i used to dream in the dark of palisades park.
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E - WIPs, Scrapped Posts, Spoilers
POSTED ON May 29, 2022 19:22:54 GMT
This post won't give you any greater understanding of Elisha referring here to the first version of Elisha, which was scrapped). It's just me sharing something about my novel writing pursuits, that incidentally relates to Elisha.
I get the sense that I won't get to properly play Elisha on this site. He probably doesn't mesh well with how the site is set up. But, the way that I write his narrative has helped me tremendously when it comes to this book idea that I scrapped. One of the MCs, his name is Ika, was going to become a wildman after the intro parts of the series finished. His mentor, named MacIntosh, gets murdered, and this leaves Ika alone. It plays with the idea that the Prophets were wildmen in one sense or another, and MacIntosh follows the Elijah and John the Baptist pattern of literally living in the wild (as opposed to the Daniel and/or Jeremiah pattern of "living in the wild" in society).
So, since Ika never got to the stages where he learned how to be in society, he becomes a wildman, knowing that would be what happened to him anyway, even if only figuratively. But, I could never find a narrative style that properly represented the wildman perspective. Then Elisha happened. It was a stroke of genius. There is a chance that I was lead back to RPing solely to develop this narrative style, so that I could then write this book.
What you're gonna see below is Ika before he becomes a wildman, and before the narrative style changes. I'm hoping its as enjoyable to y'all as it is for me. I forgot how funny it was at certain parts cause of how undersell my sense of humor can sometimes be. ep.1, little things matter A man of well age steps into the farm. He wears the skin of an unsually large tahr, staff in hand, walking along the farmland as if it belongs to him when it in fact does not but also does. Many see his approach. Many others are too busy working to see him, and even fewer have any idea what he is. Among them, there is a young boy. This young boy, who fails to see the man of well age not because of work, but because of utter idlemindedness, is unfortunately the man's last great task before his life comes to an end. The name of this young boy is Ika. He fiddles with the dirt even though he should probably be working, and expects that, when the shadow of the man of well age falls over him, that one of the overseers has come to berate him for his laziness. Before he can look up, the man of well age drops the tahr's skin on Ika's head. Ika makes a lot of noise as he wrestles it away, his face made red with the fire of his anger, ready to cost his family the wages from yet another farm. The word idiot leaves his mouth, but then he sees the man of well age walking away so very calmly, staff in hand, never looking back. He shuts up. He sees the animal skin for what it is. His heart does more than simply quicken. There was no way in the-God's green hell this was real. "Wait a minute. You dropped your mantle—" But the man of well age kept walking. Ika bit his teeth, took up the mantle. He ran after the man as fast as his feet could carry him, never once thinking that his feet would carry him so far away from the farm that he'd never see his home or his family ever again.
"I still don't understand why you insist on being naked all the time." The man of now even weller age said, "My mantle is my clothing. Without it, I'm naked." Ika had long since learned that the man of now even weller age's name was in fact a very strange name that was very foreign to the region. He called himself "Mikentosh". Much of the time, Ika thought of him as Mikentosh, but at the same time Mikentosh was also still "the man of even weller age". He grabbed the man's mantle and said, "The mighty man of the-God, O Mikentosh the Solid — stout follower of your beliefs, and yet you wear clothes in society. Why not wear them for me?" "Ika. It's MacIntosh," Mikentosh said. "My Arabian tongue fails me and always will," was Ika's reply. "You should stop reminding me." "When it comes to my nakedness, I say the same to you. The time is coming when you will make a new mantle to fit me. Endure it until then." Ika groaned, very audibly, and very very intentionally. "But there is just so much to endure. There is just so very very much to have to endure." Mikentosh faced the fire, laughless in his expression — but they'd been together long enough. Ika knew the man appreciated his sense of humor. He just didn't laugh sometimes for some reason. So Ika rested within himself a bit, pleased with his jokes. Three years since the farm. Three years spent doing so much hard work for a man of apparently-chronic nakedness, for seemingly no reason at all, while the man himself lounged around doing nothing still. He used to wonder why he ever stayed, but now he often admitted that being with Mikentosh far-surpassed everything he chose to leave behind. Family and all. Because even though Mikentosh seemed to be much less than what people thought prophets were, he was still considered to be a prophet. And he still chose Ika to become his eventual replacement. Three years of nakedness because of an animal skin. Ika rolled up the mantle, swept it back and forth against the cave floor. It seemed so silly. The ire of his family, or the source of it, anyway. Ika used to view himself like that. Now, he stewarded the mantle of a prophet. And so, silly it was, he learned to suppose. In his hands, the thing felt crusty. Despite how well he cleaned it over the years, its age showed. Four-plus decades worth of age, to be more exact, according to Mikentosh. Several stitiches scarred the thing, all of them stitched in by Ika. He remembered asking Mikentosh how he kept the mantle from breaking down over the years, and why it only started to fall apart now that Ika carried it, and Mikentosh said that the time would come when Ika would understand, and that until then, he should trust the techniques that Mikentosh gave him. When Ika asked when that time would come, exactly, Mikentosh told him that it would be in the same day that Ika made him a new mantle. That became the answer for so many things. Ika would understand when the time came, and that time was whenever Ika was meant to make Mikentosh a new mantle. It seemed like prophets scammed people by being unnecessarily cryptic. Sometimes, Ika returned the favor. Mikentosh always giggled whenever he did. A fire sat between the two males, and lit up their cave pretty well. The bear that they shared the cave with slept peacefully off to the side. Two of her cubs slept near Ika, and the other one slept near Mikentosh. The mother treated Mikentosh strange, as if she answered to him, and yet he treated her like no man that Ika had ever seen had ever treated any being. His respect for her completely betrayed the nature of her own orientation towards him. It was in the first year of the two since they all started living together that she came back with cubs. If you met him in the streets, though, there was no way anyone would ever have guessed that Mikentosh was friends with a bear. People called him Solid because of how zealous he was towards his faith, not because he was known for being courageous. Most people dismissed him because of how soft-spoken he was. Even Ika looked back on the day that Mikentosh called him with great curiosity. He dropped his mantle on Ika's head, and walked away naked, not caring who saw. He was like a living contradiction sometimes. Even now, he sat like a statue, clearly bothered by something, and yet his presence filled the air with something like calm, such that every time Ika inhaled, he breathed in something like amazement. There was no way to dismiss him once you knew him. Something about him demanded exaltation, even though he never let Ika do that. Nor anyone else.
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