Chapel Orahamm's Blog, page 7

Writing time, feeling lost

I would love a bit of input.

I want to write, and I found a selection of time this weekend where I will be able to do just that. I have a mandatory policy with my LLCs that I do not work on them on weekends. Those are for family and hobbies. So. I actually have time when I’m not helping with housework or healing from yet another surgery. The last one was in January and I’m still on 10lb lift restrictions for another two weeks, but I could not have asked for a better outcome with that.

Anyways. My problem is that I have a lot of stories to work on. But none of them interest me. All I want to do is go into Polaris Skies and poke and prod it. Like…I just want to go live in the grey dismal nature and raw emotion. I can’t really build a new world around that premise without copy-pasta-ing it. And I don’t want to make a character that lives in that particular universe because of how the story ends. I would have to figure out a tie-in and let’s go with that storyline is now locked in. I’m also not sure if I have it in me to write another broken character. Not like I wrote for Eoin, Fane, Nat, Lunam and Sanctus. They were really me patching up a lot of angst and anguish and learning about myself. Which now has me a bit lost in the types of stories I want to write and tell. I liked the dark side. That emo edge. It was comfortable and recognizable. But, I’m growing older and learning more about myself which is ending up with my characters becoming softer.

Anyways. I still need to write the Glendweller stories. Maybe that would give me the bleak anguish I need…but that kind of world-building tends to be intense, and I’ve noticed I’m having a harder time recently writing up world builds vs. dialogue. I’m happier in the realm of dialogue.

What do you think? I mean…I can watch my dashboard, for Polaris Skies being one of my most prized pieces, I think I’ve only had one person actually read it. Is something like that worth writing again?

Finding Time with the new store

*Commence whining noises*

This has been an intense upstart. I went and got an LLC put together for Iris Basin Homestead. I’ve now got a website. I’ve got a whole bunch of towels listed to my Etsy. I opened up a Tumblr account. I even have an Instagram account and an email all related to the Iris Basin Homestead store. And the towels never seem to end. Grant it, I did this to myself.

And I renewed my Chapel Orahamm LLC for editing and art commissions.

Help me. Pray for me. Shoot me. Any of those phrases work.

And I still have a full blown queen size quilt to deal with on top of all this chaos.

*Groaning intensifies.*

Anyways – I wanted to share what I was up to. So, here’s a link to my new shop. Everything routes to Etsy right now. Eventually I plan on just running my shop through my website and not through Etsy, but I have to get some momentum somewhere.

One of these days I’m going to be able to sit and write again. At least this is giving me that type of time you get when working a regular 9-5 where you desperately want to write but you don’t have time, so the characters start complaining when you get five minute gaps of time to day dream and when you finally get a solid hour to truly sit and write you get three chapters finished all in one go.

Some of my towels I’ve gotten put together.

This week’s update on my business

I’m progressing with my Etsy site: IrisBasinHomestead. Currently, I have digital downloads for cross stitch patterns. But, as you can tell from the photo above, I’m expanding. I bought my first pack of shipping bags. I really wanted my packaging to be something that would be eye-catching and set people up with happiness from the very start. I found holographic thank you stickers to place on the colored tissue paper I want to use for wrapping the items. And I picked up tea towels.

Yes. Tea towels.

I grew up with my grandmother teaching me to hand embroider tea towels as a way to keep me sitting still because of my high energy at that time. And I was kinda missing that fidget level in the last few weeks. However, I don’t have much good use for them at the moment. I have more than plenty of dish towels in excellent condition. But, it occurred to me that I could make them for other folk who grew up with these flour sack towels on their countertops.

But…I had wrist surgery a year and a half ago. Needlework is something I can handle for about 20 minutes at a whack. And hand embroidery takes quite a bit of time if done neatly – and I’m the perfectionist type that likes every stitch being exactly the same and tiny. That kind of time and neatness does not translate into a profit. There’s a limit to what a person is willing to pay on a tea towel. Accounting for my time spent on it would be cents for hours.

My birthday hit recently and I had a bit of money from that. So I did something big for me. I pulled a bit more money from my Substantive and Developmental Editing business (I still take private commissions for anyone who needs their fiction manuscript cleaned – just drop an email at chapelorahamm@gmail.com and I’ll get back with you). Then I put that money into expanding this Etsy business.

I bought an embroidery machine off Ebay. I thought it was going to be used. Nope. It came in mint condition still in the plastic bags and everything. Now I have to figure out these manuals, but still – I couldn’t ask for a better stroke of luck getting one of these for about a third of the cost of a new model. I think the machine I got was originally brought out in 2012 – so, there might be some hacking old software – but when you want to get into a business you can’t afford new in, you make the sacrifices.

Then I purchased flour sack tea towels, packaging, stickers, tissue paper, stabilizing fabric, and embroidery thread. Family asked why I would waste birthday money on an embroidery business. “You should buy something you actually want, like clothes or a book, or something.” Well, I really want at least one of my business ideas to come to fruition.

I tried with my Editing and Art commissions. I made a right go of it for two years. But AI and online editing software are stepping into my sphere. A lot of people assume they can run their manuscript through one of these and it will cover their plot holes and development issues. The thing is…there are a lot of self-pub and indie folk who are successfully releasing books that people really do enjoy that are full of plot holes, and that is killing the human editing industry.

I just have to shrug. Dev/Sub is expensive. It really is. Most people don’t want to drop $2K on a 100K word manuscript. I can’t fault them for that. I don’t want to drop that type of money on my writing. I just don’t have it to do that with. Let us be real here. Writers, most often, are just regular joes working regular jobs, and they don’t have the cash to drop on a vanity project. Most Americans don’t even have $1000 in their bank account to cover an emergency. Where are they going to find the money to have someone tell them their red dragon in chapter 4 is now a purple chimera in chapter 7, expand the book by 3 chapters to help round out a character arc, and delete 47 instances of ‘was’ in 2 pages?

Editing was something I did well. I worked on multiple anthologies and a play with other editors and a couple of stand-alone novels. This was something I knew I could do competently and proved it to myself and others. But life moves on. I don’t have much of a presence on social media anymore. That was where I could advertise my services and where I found my clients. Twitter failed and I just couldn’t bring myself to put the hours in again on building my presence back up to 8.5K followers. I don’t have that kind of time to spend on mental gymnastics, political finagaling, and dodging sad news. My mental health can’t do it anymore.

But I’m trying with Instagram again. This time I’m keeping it to other arts/crafts folk. Quilting, sewing, crochet, knitting, those things. I’m not following any other types of accounts. That’s going to have to work for me. I’m using it to promote my Etsy shop and share some of my craft projects.

This week I finished my Halloween pinwheel and 4 square quilt. I did it with spare fabric I had lying around to practice pinwheels. This was so I could move on to Beach Days by Satomi Quilts – I found it on Etsy if you think you want to work on the pattern too. The umbrellas use the pinwheel angle for the first stage of construction before moving on to another angle utilizing a template. I wanted to practice that pinwheel angle, seeing as up to now, I’ve only done layer cake square assembly.

This quilting practice is two-fold. I wanted to replace a couple of quilts that are falling apart – they’ve turned so threadbare that saving them is near next to impossible. I also want to quilt placemats, pot holders, bowl cozies, coasters, and tote bags for my Etsy shop. Now with this embroidery machine, I’m exploring so many other options to add to the shop.

I spent the day today cutting out most of the fabric for Beach Days before I went to the post office and picked up my embroidery machine (slamming my finger in the car door along the way – which has put a damper on getting work done). Now, having given up on getting all the sand rectangles cut out for Beach Days, I’m sitting down to read this manual and find the website it suggests for design downloads.

When will I get back to writing? Probably when I’ve got this thing off the ground.

What would you like to see in the Etsy shop?

Book Reviews

I run a separate blog for book reviews called Books in the Cottage. I wanted to share what I’ve been reading in the last year. Maybe something in there will look interesting to you.

Version 1.0.0

Working on My Etsy Site

Been busy with life recently and haven’t found a lot of time to write.

My father-in-law died on Valentine’s Day. The whole family is pretty broken up about it, and we’re all trying to pick up the pieces in whatever ways we can. We’ve known for several months that the time was coming and that pre-mourning knowledge has been eating at us all.

I’ve found that doing with my hands rather than writing is where my brain is laying right now. That and art design. The characters are being quiet.

So, I figured I’d update you with what I have been able to do. I’m working on a Halloween quilt because it has nothing to do with hearts and is far enough away from the fall season for me not to feel rushed to complete it in time to enjoy the season.

I’ve also been working on building up an Etsy business. Now, if only I could get some sales. That part has been the challenge. I’ve been making cross-stitch designs in the hopes of having an income one of these days. Watching my mother-in-law, who has been a housewife all her life and has absolutely no work experience to speak of, struggle to understand who she is and what she can do with her life at her age has been terrifying and eye-opening as a fellow housespouse.

Therefore, I wanted to share a bunch of my designs on here. Maybe one of ya’ll would know someone looking for a bit of thread and needle time. If you would like to help support this business venture, my Etsy Shop is IrisBasinHomestead.

The Feather on My Scale: Ch 24

Falling. A black void of electricity and gravity. I opened my eyes to find myself in a room I had not visited in years. A cabin in the mountains near the South Temple. Log and hardwood and a metal roof that was too rustic for a royal. The bed was a mess and clothes spilled across the floor. The windows had been left open to let the dome’s breath flutter into the room like a lost bird. Tension eased out of my spine as I laid my head back on the leather and wood rocking chair and listened to the floor creak below me.

“This is not what I expected of a king of a biodome.” Maolruibh startled me out of my ease.

“What are you doing here?” I gasped, trying to settle my racing heart.

“This is your void. I am honestly surprised to find you awake. I came looking for your memories. Instead, I find you have a void like I do. Dmitri. Hmm. I will have to revisit with him and find if he is also in possession of one. There might be more to what Corbin did to you than I had initially thought,” Maolruibh mused at the open window over the sink. Green gingham curtains, pulled back with scrap ties, framed a view of evergreens planted by the first settlers of the Hawria biodome.

“Seth’s cottage that burned to the ground in a wildfire years ago is my void?” I tried to wrap my head around this. True, it was the spot I visited in my head the most when I started daydreaming. Shortly after rescuing him from Last Rights, I had secretly taken him back south in hopes of freeing him to his past life. Instead, I had found a slice of heaven I could never fathom being able to touch again.

“If that is what this place is, then yes, it is your void. It’s the core of your peace. Where you feel the most alive.” Maolruibh nodded. He left the makeshift kitchen to ease onto a milking stool that served as the only other chair in the one-room building.

“You needed my memories. I take it, this was not what you were after? But, you said you could see me. My entirety as you said.”

Maolruibh shrugged. “It is different for Fyskar. I can’t just take from another. It is uncomfortable for both parties. With neutrals, it is maybe painful in the way a headache is irksome. With Fyskar, it is like having your skin undone into a million pieces and sewn back up in the same breath. It is torture at its finest, and within Fyskar, it is looked at as something forbidden. I will not press for those memories if only to obey tradition and to keep from alarming you further. Tell me then of hierarchies if I cannot have my information otherwise.”

And so I laid out the Temple, the Nobles, the Peasants, the Mariners and the history as I understood it of the Hawria biodome.

“What of you and Lunam? There is something dark you aren’t saying in what you have told me.” The man’s sea-glass green eyes drilled holes into my own.

“Mubkharatan. I am what Lunam calls a Providentia. We have no term for it in Hawria. But he is Mubkharatan. It is a gentle word for our incense burners, but it is a name derived of fear for those who possess the power of fire.”

“You fear the fire that Corbin placed in your blood to better help you survive this hellish landscape? You would depopulate that which is meant to save you?” Maolruibh’s face paled before mottling a livid red.

“Why are you upset by this? You left all of us for your underwater home because of us,” I bit back.

“We did not approve of Corbin’s methods, but they were done with reason.”

“Don’t preach to me about the sins of the fathers. I get enough of that from the Temple!” I snapped back.

“How many? How many have died because of your foolishness?” Maolruibh demanded.

I sagged. “Too many. And I do not know how to curb the killing without being dethroned. We must change. For the Mariners and the Mubkharatan both. The people are full of fear and suspicion. The Mariners for their ways with water. The Mubkharatan for their ways with fire. Those who possess magic in their blood are unnatural to the superstitious.”

Maolruibh shook his head in frustration. “What will we do?”

“Did you come looking to interbreed with the Mubkharatan? Is that where your disappointment comes from? Lunam represents a dome where we and the other dome have deposited more than our fair share of the Mubkharatan,” I offered if only to pacify the waves of anger I felt coming off Maolruibh.

“No. It was not to explicitly intertwine our blood with theirs. It is only that such a social system to come into use shows how history repeats itself, no matter how much one wishes it would not.”

I rubbed at the bridge of my nose. “As it is, your timing is abysmal. I have a hot under-the-collar lord looking to usurp me. Lunam’s people just arrived. The Temple has made an egregious error by allowing my marriage to a wab. You coming will set the spark to the kindling already laid in the hearth.”

Maolruibh stared at the fire in the glass-fronted wood stove in contemplation. “What if we offered you assistance?”

“For what? A right to my people?”

“To keep history from repeating itself.”

“You speak of Earth when you say that, don’t you?”

“Yes. The divide amongst people that led to war after war.”

“Then why did you let us have religion? Why do we have cultures that isn’t our own? Why do we worship the ancient gods and wear another land’s clothes? What did you want from us?” I demanded, voice rising.

Maolruibh blinked in confusion. “You are aware of Earth’s history?”

“I was a historian, a researcher, before my adopted father left me on a throne that is perpetually trying to kill me. Yes. I know of Earth. I know that I am, that the people of Hawria are neither of the Egyptian or Japanese lineages. We come from the MidEast and Europa. Those are the genetic background. The Mariners come from the Romae. For reasons beyond my understanding, they were forced in with these nations in an effort to assimilate. We worship gods we have no blood to share with. Why? Why take our culture away and substitute it with another?” I rose.

Maolruibh stared at me in horror. “What have they done to you?”

“They took my history away from me and substituted it with another.” I folded, my burst of anger smouldering away.

“Henu, I meant no harm. I don’t know the answers to the decisions made for your people. What I can do though, as one leader to another, is offer you alliance.”

“In trade for breeding rights to my people,” I spat.

“Never. People must be free. That is a truth never to be sundered. I offer alliance with a hope to form a relationship. To let my people and yours find a way. There may come a time where the Polaris Brotherhood expands, but not by force. Never by force. You and we both need help, and as the pack knows, it is easier with numbers on our side.” Maolruibh smiled amicably.

I sighed and gathered my thoughts. “Fix the dome. We will find if you are competent at battle shortly enough if Sev has not taken the Cliff Temple before the dome curtains are lifted and declared himself defacto Pharaoh. If he has – there will be a civil war, and I do not believe you or your demons will wish to be embroiled in it.”

“The Polaris Brotherhood are not demons. They are glendwellers, beings of flesh and blood bound to the wolf’s energy. They worship no spirit of evil.”

“Then what do you worship?”

“The Forest.” A limb snapped outside.

Chapel Orahamm (C) 2022-2024. All Rights Reserved.

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The Feather on My Scale: Ch 23

“Want Temp.” Lunam broke my focus.

“I’m not sure how I can get him in here until the curtains have been raised,” I admitted. There weren’t any ports or doors in the curtains. It was designed to fully seal off sections of the dome. I had only ever heard of one other time that a curtain had been dropped in my lifetime. Ramses had dropped one on a sector past where Ptolemy had lost his leg when a missile went through the glass. More than a thousand people had died as a result of suffocation before anyone was able to get in and patch the glass. The solar wind had roasted them to nothing more than mummies.

Lunam deflated. He quietly snapped his fingers at his sides as he thought. Chewing on his lip, he stomped off to the group of foreigners to start up another conversation.

“I think he wants Nour to translate,” Ptolemy stated the obvious. I nodded agreement.

The purr of another boat permeated through the low conversations on the dock. This one held two people, both dressed in clothing closer to that of Lunam’s group than Hawria’s traditional garments. Pants that cut off below the knees and vests. Both of the people were male and in their mid twenties I decided after staring long enough. The hair length was something else entirely. Brilliant white hair that hung well past their thighs. Bright red stripes wrapped around one of the men’s upper arms. It took the lean man standing in front of me to realize it wasn’t paint but color in his skin. It had been years since I had seen anyone with decorated skin like that. The last, save for Lunam’s barcode, had been one of the ancient Mariners who had used charcoal dust to color slash wounds purposefully made during a coming age ceremony that had faded from popularity.

“Lunam!” I called for the man’s attention. He popped up from a small knot of people where Borysko sat. I nodded toward the new men coming ashore. He wrinkled his nose and frowned. Shuffling between groups he scrambled over to us.

“White? No. Subgalaxia,” he tasted the words under his breath.

Eyes going wide, I swivelled my attention to Lunam. “How do you know about the Subgalaxia?”

“Temp.” He kept his reply short. Pulling his own hairtie out, I was surprised that the length hit close to midback on him. I shared a glance with Ptolemy before following his example. My hair, curly as it was, would probably compete with his if it was pinstraight like his instead. Rolling up his sleeves, he presented his hands, palms up in a much more respectful manner to these men then he had with the wolfmen. “Tha mi a’ cur failte oirbh, a bhrathair.”

The two men studied his movements. One of them, the one without red bands turned to Ptolemy and me to see if we had something to add to this. The one with bands left his hands in the air over Lunam’s and replied back, “Tha sinn a’ toirt taing dhut.”

Laying his hands onto Lunam’s, the two closed their eyes and bowed their heads. I shifted my weight and raised an eyebrow at the man without bands. He turned to appraise the group of wolfmen sprawled out under a tree.

When the awkward, yet reverent moment Lunam and the white-haired man shared had ended, they both dropped their hands away from each other. Lunam motioned for me to come closer. “Temp named white man Fyskar. Know?”

Fyskar. Fyskar were legends. They were angels or maybe even demons. They were the propulsion system for the Subgalaxia. That much I could remember of the word and what little my childhood wanderings through the Library of Alexander had gained me. Blood drained out of my face and hands, leaving me in a cold sweat. If Ptolemy was scared of Mariners for their boating habits, I was terrified of these two men. They were true magic. Something I couldn’t even fully fathom.

The white-haired man with the red bands lifted his hands in their form of greeting. Lunam pointed for my hands. He demonstrated how to lay out my hands flat, palms up. “He talks here.” Lunam pointed to his head. “Easy talk.” Swallowing hard, I stole myself against trembling. The people of Hawria were watching this interchange and I needed them to see me as king, not child hiding behind maids’ skirts.

Laying out my hands, I waited as the man spoke to me gently in yet another language different from what the wolves spoke. His hands settled onto my palms, warm and calloused.

The docks vanished. I found myself on a marble tile floor, staring through thick glass at fish and corals. Light filtered through from high above, leaving the tall room in deep green hues. Jittery at the sudden transformation of my space, I turned in search of the man. A menagerie of deep red and plum velvet chairs and sofas spread out on the marble floor. A heavy wood clock ticked against a wall next to an alcove.

“You are welcome in my space,” a low voice directed my attention to a shadowed space against a wall near the massive windows. The Fyskar man sat on a navy blue chair, his black suit and purple frocked shirt making his white hair that much brighter. He would have been no more than a scattered shaft of light in the camouflage of the room.

“You speak my language?” I let the anxiety melt out of my limbs momentarily.

“The voice of the soul transcends linguistic barriers, brother.” The man motioned me to a chair next to him. “Come, sit. Observe.”

“Where is Ptolemy? Where am I?” I demanded, wary of leaving myself vulnerable.

“As Dmitri explained, we are here.” The man tapped the side of his head.

“I don’t understand.”

“No. But you will shortly. Come, it is easier to find a neutral ground when seated. You have little to fear of me as I am.”

“I think I will stand.” I tested.

The man raised a shoulder. “Then let us converse. I am Maolruibh. The man at my side in the waking world is my younger brother Raild, grandsons to Bernhard of the Fyskar. I will assume you have heard of him?”

My mouth ran dry. Grandsons? They looked to be in their twenties, but they would well be over two hundred if their grandfather had been on the Subgalaxia. “As a child, I was privileged to spend time in the Library of Alexander. There I learned of your stories.”

“Dmitri said that you are a Pharoah, a king of this biodome by the name of Henu. May I call you such?”

“Who is Dmitri?”

Maolruibh cocked his head at the question. “The man you had come greet us?”

“Lunam? Oh, Dmitri must be his original name. They have some strange practices in their dome.” Watching the deep sea fish, I was caught by a wandering thought. Wash was from the South Temple, up in the mountains. I had never questioned how he knew what the bottom of Nile looked like, let alone the fish often brought up from it.

“As I gathered. Henu, if I may?” Maolruibh drew me back from my thoughts.

“That is fine.”

The man gave me a procedural nod. “Borysko requested we come from the ship to speak, seeing as there is a language barrier, and Dmitri said he was not confident in explaining what was happening. Forgive us. We meant no harm to your dome. We have the technology beyond the emergency clotting cement to replace the panels.” I must have visibly sagged from that by the half smile Maolruibh gave me.

“My brothers must have startled you, forgive us. The Polaris Brotherhood forgets themselves that the dome-livers descended from the Red Hare line and are not capable of shifting.”

“Red Hare? Polaris Brotherhood? Shifting?” I stumbled over all these variables.

“You spent time in the Library of Alexander, yes?”

“As a young child. I know nothing of these words though. I know of Fyskar. Spirit talkers. They can see the whole of you unguarded; all your secrets and use this for their own doings.”

Maolruibh chuckled. “I haven’t heard you use the word evil yet, but your tone tells me that might be your logical end to that bit of knowledge. The Polaris Brother fractioned away from the surface world when Corbin, the great founder of the Subgalaxia and saviour of the human race, went against Anson’s request to leave his genetic line alone. You are a descendant of this deviance. As is Dmitri.”

I sat with that. “We’re brothers?”

“Not so much brothers in the way Raild and I are from the same mother, but more such relations in the same way that all Mariners share the same code that gives them their skin and eye color. You and Dmitri share the same code from the last true Red Hare.”

“How do you know that?”

“I see fire in Dmitri. I see it entwined in the very core of his being, built and driven by a forced evolution derived in test tubes and pipettes. I see in you the counterpart, the fuel of it, if you must. Why Corbin felt it necessary to split the code in such a way, I wish I knew.” The man rested his chin on his knuckles to regard me in quiet thought.

“We come from one of the Fyskar that drove the Subgalaxia?” The velvet of the chair ensnared my senses as I ran my thumb along a seem to sooth my racing heart.

“Fane Anson, yes. Fyskar were made of three sides – the White Horse, the Red Hare, and the Neutral. I am a White Horse. Fane Anson was the last true Red Hare. We are, in a way, complete opposites in power. Corbin, possessed by a curiosity that broke our lines of trust and loyalty, intersected Fane’s code with the populations of the ships escaping earth. Egg cells, sperm cells – he adjusted the DNA to host Fane’s fire in hopes of making a stronger species capable of surviving this infernal planet.

“We, Bernard’s progeny and the Polaris Brotherhood, left the ground domes to Corbin’s expirements and settled at the bottom of the sea – as you might assume from your surroundings. This is my void, my center, where I feel most at home. It is a real room in our domain.”

I studied the man as I slowly absorbed the wealth of information. “How do you know of Mariners?”

He gave me a half smirk. “I see you. All of you. Your malice and your hope. There is no hiding your history and your trajectory. In a way, it benefits me to quickly understand the cultures present around you.”

“Why are you here then, if you left us to our own devices?” I wanted to get up and pace off the restless energy building in my system. Instead, I settled against the chair back and forced myself to slowly relax each muscle group from my fingers into my chest.

Maolruibh shifted with the question. Collecting his thoughts, he studied a particularly large armoured fish sweeping by the window. A shadow fell across his face with the motion before the world came back to shimmering light. “The Polaris Brotherhood is small. We have kept our records as close as possible to prevent inbreeding. Now though, we are reaching a bottleneck. There is a limit to how far we can continue our lives without devastating consequences. Food production, housing, health. Those we are secure with. It is that we will die out.”

I blinked. “You came in unannounced and broke my dome to find fuck buddies?”

Maolruibh blanched. “I was trying to be polite about it. In such a rough way of saying it, yes. We need new blood.”

I settled my head into my hands and sighed out. All the pressing weight on my skin settled into a hard knot in my chest. Tears threatened. “Gods, I thought we were going to lose the whole of the Mariner’s Ghetto and the Nile Bay. We could have had more than two thousand people die. I’m going to be locking into this section of the dome for more than a week as we get those dome curtains up and you come to me with your magic and your demons and you want our blood?”

“Not blood in the same way as Dmitri requires.”

“No, I get that. I’m just not entirely sure you fully grasp the battle you are looking at in obtaining your objective here. Look through my memories. You’ll find issues abound in our hierarchical system.” I flinched back as Maolruibh sat forward and reached for my forehead. “What are you doing.”

“You said ‘look through your memories’. I shall.” He placed his hand on my head.

Chapel Orahamm (C) 2022-2024. All Rights Reserved.

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The Feather on My Scale: Ch 22

The younger mariners dashed for a niche in the cliff face, disappearing through it only to emerge less than a minute later with bright yellow suits. Handing one to me and Ptolemy, they yanked on their own in quick succession before helping the elder Mariner Captain into one. Following their lead, I shoved one foot and then the other into the attached white boots, yanked up the strange fabric and shimmied my arms in before tugging at the metal tab that pulled the fabric together up the front. Tugging on the attached white helmet, I found myself in a stifling, crunchy-sounding, brown-tinted environment.

A squashing sensation of claustrophobia stole my breath away. Rough hands dragged me around and a slap on the back forced a chug of cold air to blow in my face, squashing the sensation. I turned to find one of the young mariners yelling directions at me in their fast-paced dialect. Staring hard, I watched his lips move and waded through the words like quicksand. “Air supply. There’s an air supply that’s on a timer?” I clarified what I thought the man said. He nodded before scrambling back to the console.

More mariners, some in yellow suits and others in their regular clothes filled the streets and docks as we watched the great grey prow level off into a city-sized subaquatic vessel the likes of which I had never seen in any of the history books in my collection.

“Henu. Demons?” Ptolemy cowered at my shoulder.

“That’s a ship, Ptol. Think demons can use ships?”

“No one ever told me they were brainless. I don’t see why they couldn’t.” Ptolemy protested.

The Mariner Captain, binoculars to his eyes, motioned for me. I stepped up to the console beneath one of the windows. He handed me the binoculars and motioned my attention toward the ship.

I couldn’t fathom what was so important about the ship when our air supply was dwindling through the dome wall, our imminent end maybe an hour or two away. The air recyclers wouldn’t be able to replace what was lost even if we got that wall closed back off in time. It would take months, if not a full year to release all the carbon dioxide from this section of the dome back into the rest without crashing the air recyclers. We didn’t have enough people trained on ancient tech to bring them back online. We couldn’t chance-

“Wolves?” I whispered in confusion. On the deck of the vessel were wolves. At least a hundred, no two hundred. “Ptolemy, Sucer, I love you. Say ‘I told you so.’”

Ptolemy’s hand settled into the small of my back as I handed him the binoculars. “I told you so. What the hell are those?”

“Demons?” We watched a series of self-inflating watercraft fall from the sides of the vessel, the wolves leaping down to the water. In doing so they did something that solidified our opinion of demons. They transformed. Shifted. Their fur, their shape melted away to that of men and women, bare to the sun streaming through the cracked glass of the dome.

I saw no ores. A chugging purr echoed off the calming water. The boats sped toward the docks at a phenomenal, impossible clip. Heart in my throat, I left the red building. Dead in an hour or not, I was still Pharaoh of Hawria and needed to find out what was about to happen to my people.

Ptolemy and I waited at the edge of the largest pier as grey ships made of the same material as my yellow suit pulled into the dock. A naked man, close to Ptolemy’s stature, gave us a once over with a raised eyebrow. The rest of his crew, a handful of men and women muttered amongst each other. More of the boats pulled into other piers.

The thunk of booted footsteps raised the hair on my arms. Turning, hoping not to find another horror, I instead felt my heart sink. “Lunam?”

The vampire leader of the Mubharakten dome had a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead. He perked up when he heard his name. He approached our pier and waved. Ptolemy signalled him over. Lunam approached, watching the naked people in the ship cautiously. Giving us the same once over as the man sitting forward in the ship, Lunam plucked at Ptolemy’s sleeve with interest.

“Flexilis? Quare1?” He posed before shrugging, realizing I wasn’t going to have a good clue as to what he was saying. He dragged in a deep breath and frowned at the shattered glass panels before he looked back at the pile of naked people all watching us with interest.

“My imeyem v vidu otsutsyiye vreda2.” The tall man in the ship lifted a pair of placating hands before moving for the ladders.

Ptolemy shifted to move before Lunam settled a hand on his suit. Stepping forward, Lunam crouched in front of the rungs, blocking the man’s path. “Ya ne slyshal yazyk moyey babushka uzhe mnogo let. Kto ty3?”

I swallowed at the soft voice. It was deep, melodic, and made of dark promises. What those promises were yet, I wasn’t positive. It sounded like love and death in the same breath. Lunam’s voice was choppy, skittish in our language. He struggled with the s and r intonations, the skittering style. This though, it was the origin of his accent. It wasn’t Easimal. It sounded nothing like Corticibus or Maria Mater. It didn’t even sound like Sanctus who was supposedly from his same dome.

The man in the boat’s eyes grew huge. “Borysko. Ktyo ty4?”

Lunam flashed a smile, fangs in full force as his eyes shifted from green to black. “Vash koshmar. Mozhesh’ zvat’ menya Lunam.5”

The group in the boat flinched back at this revelation. Some bared fangs of a less serpentine and more canine nature back at Lunam. He turned to me. “Henu, man says named Borysko.”

“Borysko?” I asked. The man flicked back and forth between us.

“Ty slomal biokupol. Teper’ my vse umrem. Vy vse idioty. Chto my budem s toboy delat’? Pochemu ty zdes’? Govori bystro. Ili ya s”yem tebya.6,” Luman was commanding every person’s attention on the dock with that voice, and yet none of us could figure out what he was saying.

Borysko dragged in a sharp breath and twisted to look at the dome wall. His color sallowed. “Yebat. Faddei, pozvonite na korabl’. Nam nuzhen tsement.7” He motioned for one of his men to look at the cracked glass. The man, leaner and dark-haired nodded before digging around in the seats of the inflatable ship. He extracted a clunky -looking version of our coms in green and grey. Rotating the nob at the top he called in what I could only think were more people on the ship.

Wolves still on board the ship shifted into more naked humans. These pulled hoses from hatches on the ship and pointed it at the dome wall. Soon a blanket of cream colored foam coated the glass and built down to the water’s edge where it struggled to harden.

Through this astounding grab from Osirisus’s clutches, Lunam and Borysko held what sounded to be a heated argument. Neither of them raised their voice above normal speech, but I had the impression of hostile aggravation from Lunam. What I wouldn’t give for Nour to be here translating what was going on.

“Ptolemy?” Lunam asked over his shoulder. “Person has cloth?” He pointed towards the group of mariners.

“Cloth?” Ptolemy asked, confused.

Lunam pulled at his shirt and pointed at Borysko. “Cloth? Need. Need? Need to be…cloth…? Pants. Shirt? Clothed! Yes. Clothed.”

“Are they hostile? Who are they? Where did they come from? What do they want?” He ignored the request, snapping out of his confusion.

Lunam shifted away from the barrage of questions. “Slow. Slow, please. Clothed easy?” The man pleaded, though the black orbs and fangs was not helping us feel like he needed much help.

“Do I need this suit?” I asked Ptolemy.

“Probably not. That foam looks like something solid. I think they didn’t realize they come up through the dome. Probably safe to take these off.” Ptolemy tugged his suit off and stepped out of it. Lunam motioned to have it. Ptolemy tossed it to him. I followed suit, leaving me in my formal attire. Many of the mariners, realizing who I was, quickly knelt, though the Mariners Captain and his attendants stayed as they were. Ptolemy scoffed, though I shushed him. Tossing my suit to Lunam, the vampire dropped them into the boat. Borysko and a woman next to him tugged them on, sans helmet. Others in the boat muttered the same word, flicking glances at us, cheeks turning red.

Raising a hand, I commanded silence for those close enough to take notice. “Fetch clothing for the foreigners!”

With everyone clothed in a varying state of traditional mariner robes or traditional Hawrian skirts, we finally had time to figure out what was going on. Men had been sent to the curtain station closest to the Nile Bay where they would be able to start decompression on the plastic. It would take days to drain and retract it. Maintenance crews would need to be brought out to inspect it for rips. Construction crews would be summoned after to help with any infrastructure crushed when the curtains had come down. Emergency personnel from the mariner ghetto were sent to the edge of the curtain to start looking for anyone who might have been caught in the curtain release. The scale of clean-up left me hollowed out. But there was not enough time to contemplate if my decisions had ended in fatality. All I could do was let that worry have a place on my shoulder.

Rubber? Why?We mean no harm.I haven’t heard my grandmother’s language for many years. Who are you?Borysko. Who are you?Your nightmare. You can call me Lunam.You broke the biodome. Now we will all die. You are all idiots. What are we going to do with you? Why are you here? Speak quickly. Or I’ll eat you.Fuck. Faddei, call the ship. We need cement.

Chapel Orahamm (C) 2022-2024. All Rights Reserved.

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Not sure if you’re aware, but I have other media that I make. Something I enjoy doing is creating cross-stitch patterns. I’m taking this month to also do research into stickers, laser cutter svg. files, enamel pins, and downloadable scrapbook materials. I first need to figure out how to actually market to an audience.

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The Feather on My Scale: Ch 21

Two miles of a hard gallop flew under my mount’s hooves. With every step, I hoped Ptolemy would come into view. The alarms were doing nothing for the bile rising in my throat. On the soft soil and sand, I feared him injuring himself more. Physically fit and stable on the prosthetic I knew at a logical level, but I still saw in my mind’s eye the pain he’d gone through just getting to the point of wearing one, the models he’d worn through, the fact this one still had a squeak in it that indicated an ill-fitting mechanism. I didn’t want him doing damage to his nub. I didn’t want more surgeries.

His broad back shadowed against the Nile Bay horizon and dome panels finally revealed itself to me. Drawing in a muffled sigh of relief, I slowed my mount to a steady trot, then a walk as I pulled up next to him. “Ptolemy? You alright?”

He stood fixated. I turned to study the horizon. A platoon of fishing vessels surrounded a bubbling mass near the far edge of the dome. “What is that?”

Ptolemy, snapping out of his stunned silence looked up at me. “Demons have come.”

“Demons, Ptol? Really? It looks more like a sweep shattered.”

“But…”

“Come with me. Let’s find the Mariner Captain in charge of today’s routings and see what he has to say.”

The colour in his cheeks drained, leaving him papery.

I sagged. “Ptol.”

He quickly tried to neutralize his expression.

“We’ve been through this?”

He dragged in a breath. “I-I know. I know. Fundamentally I know it, Henu.”

“The Cliff War. We were in the wrong. You and I know this, Ptol.”

He bristled. “It doesn’t make it any fucking easier!”

I slid off my mount and grabbed its bridle. “I’m most likely Mariner, Ptolemy! Will you look at me like that when it’s confirmed?”

“You didn’t launch a missile at me!”

“No, but I sure as hell got in your way and got your leg blown off! So what’s the bloody difference between a Mariner and me?”

“I-they-“

“They look like me. I look like them. There’s no difference!”

“I don’t trust them.”

“For what? Protecting themselves when Ramses decided that cleaning out the ghettos around the Bay would be a swell idea to expand the Summer Palace you and I comfortably dined in this evening? For not wanting to be displaced?”

“For trusting the water.”

“You aren’t making sense, Ptol.”

“I could care less about their skin colour. Or their speech patterns. Or most of their culture. But they swim in that water. It’s not clean. It’s from the outside world. It’s contaminated. How do we not know they aren’t in league with the demons living in it?”

“Demons, Ptol?”

“We have no gods of the water. Not deep water. That’s where the demons live.”

I blinked, trying to get a firm grasp on my lover and bodyguard’s rationale. Even he was susceptible to superstitions.

“You can swim, Ptol.”

He swallowed, panic-stricken.

“I’m not asking you to get in the water. You’re escorting me to the docks. You’re not even getting in the ships. I just need to talk to someone and see if whoever’s got a boat out near the sweeps can tell me what’s broken and how to get the damn alarm turned off. You can do that, right, Sucer?”

He thought before nodding slowly.

“Is your leg okay to keep going? Or do you want on the horse?” I offered.

“I can’t have the Pharoah of Hawria come walking into the city with me on a horse. That wouldn’t be proper.” He rubbed at the back of his head, tension seeping out of him as he turned from the panic-stricken junior soldier who had kept me alive in a battlefield neither of us was qualified to be on into the bodyguard I knew him to be. He offered me a mounting hand. I settled into my saddle and tapped its flank to get moving. Ptolemy’s leg squeaked in time with the alarm.

“Why are you hell-bent on thinking I’ll hate you for being Mariner blood?” Ptolemy watched our surroundings as the first shacks emerged from the frontage trees.

“As the lowest caste in the Hawria system, can you blame me? Especially when you act the way you do.”

“You’re afraid of getting assassinated by anti-mariners.”

“Yes.”

Ptolemy plodded along for a time. The horse hooves crunched on dead grasses and loose gravel. The heavy scent of fishing docks hit us in the face as we emerged from the neighbourhoods into the processing district. “Ever since I was young, I grew up on stories of demons. Of people making pacts with them. I haven’t really gotten over that fear.”

“And what of the demons? What would they do to you?” I was trying to figure out why this was still a sticking point.

“Eat me.” He looked up at me like it was the most rational thing to conclude.

“Eat you?” I flattened my tone. “You think there are demons in Nile Bay that want to eat you?”

“Hey, don’t go looking at me like I’ve grown two heads here. Ghost stories from camping trips found you in my tent bed on more than one night, might I remind you.”

“Wasn’t always the ghost stories.”

“Fair. But still, you get scared too.”

“This one just seems like you would have grown out of it.”

“It doesn’t help being paired with some traumatizing experiences.”

“If I promise you that demons aren’t going to come crawling out of the Bay while I’m standing there, can we both talk to the Mariner Captain and get him to turn the alarm off? House of Thoth said they’d know where the button is.”

“Nour?”

“Yes, him. Forgot his name.”

Ptolemy guided the horse toward a large, low red building perched into the cliff face that looked out onto the main piers of the fishing platoon. Dismounting, I straightened my clothes as sunrise peaked through the dome and cast us in a rainbow of pinks and purples.

Ptolemy hitched my mount to a post in time for an ancient man to hobble out of the red building. Weathered and whithered, the man stooped nearly in half. A short stick carved with a plethora of fish provided his only support. A cracked, high-pitched voice that comes with men in old age scratched the air. “Hawria King? Whats to bring ya here?”

“Mariner Captain?” I guessed. He nodded mutely. “I’ve come to see if you can shut the alarm off and what has become of the sweeps?”

The Mariner Captain frowned, shaking his head. “Not the sweeps, Hawria King. Not the sweeps fault. The alarm may be dealt with soon. Yet, the sweeps are not the fault.”

“Then what is causing the bubbling.” I pointed out to the crowd of ships fighting to stay afloat amongst the roiling turmoil.

He frowned, watching the bubbles. “Never seen this before, Hawria King. Not in eighty-five years of my memory.”

My heart sank at that.

“Demons…” Ptolemy whispered.

The Mariner Captain chuckled at my bodyguard. “Demons? You still believing in our boogeymen? We use those stories to keep kiddies from drowning in tide pools.”

The indignant realization of what that meant splashed across Ptolemy’s face like cold water. “Boogeymen stories?”

The Mariner Captain’s chuckle turned into a wheezing cackle. “Oh, it’s been years since I had a grown man whisper about water demons. Aye, those are children’s stories! If’n ye don’t scare the shit out a’ little mischief makers, ye have to go telling their mam the little sprite went n’ offed ’emselves in a riptide. None a’ us wanna to be doin’ ‘at.”

Ptolemy looked down at his feet sheepishly. I wanted to pat him on the shoulder, but decorum dictated otherwise.

“Can you pull up someone out there on a com and find out more about the water? Why it’s doing that?”

“Aye.” The Mariner Captain waved me to follow him into the low, red building. Inside, the thick mud and cool cliffside made for a comfortable, dim respite from the glare of the dome. A wall of ancient tech gave me a strange jitter of anxiety. We had lost most of the understanding to use the equipment in the Nobility and Temple. Save for coms. Those were kept functional. Otherwise, the consoles built into the thick walls looked more like magical alters than the Cliff Temple’s sacrificial golden alter where yearly a blood sacrifice was made to Re.

The man motioned to three mariner youth to contact the fishing vessels. Soft brown, almost greyish in tone, their skin was only darker than mine by a hint. Curly hair like Wash and mine was beaded with different colours in complex patterns that looked like fishing nets. Their bright purple floor length tunics with white belts designated them as upper Mariners, ones trained to read and write. Their dialect escaped me as they made contact with several ships. Ptolemy and I shared a glance before a clatter of claxons and horns announced more chaos.

A massive prow twice the size of the shipping fleet burst through the bubbling mess, sweeps and part of the bay dome over the water shattering. Terror hit me as I grabbed the com off Ptolemy’s collar. Yanking the battery cover off, I pressed the blue button above the battery. “Seal off Nile Bay. Seal off Nile Bay. The Dome has been breached. I repeat, as Pharaoh, the God-King of Hawria, seal off Nile Bay!” I screamed.

A new set of alarms and the growling of steel structure merged with the rest of the noise. Massive plastic curtains much further inland unfurled from the dome beams. Much too slowly for my taste the sheets descended until they crumpled over houses and trees, crushing structures. I knew I had trapped Ptolemy and myself in what was about to become a toxic dead zone. I had trapped everyone in the bay side Mariners ghetto with me. Slowly my actions sank into my bones. Catching Ptolemy’s startled look, I returned it with one begging for forgiveness. The air system whirled as the plastic sheets began the time-intensive process of inflating to create a hull breach seal. Swallowing, I muttered to myself, “Forgive me for those I take to the Duat for my actions.”

Chapel Orahamm (C) 2022-2024. All Rights Reserved.

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