The Worldbuilder's Journal

Some of my read­ers liked Falaha’s orig­i­nal lit­tle story, so they sup­ported the idea of mak­ing a small series called “Falaha’s Jour­ney”, which I will be post­ing on this blog. I’m just not sure how good I will be with pub­lish­ing dates, but I’m plan­ning to post episodes at least twice a month. If things go well, I will prob­a­bly switch to weekly posts. I have writ­ten two episodes so far, the sec­ond is still being edited.

Also, this is my first time writ­ing in first per­son. I think it is much harder than any of third per­son POVs because of its highly lim­ited per­spec­tive. I pre­fer third per­son limited.

I would like to thank my friend Linda for being a great help, and all the read­ers for inter­est and pro­vided feed­back. So I hope you will enjoy this story.

#J

Falaha’s Jour­ney – Episode #1

This ship was built by my great-great-great-great-great grand­fa­ther, so she is over two thou­sand years old. She had seen a lot of things, and she’s been places I’ve only heard of. Father says she can run for another cou­ple of thou­sand years before recy­cling the core. After recy­cling she might get a sec­ond life, or might be totally rebuilt and inte­grated into a greater ves­sel. My grand­fa­ther used to say that as long as blood­lines live, ships never die. They become a solid part of the ken­nar and con­tinue to live on along with the descen­dants of the builders, fol­low­ing the cycle of rebuilds. And one day I, too, will inherit Quen­nah.

Ves­sels of her size are not usu­ally equipped with DIVE because of its com­plex­ity. Nev­er­the­less, Quen­nah is a dive-capable small class space­craft. But this is not what makes her spe­cial. Quen­nah has char­ac­ter, and a fierce one at that. Not every per­son can pilot her. For some rea­son she dis­likes my uncle, Orewen. This usu­ally results in fail­ures of sev­eral ter­mi­nals. And when his son is on the Bridge, the whole sys­tem shuts down, so nei­ther one is allowed any­where near the Con­trol Cen­ter. Mom says it is in their blood. Me? I never tried to han­dle her, so I’m a lit­tle wor­ried. If she was a sim­ple arcai, it would have been child’s play. Quen­nah is not an arcai; she is very dif­fer­ent from intel­li­gent machines and this is my first voy­age with her.

There had been many weird things going on long before we left for Kan Diona. I haven’t told any­one yet, but I saw a real Hunter. They truly are dis­gust­ing, blood­thirsty crea­tures. Still, I think noth­ing com­pares to the Great Ances­tor, so I wasn’t ter­ri­bly scared. In front of us lies a long jour­ney of a hun­dred days until we reach the inter­stel­lar fortress. Well, accord­ing to every­one, Diona is not really a fortress, they just call it that. I have yet to explore for myself what it is, since there is not even a sin­gle pic­ture avail­able. We will reach the dive-point soon. From that spot on, I won’t see my home or friends ever again. Mom says it is inevitable. But is it really? I feel sad, although I think every­thing is sub­ject to change. After all, we all share a part of the Ancestor’s com­pelling will. So I am pre­pared to meet what lies beyond.

A Pho­to­shop mus­ing on how the author sees Falaha

Copy­right © 2012, Jelena Mosto­vaja. All rights reserved.

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Related posts:

1. Falaha’s Jour­ney – Episode 2
2. Falaha’s Jour­ney – Episode 4
3. Falaha’s Jour­ney – Episode 5
4. Falaha’s Jour­ney – Episode 6
5. Falaha’s Jour­ney – Episode 8
6. Falaha’s Jour­ney – Episode 11
7. Falaha’s Jour­ney – Episode 12
8. Falaha’s Jour­ney – Episodes 14 & 15
9. Falaha’s Jour­ney – Episode 16
10. Falaha’s Jour­ney – Episode 22