nanowrimo day 2

[xax]

so the last time i did nanowrimo was... a considerable time ago, and i went looking for the tools i used last time. one of them was 'write or die', a little web thing that gives you a text field and dings and turns red if you don't keep typing more-or-less continuously. a very simple, basic thing that looked like this when i used it last. meanwhile, the 'modern' version of it is this over-designed mess.

thankfully the archive.org version still mostly works.

wrote another 2k words today (well, 1995 words). this puts me at 4031 words total, or +697 ahead of pace. finished that djen fisting scene and wrote most of the opening paths the jinn survey caves sequence. i also put in some very basic code for handling conversation with the various gheist characters, since it was bothering me that all the human characters got talk options but nobody else did. that's gonna be weird to try to work into the nanowrimo process -- each individual talk option is maybe a paragraph, and they're nearly all backstory/worldbuilding exposition, so they're not really things i could write in a single timed block the way i've been writing the sex scenes. we'll see how that goes.

---

You say, don't usually see lightrot this high up.

Jinn nods. "There's an aquifer below here. There's a fault. The acid infiltration from the southern wastes makes channels that push the lightrot up, nearly to the surface."

Then he reaches down and dips his hand into it. You can't resist letting out a small sound of shock, and Jinn looks back at you, a smile on his face. His eyes catch the light as he turns, flashing red-green, as if to remind you that he's not actually human, despite how he looks. He smears the lightrot between his fingers, feeling it. "Unprocessed," he says. "Mixed with water, and emulsified with bitumen in the rock. Looks pretty ideal."

You say sure. You've purified lightrot before, getting out crystals and tarry black sludge, and you suppose that could run in reverse. Then you say, but you never shoved your hand right into a pool of the stuff. Lightrot burns can char all the way down to the bone.

Jinn laughs. He inhales deeply, breathing in the lightrot-suffused humidity. "My body processes it differently than a human. Or a drudge, for that matter." He splashes the pool, letting the lightrot stir, slightly more viscous than water. "If I sat in here for a few hours all that'd happen is I'd go into heat."

You look at him appraisingly. You say, you haven't _been_ in heat?

He laughs. "You'd be surprised. I don't know if you've ever met a breeding queen, but our heats can be... pretty uncontrollable. It's not just wanting to fuck."

He continues, "Anyway, that's not what'd happen here. Maybe the raw stuff from the depths, or the acid lightrot that they use for mining" -- you had no clue anybody used lightrot for mining -- "but these days there's gheist strains in nearly all the surface reservoirs. It's pretty mellow." He points at the haze. "You're breathing it in and you look fine."

The air is hazier now, with Jinn splashing the pools around. Fumes steam up from the disrupted pool, like all it needed was a slight push. You do feel a little woozy. It burns, a little, but only when you focus on it. Your skin prickles up into goosebumps.

Jinn looks at you, his skin flushed, practically glowing in the ambient light. "You feel like a swim?"