Born in Fire

Who was the buyer for the horns?
You may find out, but not for some time. But I do have plans....

Hmm, someone mentioned swimming.
There are lakes and rivers on the PoF, no seas. So swimming can be done.
But its an unsual skill. An analogy; swimming is very common (at least in Britain), but not many people hang-glide.
On the PoF, a lot of the inhabitants can fly, but not many learn to swim.
Thulia is a teenager who'd never had reason or inclination to learn such a (relatively) exotic skill.
(And, like many teenagers with skills they havent actually tried, thinks its easy!

The more I read of Thulia’s origin the more Jimi H’s song “Step into the Fire” normally abbreviated to just “Fire” keeps running amok in my head
My favourite local rock and blues band “Forged” played fire on Friday night at the nut so, that might be a contributing factor

Astrodragon wrote:

Hmm, someone mentioned swimming.
There are lakes and rivers on the PoF, no seas. So swimming can be done.
But its an unsual skill. An analogy; swimming is very common (at least in Britain), but not many people hang-glide.
On the PoF, a lot of the inhabitants can fly, but not many learn to swim.
Thulia is a teenager who'd never had reason or inclination to learn such a (relatively) exotic skill.
(And, like many teenagers with skills they havent actually tried, thinks its easy!

I'd imagine even if taught how to swim it may be harder for PoF residents even with the ability to alter the body so things like wings aren't in the way, outside of magical interactions, there's potential natural heat from their auras, which may spike if panicked, even with immunity to heat damage, what that'd do is lower the density of the water around them, reducing their buoyancy, the same way boats will have a higher water line in rivers than on the ocean. With personal flight, you'd only need to learn the skill if you do a lot of work on the lakes and rivers, particularly underwater work, otherwise at most you'd want to know how to tread water and float, but there the wings help depending on how far they articulate, and that because it'd be hard to achieve liftoff when in the water.

mhalpern wrote:

Astrodragon wrote:

Hmm, someone mentioned swimming.
There are lakes and rivers on the PoF, no seas. So swimming can be done.
But its an unsual skill. An analogy; swimming is very common (at least in Britain), but not many people hang-glide.
On the PoF, a lot of the inhabitants can fly, but not many learn to swim.
Thulia is a teenager who'd never had reason or inclination to learn such a (relatively) exotic skill.
(And, like many teenagers with skills they havent actually tried, thinks its easy!

I'd imagine even if taught how to swim it may be harder for PoF residents even with the ability to alter the body so things like wings aren't in the way, outside of magical interactions, there's potential natural heat from their auras, which may spike if panicked, even with immunity to heat damage, what that'd do is lower the density of the water around them, reducing their buoyancy, the same way boats will have a higher water line in rivers than on the ocean. With personal flight, you'd only need to learn the skill if you do a lot of work on the lakes and rivers, particularly underwater work, otherwise at most you'd want to know how to tread water and float, but there the wings help depending on how far they articulate, and that because it'd be hard to achieve liftoff when in the water.

Yes, its a much trickier thing to learn than it would be for a human, and involves a lot more training.
Not to mention the shock Thulia is going to get when Morgana finaly shows her an ocean!

one thing that strikes me as interesting, we know how her father and grandmother see things, but the best i can tell, her mother has either been silent or non committal. From Thulia's PoV that's backing her father, but that isn't necessarily the case. I don't think I personally want to get into why she hasn't said anything if she disagrees with the father, there are several possible explanations, and with observed behavior, the likely ones ain't pretty. But that's the thing I've noticed, her father talked to the Master of Training, her father is restricting her resources, her father is the one yelling at her, her mother is for all intents and purposes silent, and she is assuming both her parents have the same views.

mhalpern wrote:

one thing that strikes me as interesting, we know how her father and grandmother see things, but the best i can tell, her mother has either been silent or non committal. From Thulia's PoV that's backing her father, but that isn't necessarily the case. I don't think I personally want to get into why she hasn't said anything if she disagrees with the father, there are several possible explanations, and with observed behavior, the likely ones ain't pretty. But that's the thing I've noticed, her father talked to the Master of Training, her father is restricting her resources, her father is the one yelling at her, her mother is for all intents and purposes silent, and she is assuming both her parents have the same views.

'Then her mother had started in, all emotional blackmail about how worried she'd been, and how she feared it would all harm her, and shouldn't she be concentrating on her proper studies. She'd only managed to sit through it all without screaming out loud by what she felt was a supreme act of self-control.'

Although, true, her father is the shouty one

Astrodragon wrote:

mhalpern wrote:

one thing that strikes me as interesting, we know how her father and grandmother see things, but the best i can tell, her mother has either been silent or non committal. From Thulia's PoV that's backing her father, but that isn't necessarily the case. I don't think I personally want to get into why she hasn't said anything if she disagrees with the father, there are several possible explanations, and with observed behavior, the likely ones ain't pretty. But that's the thing I've noticed, her father talked to the Master of Training, her father is restricting her resources, her father is the one yelling at her, her mother is for all intents and purposes silent, and she is assuming both her parents have the same views.

'Then her mother had started in, all emotional blackmail about how worried she'd been, and how she feared it would all harm her, and shouldn't she be concentrating on her proper studies. She'd only managed to sit through it all without screaming out loud by what she felt was a supreme act of self-control.'

Although, true, her father is the shouty one

missed that bit, then it seems the apple fell pretty far from the tree, grew up and had an apple that decided to run back to the original tree.

I realised that I've been somewhat misleading with regard to Tanau.
While I do mislead or redirect you a lot, its basically by hiding stuff in plain sight.

So, to avoid people making false assumption for the wrong reason.

Tanau is Thulia's Great-Grandmother. This is explained fully in a piece about Thulia's ancestry, but its a couple of stories away yet. Basically Thulia started off calling her Gran (like kids often do), and later Tanau refused to be called Great-Grandmother because it made her feel too old.

I'm getting quite a strong vibe like the original Jobe stories. Both of them wanted to create something new, one to validate certain theories, the other to build his own dream girl (though, as a bio-deviser there must have been other stuff involved as well). Both thought they'd get volunteers, didn't consider any risk, and things didn't go as planned.

Looked at a certain way, what she did involves criminal negligence and lack of foresight justified only by a certain naivete and youth. Long and short, I don't agree with how her parents handled things, and I think there were and probably are better options, but I can see why they might feel / react as they did in the story. In other words, flip the perspective and things look a little different. It's to her credit that she tried to fix things, but the fact that things turned out even as well as they did might appear to have more to do with luck. Personally, if I were in their place, I'd be doing as much as I could to keep Thulia interested in Morgana and, crucially, NOT in another potential disaster.

ghoti wrote:

I'm getting quite a strong vibe like the original Jobe stories. Both of them wanted to create something new, one to validate certain theories, the other to build his own dream girl (though, as a bio-deviser there must have been other stuff involved as well). Both thought they'd get volunteers, didn't consider any risk, and things didn't go as planned.

Looked at a certain way, what she did involves criminal negligence and lack of foresight justified only by a certain naivete and youth. Long and short, I don't agree with how her parents handled things, and I think there were and probably are better options, but I can see why they might feel / react as they did in the story. In other words, flip the perspective and things look a little different. It's to her credit that she tried to fix things, but the fact that things turned out even as well as they did might appear to have more to do with luck. Personally, if I were in their place, I'd be doing as much as I could to keep Thulia interested in Morgana and, crucially, NOT in another potential disaster.

Actually that's being rather unfair to Thulia.
She expected a volunteer because it would be crazy to give someone that power to a hostile person. She is a teenager, and has no experience of how nasty something like the cult is.
Her experiment should have been successful, but as any engineer can tell you, there's a REASON we build prototypes... and in the end, she did save him. Jobe would likely have written him off as a failure.
devisors do consider risk! Ask Laura Of course, most people have issues with their idea of 'acceptable risk'

No, criminal negligence would have been doing something she knew wouldn't work. What she did was more like a failed operation. Given that she assumed a volunteer, it would have been an acceptable risk. However refusing to experiment on Rob because he wasn't a volunteer would have been a much WORSE fate for Rob. She played a poor hand the best she could.
Oh, and I haven't finished telling you about Thulia and her parents

Astrodragon wrote:

Jobe would likely have written him off as a failure.

I think that in Jobe's mind, those who sign up for ork recruitment get exactly what they shouldn't have foolishly signed up for. Bear in mind that because he would have read those contracts and understood the fine print, he cannot understand how any reasonable person can do otherwise. He's a little naive in his arrogance.

On the other hand, Jobe probably would have worked to mitigate the negative aspects of a failure on his part (for certain perspectives of "negative"), with permission. The Fury Sisters and Grabby saw no reason to take a chance on how a second round might turn out, Ayla did. Can you blame any of them?

You are quite right in that there's a huge difference between naivete and sociopathy, though in Jobe's case I'd say he / she suffers from both. In fact, that very naivete, and her subsequent actions, is what makes Thulia so much more likeable than Jobe.

However, I stand by my point that experimenting upon a subject not of legal age still could be construed as criminal negligence, even if she would have done her best to explain what might happen. Keep in mind, ANY potential subject would be underage. In addition, apart from the mishap that did occur, there could have been others which she also didn't foresee. Then there's always the question of what the subject does with the power. Whether or not it's affected their mental state or stability, whether they wanted a Faustian bargain, etc.

Speaking as someone who was a teenage boy several years ago, when a cute girl wants you to do something, especially if she's nice too and seems to like you, contract clauses or what might happen aren't exactly the first thing on your mind. Or the last thing, for that matter. One reason literature is full of warnings against "deals with the devil" and such; but one commonality they all have is that the deal gets struck and the mortal is foolish for doing it.

Anyway, not trying to criticize too much as it is very well-written; just wanted to bring up a couple things.

Null: that's really the one mitigating factor for Sara's treatment of Jobe. He's lacking in empathy until she basically forces him onto a course where he (now she) may develop some. His only previous scruples seemed to be always adhering to a contract, no matter what. It is still basically mind rape and mutilation, though. Only the fact that he's a complete psychopath and unaware or uncaring of anyone else makes it potentially justified in an "ends v means" way. He's so out of her league when it comes to stuff he SHOULD have been contrite, humble, etc when he finally had no option but to ask for her help, but that was obviously alien to him.

Remember, the age isnt exactly an issue for Thulia. She'd from a different culture, where things like 'not of legal age' apply quite differently and she has no real understanding of how it applies on Earth

Astrodragon wrote:

Remember, the age isnt exactly an issue for Thulia. She'd from a different culture, where things like 'not of legal age' apply quite differently and she has no real understanding of how it applies on Earth

There seem to be quite a few commonalities, like the idea of guardianship and responsibility until a certain point in one's life. Also laws, rules, etc. Not to mention an upper-class, established family sending their scion to be educated in the proper way, a friend who could easily be mistaken for an old retainer or minder or even family to watch over and help her.

Anyway, I agree that cultures are different and that laws change as well. I also agree that different species are different. I simply think that, where there is parallelism or convergence, similar standards should apply.

The reason I got the feeling of parallelism was here you have two mavericks, both convinced of their rectitude, both arguably the most brilliant at what they do, both trying to create something new, succeeding, and then having relationship with the product of their endeavors. From Pygmalion to Frankenstein to many creation myths, it's actually not an uncommon trope.

Now of course what makes it different is the character motivation, the product, and especially, what happens afterwards. Tellingly, Jobe will hold to the letter of a contract he makes but will bend things only for his benefit or his own interest. Thulia HAS to hold to the contract she made, but tries to rectify her mistakes as well as she can, in ANOTHER'S interest.