{"id":3522,"date":"2023-04-26T00:05:36","date_gmt":"2023-04-26T04:05:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=3522"},"modified":"2023-04-17T10:23:19","modified_gmt":"2023-04-17T14:23:19","slug":"save-me-a-story-visions-and-small-victories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=3522","title":{"rendered":"Save me a Story &#8211; Visions and Small Victories"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><i>This is the continuing story of my adventures in the tale: Save me a Story. If you wish to read the introduction to understand what is happening, click this link:\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=3431\">https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=3431<\/a><\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><i>\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><i>Otherwise, I\u2019ve tried to summarize what happened at the beginning of most of the sections of this story. <\/i><\/span><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\r\n<!-- \/wp:post-content -->\r\n\r\n<!-- wp:image -->\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/A-to-Z-2003-V.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-3424\" src=\"http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/A-to-Z-2003-V-300x300.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"134\" height=\"134\" srcset=\"http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/A-to-Z-2003-V-300x300.jpeg 300w, http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/A-to-Z-2003-V-150x150.jpeg 150w, http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/A-to-Z-2003-V.jpeg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 134px) 100vw, 134px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Visions and Small Victories<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stories and characters from the Kingdom of Selat had disappeared. They had been abducted by the evil sorceress Necroma to the isolated island of Lorn. The characters had their memories wiped. They did not know who they were or their lives before they found themselves on Lorn.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I was tasked by a mystic in my world to find all these characters and to return them and their stories to where they belonged in Selat. I was informed that the impact of my mission could affect my own world and that failure to succeed would have disastrous consequences on all worlds.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So here I stand outside a forest in Northern Selat, surrounded by friends and foes in the world of Story. These characters had not been abducted yet\u2014their stories were now incomplete. They all, at my suggestion, agreed to work together to solve the mystery of the disappearing characters and put aside their differences, at least temporarily, until a solution was found.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Since I made the challenge to all groups and they seemed to accept it, I was the one that had to organize everything.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Did you ever try to resolve a problem between two forces that were radically opposite each other in every way?\u00a0 Well, up until now, neither had I.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My first thought was to put them in heterogeneous teams so that I could assign different tasks to each group. Each task would be like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. In the end, when all groups finished their tasks, we could put together the puzzle and have a plan. Well, that wasn\u2019t going to work. There were just too many conflicts that could occur within each group to have any group actually accomplish anything.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I decided to let the opposing sides keep their own teams, and I would be the liaison between them. I kept the pied piper with me at all times. His power was known, and he had a good reputation with both sides, and surprisingly, so did I.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I met with each group and asked them if they had any information about what we were up against.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the group I started out with, the caretaker of Selat had originally given me information (that\u2019s who my friend Ronald said belonged to the voice that started me on this journey in Selat. Ronald then, not surprisingly, abandoned us) that I would find these stories and characters in the north. With Red Riding Hood\u2019s granny, Jack, and Puss in Boots, who I had met along the way at the beginning of my quest, we found a letter at one of the meeting places. Fox left it. It talked about a witch casting a spell, with her words, that erased memories and also referred to an island in the north.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the meeting with the group Ronald had been part of, they spoke of an inscription on a stone they passed while they were in the woods. That inscription stated that looking into someone\u2019s eyes might cause you to lose all thought. It also mentioned an unnamed island where everyone had been sent to.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The most confusing part of both messages was that they ended with the same word, \u201cforlorn,\u201d which made no sense in the context of each message.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I felt good that we had made some headway in that both messages confirmed some of the same information. What we were looking for was in the north, where everyone was. They were on an island. And the person responsible was very powerful. You would lose your memory when she looked at you and\/or spoke some words. I considered that a small victory to know that ahead of time.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/dreaming-brain.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3649 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/dreaming-brain-230x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"96\" height=\"125\" srcset=\"http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/dreaming-brain-230x300.jpg 230w, http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/dreaming-brain.jpg 355w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 96px) 100vw, 96px\" \/><\/a>It wasn\u2019t until the next day, after a night\u2019s sleep, that we discovered a new clue about one of the things in our messages that we couldn\u2019t answer. It appeared to us all in a dream.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Everyone that night seemed to have a vision, more of an auditory one rather than a visual one. We all heard a voice saying, \u201cOops, my mistake. It should have been two words, not one.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I didn\u2019t have to identify who had that vision because everyone was discussing it simultaneously. But how did that fit in? I shared both messages that we had found with each group, so they all had the same information I had. Was there a connection?<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I finally realized where I had heard that voice in the dream before. I had heard it when I first entered Selat. It was the voice of the Caretaker of Selat. And if it was the caretaker that constructed the clues in both messages, it would seem to reason that there was the same mistake in both of them. I called on everyone to look through the messages for similar words and find ones that might be made up of two words.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">None of them made much sense \u201cis land,\u201d \u201cbe ware,\u201d and \u201cfor lorn.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3650 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Aesop.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"96\" height=\"123\" \/><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An old Greek storyteller named Aesop came up to me with the answer. Though he spoke in a foreign tongue (ancient Greek?), I could understand every word he said.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe answer is \u201cfor Lorn\u201d with a capital L.\u201d Lorn is an island in the north of Selat, once inhabited by many, but now deserted due to its poor living conditions and harsh climate. No one speaks of it anymore. It was abandoned well before my time, but I had knowledge of it.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cCan you lead us there?\u201d I asked.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Aesop answered, \u201cI believe I can.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So with Aesop in the lead, followed by the piper and me, and then the rest of our story-seeking force, we slowly moved further to the north.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Another small victory for us. <\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Continued in&#8230;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=3524\">Wizards&#8217; Wisdom<\/a><\/em><\/p>\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><\/figure>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is the continuing story of my adventures in the tale: Save me a Story. If you wish to read the introduction to understand what is happening, click this link:\u00a0 https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=3431\u00a0 Otherwise, I\u2019ve tried to summarize what happened at the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=3522\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[410,4,7],"tags":[70,421],"class_list":["post-3522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-to-z-blog-challenge-2023","category-original-stories","category-story-writing","tag-a-to-z-blog-challenge","tag-a-to-z-blog-challenge-2023"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3522"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3652,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3522\/revisions\/3652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}