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alonstory-blog · 6 years

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A Lon Chat

So we did the first chat for patrons tonight, on Discord. This is an edited transcript. This is an example of the kinds of chat we’ll be doing at the $5 and $10 reward levels.

We covered some of the upcoming story, world-building, color palettes and web design.

Transcript behind the cut

Jenrose-Today at 5:06 PM

So I've been working on Lon Ago and Far Away this week, along with completely revamping both websites and my Tumblr.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:07 PM

Excite!

Jenrose-Today at 5:08 PM

I'm pretty pleased with the way the slideshow came out on lonstory.com

So anything specific you want to ask questions about or talk about tonight about the story?

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:10 PM

I have a question about A Lon Story

Specifically A Lon Beginning

Specifically

Where did Kel learn to introduce themself?

Who is Kel introducing themself to often enough to do it smoothly?(edited)

Jenrose-Today at 5:11 PM

Mama talks a lot to the critters and probes. Mama has to talk a lot to teach Kel language and knows this

When Kel explores a new section of the forest, they introduce themselves to the trees.

One of the interesting changes about having the neural interface active is that over time the trees may start answering back.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:13 PM

Gotcha. Explains the chattering to the bugbot, too

Jenrose-Today at 5:14 PM

Mama knows there are other people on Lon and has been working at teaching Kel conversational skills with the knowledge that at some point in the future they're going to have to leave their little corner of the planet and go out into the world.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:14 PM

Speaking of which

If Kel were to climb up the outside of that mountain and look out at the view?

What would Kel see?

Jenrose-Today at 5:17 PM

There's a lot of rock and forest and a valley. It's not a huge valley, but winds away along a river. There was a lot of erosion before Ama started terraforming, so the topology is kind of post-erosion planted. But this is a relatively young area of mountains. Basically the mountains are jagged but the valley is not.

There was a glacier here, before.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:18 PM

Ama-made or natural or...?

The glacier I mean

Jenrose-Today at 5:19 PM

Oh, the planet was pretty cold before Ama got there. One of the first things she did, terraforming, was to shift the albedo to warm things up. This was a pretty rapid process at first, but she has a pretty good handle on albedo control since one of the major projects she was designed around was stopping global warming.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:20 PM

Quick layperson's definition of albedo? Wikipedia isn't helping

Jenrose-Today at 5:20 PM

The equator was temperate enough, but Mama and Kel are pretty far south.

Albedo is "brightness"

That is, how much of the sun's radiation is reflected back into space

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:20 PM

Ohhh

Jenrose-Today at 5:20 PM

A bright white planet will reflect a lot and tend to be colder

A pitch black planet will absorb most of the radiation and be much hotter

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:21 PM

So she made the planet darker

Jenrose-Today at 5:21 PM

Part of the problem with global warming on earth is that the snowcaps have a very high albedo and when they melt, heating is accelerated

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:21 PM

Ohhh

Jenrose-Today at 5:21 PM

So she made the planet darker and that warmed it up, early on, while there was nothing alive on the planet

The early years on Avalon involved a ton of "mousetrap bots" spreading across the planet to accomplish this albedo shift and to start growing the power network.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:23 PM

Got it.

So there were glaciers before she got there

Probably a lot

Jenrose-Today at 5:23 PM

Yeppers. And glaciers create plains and smooth valleys, but wear less on the mountaintops.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:24 PM

Because water goes downhill.

Jenrose-Today at 5:24 PM

So they live in a glacial valley, but the glaciers are greatly reduced.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:24 PM

(I took two terms of science classes dedicated to water going downhill)

Jenrose-Today at 5:26 PM

There are a couple of continents on Lon, but they actually are on the "mainland" they're just not in an otherwise settled part of it. It's one of the higher mountains behind them, and not particularly easy to get to, but well placed for a communications station.

Because it has a good line of sight to Ama's asteroid and is high up and low interference from the power networks on the ground.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:28 PM

Carefully chosen by Mama I take it?

Jenrose-Today at 5:28 PM

Carefully chosen by Ama, actually. Mama didn't mean to end up in the current situation.

That was something of an accident.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:29 PM

Are we going to learn more about that in story

Jenrose-Today at 5:29 PM

Absolutely!

I mean, Mama is consistently putting off Kel's questions about where she was when she was "resting"

The next part of the story is about the years following A Lon Beginning, and follows Kel as they learn about where Ama came from and why. The answer to "Where was Mama?" requires a lot of careful pre-teaching

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:31 PM

Which answers my next question

Which was, "What do we have to look forward to in Lon Ago and Far Away?"

Jenrose-Today at 5:32 PM

Kel gets to meet a new person, and gets to help make snakes.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:32 PM

Snakes are a good starter animal

They're so easy

roll roll roll

Jenrose-Today at 5:33 PM

Well, they operate strongly on instinct, and don't have fiddly little limbs

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:33 PM

I'm still picturing play-dough

Jenrose-Today at 5:33 PM

hahahaha think more "genetic resequencing and ova generation"

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:33 PM

But see I have no visual metaphor for that

Speaking also of which

Jenrose-Today at 5:34 PM

They're going to 3d print a snake egg

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:34 PM

Oh okay

If good fortune falls from the sky and a Patreon decides to sign on at the sponsor an artist level

What's your first priority for Things Someone Else Illustrates

Jenrose-Today at 5:35 PM

#1 The house as seen from outside. It's basically a hobbit house with a buckydome on top (only instead of a buckydome, it's much, much more... granular) in a forest clearing.

#2 Kel with Mama

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:36 PM

Neat!

Jenrose-Today at 5:36 PM

#3 The house interior

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:36 PM

^^^^^^^^

I want to see that!

Jenrose-Today at 5:36 PM

#4 The whole communication room

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:37 PM

I want a floorplan of the whole setup tbh

Jenrose-Today at 5:37 PM

Oh, a floorplan I can probably do, but I'd have to shift gears away from writing for a bit.

Because I'd have to re-learn the 3d home software

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:38 PM

I can't imagine making 3d home software spit out solarpunk is gonna be easy

Jenrose-Today at 5:38 PM

They're just shapes. I might be able to do it in sketchup make

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:38 PM

I can't even make it spit out regular ol' rooms that are the way I really picture them

Jenrose-Today at 5:39 PM

Anyway, the way my brain works, I can get into "graphic design mode" and do art, or "web design mode" and do web design and web graphics, or "writing"... so I tend to do writing for a while and then shift gears to illustrate. It's part of why it would be so much faster for me to have someone else handling the art and web--I wouldn't have to keep shifting gears away from writing.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:40 PM

nod

Jenrose-Today at 5:40 PM

It was a huge hurdle for me to get into the mode of art design for this, honestly.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:40 PM

Well you did pretty well all things considered

Jenrose-Today at 5:40 PM

Thank you!

It actually took finding Craig, getting his permission to use the glowing flower pictures, and discovering Pixabay to get off the ground with it.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:41 PM

That's where you got the photos of like the girl and the salsify and stuff?

Jenrose-Today at 5:42 PM

Once I discovered pixabay and pexels (two copyright-free, no attribution required photo repositories that act as advertising freebies for the big stock photo catalogs) I was off and running

I have a lot of skill with photo manipulation and very little actual drawing skill

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:42 PM

So there has to be something to start with

Jenrose-Today at 5:42 PM

There really does.

I cannot even start to explain how many hours I've spent looking for the base pictures

Like, the "La Petite Android" picture? Has something like 20 different photos in it, composited. Anything planetary is from Nasa.

But Ama herself is composited out of like, 7 people plus an asteroid and some spiderwebs and broken glass

Which is, you know, appropriate for an android with 50 personalities who builds herself out of data and the available materials.

I posted at the $10 level a new picture called "Bubbles of Memory" which is a fun mashup of actual bubbles and glass sphere photographs

That picture shouldn't be done yet, but I forgot where I was in the story, made that, and then realized I hadn't talked about those things yet in chapter 6. They're more "chapter 9" (chapter 2 of Lon Ago...)

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:46 PM

Hee!

Jenrose-Today at 5:46 PM

oops?

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:46 PM

Some of those reflections look really familiar...

Jenrose-Today at 5:46 PM

They're actually not! Apparently everywhere looks like Oregon

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:47 PM

I knowwww. How???

When I actually travel to places they look nothing like Oregon

But the photographs do!

Jenrose-Today at 5:47 PM

It's like strip malls. They're all identical everywhere.

Trees is trees and we've got a lot of trees.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:48 PM

That's depressing

Jenrose-Today at 5:48 PM

I'm really fascinated by your user icon, the compass rose is delightful.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:48 PM

Thanks it's a stained glass piece I stole borrowed for this purpose

Jenrose-Today at 5:49 PM

Also I've been in "color picking" mode so there's that. Someone needs to ask me about how I chose the colors for the website because a LOT of thought went into it.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:49 PM

ahem

How did you choose the colors for the website, Jen?

Jenrose-Today at 5:49 PM

Anyway, your icon is high contrast but engaging, so I approve, lol

Alright, so first priority for me, since I always do the web at night, was to avoid glaring whites and blacks

Also, I see a lot of chromostereopsis, so a red-black is going to look farther away to me than a blue black.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:50 PM

I thought I noticed some of that at play

Jenrose-Today at 5:50 PM

So I messed around and found #140000, which is this sort of inky burgundy black, and the fact that it's a little red means everything on the page is going to have a little more dimension for me and anyone who sees the way I do.

Second priority is a "white" but I wanted something easy on the eyes. So that gives us the "pale", an ecru-ish color.

It helps that they look good together.

So then we need accents. A little darker for the ecru, and a little lighter for the red-black.

I've got a google doc with this all laid out, I know you're shocked.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:52 PM

A google doc? What a departure.

Jenrose-Today at 5:52 PM

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wzMc-a0WZwSaxb7MLbK5a1Sk4ob7K59AriRY8thPBUo/edit#

Google Docs

Lon Colors

Lonstory.com color scheme Light: #f6f4f5 ___________ Accent:#d5c8c0 ________ Dark: #140000 __________ Accent #724e4e ______ Blue: #2589cb ________ Accent:#a1cbe5 ___________ Light text: #d5e5ef_________ Dark blue: #1c699d ___________ Purple #9027ab ________ Accent ##b030cf__________...

In the doc, any underlined section is actually a color swatch sample.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:53 PM

How you do that

I need that

I have a css stylesheet that needs HELP

Jenrose-Today at 5:54 PM

Just use underscores, highlight the underscores, and pick the background colors

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:54 PM

How do you pick the background color based on a hex code

Jenrose-Today at 5:54 PM

Every color picker I've found has an option to enter a hex code. I use photoshop to find the hex code, but any color picker, you pick the color, it pops up a hex code.

Since css uses hex codes, having a list of hex codes is hecking useful.

https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/

Adobe Kuler

Color wheel | Color schemes

Create color schemes with the color wheel or browse thousands of color combinations from the Kuler community.

Try that. If you scroll down, there's all sorts of color tools handy.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:57 PM

What I meant is when you're using google docs it usually asks for the rgb and not the hex I think

Or at least it does on mine

But this one gives both so.

Jenrose-Today at 5:57 PM

Pick "custom"

Then paste in the hex code

Give me a minute and I can make a screen grab.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:57 PM

Nice

(Come for the Word of God, stay for the web design tips!)

Jenrose-Today at 5:59 PM

rofl

I gotta upload this pic somewhere, hold on.

teasugarsalt-Today at 5:59 PM

No you don't

You can upload it straight into the chat

Jenrose-Today at 6:00 PM

dude okay

http://jenrose.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Screenshot-47.png

teasugarsalt-Today at 6:00 PM

Should be a little plus sign next to where you type

Ohhhhhhh

Okay!

Jenrose-Today at 6:01 PM

Anyway, there's the hex code entry spot

Also I have too many tabs open

So if you look through a typical wordpress theme, for example, you will see dozens of colors, and they're all different and a lot of them are REALLY SIMILAR.

This bugs the hell out of me

This is what happens when people eyeball every damn color

teasugarsalt-Today at 6:02 PM

<.<

>.>

Jenrose-Today at 6:02 PM

If you enter hex codes, instead, then all your blacks are your "correct" black

all your pales are "the correct pale"

teasugarsalt-Today at 6:03 PM

I may or may not have done a lot of eyeballing and guesswork to tweak my forum

Jenrose-Today at 6:03 PM

And your accent colors can be carefully controlled to coordinate/contrast as desired

This is a learning process

My primary objection is when people make a "professional" theme that's supposed to be for businesses and there are 16 shades of black

Anyway, you'll notice i have like 8-12 colors in each site

And they group in families... a couple light creamy colors that would be on the same paint chip, a couple of dark colors, ditto, some blues, some accent colors. I pulled the blues and accent colors directly from my artwork.

teasugarsalt-Today at 6:05 PM

So 50 shades of grey is about bad web design?

Jenrose-Today at 6:05 PM

hahahaha yes

really really bad

(And with that, we ended the chat-- @teasugarsalt is my actual sibling, who has been extremely involved in keeping me going on this story.)

#a lon story #a lon beginning #lon ago and far away #chat transcript #meta #web design #color planning #worldbuilding

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alonstory-blog · 6 years

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A Lon Beginning • Chapter 3: The Face on the Wall

Climbing when you knew how far away something was always felt faster and easier than climbing when you didn’t. Kel was accustomed to spending large portions of every day walking, in the woods, up the mountain. Climbing was as natural as breathing, though usually Kel climbed outside, among the silver-and-green-leaved trees branching everywhere in the woods.

Now that they had a light source, they leaned close to the tunnel walls to look at the scales. Not just red and gold, blues and greens shimmered there, iridescent. And the scales had a tiny space between them that the diffuse light seemed to be coming from.

“Was it grown?” Kel mused aloud. Mama had said that the house was grown, that most of the things around them had been grown long ago.

Kel reached out to touch, and thought, I wish it was brighter.

When the tunnel brightened, Kel startled so hard the pixie nearly fell off their head.

Unsettled, Kel continued climbing, as tiny hands clung tightly to their curls.

Keep reading

#Mine #A Lon Story #A Lon Story Update #A Lon Beginning #pixies #the pixie is wearing a hard hat because pixies are good for line maintenance

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alonstory-blog · 6 years

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A Lon Beginning is Complete! Update and Patreon Info

A Lon Beginning, Part one of A Lon Story, is now complete and posted to Patreon.

The first three chapters are public on Patreon. The next two chapters are available for $1 patrons. Chapter 6 is locked to $3 patrons and Chapter 7 is locked to $5 patrons. Over the coming weeks, I will make more chapters public at a rate of one per week. Posting chapter content to social media will come after it is available on Patreon.

The $10 pledge tier will be getting access to the high res versions of all artwork on December 2.

Ebook versions of the story are coming.

What's next? I'll be working on another story in this universe. If you want to see what I'm working on and some backstory, the $20 pledge level gets you access to some of the more than 20 Google Docs in process, after cards charge.

I'm aiming to do the $10 level chat and Q&A on Sunday, December 3, probably around 4 pm Pacific, depending on what works for those at that level. When we have people pledged at the $5 level (vs. already being at the $10 level) I will set up a separate chat for that (everyone $5 and up will be included) mid-month.

NOTE: I know that a lot of content creators get upset if people sign up for a month and then drop before pledges go through. Personally, I can understand wanting to decide if something is for you. I'm betting that if you sign up, you'll like it enough that you'll want to stay if you can, and if you flat out can't, I'm not going to take it personally if you unsubscribe before the end of your first month. Higher level pledges ($20 and up) will be getting their rewards after payments go through early in the month. But for the lower levels, I see it as a "free trial" period. Either you decide it's worth it to you and stick around while your card is charged, or you don't. I'm not going to run after you yelling, "I want my $2!" Especially this December, I'd rather you join and then cancel later than not join at all. Every person reading, subscribing and talking about this story helps.

If you are not familiar with my other work, I've been writing fanfic for years. That's all available free online, most at or linked from Archive of Our Own. If I'm not posting as fast as you'd like for this universe, I have hundreds of thousands of words posted there, in many fandoms.

Art and links to every chapter behind the cut!

A Lon Beginning • Chapter 1: The Snake in the Mountain

A Lon Beginning • Chapter 2: Preparations

A Lon Beginning • Chapter 3: The Face on the Wall

A Lon Beginning • Chapter 4: Planting Seeds Across the Stars

A Lon Beginning • Chapter 5: The Morning Star

A Lon Beginning • Chapter 6: Lon Ago and Far Away

A Lon Beginning • Chapter 7: Return

#A Lon Story Update #The whole shebang is linked here #A Lon Story #A Lon Begining #My Art

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alonstory-blog · 6 years

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Miss chapter 1? Find all published chapters at Lonstory.com

A Lon Beginning • Chapter 2: Preparations

It took much less time to go down than it had to go up, mostly because Kel slipped and stumbled and without the traction of soles, the floor of the tunnel was quite slick. After a momentary panic at the gaining speed, Kel got their feet in front of them, slowing the slide with shoes stuttering against the odd surface of the tunnel floor.

There wasn’t enough time to think as Kel reacted to the twists and turns, trying to avoid tumbling. This wasn’t so slippery going up.

They managed to come to a stop at one of the more level sections, and sat there for a long moment, just breathing. Kel looked back up the tunnel, but the meandering path meant they couldn’t see very far. Mama, where are you?

A rumble in their stomach sent them further down the mountain, this time they deliberately sat down where the path got steeper, and pushed off, sliding down the rest of the way to Mama’s closet.

Mama was still nowhere to be found, but Kel was hungry and daunted and on the grounds that food might make things make more sense, they went into the kitchen to find sustenance.

Mama usually cooked, bringing together things they’d grown and eggs from the chickens and cultured protein from the meat vat into a variety of dishes. But with no Mama to tell the stove to cook, Kel had to make do with yogurt that Mama had made two days prior. A pile of fresh berries from the basket and a drizzle of precious honey made it decadent.

Kel frowned. Usually when they ate, Mama was there, listening to Kel talk, or explaining how things worked. I need you to explain this to me, Mama. Why is there a snake in my mountain? Why did the wall talk? What is Bot?

Kel was used to asking questions, and Mama was always happy to explain. Kel didn’t have anyone else to ask, but Mama had never minded. It had never occurred to Kel to wonder why there were just the two of them. In their whole life, Kel had heard their own voice and Mama’s, and no others but for the music Mama sometimes listened to at night. But no one had talked to Kel before, and now Bot had, and a wall. The wall that had answered Kel’s question.

Kel glanced up the stairs. The pull of the tunnel was strong, but knowing how far it was, Kel thought perhaps it would be better to go prepared this time.

They put the bowl and spoon in the dish cleaner and went to the cupboard to pull out what Mama called “play food,” though it was not a toy. This is what Mama would pack for Kel to take into the forest—not quite sweet enough to be a cookie, but filling enough to keep them from getting too hungry if they ended up out past mealtime.

They put four bars into a cloth, considered, and then added two more, and folded the fabric up around the food, knotting it to keep the bundle from falling apart. Mama would have just told the cloth to stay, but Kel couldn’t do that yet.

Water was easier; Kel plucked four clear bags of it from the wall, each the size of Kel’s fist, still connected to each other at the top, and set two behind their shoulder and two in front.

Then it was up to the bedroom, to pack food and water into the backpack, with a sleep bag, just in case, and a notepad. Kel stared at the pack and then threw in an extra pair of leggings and a tunic. The day had been warm and the tunnel had been warm, but nights were cold. Kel had no idea if the room at the top of the tunnel would be warm at night, but with no Mama to give them answers, staying in the still and silent house felt scarier than climbing a mountain to talk to a wall.

Kel picked up their little metal flute at the last, opened a window, and played a short, low calling tune. It was late enough. A moment later, a little glowing pixie buzzed in through the open window.

“If I’d known, I’d have brought you earlier,” Kel said. They offered a crumb of play food to the pixie, and it glowed a little brighter.

“Thank you,” Kel said. “You should make it easier. You can ride if you like.”

The pixie fluttered up to the top of Kel’s head, grabbed onto a short, tightly curled lock of hair, and settled as Kel dropped the flute into the backpack and shouldered it.

Chapter flower photo by Craig P. Burrows @conspectusargosy

Please support A Lon Story by reblogging and by joining the Patreon

The whole story is available on the Patreon!

#A Lon Story #A Lon Story Update #A Lon Beginning

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alonstory-blog · 6 years

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A Lon Beginning: Chapter 6 just went live for $5 patrons. https://www.patreon.com/Jenrose

http://lonstory.com

#A Lon Story #A Lon Beginning #Patreon #Science Fiction

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alonstory-blog · 6 years

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New Post has been published on http://lonstory.com/index.php/2017/11/24/chapter-5-is-on-patreon/

A Lon Beginning

Here's where things are at as of 11/23/2017. The general plan is that new chapters will go up as soon as I have the art done for them, until I run out of finished story (current polished story = 7 chapters, so we're getting there.) Then I go back to working on the stories I have

Please support A Lon Story on Patreon! Help expand the art options and get early access to new posts, as well as backstory, exclusive prompt fills, and more!

Feel free to share this post and links to the post! Reblogs help the story grow.

Click through for story links!

#A Lon Beginning #Meta #Patreon info

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alonstory-blog · 6 years

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A little preview of the art for Chapter 5.

Chapter 5 goes live on Patreon later today. https://www.patreon.com/Jenrose

#A Lon Beginning #my art #photocollage #A Lon Story

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alonstory-blog · 6 years

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A Lon Beginning • Chapter 1: The Snake in the Mountain

Kel couldn’t find Mama anywhere.

Not in the garden on the sunny hillside which lay nestled behind the small glittering dome of the second story of their house, and not in the bright woods in the valley below.

Kel pulled the rounded front door open, set a gathering basket down on the shaped wood bench just inside, and called out… but there was no response.

Kel shrugged out of their red cloak and hung it by the door.

(“To make you easy to find!” Mama always said when she put the cloak on Kel in the morning, holding the fabric together until it stayed.) Mama was not there to coax the fabric open, so Kel had to work the cloak up and over their head to get it off.

The house felt empty. Cozy wood and plush fabrics everywhere didn’t make up for the stillness. The usual life it buzzed with was silent in her absence. The curved walls and open spaces—that normally wrapped around Kel like a just-right blanket—felt rigid and wrong.

“Mama!” Kel called again, climbing the stairs to the second floor, looking down over the ground floor one more time, as if Mama might be hiding against a wall.

Kel dropped their backpack in their bedroom—a wide wedge of the upstairs dome—and then went back out to check Mama’s room.

The arched door was open, which was not unusual.

The closet, however, was slightly ajar, which was most unusual.

Curious, Kel pulled the closet open and then yelped in surprise when a small glittering blue thing tumbled out, bumbled across the room, bumped up against the opposite wall, skittered a little up the curved side of the room, and then flipped over onto its back, dozens of tiny sparkling legs waving helplessly as it rocked haphazardly on the rounded upper surface of its back.

Kel laughed in spite of themself, as they went over to the thing and picked it up, saying, “You’ve gotten yourself into a pickle!”

The thing was large enough around to need both of Kel’s arms wrapping around it, but small enough that it wasn’t that heavy. Kel turned it over. “What are you?”

Small stalks stuck up around the rim of the small domed creature, waving and twisting as Kel picked it up, but when Kel spoke, every stalk twisted and pointed at Kel, as if they were looking Kel up and down.

When a voice came out of the small domed thing, Kel was so surprised that they dropped it onto its many legs.

“‘ellllll come,” it said in an oddly fuzzy voice and then skittered back into the closet.

Curious, Kel followed.

The closet had always curved around the edge of the room, Mama’s extra clothes hung on hooks, and a few things they rarely used tucked neatly away along the wall.

It had not always had a small square door at the back of it, as if the wall of the closet itself was ajar. The creature skittered through the doorway.

“Wait for me!” Kel trotted through the opening.

Kel’s eyes adjusted quickly to the dim tunnel as they wondered why—how— there was even space behind the closet. Mama’s room was at the back of the dome, up against the hillside. The only reason the closet was there at all was that a window would be impossible.

Kel was familiar with the old stone of the mountain behind the house, and the idea that it contained tunnels was as startling as if someone had told Kel that the stars could talk. The rock simply was. One climbed it until the air got thin to look at the rich sparkle of the night sky. One did not go into it.

But as improbable as the tunnel was, Kel was curious and so followed the little thing up and in, trailing fingers along the odd surface of the tunnel wall.

There was light—diffuse, impossible to pinpoint—and once Kel’s eyes fully adapted to the darker tunnel, the wall gleamed deep orange and dark gold, in regular segments that made a subtle texture under Kel’s fingers.

Mama had once shown Kel a book full of strange animals from far away and long ago, and one of them had had skin like this wall.

“Snake,” Kel murmured, walking just fast enough to keep up with the little scurrying thing. “If a snake was hollow, this is what it would look like. How did someone put a snake inside my mountain?”

“Nnnnake,” echoed the thing in front of them.

The tunnel twisted and turned and turned back on itself.

“What are you, little bug?” Kel asked as they walked.

“‘ot bug.” Its voice rasped, nasal and strange.

“You’re not a bug?” Kel asked.

“‘Ot bug not bug bot bug,”

Kel stepped forward just fast enough to pick the thing up again to look it over. “Are you hurt?”

“O’en, ot ug bot bug.” All the little stalks were pointed at Kel again, and one arched over to touch Kel’s hand.

Kel laughed, confused. “Open? Broken? Okay?”

“Ow,” the thing said matter-of-factly. ”Bot bug.”

“I think I’m going to call you ‘Bot Bug’ for now,” Kel said.

Something poked Kel sharply through the little stalk. Kel yelped and dropped the creature. Blood welled up from the pinpoint prick, and Kel stuck their finger in their mouth as the bug scurried onward.

“I can call you something else!” Kel called after it. “You didn’t have to poke me!”

“ ‘el come,” the bot said, and started moving faster.

“I’m coming,” Kel said, and continued to climb further up, further in.

By the time they’d been climbing for an hour, Kel had begun to regret leaving their pack in their bedroom. Worry over Mama warred with growing impatience. Kel had looked everywhere else, and this seemed the most likely of unlikely places, but they had no idea how much farther the tunnel would go, and the little bug wasn’t stopping to rest.

“How far is it?” Kel called out to the bug, who was starting to pull away as Kel’s enthusiasm flagged.

“‘Ot far, Kel come.”

“You did say my name!”

“Ssssssay ot o’en.”

“Well, I haven’t met any other bugs that could talk, so it’s still pretty impressive,” Kel said. “Can I rest?”

It skittered to a stop. “Est.”

Kel sat on the curved floor of the tunnel, and the bug sidled closer.

“You’re not going to poke me again, are you?” Kel asked.

All the stalks pointed at Kel. “Oh poke.”

“No poke?”

“No poke. Fix.”

One of the stalks bent toward Kel.

“Fix?”

“Uch. Ow.”

Kel muddled that for a moment, and then warily stuck the finger that had been poked out towards the little bent stalk.

“Uch.”

“Touch?” Kel reached a little farther, and touched the stalk. It glowed briefly, and something cool touched Kel’s finger.

“It tingles!”

“Fix.”

Kel stared at the finger, which seemed to have acquired a subtle sparkle. A moment later, the small annoying ache from the jab disappeared.

“You fixed it!” Kel said.

“Fix. Bot. Kel.”

“Did you fix me or did I fix you?” Kel asked. “Are you Bot?”

“Yes,” Bot said, and skittered back up the tunnel. “Kel come.”

“What about my other questions?” Kel called as they climbed to their feet.

“Yes.” Bot said. It waited until Kel had started moving before it resumed moving.

Kel ran their hands over short, tight curls in frustration. “Start making sense, Bot.”

“Come.”

It wasn’t too much longer before the snakey tunnel turned into a grey stone ramp, like the rock of the mountain, but without the shimmer. And at the top of the ramp, a heavy, square door, which slid back without help when Bot came near.

“So much metal,” Kel mused, passing through it into a room like nothing they’d ever seen before. No curves, no wood, no growing things. Dim lights in rows along the edge of the floor. Hard corners. Greys and blues and slick black like water on stone.

Kel called out, “Mama? Are you here?” but there was no response.

Kel walked curiously around the odd room, and then reached out to touch the smooth, dark table with a play-roughened brown finger.

A bright spark glowed between their fingertip and the surface below, and the whole room came to life, lights on every surface.

Kel squeaked. Bot whirred and slid into the wall. “Wait, come back,” Kel called, but the bot was gone.

“Where did you go?” Kel asked the air. “Mama? Are you here?”

The wall opposite the door lit up with a face Kel had never seen before, and it said, “Mama is not here.”

Overwhelmed, Kel ran.

Posted on Patreon on November 11, 2017. Patrons get to see new chapters early! Chapter 2 is already public on Patreon and chapters 3 and 4 are posted for supporters. Chapter 5 will be up soon for $5 supporters.

Except where otherwise credited, the artwork is mine, substantially edited from CC0 stock photography in Photoshop.

See Lonstory.com for chapters in order and blog posts.

#A Lon Story #A Lon Story Update #A Lon Beginning #Jenrose #Patreon

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