I am sososo glad you like it and that it went over so well! This was one of the most pivotal chapters in the series, and one that I still get tears in my eyes when I read it over, even when I’m just editing. Thanks!
Tag: ask
He could bring you right to it after you describe it to him! He’s better than a metal detector on the beach if he can figure out how to lock onto the item in question (if he can’t, he gets a splitting headache).
I hope you managed to find the watch!
Wowie. I’m just. Good grief.
I had to take a second to be intrigued/entertained by the “bathroom problem” terminology. A bathroom is not an inherent thing that all sentient people can be assumed to have. And, though we try to ignore the subject in polite conversation, organisms produce waste in natural processes. They need not be a problem for anyone.
I understand what you meant, though, so hopefully I can explain adequately without offending any sensibilities.
The wood sprites have stairs on their trees. They generally use those or simply glide down from their home branches to an area outside the main thoroughfare of the village. There, they can dig a small trench, do their business, cover it, and be on their way (a stop by the stream to wash off certainly wouldn’t be amiss, but they have water basins in their homes, too). This is not so different from what humans generally do if there’s not a bathroom available. Sadly, we haven’t always had indoor plumbing.
That’s how it’s done in Wellwood. There are some wood sprite communities out there that might keep a sort of “outhouse” structure on their home trees for households to share. It’s a bucket of dirt in a closed room that gets refreshed every so often. Five stars.
As far as potential “emergencies” go (Spirit save me), I’ll add that gastrointestinal issues among wood sprites are astronomically rare. Their metabolisms are incredibly efficient and robust, and honestly they can be like tiny living compost bins. They are able to digest many things that other mammals can’t (sugars like cellulose, which humans can’t digest), making their lives much easier in times of scarcity (they are literally surrounded by cellulose). Conveniently, it means they can control things like their regularity with greater ease. They also don’t vomit involuntarily, the lucky little guys.
Faster metabolism does mean that chemicals like alcohol and caffeine get distributed very quickly. Bowman got hyper very fast in Lich because of this. In his canon, you can see in Bowman of Wellwood that a few drinks of beer made him wobbly, much to his chagrin. Drunken sprite. They’re all lightweights.
I digress, anon.
In short, the “bathroom problem” isn’t truly a problem (and nor does it have much to do with an actual bathroom). But, I mean, kudos for thinking to ask the awkward questions. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever have to go through answering that, but one big block of uncertainty has been removed from my life. Thanks, you’re a peach.
Ah. Lore time.
My sprites (the earthbound sprites, not to be confused with nightmares’ Aeternum babies) all have a direct spiritual connection to the Spirit that made them. It is through these connections that a sprite can Pray, which is basically another word for incantation here. They borrow magic from their Spirit, and in the case of the wood sprites, they borrow magic from the Earth Spirit, the Lady of Life.
Sprites’ souls are essentially little pieces of the Spirit’s soul. Sam, as a human, has an entirely different kind of soul and thus no connection to the Spirit. He could try to Pray, but he doesn’t have any way to channel magic from the Lady of Life.
Cerul, one of the first wood sprites Sam meets in Brothers Asunder, has a gift called the Voice of the Spirit, which means that his connection to Her is the strongest it can be. The gift enables him to Pray much more without tiring, it gives him an empathy to the feelings, physical and emotional, of the living things around him, and it enables him to see where the Spirit’s influence flows. He would have been able to see right away that Sam does not have a connection to a Spirit.
Ooo, the horror story. Well, I don’t think Jacob is pleased that we’re all so interested in it…
The horror story is the 3rd story of Brothers Found. That means, it’ll only have a chance of appearing in the poll once we’ve gotten through the first and second stories of that AU. Jacob’s got his fingers crossed that we pick other choices.
Currently, we are working on editing the horror story, because it is actually the longest story we have written together. Beware!
…He would like to go home now, pls.
Artwork by @lamthetwickster
So do I! Let me know if you find any more!
I might have gotten them. Truthfully, I get a lot of prompts, so there’s no way for me to know whose are whose, especially on anon. I also won’t be able to do all prompts. I tend to focus on the ones that I get inspired by, and I’ve got a few set aside that I want to work on, but I’ve been to busy between work and other stories to do any. Of course, all of Brothers Asunder came from a prompt, and Brothers Lost was inspired by a prompt as well, so keep sending in any ideas. If you want to resend the prompts, because I know that tumblr does occasionally lose them, feel free!
–Also, asks are currently scheduled a week out in advance, unless they’re more immediate questions like this one, so if it’s an ask you’re asking about, it may be in the queue. It’s the only way for me to keep ahead of things because of work, and keep the blog going when I get besieged for a good few days in a row.
Just remember, there’s a chance I won’t get to the prompts because there’s a lot of ideas that don’t mesh with the world I’m making over here.
Sam tends to not be a fan of black coffee, and pine sap is much worse as far as pure bitterness goes. He probably tried it once at Bowman’s insistance, only to hear the sprite cackle as he made a face. Bowman, by contrast, loves the stuff. Sam’s more likely to go for maple or birch sap, as they are much sweeter and milder than pine.
Excitement!
Oh, and if anyone notices the excerpts are a little behind our writing speed… well, we’ve been writing more than a chapter a day this week, so we’re more ahead than I thought we’d be. The BU excerpts will show up soon.
As for BU… how about a peek? :3
“No, no, no,” Walt said under his breath as he tried to keep up with Sam’s fleeing figure. He needed to catch the kid before he stumbled himself ass backwards into trouble. The problem was Sam might be scrawny, but he was fast.
After losing Bree so recently, Walt refused to lose another kid like this. Even one that was a human so recently. Big enough to grab Walt up in a fist, and keep him trapped.
Trying to warn Sam’s family of the witch that was going to attack them had ended in failure. Walt was too late. He’d found the room in chaos, the older brother shouting his heart out in a thundering voice, and Sam…
For a moment Walt had feared the child was already dead. Spotting the tiny figure on the ground had solidified his determination, and he’d dared to dart out into the open to haul Sam out of the way. The father of the boys had come in, saving Dean at the last second.
If Walt hadn’t taken Sam, the boy’s own father might have unknowingly stepped on him.
“Sam! Wait up, please! You don’t understand!”
Walt’s shout was ignored. The tiny figure running from him veered for where a crack was letting in light, and his heart fell. That opening lead to one of the closer motel rooms. Sam was defensless if he stumbled into it.
By the time Walt made it to the room, it was already too late.
He squirmed his own way into the room, the leather bag over his shoulder almost catching on the opening. Sam was out in the center of the floor, frozen in fear, and at the end of the towering beds, was…
A human kid, younger than Sam, staring in disbelief at the tiny child.
Since Jacob’s only four-going-on-five years old, there’s a steep chance that if he tries to hide Sam (Jacob, who is the worst liar around when he’s seventeen, trying to keep a secret from his parents at four), they will find him. So we will be finding out exactly how they’ll react during the story. And for anyone who knows Jacob and is familiar with his story, this is the first chance to learn more about his father.
Brothers Apart 