reannaking

It was a bit large to be a will o' wisp, and anyway didn't those prefer forests? They did traditionally, however, beckon naive people to follow them, usually to some manner of doom. Or destiny. It really depended on whom you asked.
"I am not a creature which people have given a name," it said. "I am the first and last of my kind, here for a singular purpose. You must follow me, Bob-Tessell-human. Your gate is about to close."
It took off with great leaping strides, its broad feet seeming to hit the ground without actually making contact with it, small boulders, brush and blades of grass passing through it. Bob spurred on Thornhoof through the storm after the creature which left pink, streaking afterimages of itself. When it needed to turn, it did so smoothly and surely, leading man and horse eastward over the vale, where a great wooded valley sheltered the next town and, at the bottom of a disused well, the nearest gate to Tessell.

As suddenly as an eclipser dragon flying overhead, the forest blocked the moonlight.

"Do you understand what you're doing with yourself?"

Sally couldn't understand why someone would not want to leave Tessell for a beautiful place like Jigsaw, and she could only haplessly attibute it to parts of some peoples' brains not working correctly.

"You're going to have to piss in a pot. There's no cars. You're going to be walking everywhere. No microwaves, no PEUs, no electricity. You're going to have to keep candles on hand just to be able to light your home at night, once you get one." "Oh, and no electric heat or air conditioner. What could possibly be worth giving up living like a civilized person is beyond me."

Some early chapters of Curses! were incorrectly numbered. I've fixed it now.

[Just a bit of work to be copied later]

Stroking the dense, stained wood and its landscape of scrapes, dents and scratches brought to mind the fact that in a library this old, its previous occupants may have stretched back much further than the edifice the table resided in. It may have been used for unfathomable good, stifling evil, or dinner parties. But Kao could only discern any negative thoughts and auras at the time they were emitted, and then only from living things. To have the gift of reading the past of an object was not a more advanced form of his own abilities, but another sort of inherent power altogether, and anyway he preferred curious speculation in this case over empirical discovery.
The inherent feeling of the shelves of books, most of them probably printed by hand but many likely produced by woodblock and ink rollers, could not be mistaken, however. The confining of so much love, hate, knowledge as the end result of so much single-minded labor, so densely in such a dark place could only produce a power that even mundane humans are capable of feeling. Not all of them, but most. No individual book without a certain magical property had its own emotional signature, but the effect of the shelves standing steadfast and ready to fulfill their pupose was more than humbling.

So, I'm going to attempt once again to revive my Deviantart page, and it is going to start by updating info, cycling out older art that is not so awesome (don't worry, it'll have to be really crappy or embarrassing for me to take it down completely) and going through my writing:

All chapters of the main "Jigsaw" story will be taken down in preparation for a story revamp. The story is undergoing a lot of changes and I hope to soon post up, gradually, new chapters. At the moment I have about six.

Stories that have been edited will be updated. Several short stories will also be added! I have been working on a series of themed short stories, each about ten pages long that take place at intervals in Jigsaw and Tessel's history. Background information will be provided in spoiler fields and a few of these stories will contain spoilers for the main Jigsaw story.

In addition, I'll look into posting, in parts, two complete (apart from edits) novels, Curses and Betrolled, both Nanowrimo projects. Curses is a complete story that is nearly finished its first cohesive edit and Betrolled was just finished last year and has yet to go through much in the way of rigorous editing.

Thank you.

Tales to be uploaded in the future, for my own reference:
Jigsaw Book One (The Offal Truth) [rewriting]
Jigsaw Book Two (Runaway Goddess) [rewriting/finishing]
Jigsaw Book Three (Silver Lining) [outline in a shambles]
Jigsaw Book Four (Rude Awakening) [in my head]
Curses!
Betrolled
The Clock of Fate cycle (compiliation of themed short stories)
(Untitled story about a centaur)

Tales to possibly be edited and updated:
The Third Sister
Pandora's Cookie
Drugan's Tale

Other stories in progress:
Shattergate
Woad Is Me (next Nano project?)

Perhaps in the future I will post a handy directory of all these stories, but probably only if I think it is necessary.