Dairhenien's Library, Part 3

Confession: I'm not the same person I was five years ago. I don't miss him. I'm not the same person I was ten years ago. Him, I miss.

Reading:

• "Where Will You Go When Your Skin Cannot Contain You?", by William Gay
  
• The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
  

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Catches a Cold" - Outline 25%
  

Revising:

• "The Revenant"

I've trimmed down my header stuff. Now, anything more than what I'm reading, writing, and revising will only appear when it changes. The rest will (eventually) go in my wiki.

But today, I'd like to finish my discussion of my long term fantasy project, Dairhenien's Library. If this is the first you're hearing of it, you should catch up on Part 1 and Part 2 first. I left the story of the story at the point where it figuratively and literally began to open up.

The idea of a single library with eight people and six ethereal guardians, not to mention a bad guy, sounds somewhat cramped. Plus, I had imagined a Great Room in the Library with tall windows with rounded tops (sound familiar?), and you can't have windows if you don't have an outside.

And so the Library gained grounds. There was a long stone walkway that led from its door. Barely in sight in the distance was a tall statue--I think either Fiery or Dairhenien himself was frozen there at some point--and from that place, seven others paths led off. One led to the realm of each of the guardians, and the seventh led... well, I don't remember where it led, but I'm sure it was fraught with Meaning.

Even this began to be restrictive, though. Okay, so the Earth Mother had a farm, and the Grave Master had a graveyard, and the Lighthouse Keeper had a, well, a lighthouse. What was the point? Who planted the farm? Who was buried in the graves? What was the point of the lighthouse if no one sailed? In short, it was irrational, and I wasn't a fan of that.

But so far I had just discussed what was in front of the Library. What about behind it? Well, that was easy. A desert, of course, stretching into the distance. To the west, the desert, and to the north, south, and east, the sea. A tiny spit of land jutting into an endless ocean.

Well, I couldn't bear the thought of a great lonely world with no one in it. And so I envisioned desert nomads, no doubt influenced by the Aiel in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. But beyond the desert there had to be something else....

You see what slippery slope I had landed upon? I was no longer writing about a Library and its denizens. I was World Building. In yesterday's post, I discussed what that tempting vice did to Tolkien. Could I escape?

The answer is no. The world developed, and the initial concept remained at the core, like the grain of sand that starts a pearl. Soon, I had continents, and history, and trees of language derivation. I had a magic system and religion and social structure and a fellowship of warriors that had lasted centuries. I had myth and legend and truth and fiction, and great tragedy seen from a distance. I had gain and loss and unrequited love and betrayal and bitterness and redemption.

And suddenly, I realized that the story had grown beyond the Library. It had taken on a life of its own. The ties to that idea were holding it back, no longer giving it sustenance. And so, reluctantly, I let them go.

There is still a character named Dairhenien, or more completely Dairhenien Pocyovin Savrel Kel'Dromai. But he doesn't have a library, and he doesn't live multiple lives. He has aged along with me, and is now in his late twenties, early thirties. The Six Guardians are now elements of his religion, and believed or disbelieved according to the individual and country. The place outside of time is still there, but I don't believe that Dairhenien will ever set foot in it.

But in that place outside of time, there is a room full of books. At some point, the character who visits that place will go into that room. And when she does, the scene will go something like this:

The room was cramped and stuffy, barely wider than the long hallway that it capped like the butt of a quarterstaff. It was tall, though. Shelves covered the walls, floor to ceiling, and those shelves were stuffed to bursting with books of all descriptions. The musty smell was overpowering, and the sense of sheer weight all around her made L. feel that she would be buried under the weight of two millenia of history, scratched out onto paper and vellum and linen and pressed reeds.

She didn't like the room. So many books made her itchy. But Dairhenien would have loved it.

Publication Status:

• Submitted: 5
  
• Accepted: 1
• Rejected: 1
• Pending: 3