Our prompts this week were:
- Character: Politician
- Object: Lute
- Genre/Tone: Saga
As has happened before, I completely forgot one of the elements, in this case the lute. For some reason, my brain has trouble holding the entire prompt at once, and this time I fixated on a politician in a saga, and a lute – which would have been easy to include if I’d only remembered it – simply failed to appear.
Oh well, it’s only an exercise. But one of the points of an exercise is to recognize patterns in what you’re doing, both good and bad. So it’s good to notice my bad habit of ignoring part of the prompt. It means I need to (1) pay more attention in the future, maybe referring back to the prompts as a checklist; and (2) that I might do well to seek out simpler story prompts, and/or to give myself more room and time to develop stories.
On the plus side, I think I did a pretty decent job on the tone of the piece. I’m not sure how appealing it is to a modern audience (let me know in the comments!) but it has a few of the more obvious hallmarks of Icelandic sagas.
On the shores of the distant isle of Vernon, the boats of Ulfling burned, struck by the god’s thunderspear. The twenty survivors, with Ulfling himself at their head, stood in the very heat of the flames, some with tears of loss, and others with tears of rage, but all taking the fire that burned their boats into their hearts.
Ulfling turned to his people and called upon them by their names and their families’ names. He declared that this sign from above meant that they should sail no further, and make their homes upon this isle. But Thurnic, son of Thorgaric, stood up opposite him and said Vernon held not the gold and gems for which they sought, and they must rebuild their ships to travel on.
Ulfling appealed to the survivors’ loyalty, and to the oaths they had sworn when they departed their homes far away, that they would follow him as their captain. But Thurnic scoffed, and pointed to the bodies in the pyre of their ships, bodies of the dead that outnumbered now the living. These showed the failure of his captainage, and absolved them of their oaths, said he. Moreover, Thurnic appealed to their original quest, to bring wealth back to their homes, not to abandon their homes forever. But to this Ulfling reminded them that these old homes had already cast them out, sending them forth for treasure only to redeem their honor and to pay off unjust debts. They owed nothing to their old homes, said he. And so they came to no conclusion.
Then stood among them young Halve, daughter of Yor and Albindar. She called forth from memory into words that in such times, when no course could be decided, the people all had put forth their opinions by vote, each one’s vote being kept secret even in the counting. So, with the assent of all, she gathered twenty white stones and twenty black, and she gathered her cloak into a pouch into which each of the survivors could cast one stone: white for Ulfling’s plan, and black for Thurnic’s. But the count came out equal in the end, with ten black and ten white.
So Halve proposed the survivors build small huts for the present time, and that all help build the shelters, but also that all help build new boats, and that when the huts and boats both were built, half of them depart and the other half remain. And this finally gained the assent of all.
In building all, though, they found a strain of gold on the island. In digging up the gold, they found also gemstones there. So instead of sending their ships further on, half carried their treasures home, while the other half built further and expanded the mines, and awaited the day when Halve would bring their ships back for more treasure to enrich their homes.