Ever while his family grew, Rayôn would take his wife and children exploring, out from their vale home and into the surrounding valleys and beyond. To the South and the West, the land stretched ever on, beckoning to them to discover its secrets. And so they went down the rivers; they walked in the forests; they climbed up the hills and they danced in the meadows. Every place was unique; everywhere they went they found a new type of tree, a new kind of flower; more varieties of birds flew amid the trees, and beasts they had never met before walked up to them. And still the land stretched on, but they did not desire to travel far from their home in the vale – not yet. And so they turned back North, and explored the edge of the ocean beyond the vale. Of every place they had been, this place filled them with the most wonder. They gazed across the sea, and wondered if it stretched on forever, or if it came to an end. “Someday,” said Rayôn, on one of their visits to the shore, “the time will come; and we will discover how to travel across these waters, and see if there lies anything beyond.” A fire lit in the eyes of Vúnyeðel and Durfil at the thought, for these two brothers desired even more than the rest to know the secrets of the sea. They were determined to find a way to traverse it, and they told their plans to their father.
Rayôn was pleased. “This is good,” he said. “You are growing into men; the time has come for you to go out on your own. Seek a way across the sea: you will discover many things in this venture, and we shall all learn from you.” And so for two years, Vúnyeðel and Durfil, with help from their father and the others in their family, planned and labored together. They discovered how to make fabric and ink from various barks and plant juices. Durfil devised tools from stone, and Vúnyeðel found how to harvest wood from trees. Vúnyeðel also began to devise symbols for words and maps. He realized that the stars in the heavens could help them determine their direction – he shared this thought with Durfil, who began crafting instruments to measure the heavens and track the stars. Finally, the brothers turned to building a boat. They went down to the shores of the sea, and observed the wind, and found that during the day, it blew from the sea to the land, but at night it blew the other way, from the land to the sea. The idea of a sail occurred to Vúnyeðel: this way, the wind could carry them away at night, and they could return to land at day.
Vúnyeðel and Durfil built a boat large enough for the two of them, and fitted it with a sail. They tested their boat for two months, and constantly improved its sail. Then they began to take the boat out for several days at a time, sailing away at night and returning by day. Durfil saw that paddles would be needed should the wind fail them, and he fashioned four, a pair for himself and his brother.
Finally, after many adjustments and amendments to their plans and their vessel, they decided it was time to make a longer voyage; Rayôn agreed. And so, with two weeks worth of supplies laid in their vessel, Vúnyeðel and Durfil got in their boat, bid their family farewell, and sailed away, on the first day of the week.
As their vessel picked up speed, Vúnyeðel watched the land disappear; when it was a fair distance away, he gazed back at it and was amazed, for while his eyes could no longer see the shore or the land around it, yet he could still make out the tops of the high hills between the shore and the vale; it was as if the rest of the land had been swallowed by the sea. He thought it a strange illusion, but thought no more of it for a while. He had an adventure to think about. And so Vúnyeðel and Durfil turned their faces to the North.
Comments
I love it.
I want to be right there with them, exploring... I get this wonderfully beautiful picture of them hiking and exploring together, running barefoot, joyfully... I'm such a wanderer, can you tell?
Especially the sea. I'm excited to see where that goes. :)
The sea
I don't have the sea-longing of Tolkien's Eldar, but perhaps that is because I have only seen it three times that I remember in my life. I can't wait to see what Vúnyeðel and Durfil find on the open water.... a sea monster would be interesting, but I don't think that's your style.
Formerly Kestrel
Replies, and some pronounciation guidance
Glad you all are still enjoying it! Thanks for the encouragement.
Laura Elizabeth: Fanfiction? Flattering beyond belief! You would probably want to wait for the world to develope a little more... Concerning the pronounciation of Vúnyeðel, I use a special antiquated letter (used in the old Anglo-Saxon) called eth. I'm not sure if your webbrowser is reading it correctly or not; in your comment you spelled it with an o instead of with an ð (eth). An eth looks like a strange lowercase "d" with the stem curved (or slanted) to the left and crossed with a short dash. It is pronounced like the th in then or bathe. Thus, Vúnyeðel is pronounced VOON-yeh-thell.
Kyleigh: I'm glad; that's the effect I hoped the narrative would have.
Kestrel: Actually, that thought might not be that far off.
Some notes on pronouciation:
It's pretty straight forward, for the most part. The names are in the original tongue spoken by Rayôn and his family (which later became known as the Veyli tongue), and the English letters are transliterated equivalents of the Veyli alphabet (largely invented by Vúnyeðel). Every letter makes only one sound, and the accent marks tell you what syllable to stress. If there's no accent mark, then by default the accent is on the second-to-last syllable (like Spanish). All vowells are pronounced the way they would be in Spanish (and most other languages). A few notes on some of the consonants:
Q (which is only followed by a U when the U feels so inclined) is pronouced as a hard "K" sound. K occurs less frequently; for all practical purposes it is prounced much the same as Q. Kh represents a single letter/sound, a flowing, wet, continuous "K" sound, much like the Spanish J (Jota). I never use the letter "C" in transliterating the Veyli, as it would probably be confusing. I could not find a convincing place for it.
J is prounounced like the "si" in vision. Like the English J, but without the hard edge.
G is always prounouced hard. Period. Like give, get, bag.
Sh is pronounced sh. Like shush. Pretty obvious, but just wanted to clarify that, as it is two english letters translitterating one Veyli letter.
R is pronounced with a single trill, like the Spanish "R".
Rh is pronounced by blowing an "H" right before an untrilled "R", like "Hr" instead of "Rh". I don't know how else to describe it. The reason it is translitterated "Rh" instead of "Hr" is because "Rh" is more aesthetic to the reading eye.
Here is a ponounciation guide for the names in the story so far:
Áronyeh: AH-rone-yeh
Rayôn: Righ-OWN
Qeyrah: KAY-rah
Vúnyeðel: VOON-yeh-thell
Durfil: DOUR-fill (where "dour" rhymes with tour)
Shereynah: Share-A-nah (where "A" says its own name)
Qeylen: KAY-len
Rhonnah: HROW-nah (where "hrow" rhymes with throw)
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"The idea that we should approach science without a philosophy is itself a philosophy... and a bad one, because it is self-refuting." -- Dr. Jason Lisle
Amazing!
This is like, a breathtaking peice of work! I know we will see much more of these two brothers! It's INCREDIBLE...i especially love the very beginning, when you talk about all they find without even going very far. That's what i love about reading/writing: REDISCOVERING THE WORLD. Cudos to you!
:) :) :)
Really, James, this is good :) They are at last coming out of the caveman stages (Just kidding). I think we will start having to write fanfiction for this before it's even done. One suggestion: could you put pronunciation guides for Vunyeoel (and other harder names when you get to them)? I always read it as Voon-yoe-ell, but maybe that's not how it's supposed to be pronounced.
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The best stories are those that are focused, unassuming, and self-confident enough to trust the reader to figure things out. --
http://lauraeandrews.blogspot.com/2014/05/dont-tell-me-hes-smart.html