I've Finished Writing My Current Work In Progress, And Now It Is Time For Editing. Which Means That I

I've finished writing my current work in progress, and now it is time for editing. Which means that I once again am reminded why I always avoid editing

Original Stories

I made this blog so that I had a place to share any comics, short stories, novellas, etc. that I don't have a better place for. The only one I can think of that's locked and loaded is called Werewoof Undies, and it's a campy werewolf novella, urban fantasy, short little lighthearted story. I'll be posting that on here as I figure out how this whole blog thing works, so if you're interested, be on the lookout!

In regards to the character songs I have been working on (by the way I am not a songwriter this is just for fun) they have really taken me by surprise. For example, one turned out to be some kind of anxiety rap. Another turned into this long thing that I can't get out of my head (I guess I find it catchy). That one is Tye's, and since he is raven themed, so is the song. I feel like talking about that, so I will.

So the nursery rhyme "One for Sorrow" has inspired a lot of people and a lot of things. It's an old rhyme, so it's been around. There are even multiple versions of it, though they are somewhat similar. The idea behind the rhyme is that the number of magpies (yes, originally it seems it was magpies) would indicate something positive or negative. One and two are very established - one is BAD. Two is GOOD. One for sorrow, two for joy. This actually has roots in some actual bird behavior because a lone magpie means something about bad weather, I think, so it actually does hold that seeing single magpies is a bad sign compared to dual magpie action.

Now not everyone has magpies, but the practice of counting corvids holds true across a broader geographic range. So people "counting crows" is a part of that, though often in North America, people are looking at Ravens. It all falls into the same category, really.

I really find this a compelling concept because it really has a vibe. A single raven signifying sorrow? Poe loves it, too. The band Counting Crows obviously agrees with me. So Tye as a character is kind of the 'lone raven', and has to come to terms with the fact that he can't ever signal anything but sorrow: he can't ever be two ravens, so he'll never signal joy.

He also has a sort of obsession with counting crows (backstory reasons). As such, the song has several references to specific numbers of ravens. They also often vascillate between good and bad omens if you take away or add just one, so that's a repeated theme in the song. One verse goes "Five ravens, one flew down. I begged him not to do it, may as well have made no sound". For those of you with some familiarity of the rhyme, you may wonder why he's begging that one raven to stay - it's because in an earlier version of the poem, it reads "Three for a wedding, four for a death", so when it was five ravens, the omen was just about silver. With one fewer, it signals death.

If anyone has any interest in the lyrics I wrote, maybe I'll post them. Maybe I'll record the actual song, too, we'll see

The Worry (part 3)

Eleven days later, on Thursday the 21st, they had exhausted so many of Ethan’s rituals and ideas that they were finally trying one that Jake had found. The ritual had to be performed on an odd numbered Thursday, and the rest of the instructions were very specific as well, but Jake was intentionally keeping the details from the other two. He was worried that Max might decide that he didn’t want to do the ritual at all, and he was preparing to argue each element with Ethan individually, rather than all at once. Jake had the music prepped on his phone, the ingredients prepped, and he even had handouts. He watched the clock, waiting until it was about the right time to begin.

“Alright, Max. Take your shirt off,” Jake began. He pulled the two main components out of his bag.

“This is already off to a weird start. Why does it have to be eleven-thirty?” Max asked as he complied.

“It’s supposed to be close to the witching hour on an odd-numbered Thursday,” Jake answered.

“That sounds familiar. I think one of the rituals my cousin told me about was the same, but I can’t remember which one. It was one that we wouldn’t use, anyway,” Ethan mused.

“Now stand very still so I can get the sigil right,” Jake said, consulting a page where he had drawn the sigil he needed to draw. He opened up his Tupperware of blood and dipped his finger in.

“Where exactly did you get this blood?” Max asked.

“Oh, don’t worry, I didn’t bleed you or anything,” Jake reassured.

“That makes it so much worse. Do you know how many bloodborne illnesses there are?” Ethan said.

“What makes you think it’s even human? It just said ‘blood from a non-kosher animal’, nothing about being human blood. Although, I guess humans probably aren’t kosher, so that might work,” Jake said as he drew the sigil.

“So it’s pig blood?” Ethan clarified.

“Oh, yeah, that would have worked. I wish I had thought of that. Would have been easier to source, I bet, I was worried this wasn’t even going to come in time,” Jake said.

“What is it, then?” Max asked.

“Camel blood. See? Not all that weird. Now recline back a bit so I can put the glitter on,” Jake said.

“Glitter? Any ritual involving glitter could never work,” Ethan said as Max once again did as Jake asked.

“I know you say that, but probably a lot of these elements have several possible variants, or else it would have been really unlikely for any of them to have been developed in the first place. In this case, glitter is shiny, and the color is silver, so maybe the original used polished silver flakes or something. But that would burn him, so it wouldn’t really be worth trying it at that point,” Jake said. That was one of the two big hurdles he expected.

“Fine, I guess it can’t hurt. Except wasting camel blood,” Ethan said. “What’s next?”

“Well, then I draw a line from Max to each of us using the glitter,” Jake said. Ethan shook his head in continuation of his disbelief about the glitter, but Jake continued. “And then we have to fill our shoes with it and put them back on.”

“Right, obviously. You know, the only reason I’m still doing this is that you are reminding me of at least one of the rituals I heard about,” Ethan said, taking off his shoes for Jake to pour glitter into them. Jake did the same with his own shoes and drew the lines, opposite from each other and radiating away from Max.

“Do I have to have glitter in my shoes? And should I just be standing, or should I lay down, or something?” Max asked.

“No on the glitter, and it didn’t say, so do whatever seems comfortable for you, to be honest. You have the least active part. Except getting bloody, obviously,” Jake said. “Right, now take the handout, Ethan. We are going to need to do this dance, staying in the spot where the glitter line leads. Don’t mirror what I do, do it the same way I’m doing it, if that makes sense.”

“This seems familiar for a different reason,” Ethan said. “Anyway, it doesn’t look too hard. Is there a specific tempo, or is it just any synchronized pace?”

“Well, there is a specific tempo. We have to do it to Thriller, by Michael Jackson,” Jake said. Second big hurdle with Ethan.

“That’s a fully modern song,” Ethan said. He seemed to be giving up, though.

“As you said, it’s probably just for the tempo, so we might as well. And it’s pretty well themed, if I’m being honest,” Jake said.

“I think if you two are going to be dancing, it would feel weird if I was standing. I think I’ll sit, maybe,” Max said.

“Do you think you’ve got the dance down?” Jake asked.

“I guess so. I’ll have you to watch, anyway,” Ethan said. Jake knew his memory was really good, so he probably wouldn’t need the help.

“Alright, so when he sings the chorus, we start, and then we continue until either the blood catches on fire or the song ends, whichever comes first,” Jake explained.

“On fire?!” Max said. “I don’t know that I want to catch on fire.”

“Oh not you, just the blood. I don’t think it’ll melt the glitter, either,” Jake said, and he hit play on the music. He stood still, opposite Ethan, ready to start dancing – and then the chorus started.

The dance started with a twitch of the shoulder and neck, followed by a body twist and raising their arms to the side. Then there was a series of foot and hip movements, culminating in a clap. Slide right, stomp, look to the side and raise shoulders, slide left, swing one leg and arms to the side. Hips, superhero pose, hips, then Ethan and Jake pulled up their arms to the side, bending their hands like they were clawed, first on one side, then the other, standing on the leg opposite their arms each time.

“Is this really just the dance they do in the music video?” Max chimed in.

“It’s similar, but don’t interrupt,” Jake said. He and Ethan continued the dance, which required them to repeat the whole thing after they had finished going through it once. Jake was watching carefully for the blood to burn, which would indicate that they should stop the dance immediately, but it didn’t happen. Instead, the music stopped, and they stopped dancing when that happened.

“I don’t think it worked, but it did seem so familiar,” Ethan said. Just then the blood burst into flame, causing Max to scream and stand up, though he was ultimately unharmed in the process.

“Go see if there is anything different about you,” Jake said cryptically. Ethan’s eyes widened in recognition of why he had been finding it so familiar the whole time.

“This is the teeth ritual!” Ethan said. “You found a modern version of the teeth ritual! Why did this one have to be the one that worked, out of all of them? He won’t be happy.”

As if to punctuate the point, Max yelled “JAKE!” from the bathroom before stomping back out into the living room.

“So? Did it work?” Jake asked innocently.

“You did a ritual to make my canines even bigger?!” Max said, fuming.

“Well, the ritual was supposed to bring forward some of the most positive wolf-traits, just a bit, while you’re human. The teeth thing is probably just the most noticeable,” Jake said. In fact, there was debate about whether it affected anything other than the teeth, but he wasn’t going to mention that now.

“Well, they are,” Max said, pulling back his lips to show off his nearly animalistic canines, though they weren’t visible until he pulled his lips back. “If this is permanent, I’m going to kill you.”

“The site didn’t say it was permanent. I’m sure it’ll end either tomorrow, or after the full moon,” Jake said with a confidence that was entirely undeserved.

“Alright, fine, but if they are still like this after that, I really am going to kill you,” Max said, slightly comforted. “I’m going to bed, anyway. You kept us up this late on a Thursday night just to make my teeth bigger for a few days.”

Max marched into bed, leaving Ethan and Jake in the room together. They were silent for a moment before Ethan felt it was safe to talk without Max hearing.

“So…in the context I was told about that ritual, it was developed to mark a werewolf so that they couldn’t hide if they left to go somewhere else. So, yeah. It’s hella permanent.”

“Don’t say hella, it doesn’t work coming from you. And I’m prepared to die, anyway,” Jake said.

“Well, glad to hear it, because I’m not going to stop him. ‘Night,” Ethan said, leaving Jake in the room. Jake stayed in the living room for several more minutes in silence before standing to go to bed.

“Yep. I’m hella dead,” Jake said.

-:-

The next day, the moon was absent all the daylight hours. That didn’t mean very much, given the daylight hours were few and far between, but it still made it hard to track how full the moon looked. It made Jake uncomfortable how full the moon had looked the previous day, though he didn’t talk about with Max. Ethan kept reminding him that it wouldn’t truly be full until Saturday, but Jake wasn’t convinced. He was so unconvinced that he had to say something, which he did when they were all back at their apartment.

“I know the full moon isn’t until tomorrow, but it’s gonna look pretty full tonight. And I looked, and technically the last full moon was on a Thursday, not the Friday night that Max got bitten, so I really think we should set everything up and try it tonight, just in case,” Jake said. He had already started, actually, just before the others had arrived home.

“I’d prefer to be safe rather than sorry,” Max agreed.

“Alright, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt. Just until the moon has risen a bit, and then you’ll be able to get out anyway. The whole setup will only work while you’re not smart enough to deal with it,” Ethan said.

With that, they got to quick work, setting up their wolf trap. It was in the bedroom Max and Jake shared, which meant that Jake would have to sleep on the couch on any night Max actually was a werewolf, but that was a sacrifice Jake would just have to make.

The trap was a mix of a few experiments and a few certainties. The holy water they had mixed with salt and formed a line trapping Max in – or at least, trapping him if he were evil or if salt really had any effect on supernatural creatures. The more certain aspect was a padlock wrapped in silver wire. The key was also wrapped in silver wire. While that would burn Max, if he had the mind to, he would be able to cover his hands with something and unwrap the silver wire from the key, unlocking the padlock without issue. If the wolf even had mind enough to use a key, then the silver wire would probably prevent it from picking up the key. At least, that was the hope.

There was also a few strands of silver wire strung about the room in the hopes that it would prevent a werewolf from busting through the walls. There was a chance they wouldn’t be sufficient for that purpose, but they didn't have any better way to ensure the wolf couldn't thwart their efforts.  Max was already inside the room, and the key was on the floor. Max still had to close the padlock once the door was closed, but otherwise, they were ready. Jake closed the door and pressed his ear to it until he heard the telltale click of the lock snapping into place. Then he and Ethan went to the kitchen table to wait for the moon to be fully out.

It didn't take too long before they saw the moon, looking basically full. Ethan went to the door, informing Max that the moon was out. Max had a timer set for an hour, which was just to be extra safe and ensure that they didn't let Max out right before he transformed. They figured if he didn't transform in that hour, they'd be safe until the next night. On the way back, Ethan froze when they heard a crash from the room.

“Are you okay?” Ethan called out. There wasn't a response from the room, but there also wasn't any other noise, so Ethan came back to the chair he'd been sitting in. “Maybe you were right about setting it up tonight.”

“I don't know, I expected a lot more commotion from him changing. You know, the muscles growing and the getting taller and all of that. I would have thought he'd be moving around and be too big to fit properly in the room, and all that. So I'm guessing that was just Max being a dork and not wanting to admit it,” Jake said. Of course, he hoped he was right. It was kind of exciting to think that his bedroom would be trapping a giant murderous beast. “Oh, and a howl. I mean, wolves are pack animals, so werewolves probably are, too. So they probably howl to get together right after they all transform.”

Ethan looked only slightly skeptical, and the two waited to hear any kind of noise from the room after that. They spent nearly half an hour waiting before they heard anything, and when they did, it was the sound of ripping fabric. They waited a bit longer, expecting to hear any continued sounds of change. Instead, they heard the metallic click of the lock being reopened.

“Timer's not up yet,” Jake whispered, getting nervous.

“No, it's not. It seems the wolf might be smarter than we planned for. Let's hope the salt and holy water stop it,” Ethan said, more calmly than Jake but still nervous for what was about to happen.

There was a thud of the lock dropping to the ground, and the doorknob moved. The door opened, barely revealing the tip of a wolf's muzzle from inside the room, confirming their fears. The door opened wider, revealing Max in his full werewolf form.

“So what pisses me off about this,” Max said, his voice maybe slightly deeper or more raspy, but ultimately the same as usual, “is that it means whoever that guy was, he bit me, like, fully with the knowledge of what it would do and in his right mind. That's way worse than if he were some kind of mindless beast. Who does that?”

“So your mind is the same in every respect? Anything strange?” Ethan said, eyebrows raised at the unexpected sight of Max's werewolf form.

“Why are you only in your underwear?” Jake asked.

“I started changing and I took all my clothes off so they wouldn't rip. But then I didn't really get any bigger. The tail might have been uncomfortable with pants on, though,” Max said, looking himself over.

“But we heard ripping. What ripped?” Ethan asked.

“My underwear. It was intentional. I had to make a hole to put the tail through,” Max said, turning to show them the tail poking through just under the waistband.

That prompted each of them to give Max a proper looking over. His fur, which covered his whole body in a medium-length slightly fluffy layer, was a similar blond to what his hair had been. His face was a full wolf head, ears, teeth, and nose. His legs were an odd blend of dog and human, making it look like Max might have just been standing on the balls of his extra-long feet, were it not for the pads and claws. His hands also ended in claws, but were otherwise fairly human. He was maybe a few inches taller than he was before, but he didn't look larger in any other dimension.

“Did it hurt?” Ethan asked.

“No, it didn't really feel like much. It just felt weird afterwards, because of the fur and the tail. And I'll have to get used to the claws. The feet, surprisingly, not that hard to get used to,” Max said. “I only fell once.”

Jake was stunned by how different Max's werewolf form was from what he was expecting. So much so that he couldn't form the right words for a moment, but eventually he found his voice again.

“You're really just…” Jake said, searching again for the right words. “a cute little werewolf puppy.”

Ethan raised an eyebrow at Jake, but Max's mouth was hanging open in shock. It was surprisingly expressive for being so wolf like, Jake thought.

“I will BITE you if you say anything like that ever again!” Max said, clearly offended. “Wait,” he continued, clearly coming to some kind of realization. “Oh, man! I called that werewolf a cute puppy! And then I threatened to bite you for that, so I guess I get it now and that means I can't be mad at him! This is the absolute worst.”

The Government (Part 1)

For the trio, things went back to normal on Monday morning, and it was almost a shock to see Max without all the fur and the tail, but they quickly got used to it again. Even going to work wasn’t a worry, and Ethan assured them that there had been no reports of werewolves in the area. One month down, no issues.

Now that they knew the only danger brought the full moon was the threat of exposure, they weren’t focused on any sort of preparation, and they were able to go back to a kind of normal similar to what had been before Max got bitten by Adrian. They were concerned about the new policies when the new year came around, but Ethan continued to check for any reports, finding none each time.

For Ethan’s cousin, Andrew, the new year started a little differently. When the government announced that there were changes in effect to the policies on reporting supernatural creatures, his only initial thought was that it might increase the volume of reports available to view, which would help him write some of the papers on his syllabus for his next semester. He was taking a Comparison of Modern Supernatural Entities to Their Historical Records, which typically went by the slightly disappointing acronym CoMSETHR. It wasn’t meant to sound good, it was mostly meant to make it possible to use the name of the class in normal conversation. But in any case, he had to use primary sources for the modern supernatural creatures, which would most commonly be interviews from people who had encountered a supernatural creature or their official reports. Occasionally students had been able to use their own accounts, but that obviously wasn’t as common.

His first paper was on one supernatural creature currently in existence, one of his choice. He had been rolling around all the different options in his head, but a few days after the new year, he was looking through the official and unofficial reports to see what kind of entities might be common in the area. That would make it easier to get enough sources. He saw several which had been labeled unreliable, including one vampire sighting which, upon investigation, involved several bloody mary’s on both sides of the report. After all, vampires no longer even existed. A few others were labeled unreliable for other reasons – previously diagnosed schizophrenia, head injuries, etc.

The ones labeled reliable or confirmed fell mostly into the typical categories. There were many gnomes, which were really just a nuisance that involved pest control services. They popped up whenever someone neglected their garden, mostly, unless the person involved false gnomes in preparation. Gnomes were mildly territorial, after all. There were two recent golems, which were always interesting. The modern ones were significantly different from their historic counterparts because they were significantly easier to create in the days of AI. A person no longer had to summon a spirit and bind it, they only had to link an AI to a body and animate that body. But because of the obvious changes in them, they would almost certainly be the topic of someone else’s paper. Even though there were only five students in the class.

As he got to the bottom and saw the hag that had been reported nearly a year prior, he thought about the fact that the monetary incentive must not be working yet. After all, there wasn’t a single werewolf on the list.

That made him think about something he hadn’t thought about for quite a while. His own encounter – one he had put aside due to a lack of certainty about what it was he saw. He had thought it had been some blond guy being bitten by a werewolf, but he had been in his car on the road, about to pay a quick visit to his cousin Ethan, and hadn’t been able to put too much focus on the sight as he was driving. In addition, investigating a werewolf was a bad idea, since even some of the strongest humans weren’t as strong as a werewolf, and he wasn’t one of the strongest humans. In fact, he had abandoned the trip entirely and kept driving, not wanting to risk encountering the werewolf.

He hadn’t reported it because he wasn’t sure he had enough details to report – it could even have been a wild animal attack, which wasn’t entirely unlikely. But just then, another event popped into his mind, one he never would have considered to be related to what he’d seen that night before, but that he now realized must be connected. Ethan had asked him about werewolves.

The werewolf attack had been very near Ethan’s house, which he shared with two roommates Andrew had met before, at least briefly. One of Ethan’s roommates was blond. And Ethan had taken notes. Initially he assumed it was a personal interest that brought about the line of inquiry, but now Andrew realized that it was a bit out of character for anyone to be so interested in what he studied.

Andrew rushed to open the official reporting website and type in what he knew. If Ethan’s roommate was a werewolf now, Ethan would be safer if the situation were investigated properly, but also, only official reports were usable for his paper, so unless he made his report, he wouldn’t be able to use it for his paper. Of course, this decided the topic of his paper for him, and since it was due at the end of January, he was glad to have a solid course of action, even if the paper wasn’t the most intensive that he had to write for the class.

He entered in the information required for the monetary bonus, a nice little cherry on top of the whole thing. Not once did he consider how werewolves were dealt with in the modern age. That would be a question for when he did more in-depth research for his paper.

-:-

The government outsourced most of the investigations of supernatural creatures to the police. Then they outsourced most of the actual dealing with the problem to whatever organization was best suited to it. Sometimes that was pest control, sometimes animal control, sometimes the police once again, occasionally other private organizations that were equipped to deal with a situation. The government offices that dealt with the reports of the supernatural did hardly any work except organizing these efforts.

There were a few exceptions, which were the source of the rumors about the secret government organization that experimented with supernatural creatures, or hunted them, or cured them, or whatever else the rumors might say. One of the most notable examples of the success of one of these endeavors was stopping the only ever vampire incursion into the united states, which they did primarily by observing the situation and quieting down rumors after the fact. Their success was so great that it was commonly believed that vampires did not exist, though that was, as far as anyone knew, currently true.

The existence of this organization, as it was rumored, was entirely uncertain, but the clerks who dealt with the reports of supernatural creatures knew that there were specific sets of circumstances that required passing the report up the line to some people they never saw. What happened after that was never public, so no one knew for sure what those people did, but it often led to an absence of the reported creatures involved. Hence the rumors.

Those kinds of reports weren’t overly common, partially owing to the fact that there were hardly ever any secondary reports. The creatures were dealt with before that could happen, possibly, or the creature was isolated to the point that no one would run across them. But the procedure for identifying the cases that should be passed up the line was simple, though it was also put in the form of a list of known possibilities. In general, transmissible curses and deadly, malicious creatures were passed up to the higher authorities. Vampires would easily qualify for both reasons, some supernatural artifacts could lead to one of these kind of reports in rare occasions, but the most common one was werewolves.

Werewolves were commonly considered to be rather dangerous, and the supernatural disease was transmissible to the degree that they were hard to eliminate, so reports of them weren’t unheard of. At the same time, any given region might not have any reports of werewolves for a few years or a few decades. Such was the case with the region Carl worked in. He had expected the job to be far more interesting than it had turned out to be, and he had hoped the new laws would make it a little more bearable. But he was sorely disappointed when the number of reports hardly went up, and there wasn’t a rush of good reports from before the policy went into effect.

So, as he opened a new report, his expectations were low. That was, until he read that it was a report of werewolf activity. He didn’t want someone to poach the report, so he tried to contain his excitement, but he enjoyed the mundane tasks associated with the report far more than he had the entire time he’d had the job. He extracted the information on the region, description of the victim/possible werewolf, and any other information, filling out the necessary forms for each. The last step was to notify whoever would deal with the investigation –

Except that Carl would likely never hear about the case again. His excitement plummeted, and he put his head in his hands, frustrated that the only interesting thing that had ever happened to him here was now being taken away from him. And yet, when he had gathered himself, he submitted all of the information, including the full report and the forms he had filled out, straight to the higher ups. And that was that. There was nothing else he could do for that report.

He hoped the next report might be a parallel report, a second sighting of the werewolf event, perhaps even from the victim. He was once again disappointed when he opened the next report and read it.

Gnomes. Again.

Carl really wished he could afford to quit his job.

Fate?

In writing, especially with magic systems, the question of fate comes into play. Any character who can see the future or interact with the past kind of brings this up. Is what they see guaranteed to happen, or something that can change? Is what they changed going to change the present, or will it bring about what has already happened?

In my current WIP I have two subtypes of fate: Soft Fate and Hard Fate, for the purpose of discussion. Different magic interacts with different ones. Soft Fate is going to happen, unless some particular thing changes the Soft Fate. Hard Fate cannot be changed. It will happen. As such, Hard Fate sometimes contradicts with Soft Fate at times, because the Soft Fate is going to change.

That's obviously confusing, but basically what I am getting at is that, in this world, there is Hard Fate, which is immutable, but if you're seeing the future, you don't typically see that path. You see Soft Fate when you glimpse the future. As part of that, if you see something and want to change it, you will have to use some kind of magic that has the capacity to change that.

It is also really uncommon to be able to see into the Hard Fated Future. Most people who are seeing the future can then change that future. One person in the story has a limited ability to see the Hard Fated Future, though this is never really explicitly understood within the story: Tye can see signs of the very near future (in the form of Ravens, by the way).

There is one character who sacrifices part of his ability to use magic in exchange for writing something into Soft Fate. That one in particular would require some serious magic to undo.

One character could actually change which path she had taken. As in, she could go to a version of things where she had made a different decision in the near past. As such, she could avoid the consequences of bad decisions she had made.

I would be interested to see how other people handle the question of fate. If you have any future-seeing abilities in your world, how do they work? I know I have seen where the future is guaranteed all the time, and I have also seen where the future-seeing is essentially just a really good intuition that can easily be tricked or perhaps even clouded. Do you find one of these more compelling, or another option I haven't thought of?