A Milestone, of Sorts
October 31st, 2006
Archive
Archive for the ‘O'Shea’ Category
Unrevolution 12.5
February 4th, 2006
Unrevolution 12 - In which some things are explained, some questions are answered, and more questions arise, erm, therefrom.
UPDATE, Feb. 5:
The fire had died to embers and was cool enough for Ronidez and his guest to sit close together on either side of it. Ronidez had seen much in his many years on this little world, but he preferred to be the observer. He was aloof, uninvolved in the lives of others. That would soon change.
“So, you have foreseen it as clearly as I, Mefota,” he said. The young Fulhufan before him waited some time before answering.
“Yes, I have. Change is upon us like a wind. Stronger than hate, stronger than war. As strong as death.”
Ronidez smiled.
“Change is not our enemy, Mefota, change just is. Más cosas cambian, más se quedan mismo.”
Mefota furrowed his brow and cocked his head a bit to the side.
“I don’t understand.”
“Is okay. I just mean that even though things look permanent, like they don’t change, that is an illusion. Time speeds on, we are just along for the ride. Entiende?”
“That one I know. Ah, si. Entien . . . do.”
“Bueno! Más mejor. One day we will be able to speak as brothers.” Ronidez caught himself just as he said this and smiled. “As if we were born brothers, I mean.”
“Perhaps,” said Mefota. “As soon as you learn the language of my people.”
“No. I am still the master, and you the estudent.”
Mefota spread his hands before him and mimed bowing in obeisance to Ronidez.
“So sorry, my master, forgive an ungrateful pupil. Please punish me to correct my rebellious tongue.”
Ronidez drew back his hand as if to strike his companion, but he was unable to contain a smirk as he did so. He reached over the dying fire and ruffled Mefota’s hair. His smile faded a bit as he studied his companion, then broadened into a grin.
“You may think it is a punishment before long. I am sending you on a journey. You will be a long time with this.”
“A quest?”
“No,” said Ronidez. He slapped both hands on his knees and got up. “A road trip.”
With that, he extended his hand through the thin trail of smoke and pulled Mefota to his feet.
Unrevolution 12.4
October 27th, 2005
Nothing since JULY?! Oh, man. I still haven’t figured out why the site’s broken, but another post is long overdue. This one won’t make much sense to readers who never got the old dead-tree-edition issues, but I guess the 12.3 didn’t, either. Continuity be damned, let’s knock this issue out, already, shall we?
Unrevolution 12 - In which some things are explained, some questions are answered, and more questions arise, erm, therefrom.
Cassaria hadn’t written anything in months. Ever since she left the castle, in fact, she’d been unable to put any thought down on paper. She’d been writing daily for as long as she could remember, and now she had stopped cold. It was as if her creativity had remained behind, along with her furniture, sculptures, and most of her clothes. The purge had seemed necessary at the time. She had found it freeing. But now, as she stared at the row of cottages and shops at the edge of her adopted city, she wondered if it had been a mistake to leave so abruptly.
The regret was not enough to make the idea of going back palatable, though. She knew her role as administrator would allow her great power in this time of uncertainty. The king was gone, perhaps never to return, and in his absence, things had begun to fall apart. Most of the army was disbanded, their disillusionment in the wake of crushing defeat causing many soldiers to simply abandon their units and return home. Most of the officers went with them. Crime had been a minor problem in the memory of most citizens, but it was on the rise, as the lack of authority tempted minor thieves and robbers to greater crimes.
Cassaria’s immediate problem was not as dramatic, but no less intractable. Her time at the Edge Inn had been enjoyable, even stimulating, since a steady stream of people made their way through the front door, to the bar, and out again. She hadn’t encountered such variety in people in decades, if ever. She wanted a place of her own, though, after long years under someone else’s roof. She had a little money with her, and finding work would prove easy, no doubt, but the tiny room upstairs would always feel temporary.
She heard Barlow come out the door and stand behind her. He said nothing, and she smiled at his hesitation. Barlow had treated her with deference of the highest order since her arrival, despite her attempts to be just another guest. She let him stand for a time. He cleared his throat, but said nothing. She considered speaking to him, but was overwhelmed at that moment with a sense of calm, and couldn’t summon the words. The wind rustled the grass across the road and stirred up a tiny cloud of dust. In the distance, the shadows of low clouds wrapped the hills. She was unable to break her silence.
Unrevolution 12.3
June 7th, 2004
In which some things are explained, some questions are answered, and more questions arise, erm, therefrom.
The point where the sun’s light had faded and the stars were just shining through had long been a favorite spot of Kyden’s. He still enjoyed coming to the clearing he’d found years before, even after he’d come to loathe nearly everything else on the wretched little world he was stuck on.
The war was over, which was a good thing, he supposed. He had managed to stay out of this one, like most of the simple politics of the place. He had never cared enough to choose sides on this planet. Still, there had been quite a lot of needless death. Had he possessed his old weapons, or even the ship that had brought him, he might have been able to do more. But he had grown tired of wasting energy on wishes and the “if only” game. Now he just felt sick.
He thought it was odd, still feeling like an outsider after eight years. It wasn’t the strangest world Kyden had experienced, but it had its moments. Every so often, an event would fall into place with such perfection it seemed almost to have been orchestrated. He had met so many offworlders the place had seemed full of them, but it was just the juxtaposition of the familiar mix of species with the native residents, especially on the day side.
Then he had met Cassaria. She was beautiful, smart, and a poet. She had a gift for languages, and that made her useful in her position as the king’s assistant. He had been amazed at the breadth of her knowledge, and she seemed to him to be much older than she looked. Even as they had begun their romance, however, she brushed aside all questions of her deeper past, insisting that it didn’t matter what she had once been, only what she was now. The circumstances of her arrival on the planet did not involve a crash, as did the vast majority of offworld arrivals. Her story was one of abandonment, but the details of who had done the abandoning were vague. She seemed to have taken it in stride, as she did most other things in her life, and he found her indifference her most maddening trait. They fell in love, they took a house together in Jonter-Wo, and a year later it was over.
He felt lost. Not because of Cassaria, not because of the war, but because he had no idea what he was going to do next. His old pattern of trading in information was unsatisfying, and most of the prospects had vanished with the onset of the war. Now the Fulufans were in serious talks to unify. He had no idea what would happen if that came to pass. Invasion or even conquest might be possible. He decided he would make a choice over where his loyalties rested before it happened. Part of feeling lost was borne of long years spent playing two or more sides against each other and keeping to himself. He wanted to belong somewhere again.
And, as he stared up at the bejewelled darkness, he sat down for the first time since he found the clearing.
Unrevolution 12.2
May 3rd, 2004
In which some things are explained, some questions are answered, and more questions arise, erm, therefrom.
Ana found Makele sitting beside the stream with his back to a tree. She opened her mouth to ask him what in the world he was doing here, worrying her with his absence, and saw the note. He had clenched his hand around it, crumpling it so as to be unreadable, but she knew it at once. Makele had hardly let go of it since Jan had left. She closed her mouth and knelt beside him and put her arm through his.
He didn’t say anything for such a long time, she was about to speak again, but Makele’s soft baritone stopped her.
“I didn’t want a replacement,” he said.
“I know,” said Ana.
Another long pause made her ache to comfort him, to hold him and tell him it would all be fine, everything would be fine. She knew these were mere words, though, and that the emptiness they felt, both of them, for their lost son would always remain, in some sense. She wanted to laugh. It was an insane impulse, but the empathy she felt for her husband overwhelmed her, and she gripped his arm tighter and lay her head on his shoulder.
“Maybe it was just that the house was full, again,” said Makele. “Maybe I thought that would make it better. Now all we have is time.”
“We have another son,” Ana said. She patted his arm in a slow rhythm.
“I didn’t mean it that way, love. I’m thankful for what we have. I never got a chance to help Kinve find his way in the world.”
Ana pressed her lips between her teeth at the mention of Kinve’s name. She could count on one hand the number of times Makele had spoken it since his death.
“He was as lost as that boy we took in,” Makele continued. Maybe that’s what I was hoping for. Just one more chance.”
“Life only gives us one chance,” said Ana. “But we’re still here. I still love you. I’ll keep loving you all the rest of my life. If it’s one day or a thousand, that will never change.” She looked up at him, and he turned to meet her eyes. “Be here with me,” she said. “Love me completely and I promise you we will get through this.”
Makele let the note Jan had written to him slip from his fingers as he raised his hand to his wife’s cheek. The note slipped down the bank and into the stream, where the slow current took it away. The paper uncurled as it soaked up water, bumped into stones and against the bank on either side of the water, and the ink spread and melted into blurry smears until it was a ghost on a translucent surface.
Ten Years On: Greymatter/O’Shea 1993-2003
October 31st, 2003
In honor of the 10th anniversary of the first issue of Greymatter, I’ve put up the remaining comics rest of the O’Shea bits from the eleven published issues. Read them here.
Now that I have a little free time again, I’m trying to get this site into a proper CSS format, rather than strewing tables all over the place. I promise not to wait six months to make another update.
On that tack, and in further obeisance to the decennial, I’m beginning something new. Below is the first post of the new format of O’Shea. This is an experiment, and most of this stuff is unedited. The illustrations will probably mostly be scanned sketches, but we’ll see. Keep in mind, the following will make little sense unless you have
read the rest of the series.
Unrevolution 12.1
October 31st, 2003
In which some things are explained, some questions are answered, and more questions arise, erm, therefrom.
For a long time, O’Shea wondered about his predicament. He spent most days in the same way: he worked his shift at the Edge Inn, then came back to sit on the narrow balcony just outside Jan’s room. He wished there were sunsets to enjoy, the way they were on Equar—firey oranges shifting to red, then purple, before finally fading out. But here the light was always the same, the sun always in the same position in the sky.
He had resigned himself to being stuck here, to spending the rest of his life on a primitive world with no one else who looked like him. And yet, at the back of his mind, there was a small hope. He still believed, or wanted to believe, that somehow he would find a way home. It still worried him that he and Jan didn’t belong there, despite the abundance of unusual creatures that peppered the town, and maybe the entire planet.
And what am I? he thought. Just another misfit with no one to relate to. So much for self-pity, I reckon.
He had to admit, the idea that sexual fulfillment would be forever beyond his grasp was more than a little depressing. Not that he’d fooled around so much when he was at home, on Equar, but there had been girlfriends. Human women, or whatever these were, seemed nice enough, but he couldn’t get past the anatomy. It’s like some kinda reverse bestiality, he thought, and snorted at the absurdity of it all. He sighed, a little annoyed that he had the extra time to ponder these quirks in his life. Before he rescued Jan, things had changed too quickly to worry about them overmuch. Now, despite a full-time job and another person to care for, his spare time seemed to stretch interminably.
And so much for life’s damn mysteries, he thought, and got up to go check on Jan.
Jan was a long time in recovering. He lay unconscious for most of the first day, then opened his eyes and asked for water. O’Shea worried about brain damage, but Jan was fairly lucid, most of the time. He slept fitfully, and didn’t talk much when he was awake, but bit by bit O’Shea could see his friend coming back to his old self. That is, the person he knew before they crashed on the tiny world that had become their new home.
After several days, Barlow came up to visit with Jan, bringing soup and kind words. O’Shea decided not to press Jan about his drinking, since it didn’t matter in his current state, and there was no alcohol in the house. He was content to escort visitors in and out of the room, including the girls from the inn, who all displayed a need to express their maternal instincts, as well as less altruistic desires. Jan was, after all, still a handsome young man, despite the bruises and swelling.