As you know from my incessant consternations and three-line posts, I spent the last twenty days competing in the Marathon. Yesterday I won. Similar to most competitors in real marathons, the only reward for finishing was a sense of smug self satisfaction. There are no prizes for most words or fastest to Goal or even best written story. This may come as a shock to some people (particularly my mother), but if there were such awards, I certainly would not have won.

As always, I hoped this masochistic exercise would stretch my creative and finger muscles, and move me closer to my goal of writing something worth reading (WSWR, pronounced “wiz-ee-wer”). This was my fifth year finishing the Marathon, and this year’s effort felt easier. I got off to a good start thanks to the Marathon beginning on a Saturday. I spent the first weekend chocking up 11,941 words. It goes without saying that none of them were good. After that first weekend, I devolved into my normal 2,000 words per day, never missing the daily goal (although I did come close twice).

When I start the Marathon, it usually takes me a few days to turn off that part of my brain that wants to edit what I’m writing and make it good. I did not have that worry this year. I went into November with only a few vague ideas of the story that I wanted to tell. I had a few pages of nonsensical notes, and hoped that the muse would push me to the finish line. She did but not in the way I had hoped.

The morbidly curious asked for a synopsis of my story. There were actually two stories set in the same world this year. I had hopes that the two stories would come together. I did manage to bring them slightly together in the last few days of writing. The rest of the time these stories meandered through the no-plot zone, searching for obstacles and finding only bland descriptions with a coward at the helm forgetting to spin the world.

Like most of my worlds, this world involved a small country in a valley completely surrounded by mountains. (My worlds tend to be enclosed—too large of spaces scare me.) It was a civilized country with a class system similar to what was found in the early United States (I’m reading a biography of Theodore Roosevelt—his early life influenced this part of the story).

Living in the caves inside the mountains was a race of people known as elves. They were a short people with an abbreviated life span. In exchange for this short life span, they moved and thought much quicker than humans. They were a wiser people, valuing scholarship and deep and long thought over fast decisions.

The elves rescued the ancestors of the people living in the valley. Every hundred years, there was a catastrophic event that shook the very foundation of the earth. It caused massive damage and famine, and threw a substance known as orange dust into the air. Outside of the valley, the dust was everywhere: in the air, in the water, in the food. The mountains protected the people in the valley from the orange dust, and they thrived.

After the elves rescued the people and brought them to the valley, the elves set up the human government. There was a human council that was elected by the people. Ruling over this council, however, was a monarch. The monarch was a human selected by an elven prophet. The prophet remained the closest advisor to this king or queen. In exchange for the kingship, the monarch was never allowed to marry or to have any children.

Enter our characters. The first was a well-to-do boy in his late teens named Tsomis. He was a university student studying law. His father was on the council and he was popular at the university. He met an elven woman named Sada who was enrolling in the university. This was strange as the elves did not associate much with the humans. In fact, except for the elven prophet, few elves were seen in the valley. The elves were dying off. They lived in their caves and for reasons we find out later, they had few children. They knew their time was limited, and they spent their remaining days in the caves studying and trying to save their race.

The queen was not liked because of her policies, and many of the people blamed the elven prophet who selected her. The council members encouraged this belief, using it for their own purposes to promote a platform of fear, which allowed them to control the council. Tsomis was involved with this platform through his father who was on the council. Sada and Tsomis began a relationship, and after writing many, many words, they became friends.

Interspersed with this first story was a second story that took place outside of the valley in a place known as tent city. The orange dust was heavy here, and the city was located at the foot of the mountain. I introduced four bunkmates named Theodore, Trident, Melinda, and Samuel. They lived in the tent and grew up together in this city. The city was watched over by a bunch of old women and their husbands, who were guardsmen. Only the women interacted with the children in the city, and then only with the oldest of children; the guardsmen remained outside of the city, ostensibly to guard the city against bandits that were said to plague the area. The old women and their husbands spoke a different language than the children, and when they spoke to the children, they spoke with heavy accents. The children did not remember how they arrived in tent city. The children ruled over themselves, with the older children supervising the younger children.

The children worked during the day farming the land around the tent city. The orange dust did wonders for crops, and the crops grew quickly. The children worked the fields during the daylight hours, and spent the evening hours socializing and in some cases learning about the world.

Melinda was the rebellious one of the group, and she explored the area in and around the tent city. She would bring back books she stole from the old women’s tents, and they would learn about the countries outside of the tent city. Samuel was the quiet yet strong type. He was the strongest child in the camp, and the children and even the old women and guardsmen gave him much leeway. He was quiet intelligence but very slow to communicate this intelligence. Trident was the other girl. She was short and sarcastic and timid. Unlike Melinda, she was obedient to the whims of the older children.

Theodore was the main protagonist. He was shorter and sicker than the other children. While all the children’s skin was dyed orange from the dust, his was a deeper orange. His movements were quick but he did not have much strength. Melinda and Samuel spent much of their time in the fields covering for his weakness.

These two stories went on for a while. Eventually, the four characters in the tent city escaped the city at Melinda’s urgings, and followed some guardsmen up a pass in the mountain where the food was being transported. They came upon the guardsmen and the women at one of the passes, and found them froze in stone. This was never explained. Eventually, the four children arrived at the city and were taken in by the council members.

Sometime afterwards, Theodore’s history is revealed (in yet another instance of telling instead of showing): it turned out that the queen and the prophet had been intimate and had a child. They hid the child from the rest of the country. The elves found out about him, however, and whisked him away. The elven prophet did not have any say over his own people. His only power was in the valley. The prophet did not love the queen; although the queen loved the prophet. He agreed to have the child because he knew that was the only way to save the valley and the elves. The queen was heartbroken over that, and let the council rule over the people. The council used the queen as the scapegoat for their bad policies, which they used to enrich themselves.

The elf who took the baby out of the palace did not kill the child. He dropped him off at an orphanage, not able to bear killing a half-elven child when the elves themselves were dying off. Theodore was that half-elf child. The orphans from the valley were used as child labor by the people in the tent city. There was a bit of hand waving on who authorized this; the monarch was involved in this decision.

Sada’s relationship with Tsomis evolved into a love interest. At the climax of the story, the queen and the prophet were assassinated. In the mayhem that followed, Sada ran back to the caves. Tsomis followed her and broke one of the oldest elven laws: he went into the cave after her. He witnessed the funeral of the last prophet, and saw Sada being crowned as the new prophet. The elves captured Tsomis and threatened to kill him as that was the penalty for a human entering the caves.

And then . . . .

Only joking: Sada saved Tsomis because she was in love with him. She saved him by naming him the new king. History repeats itself.

There were other parts involving the other four characters from the tent city. They were never tied that well into the other story. In the end, it petered out.

So there you have it. Another year, another NaNoWriMo. Would I do it again next year? Ask me in eleven months.