Describe an Imaginary Place

[Flugel Meister]

The initial view from orbit, one of greens and blues quickly faded as we descended, and my perceptions changed as well. What I thought were lush green grass-covered plains and wild blue oceans teeming with life were in fact the remnants of a cold, dead world. The thick atmosphere had warped our examination of this remote and ancient bastion of defence. All that was left now was a rotting carcass of a planet. Instead of green fields we saw the brown and black of decay, and the vast ocean below had long since turned into a putrid millpond of spent life.

 

[Abernovo]

Sorry if this one's a bit long, more like a short story, but it took on a life of its own.

The hospital bed stood lonely in the middle of the blank, sterile room. Its occupant, a young woman, lay immobilised in a full body cast, reaching from her neck to her ankles. She looked to be sleeping, but that appearance was deceptive. She sighed and a smile came over her face as the neural transmitters took over, transporting her to her destination.

She was not in a hospital room. Not really. She was wandering along a narrow path through an ancient forest, the tall, widely spaced pines letting a cold wind bite deliciously at her skin. It was late summer, perhaps early autumn. She felt the bracken brush against her legs as she walked, heard the rustle of something moving on the slope to her right; from the movement of the ferns, she thought it might be a roe deer. There was the crack of a breaking twig and an antlered head rose, anxious. For four whole seconds, deer and human looked at each other, before the deer turned and slipped quietly over the crest of the small hill.

She continued her stroll, the pines thinning out even more. Birches became more frequent, their lower canopies giving a more claustrophobic feel to her surroundings. She could see brighter light ahead, though and could smell the heady scent of broom and gorse flowers. She was coming up to a clearing.

She stepped out into the open and found herself on a narrow border between the woodland and a steep cliff. Close to the edge, cowberries beckoned seductively. She could almost taste them, but knew that the price for such a sweet berry might be higher than she was willing to pay. Anyway, she had another reason for being there. She could feel the changes happening already. She ran forwards, jumped and plummeted, feeling the wind rushing past her body. She was transforming, her arms becoming wings, her body sleek and feathered. She soared. High above the forest, she found freedom.

It was exactly as she had programmed it to be. Soon, she would have to return to her hospital bed, but for a brief while she would get some relief from the monotony of being nothing more than a passive observer whilst her body healed.

 

[Christopher Lee]

Sorry if this one's a bit long, more like a short story, but it took on a life of its own.

The hospital bed stood lonely in the middle of the blank, sterile room. Its occupant, a young woman, lay immobilised in a full body cast, reaching from her neck to her ankles. She looked to be sleeping, but that appearance was deceptive. She sighed and a smile came over her face as the neural transmitters took over, transporting her to her destination.

She was not in a hospital room. Not really. She was wandering along a narrow path through an ancient forest, the tall, widely spaced pines letting a cold wind bite deliciously at her skin. It was late summer, perhaps early autumn. She felt the bracken brush against her legs as she walked, heard the rustle of something moving on the slope to her right; from the movement of the ferns, she thought it might be a roe deer. There was the crack of a breaking twig and an antlered head rose, anxious. For four whole seconds, deer and human looked at each other, before the deer turned and slipped quietly over the crest of the small hill.

She continued her stroll, the pines thinning out even more. Birches became more frequent, their lower canopies giving a more claustrophobic feel to her surroundings. She could see brighter light ahead, though and could smell the heady scent of broom and gorse flowers. She was coming up to a clearing.

She stepped out into the open and found herself on a narrow border between the woodland and a steep cliff. Close to the edge, cowberries beckoned seductively. She could almost taste them, but knew that the price for such a sweet berry might be higher than she was willing to pay. Anyway, she had another reason for being there. She could feel the changes happening already. She ran forwards, jumped and plummeted, feeling the wind rushing past her body. She was transforming, her arms becoming wings, her body sleek and feathered. She soared. High above the forest, she found freedom.

It was exactly as she had programmed it to be. Soon, she would have to return to her hospital bed, but for a brief while she would get some relief from the monotony of being nothing more than a passive observer whilst her body healed.

This is amazing. I loved reading this

 

[Christopher Lee]

Collin followed the reaper reluctantly up the narrow stairway and stopped as they came to the door. It was a door that had spent many a year in this dark and damp world. Vines were coming through and bordering the outsides of it like a portrait. Cracks flowed through its core like a river and the wood was peeling around its rusty door knob. The reaper stepped to its right and faced Collin. He pointed a skeleton hand at the door, beckoning him through.

A feeling of curiosity and terror reflected in his eyes and the reaper grabbed him and shoved him through the door. It slammed shut behind him and he found himself standing on a mountain top, overlooking the most beautiful world he had ever seen. Sharp mountain peaks reached for the sky; white clouds slowly passed through him like ghosts, and the lush, green forest canopy underneath was filling his ears with the sounds of wildlife.

He knew what to do. As if by instinct, he had always known what to do. This world was to beautiful to allow it to come to ruin. It's people were special and needed nurtured. It would not come without sacrifice and the world would fall without one. He thought of the little boy; his blue jean overalls covered in dirt, his white tee shirt stained yellow with sweat. His little face had an honesty to it he had never seen before out of his own kind. "I love my parents," he had told him,"It's why i gotta' work so hard mister." Collin looked down at the tree-tops. He took a deep breath as he closed his eyes, and jumped.

 

[odangutan]

Using this workshop to get some thoughts straight on my own, internal world. Written in one sitting with limited editing.

----------------------------------------------------

Out. Eventually it's the only direction left, the only direction you can give. Out past the Lingering Boroughs. Out past the Riddle's Bed. Out past the last few fern-throttled hollows of the banished dead. Out yet further until there is only the Fen and you are lost in the grey-blue fogs.

Yet not quite lost. Ahead looms the vast bulk of the Sleeping Cliffs and you know that as you have lost yourself, so you have also been found. There are no foothills, no slow rise into colder air and the sparse scrub of elevation. There is just the slow, soporific undulation of the Fen and then a wall of rock that transitions out of nothing. Not-there becomes there, becomes in its mass more there than you. Water, condensing from the air onto the cold rock, slicks the surface and runs in black cascades down the channels carved out by the claws of Time itself. You hold out your hand, let the fluid flow down your arms and you wonder at the strange sense of it. More oil than the pure water you might expect. It lingers, pooling on your skin, and you feel numbness seep into you.

False dusk comes quickly as the sun is eclipsed by the overhanging rock. The numbness spreads and you feel yourself fold, feel yourself lie down in the gravel at the foot of the cliff. As time passes, and even the glimmering phosphorescence of the mists abates, you begin to hear a slow pounding in the earth. A heartbeat, so slow and massive that perspective bends around it. Your own body feels like nothing, like the fluttering of a single second against eternity.

Where is there to go? Where else is there to go?

Nowhere. Apart from out.

 

[Starchaser3000]

Within the great sea of infinite light was a massive continent. And in an isolated region of that continent was a great elaborate walled city-state that ruled all of known life within and outside its great walls. Magnificent in beauty with a great splendor of art and architecture, and academic prestige, with its schools of philosophy and known science/magic. The streets of gold and silver, along with the overall standard of living were most comfortable, even for the lowest class of citizens.

But despite all the complexities of explaining natural things, in the very center of the city was a huge forum, and within that forum was a palace courtyard and garden that contained a huge jeweled palace/temple where the mighty cat god Louie lived. This certain mighty god was actually a plump orange tabby cat that has lived without aging for over 2000 eons and is believed to be the pet of the cosmic deity that left from the great continental land to journey through the stars, never to return. So according to eternal legend, the cosmic deity left his beloved pet in charge of humanity, which in turn formed an elected priest/wizard class of multiple sages that has long since ranged from 30 to over 50 sages, pending which historical era it variously pertained to. Out of all of them at any given time period, only one had the hereditary right to be known as the Head Sage. These exclusively male individuals of this particular high ranking social class were the chosen ones that could communicate telepathically most often everyday with Louie’s own telepathic thoughts. In regards to governing, those thoughts on that certain matter were then interpreted as Law. For, according to the written works of the sages from ancient times past, it was his wisdom-filled guidance over 2000 eons ago that allowed this society to develop. The newly organized civilization revolved around this persistently constructed over time city state metropolis with a large ornate palace/temple in its center, and constructively adjacent to a splendid looking forum. The shining palace was adorned with a golden and ornately jeweled likeness of the fat tabby cat emperor atop the main marble dome. Inside the palace, the demi-god cat emperor/ruler lived a spoiled and pampered lifestyle, mainly because of his ability to communicate telepathically and hypnotically mind control whoever or whatever he chose.

 

[David Evil Overlord]

The summer I was ten and my brother Josh was eight, my dad built us an invisible tree house. I couldn’t figure out how he did it. I asked him, but he just winked at me, and said it was a secret. And I thought my dad was the greatest super hero in the world.
Our tree house was a huge wooden maze, shaped something like a starfish impossibly beached upon the branches of the old oak tree that shaded most of our back yard. Inside it was all smooth polished wood; so smooth the eye could not separate a single board from the next. Outside it was all covered in bark. There were leaves growing all over it; even in the middle of winter, when the oak leaves were just a distant memory, forgotten until spring.
Now that I’m almost seventeen, I know those winter leaves are just some kind of jasmine, growing a living, leafy camouflage net all over anything that stands still long enough.
It was kind of sad, the day I realised my dad was not a super hero. He was just another baseliner.

 

[James Coote]

Pools of various shapes and sizes shimmered, oily iridescent rainbow patterns shifting and twisting as they floated across the opaque creamy-white surfaces. In the distance, silhouetted against the horizon, giant crystal trees scattered dashes of waste red and yellow light. Pond skaters skipped between the smooth, waveless lakes and over the orangy mud-banks and ridges separating them.

The shrub-crystals anchored to the banks tinkled and crunched under foot as we navigated our way along them

 

[Phyrebrat]

I hope this constitutes an 'Imaginary Place' as it is based on a real environment but, hey..

In the cabinet of the cosmos, lambent pillars of dust and diaphanous gas, the exotic colours of peacocks and hummingbirds, rose and morphed into new shapes. Their slow evolution was more ponderous than the imperceptible changes in cloud shapes on a windless summer day. Away from the pillars, further out, were other precious galactic curios, suspended in a blackness that was more than just absence of colour; eternity rings of ruby and diamond flickered in binary conversation, and solitaires of white star hypernovae glistened, I'm born now, feed me!

 

[silvermoon]

"Extraordinary," Koba the Killer breathed, as she stared at the Forest House.
"Well-named, certainly," Arka the Tall said, impressed.
"How long did it take to build?" Vai One-Thumb asked.
"That depends what you mean by 'build', Vai," Yniva the Guide replied with a slight smile. "I don't know that you could call it built, either, in the sense of being completely finished yet--it's a work-in-progress, you could say."
"Which brings me back to my original question, sort of," Vai persisted.
"The trees began growing about two hundred years ago, shortly after the island finished erupting," Yniva explained. "The island was considered too dangerous to approach for several decades after the last eruption--nobody realised at the time that it was the last, of course--so the forest was left to grow wild for an entire lifetime, about eighty years."
"So when someone plucked up enough courage to land here...? Koba asked.
"The Vanu people are forest-dwellers anyway," Yniva said. "When they came out to the island, the first thing they did was start to build houses in the trees nearest the shore. Gradually, houses were built in every tree on tghe island. At the same time, obviously, the different family groups were building bridges to link their tree houses to those of their neighbours..."
"Ultimately, then," Arka said, "you end up with this--a forest with every tree having its own small house, each tree connected to its neighbours with bridges..."
"Exactly," Yniva said. "I know it sounds pedantic to mention this, but there are over two hundred thousand trees in this forest--it's a large island...a shield volcano, with a high central peak and gentle slopes."
"The forest goes right up to the highest part of the island, I guess?" Koba asked. "It's so dense, we can't see more than fifty feet."
"Right up to the crater rim the forest goes, yes," Yniva confirmed, "and into the crater itself. The trees there are particularly tall, because they have an excellent water supply and good rich soil."
"That raises your other point..." Vai said.
"That the Forest House is always being built?" Yniva said. "Yes, well, as trees die, new ones are planted to replace them, of course. Also, as the trees keep growing the houses are made larger. The Vanu people have always acknowledged that they are part of the living system, merely one thread in the forest web, by no means the owners or controllers, merely tenants. So, as I said, a work that's in constant progress... "

 

[silvermoon]

"Where are we, Guy?" Wendfy Fisher asked, looking around at the iridescent blue walls of the vast meeting hall.

"It's called The Junction," Guy Solomon said. "Lucid dreamers from all over the Solar System come here to meet every night."

"It's my first time here, ever," Wendy said. She was awestruck at the size of the place, and the masses of dream-body people walking about.

"Well, imagine the population of the Solar System now, in the Thirty-Second Terran Century," Guy said. "You may be sure the hive is humming--but you know the main problem with communication..."

"The speed of light," Wendy said. "Even within the Solar System, a two-way conversation can take hours..."

"Now, you live in Baltimore, and your sister Denise lives in Galle City, Mars?" Guy asked.

"You're right, it's much easier to keep in touch with her this way," Wendy agreed. "She learned the skill, and told me about it...so I learned lucid dreaming as well."

"Billions of people come here every night to contact their friends," Guy said. "Much better than wandering around looking for someone. You can think about being in a place, and there you are--and The Junction is the central hub, the main meeting-place in the Dream Dimension."

"How long has this place been around, Guy?" Wendy asked.

"Hundreds of years," Guy said. "When you have hundreds of millions of lucid dreamers all thinking pretty much the same thing--that they all need a place to meet regularly--and you know that in the Dream Dimension you just think of something, and you create it--this is what you get: The Junction..."

"So Denise can find me, even in this crowd?" Wendy asked dubiously, looking around her at the milling horde of dream-bodies.

"Why yes," Guy said. "Intention is everything in the Dream Dimension. She just needs to come here, and have the intention of finding you..."

"Aha, here she is now," Wendy said, as a familiar figure approached. "Over here, Denise!"

"I'll leave you to it, Wendy," Guy said, drifting away.

"Hello Wendy," Denise said as she walked up. She hugged her sister and kissed her on the cheek. "Welcome to The Junction, dear..."

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Lately we've been moving away from the original purpose of this thread, as described in the first post:

There's been some discussion here and there, recently, about description, details, adjectives, etc. Some would say cut out all the non-essentials, others would say if we are going to explore imaginary worlds let us at least describe some of the scenery.

For those of us in the latter group, I thought it might be interesting to try an exercise in describing places. It can be a landscape or an interior, preferably no more than a paragraph (but it can be two if they're short).

Is anyone willing to take up the challenge?

If so, I'll begin with something from my notes, which I meant to use but kept stumbling over at the time:

There was a bit of woodland a little beyond and above the beach, not far from the waterline. And perhaps (she thought) during a high tide the trees were half-submerged, for their lower trunks were scoured as white as driftwood. When she bent down and sifted through the fallen leaves, she found sand, and shells, and smooth grey pebbles.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

The desert air assailed her, its insiduous dry heat alien and cruel. She hunkered, the hot sand shifting in the wind, and blinked her eyes against the storm. Storm? This wasn't just normal - it was expected, welcomed by the tribes. But still, the dry heat, the cruelty....not kind and strong, but cruel and implacable. Standing, she faced it, accepted it, and rejected it, utterly.

Close/off beam?

 

[silvermoon]

He walked up to the end of the road, and found himself in an old quarry. It had been cut far back into the hill, so that a great bite had been taken out of the slope. Bluestone cliffs at least fifty feet high were all about the basin of the quarry. The ground was fairly level at the entrance, but rose gradually toward the far end of the chasm. The quarry was at least four hundred yards long and one hundred wide.

At some time there must have been an attempt to use the quarry for another purpose. Ruined buildings stood about, on either side of a tar-sealed road and around the rim of a gravelled turning-circle. Most had been brought down by the earthquakes, and lay in various degrees of ruin. A shame, he thought. Someone's project destroyed by Nature, some dream defeated, at least temporarily. People being as they are, though, he reasoned, if they're denied in one place they'll rise up again, pheonix-like, somewhere else...

 

[Fairytale Jane]

When Marcelline sat up she was greeted by a nasty blow to the forehead. She looked up and spotted her aggressor: an old bough resting inches from her head. Nico the horse chuckled nearby; he was never a friendly animal, especially to Marcelline. She glanced in his direction and almost choked at what she saw. The horse was blue. She quickly shook her head in disbelief. Apparently she hit her head harder than she thought. Still, the horse remained blue. And it wasn't the only thing blue. Everywhere she looked it was a different shade of blue. The grass was a violent blue. The trees were medium blue. All the flowers sported a fading blue. Even her clothes were blue. The only thing that wasn't blue was the sky, oddly enough. A dark grey shroud hung over Marcelline's head and a black vortex was spinning wildly at its center. She stared at it stupidly. There was no wind, no singing birds, no sweet smelling pastures, and no living beings other than herself and Nico. An eerie feeling crept over her mind, almost as if she had walked into a forbidden secret. She mounted Nico and proceeded into an opening. As if on queue a dark shadow descended from the vortex and flew straight at her. Nico reared on his hind legs dropping Marcelline on her back. He bolted and disappeared into thin air. Marcelline cried out in shock. The shadow was upon her and there what was no escape.

Pretty much an empty world if you ask me.

 

[silvermoon]

As she exited the hypergate, Olyn looked over to her right. There was the high ridge, just as Kepha had told her. Long spurs ran out from the main ridgeline on either side. Along the mountain-top ran the narrow fortress, and down each spur annexes of the castle descended like arms. Having been fought over savagely in the Fifty Years War, the whole vast building was in ruins. Wreathed in mist, with the full moon rising above one of the remaining towers, the castle took on an eerie aspect. Olyn remembered the old name for the castle, Home of Ghosts. Hand on sword-hilt, she began walking towards the base of the hill. A light drizzle began falling, and the mist rose slightly to shroud the moon...

 

[silvermoon]

"What's the name of this place?" Carina asked.

"It's called Broke-Off Strait," Owen Mellish said.

"How ever did it get a name like that, Owen?" Carina asked.

"Well, look at it, you'll see why," Owen said.

Carina studied the vista before her. A long valley stretching up out of sight, rising in gradual steps uphill into the misty north, with the valley floor flooded by the rise in sea level.

"It isn't just the sea-level rise that did this, is it?" Carina asked shrewdly.

"The earthquake and its aftershocks were the main reason," Owen confirmed. "As you see, there was a city here at the time."

"Yes, ruins are everywhere," Carina said. "On both sides of the strait, in the shallows, all the way up the valley, out of sight as the valley swings away to the north-west."

"About ninety thousand people here just before the 'quake," Owen said. "Roughly one third died, the rest fled..."

"And now this," Carina said sadly. "What was the name of the place, Owen?"

"Depends who you talk to," Owen said. "There were several different translations of the original name--the one used most commonly is Boundary Harbour."

"Some boundary," Carina said, shivering in the winter wind from the snow-laden south. "How far north does Broke-Off Strait go, Owen?"

"About a hundred kay or so," Owen said, "up the the Bay of Islands. It splits East Island off the rest of Northland."

"How long ago did it happen?" Carina asked.

"Just over one hundred years ago, after the first rise of the sea-level," Owen said. "Since then, of course, the sea has risen quite a bit further. There's a lot of ruined buildings under the water, no matter how low the tide. The other name for the strait is Fishermans' Nightmare, as you may imagine...

 

[prizzley]

Bare rock rose in impossible heights, fell into dizzy depths. Open vents exposed molten cauldrons of flame, which disgorged acrid smoke and steam blurring his vision, burning his skin. He stood on cinders and ash.

A teacher once wrote on my work, 'Brevity may be the soul of wit, but this is ridiculous.'

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

While I don't really hold with brevity being the soul of wit (consider which of Shakespeare's characters says that), it seems to me that your description here says everything it needs to say.

It gave me a clear picture of the place, and you even put in some good sensory impressions.

 

[prizzley]

Thank you Teresa. I always appreciate feedback.