Memorable Worlds: The Land of the Fallen Rainbow

The Land of the Fallen Rainbow

My Experience with this World: 

I was doing my school work one day, and discovered a story on the back of my school list. I read it about six billion times that week. (I must have been particularly bored of my school work!) Problem was, there was only one page of it - and it promised WAY more to come. It was the story of a girl named Shasta who had been born with crooked legs, but through countless surgeries, was now able to walk and run like a normal girl. However, now that she's among normal children, she has discovered that's she's an outcast. She was overjoyed when her teacher assigned writing a story as homework, because she used to be really good at it ... but once she got home, she discovered that she now has a MAJOR case of writer's block. While bemoaning her fate, she heard a knock on her closet door, and when she investigated, she found a little man - a dwarf!

And there the page ended. I spent the next year or so wondering what became of Shasta and who that dwarf was and what he was doing in her closet. Luckily, I'm the sort of person who can survive cliff hangers ... so I wasn't scarred for life by the experience.

Eventually, I discovered that it was my mom's book, and I begged her to let me read the rest. Eventually she let me, and I sat down at her computer to read and enjoy all of Shasta's wonderful adventures ...

And discovered that she had only written the first six chapters. Talk about cruel and unusual.

I then began all sorts of crazy ploys to get my mom to finish writing the book ... including a play with my cousin and I ... but nothing worked. At last mom handed me the file (via dropbox) and told me everything shew knew of the thing and said that I could do whatever I wanted it with it.

So I turned it into a trilogy, wrote about a page more ... and got writer's block myself.

Ah ... such is life. Someday I'll get the book finished, and published, and everyone will love it as much as I did when I found it on the back of my school list.

Or we can hope.

Origin:

The origins of the Land of the Fallen Rainbow are uncertain. Mom doesn't know, and I haven't come up with a plausible answer. A name for God hasn't come up either.

Geography:

So far the Land of the Fallen Rainbow is mostly unexplored. What is known, however, is that there is a shifting dessert whose borders are never constant (and it's full of animate plants called Purple Plinktoos - it's a very good idea to stay away from them), a mountain range full of caves and caverns, an ocean ... and at least three forests. Blue forest, which has blue trees that get VERY tall in the center (or else people shrink when they're within the woods, it's unclear which) and it't not a good idea to fall asleep there since you're like as not to never wake up, Song forest, which is bright and airy and cheerful and full of yellow-leaved trees, and the Zaver Forest, which is kinda like Mirkwood ... only darker.

The Land of the Fallen Rainbow is so named because everything is a bright, bold, unusual color. There are two suns, one orange and one red, (making this a geocentric world) but the jury's out on whether or not there are moons. The color comes from nine special gems that reside in the heart of a mountain. Once a year, both suns are in just the right position so that the light penetrates strategically placed holes in the mountain, and everything bursts into color. These are the Nine Gems of Virtue and they are also responsible for keeping harmony and unity between the diverse peoples who live in this world. The gems are known as follows:

Love: Represented by a Ruby
Joy: Fire Opal
Peace: Sapphire
Patience: Pearl
Kindness: Tourmaline
Goodness: Emerald
Faithfulness: Diamond
Gentleness: Moonstone
Self-Control: Amethyst

I'll let ya'll guess as to my reasoning behind those jewels. Some are obvious (I'm sure) but I'm not giving away everything about the book yet ...

The way in and out of this world is through closets, via the Golden Line.

Peoples and Culture:

Now THIS is where I've had fun plotting. You see, for each of the jewels, there's one people group that is affected more than any of the others. (And there are other groups, but I haven't met any of them yet)

Love is embodied by the Alatians. They live in the ocean, and are kinda like mermaids, only they have legs instead of tails. They have big feet, however, and their hands are completely webbed. They do not have hair, instead their bodies are completely covered in scales, blue and greens for the females (so that they blend in better in the green water and blue caves where they live) and oranges and reds for the males. Males are also quite a bit larger than the females. They make their clothing out of woven seaweed. They have both gills, which are connected to their mouths, and lungs, which are connected to their noses. Because their mouths are connected to their gills, they cannot speak the common tongue. They understand you, but unless you know what they're humming, two way communication is impossible. They have a very close-knit community, most of them living in their capitol city of Atlantis (which is built into the caves under a good-sized island).

Joy is represented by the Sunsingers, who are a birdlike who live in Song forest. I actually made them up for my Narnia fanfiction, but I'm a firm believer in recycling characters from fanfiction for stuff I can actually publish. Sunsingers have feathers instead of hair, and they make their clothing out of their molted feathers (and the feathers of birds for decoration). They are tall and bony, and have hollow bones. They don't have wings, so they can't fly, but they can glide short distances. They live a very haphazard life, playing in the trees, eating the fruit ... whatever they feel like. They are a very happy people, but not very serious.

Peace is represented by giants, but I haven't gotten around to develloping their culture at all.

Patience is the dwarves. As Shasta describes the one she finds in her closet:

His clothes looked like they had come from one of her story books about old England. He wore a red pointed hat with red and turquoise feathers sticking in the top. He had on a brown shirt and a red vest, turquoise pants and strange brown boots, obviously homemade. He had a large round face, small black eyes, a very large nose, and a wart on his left cheek. His face and hands were like leather. His hands were small and fat, she wondered how he used such small hands. He was half as wide as he was tall, and as he removed his hat, she noticed that his dark black hair was pulled back into a pony tail, and would have been considered much too long by her mother’s standards. He was a perfect little dwarf, just like the ones pictured in her books.

- Nine Gems of Virtue

I haven't encountered any female dwarves yet, so I don't know about them. I do know that dwarves have good vision in the dark, and they make good tutors, interestingly enough. Well, they do if they decide they like you. They can be quite gruff at times ... or at least, Flewder can, but he has some ... issues. (Sorry, can't tell you what his problem is, beyond the fact that he's blamed for the feud between the elves and dwarves, and has therefore been declared an outcast in both communities.)

Representing Kindness are the Glimmers. These are small, fairy-like creatures who live in Zaver forest. Their wings are made of light. They are very ditsy, but if you can keep them on task, they make excellent guides through the dark depths. Their ruler is whichever one of them can keep a thought the longest.

Lanyi represent goodness. Lanyi are sort of a cross between fauns and centaurs. Like fauns, they have the bottoms of goats, but like centaurs, they have six limbs instead of four. Their names (or at least the names of all of the ones that I've met) all begin with El - Elroi, Elrene ... you get the idea. They look younger than they actually are, for instance Elroi, the first Lanyi Shasta meets, looks eight at the most, but he's actually forty-three and is married with two kids. (Adorable things, they are!) Lanyi like to help people, and they have houses positioned near places of danger so that they can give their assistance to weary children. They are assisted by the Lairies, who are like fairies ... only human sized. I'm not sure yet if Lairies represent a gem or not ... They could represent faithfulness, because I haven't settled on something for that ... or maybe gentleness ...

Self-control is represented by the elves. They are much like Tolkien's elves, tall, long-living, and wise. Because they are so wise, they are often looked to for leadership in times of crisis. They are led by the Elder Elf. All elves love history and story telling, and the children's favorite game is enacting stories they have heard or making up new ones together.

There are also a few human villages, but I have yet to decide whether or not they will represent a gem. There is also a wizard named Homgloff. Intermarriage between peoples is not allowed, and not possible.

(Folks, don't read me wrong, I do enjoy reading about blending people groups like elves and humans and such, but I take a more realistic approach when I'm writing. I do have books where it happens, but they're the exceptions, not the rule.)

Again, I'm going to let ya'll guess as to why I selected the peoples for the gems.

What I like about this world:

The COLORS!!! This is a land of the FALLEN rainbow, so naturally everything is colored weird. I also love the wide variety of peoples and creatures that this world has. (trust me, I had barely even scratched the surface. I only talked about the sentient peoples). 

What I don't like:

The fact that mom hasn't written anything more.

What I learned from this world: 

That my mom is a good writer! (Although reading over it just now ... it's a bit awkward ... but I'll polish it up for her eventually.)

Playing with color is FUN!!! This bled into both Rizkaland and Colluna.

I've mentioned this before, but without this book, The Ankulen would not exist. It was because of that play that my cousin and I attempted to do of this play that prompted us to change into what is now the Ankulen. Also, The New Division got its first breath of life from this book. I had stumbled upon an idea that simply would not leave me alone - what if a girl wasn't allowed to cut her hair because she was a weird creature from another world? After reading mom's book, I decided to also give the girl, who was now named Tabitha, some writer's block for the beginning, then ship her into another world where she discovers that she's an elf and that the random boy that she's been trying to write about is real - and her brother!

Yeah, it's changed a lot since then, but without Nine Gems of Virtue's initial breath of life, it would not be what it is today.

I've also discovered that trying to write in someone else's style is HARD!!!

These world-building posts are for the promotion of the upcoming release of my book The Ankulen. Feel free to do one yourself, just make sure you refer back to my blog and let your readers know about my upcoming book. If you do write a post, post a link in a comment somewhere on my blog and I'll add you to a giveaway for a copy of my book.