25 January 2024

“Good morning.” I greet Isaac as he walks in, although I don’t turn to face him. Instead, I stare at a series of paintings along the back wall, each a different version of him; short and proud, tall and laid back. A jokester, or too serious for his own good. Caught up in a thirst for adventure.

“Morning.” He looks around. “What… is this place?”

With a sweeping gesture, I turn to face him. “This? A fragment of a dream. A space between realities.”

“Huh.” Isaac cocks one eyebrow as he looks at me warily. “And why have you brought me here?”

“Because I want to understand you.” I conjure up a table and two chairs. “I want to know how your story changes you, and to do that, I need to know who you are at the beginning.”

I take my seat, and Isaac follows suit. “Okay… What do you want to know?”

That brings a wry smile to my face. “That is the question, isn’t it?” I conjure up a bottle of something–sparkling cider, perhaps–and offer him some. “Drink? It’s not alcoholic.”

He shakes his head; so this version is cautious. That seems a bit at odds with someone who would chase down witches and fairies on the off-chance they can help find Aurora. Perhaps I’m reading him wrong?

He squirms a bit in his seat. “What is it?”

“Ah! My apologies. I didn’t realize I was staring quite so intently.” I lean back and place my hands in my lap. “I do have one question, though. Why put so much effort into finding Aurora?”

“Well… She’s my sister, isn’t she?”

“Indeed.” I take a sip from my drink. “But you’ve never met her. She was taken before you were born, and I daresay most of the nation has given up hope of ever getting her back, especially this close to her sixteenth birthday and her predicted demise. SO what keeps the spark going for you?”

“I… The adventure of it, I guess?”

I nod to myself. “Then… Are you actually expecting to find her?”

That stumps Isaac for a long while. “I… I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.” He paused. “I guess… before I stumbled into those two fairies, I never thought it was possible? And then I was so caught up in it all I never thought about what it might mean.”

19 April 2023

I was dead tired, and needed something random. So I went back to the White room.

Heads up, by the way. I might be shifting my layout and/or schedule in the near future for this, to better align with my goals for it. A way to make the stories more complete/accessible to anyone who’d come for them, and adding on more of my writing process for those more interested in that. My only concern is that’s going to be a time commitment, and I don’t really have an excess of that (not that I’ve met anyone who does). There’ll be a more official update post once I’ve actually got it figured out/working.

Alright, now where was I? Ah, yes. Locked door in the Ebony room. Well, what do I have to work with? There's a couch in each room; all there cushions, as well. And in the White room, at least, there was a loudspeaker; is there one here in the Ebony room, too? It seems like it would be harder to spot…

Ah, yep, there it is. Gut feeling says the solution is going to do with those, somehow, which is awkward. They’re just high enough to be effectively out of reach, and I don’t have step stools here. Oh well. No matter.

Just in case, I look under each of the couches and pull all the cushions off, to make sure the key didn’t fall (or get stuffed) between them.

I briefly consider cutting open the cushions, but I don’t have a knife, so that’d be difficult. All I’ve got are my keys, and, well, I don’t think it’s worth the effort. Instead, I head to the White room and drag the barren couch so the armrest is directly under the speaker.

I get a mental image of someone else landing here and seeing all this sprawled out like I have it. The couch cushions strewn about, the couch shifted out of place. For some reason, to me, it’s a funny image.

14 April 2023

I was mostly just trying to get a sense for what the setting is, what kind of city it is, for Tirian and Gwen’s story. I haven’t fully decided yet, but even if I don’t use this visual for this story, it does seem like a cool aesthetic.

As I enter through the city gates, I am struck by the verticality of the city. It is built on and into the cliffside, sprawling up past the summit, like a strange fusion of Minas Tirith and the old Pueblo cliff dwellings.

Featured prominently almost a thousand feet above me, at the highest point of the city, sits their temple, dedicated to the worship of the light. I’ll probably have to dive deep into that soon-ish. What exactly do they worship? What are their beliefs? Traditions? Holidays? That’s for later, though. Hopefully by then, I’ll have established more of a plot.

In the meantime, I stroll through the city, here at the base of the cliff. It’s ever so slightly to the north of the cliff face, meaning it sees marginally less sun than the rest of the city; that’s why, in this culture that celebrates light, it’s been shunted off onto the poor. This section seems covered in dust, at least as I currently envision it; it’s actually really similar to the undercity in the movie Alita: Battle Angel, though without the sci-fi elements. I’m having trouble being certain of the environment outside the city, though; is it desert, or does life thrive, like a forest or jungle?

There are various ladders and stairs up to the various cliff dwellings, along with a gated stairway heading to a large terrace that makes up the middle layer of the city. Who lives here? What kind of jobs do they do?

8 April 2023

This was surprisingly fun to write. I was dead tired that evening; I’d just gotten back from a family Easter lunch thing, and it was already pretty late by the time I could sit down and write. So I just wrote whatever came to mind. I’d just finished Brandon Sanderson’s A Frugal Wizard’s Guide to Surviving Medieval England earlier that week, so the concept of white room exercises was stuck in my head. And it wound up coming out more literally than expected.

I don’t know if I’ll ever visit again. It’s a little strange to be creating the puzzle as you solve it, if that makes sense. But it’s kinda fun, too, so it’s possible.

I’m in a room; everything is bright white. Not that there’s much there. Walls, a sofa…I do eventually spot a door off to the right.

Do I still remember who I am? Yes. Just another avatar for the author, poking around the strange corners of my mind. No matter. It’s not amnesia, at least.

As soon as I acknowledge that, a voice blares from the loudspeaker hidden near the ceiling. “That’s not what it means to do a white room writing exercise, Cloud.” While it is easy enough to understand the words, the voice is not one I recognize; the speakerphone reverb does a good job masking it.

I just smile up and say, “And? What of it?” Rather than wait for a response I head through the door–not locked, fortunately–into another room.

I half-expected to find dreary office cubicles, wit my actions narrated by the voice from the Stanley Parable, but that’s not what I see. Instead, I walk into a room that is all a glossy ebony color. It’s almost a mirror to the first, with a sofa and little else, though there is an additional door opposite the one I’m standing in.

Even from over here, I can tell that door won’t open as simply as this one, if it even opens at all. There’s a puzzle of some kind to these two rooms, bare as they are, and I’ll have to figure it out if I want to proceed.

Perhaps another day, however. I am quite exhausted. Does the black couch have a pull-out bed?