And when everyone was fed, everyone benefited.

Silco grabs a scuffed enamel cup from the rack and slips behind the counter. The fire that had been burning under the minecart is down to its last coals, and the dark liquid in the stewpot isn’t steaming. Still, coffee is coffee. He dips his mug to fill it, and takes a quick thirsty gulp of the bitter brew.

“You know Kassandra?” Maryam asks. She glances up at Silco joins her at the counter. “In Work Crew Jussi?”

Silco thinks for a second, then nods. “Yes. Married Tyr last season?”

“That’s her.” She nods, sweeping a small stack of coins to one side. “She has a cousin in Production, in Bergen proper, and might be able to get something to add to the stews. She says the cousin can get her a few sacks of leftovers. Might even be able to make it regular if we’re good to them.”

Silco nods thoughtfully as he sips the coffee. “It won’t be cheap,” he notes, “Even with a family discount.”

Maryam shrugs, her mouth pulling in a wry smile. “Maybe we should invite Production into the Collective.”

He laughs, dryly, incredulous. Why would Production need a Collective? The workers in the city no doubt have protections and wages far better than those who perform hard labour on the outskirts. “We’re doing very well as it is. Better than expected and in such a short period of time.”

“Mmm,” she hums, tapping her pen on the counter. “But we can do better than leftovers and grocery donations from home kitchens.”

“We can?” Silco asks, mildly. When the woman just grins, he laughs and nods to her in salute. “You have an idea. You’re ambitious.” He’s pleased. He so loves seeing the way ideas and hope bloom these days.

“I’ve been here long enough that this place is my baby.” Maryam looks around, proudly, then sets her hand on her belly. “I’m going to have this child here, I’ve decided. Spill blood and bring life out on this hard-packed earth.”

Silco raises his mug in a silent toast. He recognises the words having some kind of rite quality to them. He had never learned his parents’ religion, and had no community outside of the mines. But there are those who toast, and so it follows that this seems like a statement worth toasting; there is power to it, and more the power to her for it. More power to all of them.

“I do have an idea,” Maryam continues, as she finishes her count and swipes the coins into an old lunchbox. “It’s not one that’s gonna take off anytime soon. But there’s plenty of tunnels where the ore’s run dry and the coal’s chipped out. Ones near the vents, so air’s not sour. What if we made use of some of that dead space?”

Silco frowns in thought, nodding as he considers how much of mines gets abandoned or buried whenever it no longer produces. “In what way?”

“Well.” Maryam folds her hands over her belly, smiling, “What if we made a garden? A few boxes of shit and soil, and we could start growing mushrooms.”

Mushrooms. Silco’s mouth involuntarily waters; he looks at the woman in wide-eyed admiration.

“Collective-grown crops for the Collective canteen,” the woman smiles serenely. “And who knows? Maybe we could even start ranching rats.”

“My gods. We’ll eat like kings.”

Maryam laughs. “I s’pose I’m cleared to bring it up at the next meeting?”

“You don’t need my permission t—” He freezes, hearing something outside.

“Well, I thought I’d—”

Glass shatters. Fire blooms against the wall of the canteen. Maryam screams. Silco dives for her, shielding her as best he can with his scrawny frame, hauling her to her feet and moving at staggered, stumbling swiftness as they make for the canvas wall, for outside.

He hears it louder now, the sound of footsteps and angry voices and then, as he and Maryam push out of the flames and smoke, he sees them. Strangers, illuminated by torches and glow-tubes and moonshine-bottle grenades.

Another one of those grenades hits the side of the canteen, and the strangers howl and cheer. Maryam screams again, this time in outrage and fury. Miners still around after their shift are running to sound the alarm, to gather pails of dirt for to smother the fire, and to come to the aid of Maryam.

Silco stares at the fires. His eyes are wide, and all he can see is the canteen up in flames. Everything burns, and he feels cold.

Maryam is still screaming, pulling herself out of the teenager’s arms to address the strangers with curse and fury, but she doesn’t get far. She staggers, and falls, clutching her belly. One of the strangers moves to stand over her, arm raised as though to strike her.

Silco moves, then, whip-fast, charging forward. He doesn’t have the strength to tackle the man to the ground, but he has a pretty knife he carries with him always. A few rapid jabs are enough to drive the man back, but now— Silco grits his teeth and braces himself, standing between the pregnant woman and the angry mob. His hand grips the knife in a tight fist, trying to keep from shaking.

He can see them now, this mob. Rough and filthy and furious, armed with pick and shovel, men and women with bared teeth and fury in their faces. He realises with an odd jolt that he is staring down a group of miners. Strangers, yes, but miners.

“What in the good hells are you doing?” He doesn’t have a voice that carries, not with his lungs burned out, but they’re not watching the canteen burn anymore. They’re watching him, and they hate him, so they hear him. “Why are you doing this?!”

They didn’t come here to talk. They came with fire and weapons and hate. They cuss him out, and call him bastard, and say he and all his kind deserve this. Silco scans their faces, and sees the anger he’s familiar with, the kind of anger that once had him pinned against a tunnel wall with a pick at his throat. They have the same fury he did: he’d thrown dynamite into a tenement with that anger, and in the same way they’ve made their grenades to burn down this canteen.

They’re strangers to him, but they’re miners. They must come from another Company, another part of the mountain. But why are they attacking the Collective? Why are they calling him a bastard?

There’s no time for rhetoric. There’s no air left to speak, because it’s all being used in the fire burning down the canteen. All he can do is hold his ground and protect Maryam, as ash falls down over him and the canteen collapses into charred wood and smoking metal.

Yakob, Maryam’s husband, slam-tackles one of the strangers to the ground, and starts laying in with his fists. He’s not alone; other members of the Collective charge down the hill and throw themselves into the melee. Silco glances to Maryam – seeing her well, but there’s despair in her face as she watches the Canteen burn – before he snarls and charges forward to join the fight, to protect what’s theirs.

It’s a brawl of blood and fists and ash and the gleam of Silco’s knife, under a grey fresh-smoke sky.

---

“Right, that’s the bandages done. Let’s see that eye of yours again,” Vander says, peering in.

Silco obediently lifts the bag of ice chips off his face, squinting with the good side of his face.

The messy-haired youth gives a low impressed whistle. “Swelling’s down, but you’re gonna have a hell of a shiner, Sil.”

“I didn’t even know my face could bruise,” Silco admits, putting the sodden icebag back against the right side of his face. “I thought the gas-paralysis prevented that.”

Vander shakes his head, then resumes his close scrutiny of Silco’s battered hand. For a man with large hands, he is being very careful, very gentle, and very thorough. When he presses against Silco’s knuckles, Silco winces at the pain, and Vander eases his touch immediately. “Describe the pain there, Sil.”

“Uh. Ouch?”

“Sharp, stabbing, lingering?”

“Sharp, I guess? Fades to an ache?”

Vander massages around the ache, then gives a small grunt of relief. “Nothing broken, then. Good t’know.”

Silco blinks with his good eye, his lips pursing in the best smile his face would allow. “And you know this how, exactly?”

Vander opens his mouth to answer. But his father answers first, busy as he is in the kitchen.

“He were apprenticed as a doctor’s boy,” Carlisle Vander grizzles, slamming a cleaver into root vegetables with more aggression than they deserved. “Five years of trainin’ an’ workin’. Waste of a good education, ‘coz he turned tail an’ ran soon as the work got too tough.”

Vander’s face creases in exasperation. “Dad.” It was a warning, a plea, an attempt to interrupt what was clearly an argument hashed and rehashed on-and-off for years.

“It was your ticket to a better life,” the older man throws a scowl over his shoulder. “Did we scrimp an’ save for months to get you the joinin’ fee? That we did!”

“Dad.” Vander gives Silco a look of mild apology. He hasn’t let go of Silco’s hand, and still circles his thumbs around the shape of Silco’s knuckles.

Silco, though, lowers the bag of ice and stares at the messy-haired youth. “You were a doctor?”

“Just an apprentice,” Vander mutters.

“Couldn’t handle it,” his father offers, scathingly.

“Dad, enough. I already tol’ you what it was like.” His accent always became more pronounced when he was at home. “It weren’t a life fer me.”

“Imagine what you coulda been,” Carlisle tossed the rough-chopped vegetables into the pot, where they hissed in the oil in protest. “Coulda had a proper future.”

“Weren’t the future I wanted, Dad, so drop it.” He pauses, and looks at Silco’s hand, and face, and the bandages he’s just finished binding, and a flush of colour rises in his cheeks. “I know enough, learned enough. Didn’t need more. We’ve been over this.”

“You weren’t born a doctor?” Silco feels like he’s missing a significant piece of context. “And you just… you left? You can do that?”

“Well, yeah.” Vander says, managing a lop-sided smile.

“Not everyone’s born into a profession like you, lad,” Carlisle offers, shrugging. “Not everyone in Zaun’s born t’a Company. Some gotta buy their way into somethin’ new, or they pick up what they can, where they can. S’why we’re runnin’ a pawn shop.”

Silco feels the ice in his hand and the ache in his hands and face, and is suddenly conscious of how big the world is when you’re not pinched between stone and darkness. “People can choose where they work.” It’s a revelation. It makes him feel small, and ill, and in the same way he felt when he stood on the edge of the Ironspikes and looked south to see the world unfurled vast before him. A world within view but just out of reach.

“Aye,” Carlisle mutters, giving his son one more dark look, though now at least it is tempered with a grudging acceptance. “They can.”

Vander pulls a face at his father, then gently lets go of Silco’s hand. “You’re stayin’ the night again, Sil?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” Silco still has too much adrenaline in his system, after the fight, after dousing the fire, after getting clocked in the face, after having his hand and face touched with such care by Vander. “I don’t want to cause you any trouble.”

Carlisle grunts. “If your Company wanted t’fuck us over, lad, they’d’ve done so already. Not like you two’ve been subtle about your sneaking off.”

“Dad!” Vander buries his face in his hands.

“Dinner’s in the pot an’ cookin’ up.” Carlisle ignores his son and gestures the ladle in a vaguely-threatening way in Silco’s direction. “You’re stayin’ t’eat, but after that I don’t give a rat’s arse what you do with your time or where you lay your head. Get me?”

“Thankyou, Mister Vander,” Silco says, politely, lips quirking as he fights not to smile. He’s familiar with the old man’s surly affection now, and hears the invitation to stay the night for what it is. “I appreciate it.”

The old man grunts, then gets back to work.

“‘Mister Vander’,” the younger mocks, under his breath.

Silco smirks a little. “You’re the one who doesn’t like being called by your first name,” he points out, in the same whispered tone. “Warwick.” Pronounced ‘worrick’; Carlisle, too, was not pronounced how it was spelled, being ‘car-lyl’. It was a habit of Middletongue to pick up and discard rules of language as it saw fit, especially when it came to names.

Vander the Younger flushes a slight pink. “Shut up.”

“Make me.”

Vander looks like he plans on making Silco shut up, with his eyes dropping to Silco’s lips and a grin starting to form. But then Carlisle calls for his son to set the table, so the young former-and-not-currently-a-doctor Vander sighs and gets to his feet and wanders across the room to help.

Silco puts the ice back against his face. He thinks about being born a miner. He thinks about the miner who gave him this black eye. He thinks about the fire that burned down the Canteen, and the view beyond the borders, and his jaw sets with renewed determination.

---

His cigarette is burned almost all the way through, but he’s barely noticed. He and a few others from the Collective have been watching this other mining site for the better part of two hours now, noting the differences between the Company that runs this place and the one that owns where the Collective toils. The conditions are as different as night and day. Silco nurses his anger.

The whistle has blown to signal the end of shift, but the emergence of miners from below takes agonising hours. Company agents and security check each miner for ore or shale they might be trying to smuggle out. Equipment is collected and scrutinised. Each shuffling, miserable miner is given their scrip and made to depart the property. It’s pitch black, but for the floodlights trained in the ragged folk shuffling out from under the earth.

“Looks like a prison camp,” Gesso hisses softly. Silco agrees, but says nothing. He just finishes his cigarette.

Most miners shuffle off towards the Company-owned tenements. But there’s many more who make their way to the mazelike slump of tents and shacks that pock the mountainside, homes built between the air-pumps and shale-vents. There’s a larger building, sitting humped like a tumour at the start of the path, where signs proclaim in symbol and rough-painted sign of food and drink available. It seems busy. Crowded. Yet it lacks the usual jollity of a tavern. It is the first target for so many, including the crowd the Collective have been observing.

Silco drops his cigarette and grinds it out under his shoe. “Let’s go.”

As expected, he finds many familiar faces. But before they can give him another black eye, he starts to ask them questions and drawing comparisons between this mine and the one they attacked last night. Those who aren’t so deep in their cups can give what answers they can. The hostility remains between these miners and the handful of Collective folk. But Silco knows how to talk. He pulls at their pain, and shows them a spark. Money is a good way to get people to pay attention. But power? Power is a good way to get people to listen.

“Your Company bleeds you, your Company denies you your pay and your freedom, and your Company tells you we are to blame… and you believed that?” He meets the gaze of the man who slugged him across the face, and spreads both palms out, a query to make every one of them think, before he addresses the tavern interior. “The Company needs you. But they need you to be their wretched servants. They can’t ever let you think or fight for yourselves. They’ll tell you it’s for the sake of the business, or necessary for the bottom line. But really, you know what they want. They want you to be numb and obedient and to say ‘thank you’ for every crumb.” He cocks his head, and seeks out the gazes of those who seem the most infuriated. “Don’t you think you deserve better? We did. That’s why we formed the Collective.”

It’s morning by the time Silco and the others return, after hours of sharing their stories and explaining just what kind of steps they took. It’s dangerous, of course it is, to take the steps that the Collective has, to take that risk and challenge the hand that squeezes your throat. But it’s something to think about. So they give these miners time to think.

Over the next few weeks, there are strangers that join the meetings at the Collective, listening, questioning, cultivating their own sparks. And by the time the Collective Canteen has been rebuilt, the next Company over is starting to feel the tables turn, and understands that their plan – to get the miners to squabble between themselves – has backfired in the worst possible way. For the Company, at least.

---

The map is several conflicts out of date, but the shapes of most borders and landmarks is at least recognisable enough for his needs. Silco traces his fingers around the Ironspikes Mountains, the northeast-to-southwest border that encircles Zaun, then further still in an unbroken curve up to the northwest where Piltover claims. Past these mountains stretch vast plains: the indistinct blur of the Freljord’s snowfields and coasts, the river-crossed forests before the rigid borders of sunny Demacia in the west, the rocky gravel-strewn lands of Noxus to the east, and The Great Barrier, the barbarian-settled mountain range that separated the civilised states from the wildernesses of the Shurima Desert, the Voodoo Lands, Urtistan, Kumungu, the Plague Jungles and the ruins of Icathia. Then far far south, Bandle City, safe from wilderness and conquest by these natural and dangerous barriers, but still able to reach the rest of the world due to their flying machines and their access to the coast. The world committed to paper, and yet not all of it. There was so much more in the details lost to paper, and even more across the sea.

Silco traces his fingers over the map again, this time over the rough sketched lines of the trade routes that connect Zaun to Noxus. A war machine is always hungry for ore and stone. The fruits of Mother Zaun keep the tyrant Darkwill’s hunger keen.

“Zaunite iron,” he murmurs to himself, “Beaten into armour and swords, taken all over the world.” Wherever Darkwill’s desire for conquest took him. South past the mountains, east across the sea, even west and north to Demacia and the Freljord, and further still. The rocks that passed Silco’s hands from the grinder and into the shipping bins could end up rusting and abandoned on some foreign shore. It was fascinating to think about.

He turned back a few pages, leaving the world behind, and looking instead at Zaun. The inaccuracies of the map were now even more obvious, with Zaun being divided simply into six districts. Even the river was the wrong shape: it would be a decade or more before towers and factories and Company rivalries started changing the shape of the city and securing the shape of the land into something more defined, more easy to claim and control. But even now, against the back of the Ironspikes, the district that the Collective first bloomed in was known – then and now – as Bergsen. It had been a big district. Now it was one of the many fragments of the Economic Exclusion Zone. A modern map would no doubt show how many shards the EEZ was in, how many Executives had their hands on territory and were refusing to share.

Silco had grown up thinking the Company was everything. To know that they were merely a fragment of the companies that were owned and fed profit back to the head of the district was … something. To know he was a tiny piece of a tiny business of a tiny corner of one of Zaun’s smaller border towns… it could make a man feel almost insignificant.

Instead, Silco took a pull at his cigarette, and swept his fingertip over the southern curve of the Ironspikes Mountain on the old map, letting his vision blur. There were a lot of mines through these mountains. There were a lot of other businesses, too. And the river started here in these mountains as well, fed by underground springs and snow-melt. The underground tunnels - watched and guarded by the private armies of each district’s Executives - might be the way that trade goods from Zaun got through to Noxus, but all of Zaun’s businesses used the river to bring those goods to the border.

Silco swung the heavy atlas closed and tapped his cigarette into the ashtray. “Vander.”

“Yeah, Sil?”

“Your father used to work Freight, right?”

“Yeah?” The young man’s lips twist in sudden wryness. “What’re you schemin’ this time, Sil?”

Silco hummed thoughtfully. “I’m just thinking about making some new friends.”

“An’ you want some introductions?” Vander sighed, chuckled, shook his head. But bright mischief lit up his face. “Well, I might still know some folks. When do you wanna make the trip?”

Silco stands, flicking the last of the ash off his cigarette and grabbing his coat. “Now. Now seems like a good time.”

#the miners' son #fox and hound #some time back #towers and mines #neatly printed on letterhead #cigar smoke

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neathnights · 2 years

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The Rat Market

A crawling, squeaking, jostling hubbub, precariously perched on the rooftops overlooking Flowerdene Market. Of course, as the Rattus Faber will tell you, the Rat Market is the real market. The human one is but a sad imitation of the ratty glories to be found up here.

The only rule of the Rat Market is its changeability. The Market marches to hidden seasons and absent winds, governed by the changing of an invisible moon. Of course, the Rattus Faber say, they're only invisible to you. If you were a rat, they say, you'd know better.

→ Enter the Rat Market The Rat-Market accepts only Rat-shillings, a rusty copper-hued coin of Ratty antiquity. As only rats are permitted to spend them, you'll need to enter as an honorary rodent.

The court of the Rat Market Canvas hangs between chimney pots, framing the entrance to the court of the Rat Market. Bounded by brickwork and the sharp drop below, the Market runs across a row of roofs, dense and chattering. The stalls are crammed into every available nook and cranny, bristling with all manner of miniature commodities.

The currency of the Market is its shillings, larger than a rat's paw and stamped with an icon of ratty origin. The Saint peers up at you from beneath her crown of knotted tails. Of course, only rats may use the shillings.

However, the Market is a place of commerce, and all customers must be catered for. There is a rite to perform in the broken spout of a battered chimney. You must kneel before it and accept the flow of the dirty water over your head. Two rats place a blindfold over your eyes, slit to allow in a modicum of light. A third whispers in your ear of indignities and cruelties, generations of ratty shames inflicted upon ratkind. When you rise, you rise a rat (honorary): the Rat Market is open to you.

#the rat market

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appliancegadget · 2 years

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MAJESTE Casserole Premium Chinese Traditional Old Beijing Charcoal Copper Hot Pot, Pot Shabu, Camping Home Use Buffet, Cooker Soup Large Cook Cooking for Unusual Gift Ceramic casserole//83

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lacependragon · 3 years

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So since I got so much traffic on my last post, I figured I’d update everyone. I’m in the midst of playtesting what is probably one of the largest modpacks I’ve ever messed around with. As you can see, we sit at about 465 mods, with many being content mods. I’ve included a list of all the interesting ones (I think) below.

My computer takes a little over 8gigs of RAM to run it smoothly, I give it a little more for safety, and it holds between 40-60 FPS. Dips into the 30s when genning new entities or terrain.

I’ve got magic mods, tech mods, world gen mods, biome mods, mob mods, storage mods, decoration mods, and so much more. I’ve been slowly piecing together the configs, the ore gen, and the recipe alterations. It’s definitely not perfect, but I’m having a lot of fun. I’ve played for a couple hours on survival and I found some stuff I still want to tweak, so that’s what I’m up to at the moment.

Takes about 7 minutes from launch to main menu, and about the same to load into a save. About twice that to generate a new world. But I can still watch videos and scroll Tumblr on the same computer, so I don’t really care.

For what it’s worth: no, my computer doesn’t get hot, yes it runs well, yes the fan does turn on but it’s not at full speed, and my computer is a laptop on a lap desk.

Oh, and I’ve called this modpack: Attempting to Escape the Planet of Dragons with Rockets.

By all means, feel free to reblog and ask questions/be surprised/leave tags. I really loved it last time.

Interesting Mods:

Lag Meter Dragon Mounts Legacy Abnormal's Delight Absent by Design Advanced Chimneys Addendum Additional Enchanted Miner Advanced Rocketry AI Improvements AIOT Botania Akashic Tome Alex's Mobs All the Modium Angel Ring Apotheosis Appleskin Aquaculture Archer's Paradox Architect's Palette Architectury Ars Nouveau Artifacts Astral Sorcery Atmospheric Attribute Fix Baubley Heart Canisters Bed Benefits Bedspreads Better Badlands Better Advancements Better Biome Blend Better Burning Better Dungeons Better End Forge Betterlands Better Mineshafts Better Spawner Control Better Strongholds Better Than Mending Better Tride Return Bigger Reactors Biome ID Fixer Biomes O Plenty Block Carpentry Blood Magic Botania Botany Pots Botany Trees Bountiful Baubles Bow Infinity Fix Builder's Addition Building Gadgets Buzzier Bees Oh the Biomes You Will Go Cable Tiers Caged Mobs Carry On Spice of Life: Carrot Edition Catalogue Cat Jammies Cavalry Caves and Cliffs Backport Charging Gadgets Charm Charms Cherished Worlds Chicken Chunks Chickens Shed Chipped Clay Conversion Clumps Cobble for Days Colds Enchants Colored Bricks Colytra Comforts Common Capabilities Compacter Connected Glass Construction Wand Cooking for Blockheads Copper Pot Corail Recycler Corail Woodcutter Corail Woodcutter BYG Extension Craftable Horse Armour Create Create Stuff Additions Create Addition Crock Pot Cable Tiers Culinary Construct Curio of Undying Curios Curios Quark OBP Curios Armor Stands Curios Elytra Curios Shulker Boxes Customizable Elytra Cycle Paintings Cyclic Dank Storage Darker Depths Dark Utilities Data Fixer Slayer Decorative Blocks DeLogger Demagnetize Diet Differentiate Ding Doggy Talents Double Slabs Draconic Evolution Dragon Seeker Drawer FPS Dungeon Crawl Dungeons Gear Dungeons Mobs Dungeons Plus Earth Mobs Mod Easy Hammers Easy Paxel Eidolon Elevators Emendatus Enigmatica Enchantment Descriptions Enchant With Mob The Endergetic Expansion Enderite Ender Storage Engimatic Graves Ensorcellation Entangled Entity Culling Environmental Materials Environmental Tech Expandability Extended Caves Extended Bonemeal Extra Golems Extra Storage Extreme Reactors Extreme Sound Muffler Fairy Lights Farmers Extra Foods Farmers Delight Farmers Delight Integrations Farming for Blockheads Fast Bench minus Replacement Faster Ladder Climbing Fast Furnace minus Replacement Fast Leaf Decay Fast Suite Farmers Delight Cookbook Find Me Flamboyant Flicker Fix Flux Networks Flywheel Forbidden Arcanus Endertech FPS Reducer Framed Blocks Friendly Fire FTB Backups, Chunks, Essentials, Ultimine Garden Arsenal Glassential Guard Villagers Healing Campfire Help Wanted Ice & Fire I Like Wood I Like Wood BYG Illagers Plus Illagers Wear Armor Immersive Cooking Immersive Engineering Industrial Foregoing Inspirations Inventory Essentials Inventory Tweaks Iron Chest Iron Furnaces Iron Jetpacks Item Collectors Item Zoom JEI + addons Krate KubeJS & addons Lantern Colors Lenient Creepers Light Overlay Lighting Wang Log Protection Lootr Mana and Artifice Masonry Macaw Bridges, Doors, Fences, Furniture, Lights, Paintings, Roos, Trapdoors, & Windows Mekanism Metal Barrels Mini Coal Mining Gadgets Mob Grinding Utilities Mod Name Tooltop Mooshroom Tweaks More Crafting Tables More Dragon Eggs More Villagers Morph o Tool Mouse Tweaks Mystical Agriculture & Aggradditions Nature's Aura Nature's Compass Neapolitan Nether Portal Fix No Fog NoMoWanderer No Potion Shift No Villager Death Messages Nyfs Quiver Occultism Ocean Floor Oh My Gourd Omni Organics Out of Sight Outer End Overloaded Overloaded Armor Bar Pam's Harvestcraft 2 Paraglider Peaceful Recipes Peaceful Surface Pipez PizzaCraft PneumaticCraft Repressurized Pocket STorage Potion Bundles Potion Descriptions Powah Pretty Pippes Project E Project Red Quantum Storage Quark Quark Oddities Quark O Plenty Quartz Chests Random Patches Ranged Pumps Ratlantis Rats Refined Pipes Refined Storage + addons Relics Reliquary Repurposed Structures Resourceful Bees RF Tools suite Gauges & Switches Sapience Savage and Ravage Save My Stronghold Scaffolding Drops Nearby Scuba Gear Serene Seasons Shulker Drops Two Shulkered Shulkersception Shut Up Experimental Settings Silent Gear Silent Gems Simple Magnets Simple Generators Simple Sponge Simple World Timer Simply Backpacks Simply Jetpacks Simply Light Skinned Lanterns Small Ships Smooth Boot Snad Sodium Solar Flux Reborn Sophisticated Backpacks Spark Spartan Shields Spartan Weaponry Spawn Egg Recipes Spawner Fix Starlight StartupQoL Storage Drawers Structures Compass Structuerize Supplementaries Sushi Go Crafting Swing Through Grass Tank Null Tinkers Planner Terraforged Tesseract The Undergarden The Abyss Chapter 2 Thermal Suite Time in a bottle Toast Control ToolBelt The One Probe + addons Torchmaster Towers of the Wild Trample Stopper Translocators Trash Cans Trash Slot Travel Amchors Traverse Treemendous Twiglight Forest Unnamed Animal Mod Upgrade Aquatic Upgraded Netherite Useful Railroads Valhelsia Structures Vanilla Food Pantry Vanilla Tweaks Mr. Crayfish Vehicle Mod Mry Crayfish Furniture Mod + More Furniture Villager Names Void Totem Waystones Well Behaved Mobs Wireless Chargers Wither Skeleton Tweaks Wool Tweaks woot Wormhole Wyrmroost XNet + Gases Yungs Extras

#lace speaks #minecraft #mineblr #modded minecraft #minecraft modpack

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