The third draft is now about 54,800 words so I got about 2k written this week.
Haven’t explored too many new ideas, most of the scenes I worked on this week were centered around one idea.
Not much to share, but I am rather fond of a particular dialog scene with Halvar and Zuriel.
Enjoy!
“All of that is besides the point. We don’t get to choose each other; we have no other options.”
“Of course, you get to choose each other. It’s just a little less difficult.” Giving up on getting Zuriel to look at him, he returned to his planter. “I think if you really stopped to think about it, you’d find that even if you had all of Vale to pick from, you’d pick her. You guys don’t actually have to take on the restoration of your entire race. Even with the two of you, there wouldn’t be enough genetic variation.”
Zuriel dropped a load of soil in the planter and stopped. “You’re right.”
“I usually am.”
“Even if we had fifty kids, they’d all have to take non-nymph spouses. In two generations, we’ll be back to no nymphs in Vale.” Zuriel let out a breath, surprised at the pain the thought brought him. It’d been just a couple weeks and he already identified enough with the race whose magic he didn’t even possess, to feel the loss of it.
“Maybe.”
Zuriel turned to Halvar who went on with his work. “What do you mean, maybe?”
Halvar shrugged. “Tala was found empty. Not destroyed. There is an entire city of nymphs unaccounted for.”
“Unaccounted for? What does that mean?”
Halvar grinned at Zuriel as he went to grab his liner. “I thought you spoke the common tongue.”
Zuriel let out a growl. “Where did they go?”
“If we knew, we couldn’t really say they were unaccounted for, could we?”
“Halvar, I swear.”
“They probably left with the help of some naims. Either to another planet or a subrealm. Likely another planet given the power it takes to build a subrealm.”
“Does Aila know?”
“Where they went?”
“That they exist.”
“Of course she does. She went through Tala when she fled Lux. It was already abandoned when her, Kyra and Zelena got there.”
“Zelena?”
“Kyra’s sister. Do you ever actually talk to Aila?”
“Yes, I talk to Aila.” He grumbled. “Just apparently not about anything.” He sighed and continued to return the soil to the planter box.
