Describe an Imaginary Place

[Teresa Edgerton]

I was hoping you would join us here, Culhwch, because I remembered that you are good at this sort of thing.

Lightning traces a snake’s path across the sky. The rain-slicked mountain path is treacherous, and I still have far to travel. In the forest to one side I hear pine boughs crack in the wind. On the other side, a sheer precipice falls away for -- no, I can’t even see, for the rain in my eyes. By my laboring lungs, the thinness of the air, it may be thousands of feet. I only know that one misstep and I am done.

Then there is thunder, like a great shout between the peaks, and I feel the ground beneath my feet crumble.

[HardScienceFan]

the place wasn't physical
It had no location in space nor in time
it had no dimensions
it was eternal,or else very shortlived
all or none of the forces of nature were in force there
it was composed of both matter and energy
it was called the EMOTIVERSE

[Hilarious Joke]

In the moments before death, colours are more vivid, sounds are clearer, smells are stronger and everything is beautiful.

He marvelled at the perfect curve of the baked brown clay from wall to roof. His heart ached as he regarded the thin deep streams that disected the marketplace, crossed over by hundreds of arched red bridges. Moisture sprang to his eyes when the scent of fried goats liver reached him, with undertones of freshly cut cedar for planks on a ship and the rank fumes of the waste collector's wagon. His breath caught at the sound of a baby crying pierced through the low murmers and hawker's shouts that rebounded around and through the crowd to the podium. Distantly, he could hear gulls and the deep clap of the Town Hall bell, signalling his final hour.

And all of a sudden, despite the days he had spent resigned to his fate and ready for his death, he did not want to leave this city in all its grimy alleys and its sweet filth and its corruption and its harsh and patriotic people.

How unfair is this, he thought, as he began to struggle against his cuffs, that I only see the city of Holikea in her greatest glory now, when I have so little time to love her.

The hemp noose fell heavily round his head.

[Saltheart]

Hell:

All around, there was blackness – the long, wide vacuum of space stretching infinitively in all directions; dark, desolate, empty; encompassing his numbing senses as he fell through the void, weightless. Not a star was to be seen, not a single source of light. And when he screamed, cried, seeking answers, there was no sound to be heard. He was deaf. Deaf and blind. Or there was no air. Then why was he alive? What was he breathing? Why was he still falling?

He looked. Below him there was still nothing, still nothing, the same nothingness that surrounded him in all directions. If there was nothing pulling him down, maybe he was floating up. He looked upwards. No, even up there was nothing. He shivered, but when he did so he realized he couldn’t feel his body. It wasn’t just numb, it wasn’t there! He lifted his arm and jammed it into his eye, but felt nothing, nothing passed through him, nothing stung him. He couldn’t see, feel, or hear. He couldn’t taste or smell either. And yet he was – a conscious being, a consciousness trapped in… in… where? Where was he? When was he? What… was he? He tried to remember, but his mind was empty: there were no memories.


Was he a horse? Maybe… yes, perhaps… but what was a horse? How does one behave like a horse? What does a horse look like? Where did he get such crazy ideas from? He couldn’t remember.


Maybe he was… a hissing thing… long, wavy, and slender… it hissed through the bushes… and bit the tall, slender figure which recoiled and howled... which turned around and pointed its long and dark tunnel into its face… and then a flash of white… and nothing. Again nothing. It was again surrounded by nothing.

[chopper]

The great hall was dark but for the two flickering candles in plain iron stands at either end of the bier. The candles created strange and inconstant shapes against the walls past the chipped stone pillars and arches. Shadows against the blacks and greys of night.

Shay paused just inside the small Galleygate door and held her breath, listening to the fading echoes of the creaking hinges. The Galleygate door was rarely used these days and had certainly not been oiled for some time. It would only take one person to stumble into the hall to spoil everything, and after tonight she would have no chance to try again.

The floor was bare stone and the flags were uneven in many places, but Shay knew by heart the way to the platform where the bier had replaced the high table. Barefoot, and holding up her long skirts with one hand, she made no sound. The huge stone slabs would once have been warm underfoot, even at this time of the night, but the kitchens below had been neglected and under-used for as long as Shay could remember.


It could also belong in a "Start your story here" thread.....
My descriptions can get over-elaborate if I don't pay attention to them, so here's a carefully pruned one; can you imagine this great hall as it is?

[The Ace]

A light breeze carried the scent of pine to my nostrils as I felt the lush grass between my toes. I looked out across the small beach to the loch and the mountains beyond. Was that really a hump breaking the surface ?

(Sorry, couldn't resist it.)

[Talysia]

Good one, Ace!

Water dripped from somewhere, dropping loudly into a little puddle at the foot of a wall that was slick with moisture. Bleak, grey stone arched upwards, and the shadows cast by the pitiful camp fire danced mournfully on the almost vaulted ceiling of the cave. He huddled there, shivering as icy wind blew in from the entrance, wishing that there was some better shelter in this snowstorm.

[StewHotston]

The walls were crumbling, aged paint flaking away like leaves after the first frost of autumn. Standing on the street the broken windows emptily returned his gaze. This wasn't the place he had hoped for.
A sparrow emerged from inside, coming to perch on a glass littered sill, and chirruped its gentle greeting. A flower peeked sneekily over the edge of the guttering, a burst of white and blue against the morbid slate grey around it. That life was enough to encourage him to look inside.

[Peter Graham]

A light breeze carried the scent of pine air freshener to my nostrils as I felt the lush carpet between my toes. I looked over across the small mat to the toilet bowl and the cistern beyond. Was that really a dump breaking the surface?

(Doubly sorry, Ace - I couldn't resist either).

Regards,

Peter

[Talysia]

I like that one, Stew

Frost covered the grass, and his boots crunched down as he walked towards the village pond. Ducks huddled on the bank, feathers fluffed up against the cold, but there was no other sign of life. Presumably all of the fish must be hiding in the deeper waters, away from the shallow edges where there was a covering of ice, barely thick enough to hold the weight of a cat. He sat down and put down his rod and tackle box, and then steam curled up as he opened a flask of tea, and he relaxed.

Edit: Good one, Peter

[Peter Graham]

The hive had been empty a long time. The deal of the brood box had weathered to a silver-grey, but the grain of the wood was splitting for want of a coat of creosote. A cats cradle of spiders web, heavy with the morning dew, lay thick on the exposed top board, shimmering in the first rays of the spring sun.

The trees moved in the wind, causing a single piece of damson blossom to flutter down onto the hive where it rested atop the web, bobbing in the breeze like a ship at anchor.

Peter

Edit: Thanks, Talysia. Just thought I should try a serious one too!

[Talysia]

The pale moon rose over the desert, and the pale light that reflected back from the almost jewellike sands was very nearly iridescent in its brilliance. Only the wise travelled at night in the desert, which was ultimately preferable to the unbearable, pressing heat of the day, but in turn night was close to freezing. The winds blew tiny gemstone motes of jewelsand up into this eyes, and he quickly brushed them away, pressing on with his journey.

[Teresa Edgerton]

(Very, very impressed by the imagination and imagery of everything everyone is posting here, but, um, per the first page, could we try and keep it to one or two paragraphs?)

Beautiful, Talysia!

I don't normally (or, well, ever) do Science Fiction, and the science here is undoubtedly shaky, but this came into my head and the only way to exorcise it was to write it down.

Domed cities spread swiftly, like blisters on the face of the land. As the upper layers of atmosphere were stripped away, the earth’s surface grew feverish under the fierce bombardment of solar energies. Oceans began to evaporate; the resulting cloud-cover only served to hold in the heat. A white rim of salt flats formed around each of the continents. Drenched in radiation, men mutated inside their hot-house cities: growing extra eyes, extra limbs; some even put forth leaves and twigs or branching porous growths like corals. In time, the domes became like nightmare gardens.

[Talysia]

Agh, I just noticed a couple of typos and repetitions in my last post. I'll have to start checking more closely. I like the sci-fi one, Teresa. It's not my genre, but I'll give it a go myself.

It was called the Planet of Storms for good reason. Giant tornadoes of pure gas spun in place from just about everywhere there was land, and the sky they reached into was equally turbulent, black and thick with roiling clouds. Where there was no land, there were lakes of what the scanners had revealed to be acid, and the whole scene seemed to have been painted in various shades of murky grey or black. From the safety of the ship, she wondered why they had to go there at all.

[Commonmind]

The old seamstress’s room sat cold and quiet. The Merklen rocker in that dark corner she loved receding to after busy evenings had forever ceased its assault on the cherry-stained floorboards. Whispers of band tunes no longer sang from the phonograph atop its Chippendale perch. The teak and leather coach flanking the fireplace would enjoy their tangerine baths no longer, and the unfinished quilts once keeping their arms warm during cool nights had found new homes in the missing pine chests that used to foot the seamstress’s canopy bed. The breakfast table had already relocated, and the mustache tapestry once curtaining the single window had been thrown over the spot where she’d once served guests with silver platters of tea and scones. Bookshelves misplaced their occupants, gold trimmed mirrors loathed making canvas reflections under darkness, the cramped closet cried in its emptiness and the grape sheets that had once warmed the seamstress’s old bones were saddened, for they could warm them no longer. Only the oak door rejoiced, for no more did it have to bend its tired hinges.