allmywires
Well-Known Member
I'm experimenting with a new character POV in my sequel, and I was wondering whether it comes across right. (She's the bad guy, but a sympathetic one - or at least I'm working on making her sympathetic).
So - does she come across as sympathetic? Also, are you interested? The card-reading mentioned here is the first introduction of it - does it work?
*
At Port Halberd, the mist curled back off the sea like a sneer, and she dressed in full Isirian veil, after trading her last silver coins for the dress of a well-to-do foreign pleasure-trader in the town’s outskirts. She had always thought Gondwanaland a rather dull place – green was her least favourite colour, followed closely by grey, and everything in this mountain-streaked wilderness was a shade of green or grey – though she would concede Olympia was a fine city, rather enjoyable even. The last of her gold weighed heavily in her hand as she approached the docks, stacked full with trading barges. She walked slowly through the main street, cluttered with the remains of market day.
She was very tempted to go into the striped conical tent to her left, set back into an alcove and decorated with the cuneiform of old Orian script. Fort Nader had had its benefits; she could now speak passable commonspeak Orian, and read some too. She didn’t need to, though, since she knew the word well, though in any case it had been scrawled on the little sign propped by the tent flap.
Naibet.
Lingering by a pear-fruit stall, pretending to be interested in the difference between melon-pears and berry-pears, she considered the tent. No, she wouldn’t go, since she’d taught herself the art of naibet as a child – really, it was very easy – and she always drew the same cards, the same fortunes, though of course one wasn’t supposed to read one’s own fortune, it being extremely bad luck. The future is uncertain, consult later. Darkness comes. The Phoenix – rising or falling, hard to tell. The Sorceress in ascendance – well, that is a difficult one...
She’d had professional naibet-fortunes told to her in the back streets of central Palam, and they had all told her the same thing, given her the same odd stare, drawn the same cards: the Queen, the Phoenix, the Sorceress, and Death. Every time, the same printed blank-eyed skull, the same sympathetic look on the witch-woman as she explained, ‘Now, cariu miu, Death does not mean what you think...’
Which she knew very well, of course, but it was no comfort. What use were soothsayers if not to tell truths? Or half-truths, at least, but at best every fortune she had read was as vague as the wind.
In the end she bought several melon-pears, getting change for one of the gold coins, and walked straight past the tent, crossing to the other side of the market. Besides, she thought to herself as she crunched the fruit, Orian spies were everywhere these days. What was to say the witches hadn’t become slaves for the Divinity as well?
So - does she come across as sympathetic? Also, are you interested? The card-reading mentioned here is the first introduction of it - does it work?
*
At Port Halberd, the mist curled back off the sea like a sneer, and she dressed in full Isirian veil, after trading her last silver coins for the dress of a well-to-do foreign pleasure-trader in the town’s outskirts. She had always thought Gondwanaland a rather dull place – green was her least favourite colour, followed closely by grey, and everything in this mountain-streaked wilderness was a shade of green or grey – though she would concede Olympia was a fine city, rather enjoyable even. The last of her gold weighed heavily in her hand as she approached the docks, stacked full with trading barges. She walked slowly through the main street, cluttered with the remains of market day.
She was very tempted to go into the striped conical tent to her left, set back into an alcove and decorated with the cuneiform of old Orian script. Fort Nader had had its benefits; she could now speak passable commonspeak Orian, and read some too. She didn’t need to, though, since she knew the word well, though in any case it had been scrawled on the little sign propped by the tent flap.
Naibet.
Lingering by a pear-fruit stall, pretending to be interested in the difference between melon-pears and berry-pears, she considered the tent. No, she wouldn’t go, since she’d taught herself the art of naibet as a child – really, it was very easy – and she always drew the same cards, the same fortunes, though of course one wasn’t supposed to read one’s own fortune, it being extremely bad luck. The future is uncertain, consult later. Darkness comes. The Phoenix – rising or falling, hard to tell. The Sorceress in ascendance – well, that is a difficult one...
She’d had professional naibet-fortunes told to her in the back streets of central Palam, and they had all told her the same thing, given her the same odd stare, drawn the same cards: the Queen, the Phoenix, the Sorceress, and Death. Every time, the same printed blank-eyed skull, the same sympathetic look on the witch-woman as she explained, ‘Now, cariu miu, Death does not mean what you think...’
Which she knew very well, of course, but it was no comfort. What use were soothsayers if not to tell truths? Or half-truths, at least, but at best every fortune she had read was as vague as the wind.
In the end she bought several melon-pears, getting change for one of the gold coins, and walked straight past the tent, crossing to the other side of the market. Besides, she thought to herself as she crunched the fruit, Orian spies were everywhere these days. What was to say the witches hadn’t become slaves for the Divinity as well?
