Your choice of prompts is still just a little ominous, but perhaps you're being influenced by Lent starting next week? Are you planning on sacrificing pancakes to your family on Shrove Tuesday to earn 40 days of peace and quiet? :)
Sacrifice “There are six blasted towns,” said Collins, surprising himself with the speed of his response. In the back of his mind his thoughts were a mix of panic and a cooler thread trying to build a response on the fly. “I know about five of them because I looked them up. I come from one of the blasted towns, and it just wasn’t anything we got told about so I got really curious when I heard about them. There are a few old references to six towns, and some older folk I’ve talked to mentioned six, but there’s only ever five listed and people say they’ve forgotten what the sixth name is. But it’s always the same name that everyone’s forgotten, and that stuck in my mind.” “Thinking like a policeman,” murmured the Inspectral, and Collins smiled while in the back of his mind his panicked thoughts tried to decide if the Inspectral had realised he was making things up on the spot or not. “William gets linked to Tanham early on, before the Radiance,” said Collins. “But then it’s not mentioned any more, not even his obituary mentions where he was born. It was the only one in the entire obituary column that week that didn’t mention where the dead guy was born! And that made me wonder, so I looked at a map. And there’s no Tanham on the local map at all. I haven’t checked yet, but I was going to go the library tomorrow afternoon and see if they’ve got older maps that still have Tanham on them.” “Not for public use,” said the Inspectral. “They were all removed at mostly the same time.” Collins nodded. “A town disappeared just like that?” The Inspectral took his turn to nod, his chin dipping inside his ghostly chest. “There was a fund for it,” he said. “If you check antique and second-hand shops you can probably find some maps from well before the Radiance that are also missing Tanham – they were made especially so that if any maps containing it got missed they could be discredited. There’s also a few maps in the Reserve collection in the main library that show a village called Tanham located a long way away from the real location, so that anyone who thinks they’re being clever can go to the wrong place. There’s even some ruins there – a folly I suppose – to keep them happy if they go for a visit.” “That’s a lot of effort to go to!” “There’s something in Tanham that we don’t understand that might just set the Radiance off again,” said the Inspectral. “It might not be enough effort to have made. Time will tell.” “It’s guarded, though, right?” The Inspectral shrugged. “I don’t know any details,” he said. “We will either start finding them out, or we’ll be told to stay out of it, since I rather think William Fulton or someone who knew him is up to something. And one thing I am very sure of, from their history, is that the Radiant Dawn will sacrifice absolutely anything if it means achieving their goal.”
2 comments:
Your choice of prompts is still just a little ominous, but perhaps you're being influenced by Lent starting next week? Are you planning on sacrificing pancakes to your family on Shrove Tuesday to earn 40 days of peace and quiet? :)
Sacrifice
“There are six blasted towns,” said Collins, surprising himself with the speed of his response. In the back of his mind his thoughts were a mix of panic and a cooler thread trying to build a response on the fly. “I know about five of them because I looked them up. I come from one of the blasted towns, and it just wasn’t anything we got told about so I got really curious when I heard about them. There are a few old references to six towns, and some older folk I’ve talked to mentioned six, but there’s only ever five listed and people say they’ve forgotten what the sixth name is. But it’s always the same name that everyone’s forgotten, and that stuck in my mind.”
“Thinking like a policeman,” murmured the Inspectral, and Collins smiled while in the back of his mind his panicked thoughts tried to decide if the Inspectral had realised he was making things up on the spot or not.
“William gets linked to Tanham early on, before the Radiance,” said Collins. “But then it’s not mentioned any more, not even his obituary mentions where he was born. It was the only one in the entire obituary column that week that didn’t mention where the dead guy was born! And that made me wonder, so I looked at a map. And there’s no Tanham on the local map at all. I haven’t checked yet, but I was going to go the library tomorrow afternoon and see if they’ve got older maps that still have Tanham on them.”
“Not for public use,” said the Inspectral. “They were all removed at mostly the same time.”
Collins nodded. “A town disappeared just like that?”
The Inspectral took his turn to nod, his chin dipping inside his ghostly chest. “There was a fund for it,” he said. “If you check antique and second-hand shops you can probably find some maps from well before the Radiance that are also missing Tanham – they were made especially so that if any maps containing it got missed they could be discredited. There’s also a few maps in the Reserve collection in the main library that show a village called Tanham located a long way away from the real location, so that anyone who thinks they’re being clever can go to the wrong place. There’s even some ruins there – a folly I suppose – to keep them happy if they go for a visit.”
“That’s a lot of effort to go to!”
“There’s something in Tanham that we don’t understand that might just set the Radiance off again,” said the Inspectral. “It might not be enough effort to have made. Time will tell.”
“It’s guarded, though, right?”
The Inspectral shrugged. “I don’t know any details,” he said. “We will either start finding them out, or we’ll be told to stay out of it, since I rather think William Fulton or someone who knew him is up to something. And one thing I am very sure of, from their history, is that the Radiant Dawn will sacrifice absolutely anything if it means achieving their goal.”
Greg - man, if that's all it took to get that much peace and quiet...
More fascinating reveals here. Have I mentioned how much I'm enjoying this tale? Because I am indeed.
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