Thursday Tales – The Undoing Chronicles

First off, a huge welcome to all of you stopping by from the Fourth Writer’s Platform Building Campaign!  If you’re in one of my groups, I promise I’ll be around soon, and I’m so glad to connect with you!

Second, I would like to remind you guys to go enter the drawing for a copy of Shades of the Orient by Stephanie Guerrero.  I did an interview with her on Tuesday, you can find it here.

So this is the first week that I’m starting my Thursday Tales feature!  Basically, I’m just going to talk about whatever story(ies) I’m currently working on.

This week, we’re delving into the newest thing I’m doing.

So last month, I participated in the #Nightgale flash fiction challenge that Stevie McCoy hosted.  Our assignment was to write 4 stories, a minimum of 200 words, based on the theme of Immortality vs. Mortality.  Week one was tough to write, I wasn’t really feeling it at all.  Week two, though . . .

The universe exploded.  Sort of.  Not really.  But that’s what it felt like!

Week two of #Nightgale, the Rishka and Kashtophim were born.

I still don’t have a name for one of the characters.

Sachi is haunting me, though.  I can’t get her out of my head.  Yet I’m still having a hard time figuring out exactly who she is.

I know she’s the catalyst for the story.  I hate that she has to die, but she DOES have to.  Without her death, there is no story.

What do I know about her so far?

She’s the last Rishka.  The Rishka and the Kashtophim used to be one race, then somewhere along the line, they split.  One race became lovers of everything vile and evil, and the promise of being able to have whatever they wanted without consequence seduced many people to that side.

The Rishka didn’t mean to become a threat to them, but they clung to the ways their ancestors lived and worshiped, and wouldn’t bow to the way the Kashtophim wanted to live.  At some point, the Kashtophim made it their purpose to completely wipe the Rishka out.

The Rishka have seen this day coming for about a century – when the Kashtophim would succeed, and the Rishka would be annihilated.

Since the time of Sachi’s great-grandparents, every child has been taught the ritual once they reach six years of age.  I don’t really know what the ritual is, beyond the fact that they draw on some power that makes their eyes glow, and something has to be written in their own blood (re: #Nightgale week 4).  In Sachi’s case, she writes a letter.

Between the letter, her death, and the fact that one of the Kashtophim fell in love with her, sets the world up for the “Undoing” – hence the title I have come up with for this story!

I don’t know if this will end up being one book, or a series.  I don’t know how the “Undoing” will be accomplished – if, somehow, the Rishka will be revived, or if the Kashtophim will somehow be redeemed.

I’m leaning toward the latter.

So, I know Sachi’s history, but not really her yet.

I know she has brown hair and green eyes.  She’s too skinny – having been malnourished most of her life. But she’s fast – very adept at thievery, though not by choice.

She had two older brothers.  Once, she even lived in a house, until (she was six) she accidentally told someone where they lived.  They barely escaped.

When she was seventeen, her entire family was slaughtered.  The only reason she wasn’t with them was because she was foraging for food.

Sachi has been without them for ten years.  She’s been completely alone, as the last of her race, for at least five years.

Everything was fine, until one day, she is found.

Not by just any Kashtophim, but by their leader.

He should have taken her away to the execution block right away, but it was the first time he’d actually gotten to talk to a Rishka.  They were rare enough, and killed too quickly, in his reign that he’d never actually conversed with one.

He falls in love with her.

So, I know that I have something epic in the works here.  I have the same feeling about this one that I did with Weeping Willow – I can’t get it out of my head.  I keep having flashes of scenes in my mind.  Sachi makes me weep . . . but her lover (the nameless one still) – he makes my heart break.

While I continue to stress and weep over non-existent, sometimes nameless, characters, please enjoy these songs that pretty much embody who Sachi is . (Youtube playlist, fyi).