Each Sunday, Weekend Writing Warriors offers a selection of eight-sentence excerpts from writers in multiple genres and forms. Check out the full roster here.
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Our own kin killed each other, people like us but not.
They say we were the second to last ship to leave the Original World; that’s the one thing everybody agrees on.
We weren’t even meant to survive! Not only bone-fields, but bone-quarries, on those worlds, layers of dead like you can’t imagine. They killed each other and we’re the inheritors. Everywhere we’ve gone that’s even remotely inhabitable–why do you think we keep moving outward? Yes, all the liturgies are very grateful for what we have, but we know we’re here on sufferance.
Karis is the Mother of Worlds but we’re her late-comer stepchildren. We’re the distant kin, if we’re kin at all, and the only reason she doesn’t kill us is that we hold her at arm’s length.
***
Character interview for the Shipwright cycle, which is set about 600 years before the time of Ship’s Heart. The speaker is Phila, cousin to Naime the Shipwright. This part of the interview is a collaboration with poet-scholar Lev Mirov, who provided questions drawn from sociology of religion to help me understand the cult of Martis-Mortis, the war deity to whose cult Phila belongs.
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Lots on bones here. I wonder why they weren’t meant to survive, and why holding the home world at arm’s length lets them survive.
“Bone quarries” – that’s a really chilling term. Very powerful.
Chilling snippet! I’m looking forward to reading more!
Powerful imagery in this snippet…really enjoyed it a lot.
Wow, never meant to survive. That’s chilling. Great snippet.
I’m curious as to how you can hold a Mother of Worlds at arm’s length. Very intriguing!
That’s a creepy set-up. Sounds like a difficult life!
Creepy… I love it. 😀