212 words down on Polendron, my NaNo2003 novel. Dunno what it is, dunno where it’s headed; seems a bit like an organic SF/Fantasy novel right now, but who knows. I’m not pushing for a plot; she’s just showing me where to go. Here’s what I have so far:
~~
Brown, muddy sweat trickled down the cumbel’s side. Plendron hopped down from her saddle with the leather scoop and ran the faded blue tool up the cumbel’s back, collecting the sticky, sweet-smelling sudor. the bowl at the end of the scoop was full; the blue leather sagged and bobbed under the weight of the fluid as she hopped through the knee-high grass back to her waltzer.
The grass was unusually strong this season, so when she stepped on some it bent but didn’t snap, and instead behaved as a trampoline would; she jumped into the saddle of the waltzer without any effort.
Polendron fed the cumbel’s sweat into the waltzer’s fuel tank. The engines behind her hummed with the taste of new fuel. She grabbed hold of the yoke and turned the vehicle about, waving to the cumbel as she swung around. The cumbel shot her a wizened sideways glance and continued to chew on the strong grass.
Three hundred millilitres of a cumbel’s sweat was enough for even a small wagon to run for days; in the zippier single-saddle waltzer it was a month’s worth of fuel even if she ran the veldt all day and all night.
~~
More as it comes.
V