The Many Writings of K. A. Jones

Monique looked very much like she would have smiled back is she could, instead settling for wagging her tail harder. “How long have you been here?” she asked.

“Just over two weeks,” Zoe replied, “but it feels much longer.”

The Nox Gadael all nodded. “We had the same problem,” Isen said. “Our old world had a much shorter day too and getting used to the thirty-six hour day took more time than I think any of us expected it to.”

“When did you all arrive?”

“Monique was the first of our pack to arrive on Taithmarin, then Gerald found a door, and finally I appeared about six months after Gerald.” Isen sat on his haunches. “On our world it was six months. Here it was…” He looked at Monique and Gerald. “About eighteen months, I think.”

“And three years after I first arrived,” Monique continued. “None of us are exactly sure why, because logically it should have been fewer months for us that it was for Isen, but no one here understands the way the door works.” She sighed, her tail no longer moving. “We wish we did, because we’re hoping that more members of our pack may arrive soon.”

Zoe was thankful she’d taken the time to study the Nox Gadael, because it meant she didn’t have to ask what a pack was. “Are there many more of your pack left on your world?”

The three Nox Gadael shared a look. “We don’t know,” Monique replied, looking back at Zoe. “When Isen arrived here there were still six members of our pack alive, but they may all be dead by now.” Monique’s expression made Zoe think of someone biting their lip as they were thinking about what they should say. “On our old world,” she continued, “we are hunted for our magic.”

“That’s…” Zoe trailed off as she tried to find the right words. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you.” Part of her wanted to gather all three Nox Gadael in her arms and give them a hug. “I hope that the rest of your pack do make it to Taithmarin.”

“Thank you.” Monique wagged her tail a couple of times. “Taithmarin has been good for us and getting to know other magical races, who don’t want to hunt us, has been wonderful. Although a lot of humans have a problem with talking dogs we have also made some very good human friends here.” Their eyes met. “What did you have to leave behind?”

Zoe thought about the question, trying to find the right answer, but there was no right answer. “My family are all still on Earth, but I stepped through the door with a man I thought I still loved, and coming here has left the naive girl I once was back there.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I haven’t worked out if I miss her yet. I miss my family, because I know I’ll never see them again, but I’m glad they will never know that I’m gone.”

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.

Names are going to get slowly more difficult and I was wondering how other people dealt with this, although I’m pretty sure most people don’t have the same problem I do, having to come up with unique names for so many different collections. Part of my problem is being picky. When I name a character I put a lot of effort in to finding the right one, because otherwise nothing feels right. There are also some characters who seem to want to have the same name (or close to) as another and I don’t quite know what to do about that. I’m pretty sure it would be fine to have characters with almost identical names in different collections. My problem is the characters who want to have the same name as another character and finding names that feel right for other characters. Input would be appreciated.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.

Written forLJ user ysabetwordsmith’s prompt: How and when is New Year celebrated in this collection? Are all the worlds ‘in synch’ timewise or are they on different cycles? The story was meant to answer the question, and I think it did in some small way, but it ended up being more about Archer than the new year.

There were the walkers. Every one of them went through years of training and tests before they were permitted to get any of the tattoos that would allow them to travel to another world. It was very rare that any walker chose to travel to all of the worlds that they could. There were merchants. Often a family business, the merchants travelled to different worlds to buy and sell items, once they were verified as being legitimate by the walker’s council and registered. Both had rules. Then there were the demons. Demon wasn’t the descriptive phrase Archer would have picked, but he understood why they had been given the name. No one knew exactly how many demons there were, who they were, or where they went, and that made the walkers scared.

Archer didn’t know how many demons there were. All he knew was that he’d been born with the ability to walk through the doorways leading to other worlds without the tattoos that everyone else needed. Some did use it to do things the walkers really didn’t like – like getting involved in situations that the walkers would have just watched, instead of breaking their first commandment. He never had, but that didn’t change the way everyone would view him if they found out what he was. That was why he was always careful.

Most of the doorways had been mapped by the walkers, but there were still some hidden that the demons could use. There was one in a clearing that Archer used at least twice a year to visit his family in Gaelom. That had been the first doorway he’d ever walked through, accidentally because he’d had no idea he was a demon, and he’d found himself on Athare, the home of the walkers. He’d gone straight back through, terrified that someone might have seen him, because he’d never studied the doors before. After taking a couple of lessons he’d told his father.

It was due to his father that Archer was living on Athare alone and did only travel back to Gaelom. Tattoos were expensive, so he’d never expected to get one, and then his eighteenth birthday present had been a one way tattoo to Athare. Every year he went back to celebrate new year with his family, which was on a different day to Athare’s new year, but he never took anything back with him because he couldn’t afford another tattoo. To keep himself safe he bought anything he wanted from Gaelom off the merchants, just in case someone noticed. He couldn’t take anything to Gaelom either.

Sighing, once again wishing he could take gifts to his family, Archer stepped through the doorway. Gaelom was a very different place to Athare and smelt of magics that no one on Athare used. People knew Gaelom as the weapons world, because it was where almost all the weapons, and wielders of those weapons, came from, but that was just one small part of his home. Feeling comfortable for the first time in moons he walked in the opposite direction to the town centre, because that was where the majority of people would be, going straight to the home he wished he hadn’t left.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.

Rhiannon stepped into the classroom. From the moment her right foot crossed the threshold she could feel his eyes on her. It was beginning to make her feel uncomfortable. She did her best to ignore him as she went to sit in the window seat she had chosen at the beginning of the year, when she had been the new girl, again. Every time she started a new school she wished that they had chosen a better age for her, an older age so she didn’t have to spend most of her time learning the same things repeatedly, but it was their way of making sure that she was under their control. They were scared of her in a way that none of her previous owners had been.

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Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.

Sighing, Mab looked down at the table. It would take time to get used to the new elders, who were all much younger than the previous group, but she didn’t have any. The fae didn’t know how not to use their magic and the last thing she wanted was for Athare to fall apart the same way their old world had done. No one had time to find out what their new world was like before they’d moved, because neither she or the elders had wanted to believe Willow.

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Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.