#Ironjaw is a kobold warlock

[kyofsonder]

Find the Word

I was tagged by @saltysupercomputer to find a given set of words in my writing and tag others to keep the game going. Thank you for the tag, and the chance to play my favorite writeblr game!

My Words: pen, nature, ecstatic, cold, down

I'll tag: @aohendo, @crypticcodexcreations, @eli-writes-sometimes, @on-noon, @writingpotato07, and as always anyone who wants to join in can use the following words and say I tagged them!

Your Words: explain, answer, scheme, avoid, dismiss

Also as always, the excerpts themselves are under a cut so they don't take up too much space on people's dashes.

I found pen in my novel WIP "Apricots":

"Do you keep any note paper around here? A pen? Do you just type everything, and do I have to borrow your phone or something?"

"There are note cards and pencils by the teapot, same as always. I haven't moved them since the last time you came over. Are you okay?" Ian starts to get up to show him where they are, but Noah impatiently gestures for him to stay. Noah's legs are a little longer than Ian's, anyway, so the strides he makes across the apartment get him to the kitchen and back in barely any time at all. He complains along the way, mumbling things to himself that Ian can't understand, but there isn't a chance to ask him if those mumblings are important or not before a stack of lined notecards is being slammed down onto the coffee table and a cup full of pencils slides in right next to them.

I found nature in a rough draft of a short story titled "A Question of Time":

"That's better. Now. I am a piece of time itself. I am a cog wasp. You who have plucked time from the air and set it before you in a makeshift chair in a summoning circle. You who have asked for the knowledge of the world from a piece of its own sprawling existence. Ask your question once more, and time will answer," it speaks formally this time, as if greeting him properly for the first time. Was its slightly flippant yet refined nature before not how it's supposed to act when summoned? He shoos the thought from his head, focusing instead on what he'd worked so painstakingly to recover.

"Thank you again for responding to my summons and agreeing to hear me out. My question is this: how do I know how much time it will take to heal from a wound that wasn't inflicted on my body, but on my mind or heart? Do you know the answer?"

"Thank you for your kind and generous methods in summoning me and your careful thought about your question. I do not know the answer."

"What?" he slaps his hand across his mouth more aggressively this time, shocked by his own outburst when his voice rises several octaves into what can only be described as a squeak.

I found ecstatic in a bit of backstory writing about the villain for a D&D campaign I tried to run (scheduling conflicts forced a permanent hiatus) titled "Shifty Business":

If the kobolds can fill the innermost cavern where the dragon sleeps with gold, in a pile so high that the dragon can only barely fit to sleep atop it, then they will have earned not only permission to live here but a place of honor which other kobolds will come to envy for generations to come. Ecstatic, Ironjaw readily agrees to these terms. All he has to do is earn gold and platinum, and he'll catapult up to the position every kobold wishes they could occupy: borderline dragonhood. He even knows how to pull this off, after a little thought. Gathering money means bringing it in consistently and in large amounts, right? He's seen how other races do this, and he's confident he can follow their example. He just has to start a business. He'll be a legitimate business owner, and his entrepreneurial enterprises (he may not be an inventor like other similarly intelligent kobolds, but Ironjaw is and always has been an innovator in many senses of the word) will bring in all the gold and platinum their awesome and benevolent dragon could ever want.

I found cold in several excerpts I've already shared, and also in the intro to a rough draft of a short story tentatively "Puddles & Lakes":

I don't think I dislike being human... but I get up before the sun's fully risen for a reason. The shaky back door shudders into place as usual, the silent cold in the air making its slight reverberation against the house feel like a deep and endless echo. It almost feels like it rattles out from the house itself. An easy wind shakes the skinny limbs of half-dressed autumn trees. I shiver at the sound as much as the chill of the air itself. My breath reaches out ahead of me in the shy morning half-light -- toward the dirt path just down the slope of this tiny backyard. I push past the edge of that little cloud of oxygen, mentally tracing my path. Gliding across damp soil, between dew-touched blades of grass, briefly touching the gate to the yard itself before dashing off to my usual places. I let the scene swirl around me for another breath or two. If I could be the sound of the shuddering door or the gust of the autumn wind or the fence of the yard itself, it might be nice.

I found down in the current draft of a short story titled "Hidden Talent":

"You don't have to believe me. I know it sounds pretty ridiculous. I don't even believe it sometimes. I just figured I... shouldn't hide it from you anymore," Vance shrugs, hyper-aware of how the motion affects his shirt. The wrinkled cloth shifts, tugging existing folds taut in some places and rolling loose fabric in on itself in others. Smoothing out old shapes. Creating new ones. Altering his entire image into something new, at least on a symbolic level. It feels like that change in his shirt is somehow symbolic of the change he's inviting by being honest about his weird ability. His friendship could be broken in a few seconds, or slowly molded into something unfamiliar -- a shape that doesn't quite fit into the space it did before, making Rowan so uncomfortable that the two of them start to drift apart. It could move two folds in the fabric of their relationship that were close to each other, transplanting them to completely new areas. He sets his head against one of the blue swirls and drops his eyes down to the ground, "You can forget I said anything. We can just start the show -- that was the plan, anyway. You're already three episodes behind me, you've gotta catch up. Sorry. For distracting you with... for distracting you."

I found every single word this time, and only one was in a fanfic. If I was keeping better track of how often those things happen, this would probably count as some kind of record. Thank you again for tagging me, I always have a lot of fun with this game!