Realistic or Modern Vanatas Project: Prose, Poetry, and Documents

[Pretentious_Crow]

Greetings! Welcome to the Vanatas Cooperative Worldbuilding Project Prose, Poetry, and Documents Thread.

Vanatas is a universe with realistic and modern tech where users may create and control an individual nation with its own unique history, culture, and peoples. If this tickles your fancy, we are all always open to new folks and you can message one of our members for a link to the discord.

This is an in-character thread for prose, poetry, and documents in or about the project. This is meant to serve as a more free-form alternative to the Current Events Thread, which is about news articles about current events in-universe.

This thread is not required to be 100% in-character, but must either relate to or be based on events in-universe. For example, a third person story about a major historical event might not be an in-universe document, but the events that transpired did exist in the canon. OOC discussion should take place in the appropriate backchannels.

This thread is also strictly meant for having fun. If you are not having fun you are doing it wrong.

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[Pretentious_Crow]

Don was never a particularly popular boy. In his mind, it seemed to stretch all the way back to his birth, when he wasn’t popular enough with his parents for them to bother raising him. The other boys at the Ó Cloigeann Salian Boarding School for Huenarnoan Boys didn’t seem to like him much either. They bested him at ergyd, not that he much cared for the sport. Most subjects bored him as well, with one exception. When he was younger, he was very good at remembering Salian history and politics; he could speak for hours on end about how Íadal mac Cloige united distant Salia, or how Arth map Duny conquered even more distant Lathadu. Then, for no obvious reason, he lost heart in his old passion. The one thing he cared about, gone.

This seeming lack of talent turned away every prospective adopter. They usually chose the academiacs, the ergyd captains, the ones who had a chance of becoming someone in the outside world. 19 years old, with not one person taking notice of him, he spent his time doodling whatever passed his mind. Sometimes they would be of what he learned back when he listened to classes, other times creatures or people he created in his own mind. And he did so whenever he pleased; he would draw a loroon-hawk hybrid while the teacher taught Salian linguistics; he would sketch the chimeric god Cuiv, with his vulpine head, corvid body, and serpentine tail, while the rest of the boys prayed at his shrine; and he would draw Múinteoir uasal Chroí with a less concealing garment while she lectured about biology.

So it should come as little surprise that when Mainri Higari, Emperor of Huenarno, the most powerful native in the Salian Colonial Government, came to visit the Boarding School, Don showed little interest. Indeed, he was in the process of doodling Higari trampled by livestock when the man entered the room. While everyone else stood to show their respect to the emperor, he was finishing off the last details of the ground sloth defecating on the man’s mangled skull. His seeming disregard for Higari was not lost on anyone in the room. Students held their breath. Múinteoir Fforth was furious when the boy refused to show his respect to His Greatness, threatening to drag him out by his hair. But before the teacher could make true of his promise, the Emperor held up his hand, and the room went silent.

Higari, with clothing that is the closest approximation of casual one can get from an emperor in public, strode up to the rebellious teen. He casually stole a chair from a nearby standing student who could do nothing to stop him and sat next to Don. Don, for his part, continued doodling with distant interest in the man beside him.

“Hello,” greeted Higari, “may I see what you have drawn?”

This got the attention of the boy. Not many had asked to see his drawings, and even fewer had been indulged. But in an effort to get a rise out of the person who dared bother him, Don passed the notebook to Higari.

He stared at the page for a beat. Everyone in the room held their breath.

And he laughed. He laughed and laughed and laughed like it was the funniest thing the man had seen in his whole life.

No one quite knew how to react. Students who were still standing eyed each other or looked to Múinteoir Fforth for guidance. The teacher, for his part, was simply dumbfounded, his mind struggling to comprehend what just occurred. Perhaps the most important reaction would be from Don. And he was very, very confused. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of the Child of the Dragonfly’s show.

Finally, Higari calmed down enough to actually speak coherently. He wiped a tear from his eye, and sighed.

“I must say, young man, you have quite the artistic talent. May I attach a name to your work?”

“ . . . Don mac Duine,” the boy responded.

“Wel-”

“Y-Your Magnificence - sorry for interrupting you, I didn’t mean to disrespect you, I just realized that I hadn’t addressed you prop-”

“Don,” Mainri said softly but firmly, which stopped his rambling. “If anything would offend me here, it would be your imagining of a ground sloth shitting on my broken skull.”

A few of the other boys, who were still standing, snickered at this. Fforth shushed them, still not sure how to handle his most loathed student being noticed by the Emperor himself.

“Ah, but here it is too public for conversation,” Higari decided. “Múinteoir?” The teacher snapped to attention. “I’m sure you wouldn’t mind if I took Don off your hands for a moment, hm?”

“Of course not, Your Magnificence, Child of the-”

The emperor was already walking past him, the young man in tow. The teacher and the student exchanged a look, one of severe uncertainty, before the younger of the two followed the greater of the three.

In the relative solitude of the library, the emperor and the child talked. The former asked questions of the latter, about himself. He told the well-dressed man about his times at Ó Cloigeann’s, his likes and dislikes, his favorite teachers and subjects, his friends, lack thereof. Eventually, the conversation shifted to his future.

“Eh, don’t really have much of a future, I think. In all honesty, you’re the only person who’s shown any interest in me, beyond a sense of pity for the strange boy.”

“No prospective families?” Higari asked with a sympathetic face, one that actually seemed genuine to Don. When he shook his head, Higari smiled and replied “I feel the same in a way.”

When Don looked confused, Higari shrugged. “Between you and me, I’ve never really been interested in pairing with another in marriage. Not out of principle, mind you, I simply never felt that way about anyone else. Of course, as - ugh - ‘Child of the Dragonfly’, I’m expected to produce an heir for the stability of the empire and our . . . magnanimous overlords’ government.” He made a face Don couldn’t quite parce. “In my mind, though, family need not be related. Bonds of mind can be millions of times more sturdy than ones of blood, for while the latter is static and given, the former is dynamic and earned.

“Ah, but you have been given more than enough lectures, no?” Higari got up and stretched, limited by his tight, formal attire - which, Don noted, looked rather old and faded. “I have business to attend to - boring stuff, negotiations with the governor - but it was nice to speak to you. I’m sure I can find time in my schedule, and in yours, to meet you again.”

Before Don could take in anything he just said, Higari turned around and walked out the room, leaving Don alone in the dusty, dark library, left to try to make sense of the most powerful man in the city talking to the least.