The exercise:
Write about: a celebration.
I certainly didn't have an eye for easily remembered dates for anniversaries when I started this blog on June 9th, way back in 2008. I'm quite certain I've forgotten many more years than I've remembered to mark the occasion.
Anyway, happy slightly belated 14th birthday, Daily Writing Practice.
2 comments:
I think you might have remembered the blog's birthday as many times as you remembered Diabetes Donut Day but I haven't actually been keeping track. I do, now you're reusing tags, usually go back over the old posts with a tag these days, which is why I think the two events might be equally celebrated :)
A celebtration
Much to Fabian's surprise he saw the Maestro in the Museum the following morning, collecting a coffee from the Director's kitchen. He looked up when Fabian came in, grunted, and looked away again.
"They caught the guy who was putting magical traps around my office," said Fabian, wondering why he was telling the Maestro and not the other way around. "It was that... what did you call him, illithid?"
The Maestro grunted again and started to walk out the kitchen, with Fabian staring after him in disbelief. Then the Maestro came to a halt, staring down the corridor, and took a step away and then stopped again. He turned back.
"Do you know what an illithid is?" he asked, his voice gravelly. Fabian thought he looked slightly sad.
"No," he said. "I keep meaning to look it up but there's always something else to do first."
"It's the proper name for a mind-flayer," said the Maestro. A slight glint came into his eyes. "I caught my first when I barely out of my teens; there was a team of four of us led by Evans -- we used to call him the Collector for how good he was at catching these beasts -- and we chased it into a cave. It was a tough fight, and it actually killed Cynthia." He paused, remembering. "After we had it subdued though, and were getting it into the ship to bring it back, Evans took me round the cave. You'd think a human or an elf lived in there: there was furniture, there were books, there were rotting corpses, obviously, and there was a table set up with chemical apparatus and notebooks. Evans took the notebooks and told me to set fire to the rest. 'The Empire doesn't want to think that there's anything more sentient than necessary out there,' he said."
"Wow," said Fabian, enthralled by the idea of a secret lair for a mind-flayer. "It was actually intelligent?"
"It was probably cleverer than us," said the Maestro. "I didn't get much chance to talk to it, and I'm pretty sure it ended up as ingredients for various devices and spells, but on the way back I did spend some time around it and... it talked. And I listened."
"Ok," said Fabian. "That's amazing. What does it have to do with--"
"Framer? He's a spider-elf."
"I heard that recently," said Fabian, wondering what he could say without giving anything important away. "Well, I heard he has spider-elf ancestry."
"He's the real thing," said the Maestro. "I've worked with him for years. Known him well all that time too. He pretends there's human in there, but there isn't. But... he's the one who tipped me off about illithids. They're not evolved, like us and the elves, they're made. They're made by spider-elf mages who take another human or elf and change them."
"What?" Fabian felt cold as the shock of the Maestro's words hit him like a rainshower.
"That's why I call him that, it's an old, inside joke. But I know him. Whatever he was trying to do, he wasn't trying to hurt you. He was trying to help you. Maybe even protect you from yourself."
Fabian tried to look as unguilty as he could.
"No-one's tried to touch the Staff for the last few days," said the Maestro. "That's reason for a celebration at least."
Greg - I imagine percentage wise those two are pretty close. I'll have to look and figure it out sometime.
Oh, well this was a most unexpected turn of events! The Maestro rarely fails to deliver a surprise, but I should think this is the biggest so far.
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