Build A Story World

Damar, Cont’d

Though their circumstances are completely different, each Damar heroine finds herself influenced by the similar characteristics provided by the setting.  These attributes make it possible for the reader to identify common threads in different attire, and so relate to both stories in either order.

In Aerin’s time, the earlier time frame, at the end of a desperate battle, they rolled out the dragon Maur’s head and it rushed away from them across the battlefield. “And in the next morning, when they awoke, instead of low rolling hills despoiled by war, they found a plain, flat as a table, stretching from the burnt-out fire where the survivors had slept huddled together to the feet of Vasth and Kar and the pass where Aerin had paused and seen what awaited her and gathered herself and her army together.  It was a desert plain.”

When Harry first arrived at the plain, more than a century later, “She raised her eyes to the watching Hills again: surely this great flat plain was not a natural phenomena in this rugged land? And yet what labor could have flattened the Hills so?”

For Aerin’s sake, the yerig (the dog queen) and the folstza (the cat king) came from the wilds with their armies to join her in her journey and in her battle and at the end decided to stay. When Harry first arrived at the camp she noticed: “tall long-legged dogs with long narrow beautiful skulls and round dark eyes, and long silky fur to protect them from the sun….There were cats too.  But these were not the small domestic lap size variety; these were as lean and long-legged as the dogs….Some wore collars, leather with silver or copper fittings, but no leashes, and each went its solitary way, ignoring any other cats, dogs or horses that might cross its path.”

Both sets of animals were perfectly at home in their atmosphere in both novels.

With these and many other touches of names and geography, legend, history and danger, a culture across time holds true.

Exercise: Choose a character from your story's past and one from your future. What does each what your hero to know know?

Share: Do they have a common goal or are they opposed? Why?