Chatterbox - The Colors of Klarand

Okay, first of all, I have a shiny new gadget on my sidebar - a word counter for Water Princess, Fire Prince. Currently, it's blue, because I'm writing part one - The Water, when I move on to part two - The Fire, I'll turn it red, and so on. So, keep an eye on it and you can get an idea of my progress. I'll try to update it every day.

I'm thoroughly enjoying the book so far. There's some discrepancies I'll need to clean up later, but for the most part, it's flowing well, and I just entered one of my favorite chapters. After it, I'll have passed where I was in the last computer draft. 

Anyways, onto my chatterbox. The theme this month is Maples. As in the tree. This did throw me for a loop, as I had intended to use my Rizkaland cast and - gasp! - they don't have maples in Rizkaland.

But I did some thinking and have come up with something plausible with Andrew and Karlos. Enjoy!

Via Pinterest

"What is your world like, Fire Prince?" asked Karlos, sitting down on the log next to Andrew. "You keep saying how different it is from our world, but what is it like? How is it different?"

Andrew glanced at the kid and automatically ruffled his hair. "Well, for one thing, snow isn't ... pink."

"It isn't always pink here, either," said Karlos, "Just near the Firefall."

"Also," said Andrew, "Leaves are green. Not ... whatever color they feel like being."

"All year round?" asked Karlos, his eyes widening.

"What do you mean?" asked Andrew. "Do leaves turn green here?"

The boy nodded. "In autumn, and then they fall from the trees. It's lots of fun to play in them."

Andrew nodded, seeing some sort of semblance to logic in that. "Well, they aren't green all year," he admitted. "In fact, in autumn, they do turn other colors. And then they fall from the trees."

"You have a funny world, Fire Prince."

"Except they don't turn strange colors like purple and blue," Andrew continued. "Usually, they're brown, orange, red, or yellow."

"That doesn't sound very exciting."

"But it is, for our world at least," continued Andrew. "My favorites are the maples?"

"Maples?" Karlos repeated.

"Their leaves turn a rich red, with is very pretty," Andrew explained. "And in late winter, you can harvest the sap and turn it into maple syrup, which is really good."

Karlos was silent for several long seconds. "Cool!" he announced, then ran off to pester one of the other men. Andrew sighed and shook his head.

There. I got maples to work in there. I did my best, I really did! Anyways.

The Love of Pears

Via Pinterest

"There are days when I tire of fish, leaves, and nuts."

Lucin looked up from her place at the river to see that Erica was no longer fishing, but was sitting cross-legged on her rock, staring into the distance.

"But what else would we eat?"

Erica sighed and shook her head. "Where I come from, there are other things. Other sorts of meat and ... fruit."

Lucin couldn't even imagine eating any other sort of creature than fish, but, "What's fruit?"

Eric cocked her head to the side. "It's something like a nut, but instead of a shell, there's a sweet fleshy stuff around it, and you eat that instead of the nut. Most people just throw the nuts away."

"That doesn't even make sense."

"I know, that's what all of you tell me, but you have no idea what I would do for a pear right now."

"A pear?"

"It's a type of fruit, my favorite kind," Erica explained. "But I haven't had one in, oh, I don't know how long. A hundred years maybe? They haven't been in season."

"Oh."

"Maybe I should just let him kill me again - then I might actually get a pear."

"But we need you here!" Lucin protested.

"I know you do. That's why I return, no matter how tired I am of the fish and the nuts and the leaves. My love of pears does not outrank my love for this people."

She winked slowly and pulled a string out of the water, and Lucin gasped as she saw that there was a fish on the end of it. "I have some tricks up my sleeve, Lucin. I'm the Eternal Queen, after all."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Okay, so there's my linkup for Rachel Heffinton's Chatterbox this month. For some reason, my characters only get inspired to talk about her topics if they involve food. I'm not sure why. Anyways, this is for The Eternal Queen, a story I'm looking forward to writing when I get to it. 

Jelly Donuts and the Great Feud

"Now princess," Rikkard began, opening the book. "Today we are going to learn about the great Feud."

"We had that last night," Lillillil replied, nodding slowly.

Rikkard blinked. "You are purposefully misunderstanding me again. I am not talking about the events of last night, but of five hundred years ago when our ancestors decided to part ways."

She tilted her head to the side. "I knew I was born in the wrong era."

"You wish to have been born during the great Feud?" He had asked the question before he had time to think about it. He honestly did not have time for any of her misdirection today.

"Oh yes," said she, seizing upon the opportunity. "You see, we have good food now, and I like it a lot, but back then, they had great food, and that must have been amazing."

"Princess, I am not talking about what they ate, but the argument that led to the decision to part," explained Rikkard, in effort to get them back on topic.

She stared wistfully out the window, her chin resting on the palm of her hand. "I wonder if the great food was jelly donuts."

"I believe that jelly donuts are a recent invention," said Rikkard. "We do not have the among the Alivocks."

"Must be why you're always so grumpy," Lillillil decided. "And that's probably why they were so grumpy back then. They never would have argued if they had had jelly donuts to eat instead."

"I do not believe that jelly donuts would have swayed anyone's opinion," said Rikkard, wondering if there were any way to get back onto topic.

"They would have swayed mine," she declared. "But, unfortunately, I wasn't alive back then, so my opinion doesn't matter."

"However, we can still study and learn from the people who were alive then. Take Terian, for example ..."

"The stuck up Alivock scholar who thought that people were only supposed to walk on their feet? He needed a jelly donut. Why'd you have to bring up food, Rikkard? Now I'm hungry, and we only just had breakfast. I wonder if cook has anything left over ..."

And before Rikkard had time to protest, she was out of her chair ... and out of the room. Rikkard darted after her, but since she was already disappearing around a corner at the other end of the hall, he slowed to a more dignified walk. Even among the illogical Silions, it was still unseemly for a man to be chasing after a young woman, especially if she were the princess. Besides, he was about ninety percent sure that he would find her in the kitchen.

Sure enough, he did discover her perched on a stool at the end of a long counter, with nothing other than a jelly donut in her hand. She grinned triumphantly. "Oh, are you hungry, too, Rikkard?" she asked. Without waiting for him to answer, she tore the donut in half and offered him the part that didn't have her bite marks in it.

Deciding that protesting would only bring more problems than it was worth, he accepted the half and meekly took a bite.

"Want to know something interesting about jelly donuts?" she asked, as the last bite of her half disappeared.

"I suppose I have no choice."

"Well you see," she explained, licking the jelly residue off of her fingers, "it's a Silivock legend that if a man accepts part of one that a girl has already started to eat, it means he likes her."

Rikkard's gaze fell to his half-eaten half, then he closed his eyes. He had just stumbled into another one of her traps. Honestly, if it weren't for the fact that her father was threatening him with death ...

"But that's no where nearly as important as that great feud," she continued. "Back when Terian and Ligire, twin brothers, I may point out, decided that the only way to make Alivocks and Silions stop arguing was to separate them, is it?"

"Uh, no, I don't suppose it is ..."

No Coffee in Rizkaland

Rachel Heffington of Inkpen Authoress has begun a new link-up called Chatterbox, akin to the Snippets of Story that Katie hosts (and I shall be posting mine the day after tomorrow) and similar to my own Character Encounters. (She also compares it to Beautiful People, but I've never actually done BP, so I can't say that for certain.)

The theme of Chatterbox is showing your characters through conversation. She assigns a theme, and you have your characters talk about it. (Sorta like how I assign a location and you meet your character there.) Who knows - it may even find its way into your book!

This month's theme is coffee ... a topic that none of my characters have ever given enough thought to warrant a conversation. But I've worked through my list of characters and came up with a cast and setting that is at least somewhat logical for such a conversation. So here goes ... Clara and Andrew on coffee. (Told from Andrew's POV, so Clara will be referred to by her title, Water Princess, which is how I keep it straight in my head whose POV I'm using in the book.)

"They don't have coffee here in Klarand."

Andrew's head shot up from the tiny fire to see the Water Princess staring down at him. Even after blinking several times, he still could only come up with one word for his response: "What?"

She smirked as she sat down cross-legged on the other side of the fire. "They don't have coffee in Klarand," she repeated. "In fact, it doesn't exist anywhere in Rizkaland."

He blinked again, glancing helplessly towards their sleeping friends. "And you'd ... like some?" he guessed.

She made a face, and he instantly knew that he had guessed wrong. "Coffee is disgusting, and terribly bad for your health."

"Then ... why'd you bring it up?" He found it almost impossible to even think with her staring at him like that.

"Because we've already discussed how Rizkaland doesn't have chocolate, and coffee follows naturally from that." 

"That was five days ago."

She smirked again. "We've been busy, but now we aren't. So we can continue the conversation."

Andrew glanced towards the dead-end wall along which she had been pacing like a wildcat for the last three of those days. "I've ... noticed."

Her gaze followed his to the wall and a growl rumbled in her throat. "I don't like inactivity."

"Obviously."

"Which is why coffee is not a good thing for me. You think I'm bad now - I'd be a monster if people gave me coffee."

"Except that you don't like it."

"Precisely." She was silent for several seconds, then turned him a sharp look. "So, do you like coffee?"

He looked down at the fire in an effort to avoid that sharp look. "Not plain, but with ..."

She snorted. "Exactly, you have to add SUGAR to make it taste good. And do you know how unhealthy sugar is?"

"I've heard."