Escape Artists

PodCastle => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Ocicat on August 27, 2016, 05:29:06 PM

Title: PC Miniature 89: Lapis Lazuli
Post by: Ocicat on August 27, 2016, 05:29:06 PM
PodCastle Miniature 89: Lapis Lazuli (http://podcastle.org/2016/08/26/podcastle-miniature-89-lapis-lazuli/)

by Tania Fordwalker

read by Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali


This story originally appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (https://planetarydefensecommand.wordpress.com/2016/01/13/andromeda-spaceways-inflight-magazine-58/).

In Sesara, only the rich wear bright colours. My knight shines in the armour I buff for him nightly, glossy as a jewel. My clothes and skin are the colours of the earth. We stand together with two days of desert at our backs and a forest of black thorns before us. My heart is a bird in my chest.



Rated PG.

Tania Fordwalker is artist and writer hailing from Tasmania, the gothic little island beneath Australia. A former Disney animator, she now works as a freelance illustrator (portfolio at www.taniawalker.com (http://www.taniawalker.com)) and studies Creative Writing Honours at the University of Tasmania. She lives to tell stories, swinging between pencil and keyboard to make it happen.

Prior publications include the short story “Lapis Lazuli” in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (writing as T L Fordwalker); contributing art to Anything That Loves and the Goblin Quest RPG rulebook; and cover art for fantasy anthology Defying Doomsday and The Mocklore Chronicles series by Tansy Rayner Roberts. Look for Tania’s tabletop card game Dracula’s Feast on Kickstarter in late 2016.

Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali is our Assistant Editor here at PodCastle. She lives in Houston, Texas with her husband of twenty-five years and three children. By day she works as a breast oncology nurse. At all other times she juggles, none too successfully, writing, reading, gaming and gardening. She has self-published one novel entitled An Unproductive Woman, has published a story at Escape Pod, and has a story in the An Alphabet of Embers anthology. Of her alter ego, K from the planet Vega, it is rumored that she owns a time machine and knows the secret to long youth. You can catch her posts at her website, www.khaalidah.com (http://www.khaalidah.com), and you can follow her on twitter, @khaalidah (https://twitter.com/khaalidah).

(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif) Listen to this week’s PodCastle! (http://media.rawvoice.com/podcastle/media.libsyn.com/media/podcastle/PCFlash089_LapisLazuli.mp3)
Title: Re: PC Miniature 89: Lapis Lazuli
Post by: bounceswoosh on August 30, 2016, 02:04:44 PM
Love the conceit. ("Conceit" is such a rude word for "neat idea.") I want to know what happens next. Do they journey together? Apart? Does the main character just go back to being a slave?
Title: Re: PC Miniature 89: Lapis Lazuli
Post by: Unblinking on September 01, 2016, 01:35:59 PM
I loved the sound of this one, but I think it leaned toward the poetic side which tend to lull me and then I miss everything.  I... enjoyed listening though, even thought I have nothing intelligent to say.
Title: Re: PC Miniature 89: Lapis Lazuli
Post by: Maxilu on September 01, 2016, 08:02:55 PM
I love this. It's a beautiful little sketch of a fascinating world that didn't need to be one word longer. I especially love the contrast between the slave and the princess, and how their similarities are highlighted without being explicitly stated.

I want them to go on adventures together. I want the princess to travel to the slave's native lands and live with her people. I want the princess to use her influence to free the slave. But, I appreciate the ending being vague. This is a story that could have easily been fussed to death, so, kudos to the author on it's perfection.
Title: Re: PC Miniature 89: Lapis Lazuli
Post by: Jethro's belt on September 06, 2016, 05:47:46 PM
I didn't think I would like it but I did. The visceral and swift impaling of Sir Knight was perfection. Best discard the baggage and get to the main theme, slavery, class status and that old invisible feeling, well said.
Title: Re: PC Miniature 89: Lapis Lazuli
Post by: Devoted135 on October 15, 2016, 12:47:23 AM
Ha! What a neat little turn there. This is what flash should be. :)