Lost For Words

 

Lost For Words is the eleventh and penultimate story for A Better Place, taking place quite some time prior to the events of In Love This Way. Lost For Words focuses on the far travels of Txori Orzola, a forest gnome from a distant, reclusive corner of the land, and while she has spent several years of traveling the land, her travels have yet to lead her to anywhere or anyplace interesting, instead finding herself frequently the subject of curious glances and questions from those she passes by. One night in the sleepy town of Luton, life seems to go on as usual for Txori; a chance encounter with a long-suffering merchant and her odd friendship with a noblewoman, however, cause her to enjoy a unique night on her travels for once.

Lost For Words can be read here.

The above image was found among some folders in one of my older flash drives, and I unfortunately do not know who drew it, nor have I been able to locate its creator. Hopefully that'll change someday soon.

Lost For Words was named after the Pink Floyd song of the same name. It was initially named High Hopes after another song by the band, but I ended up changing it due to the abundance of entries that started with the letter "H" and as to reflect Txori's own name change in the midst of this story's creation (as detailed below).

Back when I was debating who to play as instead of Silifrey, as outlined before, a then-unnamed barbarian was one of three finalists for my new character, alongside Saeros and Zetian. Txori ultimately got passed over due to her being too underdeveloped as a character at the time, and I also couldn't find a way to make her primal path, Path of the Totem Warrior, really work in the setting. I tweaked the character in my head a bit as I started this long-running project, with the most notable change being her going from a half-orc to a gnome due to a clerical error on my part (as I previously posted for Among The Living), alongside other changes to make her primal path make more sense.

Txori was initially named "Tawnie Teagan" for no reason other than I thought it was a lovely name that clashed with her being a half-orc barbarian, and I liked it enough to continue using her name even as she became a gnome. As her backstory became more fleshed-out, however, I decided to change her name as to accentuate her distant and mysterious roots, akin to Migizi's Ojibwe name and, to a lesser extent, Zetian's Chinese / Uyghur name. Owing to this, I elected to dip into the Basque language, due to its status as a language isolate that would accentuate Txori's remote background; "Txori" means "bird" in Basque, as to reference her totem spirit of the osprey, while her surname, per Basque tradition, was a combination of the word "Ortzi" and the suffix "-ola", meaning "sky" and "forge" respectively.

As an aside note, Txori is tied for shortest character in the series with another character who will make their own appearance next time around; both stand at approximately 37 inches. I find this rather amusing, given that Serra herself is 71 inches tall, making her the second-tallest female in the series behind Zetian (who stands at 73 inches). 

I found Lost For Words considerably easier to write than the previous three works in A Better Place, especially In Love This Way. Alongside the lower stakes for both Txori and Serra, Txori's more informal personality, and the somewhat tongue-in-cheek ending for Txori (ending up with the goal of finding a goal), I felt considerably less pressure to respectfully write Txori as a character, compared to Migizi's Ojibwe-inspired background and Serra's lesbianism. And if nothing else, I quite enjoyed being able to write about Leily Rhoeas again, whom we last saw quite some time ago in Holidays In The Sun.