The Still Parade is a short story that acts a fourth installment for Circle of Magie, a series of stories centered on various sorcerers who live in the fantastical land of Oliviani, itself based on the nation of Belgium at the turn of the 19th century. The Still Parade takes place several weeks since the events of The Barren Fields, with Marcel Recker having spent several weeks away from most of the cast from the previous stories, Tanneke Daamen having vanished, and Felicity Pavona and Agnés Robben remaining in Stavelot. Walking back to his apartment within the bustling city of Leuven, however, Marcel ends up reuniting with some of his old friends, while also finding himself in the midst of both a conspiracy in his city, and a complicated familial conflict.
The Still Parade can be downloaded as a PDF in the following formats:
The above photograph is that of the real-life Leuven,
a capital city within West Flanders, where Flemish / Dutch is the primary language (in French, it's called Louvain instead). As a capital city hosting some of Europe's oldest and largest universities and libraries, alongside the world's largest beer brewer, it made sense to name my own large fictional city after it. Leuven itself also has a sadly chequered history, having been occupied and attacked by innumerable armies over the years, including during both World Wars, which felt rather fitting given what happens in this story. Hamont, where Tanneke's family lives, is another actual city within Belgium as well, located in the far north of Flanders, right against the border with Netherlands. Hamont itself is known for being a major fruit-growing area in Belgium, with its denizens speaking the Limburgish language and speaking Flemish with a marked accent, making it a fitting place for Tanneke's farmer background.
One inspiration for this work was seeing oorijzer within the halls of the Grand Rapids Public Museum in late 2023, as part of an exhibition regarding immigration to Grand Rapids throughout the city's history. I was rather amused to see an exhibit about Frisians, given my own series of works tangentially involving them, alongside my own interest in "outsider cultures" (like the Frisians, Ojibwe, Uyghurs, etc. as featured in previous works of mine), and seeing oorijzer in real life made me want to find a way to somehow include them for the next installment of my works. A picture of the oorijzer on display can be seen here, alongside three other photos of the actual exhibit concerning the Frisians and their own small history within Grand Rapids. While a distinctly Frisian invention, oorijzer is now considered a rather Dutch convention due to historic strife within Netherlands against the French during the early 1800s. Hey, my story may be intended to invoke the nation of Belgium at the turn of the century, but who says I can't throw in some cues from nearby states?
While the classical sorcerers were intended to be based on the Frisians, a cultural group that most folks probably don't know about, I wanted to make sure that they weren't being "othered" by the narrative or its characters, as to respect the base culture, but more importantly, to make sure we don't rely on really lame tropes where the whole "cluster" is "bad" or "wrong" (in particular, I've always disliked the Always Chaotic Evil trope, especially when applied to sapient beings). Since we only got to see the classical sorcerers in their more violent mode last time around, I wanted to see if we could try to get a more sympathetic light on them this time, focusing on the checkered backstory sorcerers have with royals and trying to showcase the questionable loyalty that Sherilyn has towards them. I'd like to also visit their interest in knowledge no matter the cost in a future installment, whenever that may be (akin to Ravana or Nico Cekala in the A Better Place series).
As an aside note, the central idea for the parade was taken from typical military parades, particularly the recurrent military parades in the Belgian city of Bastogne, located deep within Wallonia: every year on 16 December, a military parade is held to commemorate the Battle of the Bulge, a critical battle in World War II that decisively forced the Third Reich into permanent retreat. An album of the 79th parade can be found here, alongside an article about the 80th parade and its circumstances here. Within both Netherlands and Flanders, there also exists a type of parade known as bloemencorso (literally "flower pageant" or "flower parade" in Dutch), featuring grand and ostentatious floats that are decorated with flowers. After reading about those, I definitely felt I had to include such a float somewhere in the story.
I will admit that this story is considerably heavier in tone compared to previous installments, especially its ending. I started drafting this story in a far better mood, but I ended up not being in a good state of mind while writing a majority of the ending, hence why so much trauma seems to have happened within this story. Hopefully I'll be in a better state of mind next time around, and we can see a happier ending for our four friends within this world. Of course, since Sherilyn is supposed to be symbolic of an impossible ideal and memory that you can never have or revisit, respectively, I guess more heartbreak is unfortunately in store for at least some of them...
As has been written about many times before, Circle of Magie has its roots in a writing project I started in middle 2013 during some unending calculus lectures in my undergrad. Purge himself was actually present in these original drafts, acting as a ringleader for some classical sorcerers, but also acting as a rival for Bolting and Divine's own chapter of classical sorcerers; furthermore, in these original drafts, Purge was actually a woman named Morgan. But with the cast being dominated by women now, due to the departures of both Klein Ellman and Bryce Roussin in the narrative, Purge's character had to become male for the sake of pragmatism. When I return to this series, I'd like to see what else might return from the original drafts from all those years ago.
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