Tootfiction/Thimbleful Thursday: New Leaf

[aldersprig]

The trees in Haleth Forest were unlike those anywhere else. They had not grown but had been created. In every one of them, broad leaves spread out, waiting for pen.

You could climb the trees to read someone else’s tale unfolded leaf after leaf or you could climb higher to find pages that had not yet been written on.

There, you could write your own story on new leaves, untouched by hand or pen or tale.

Some people used it to gain immortality.

Some used it to gain a fresh start.

---

Written to Dec 29th's Thimbleful Thursday prompt as an experiment in tootfiction - 500-character-or-less fic.

Comments

[kelkyag]

<intrigued>

[sauergeek]

Seconded.

And what, if any, other uses do these leaves get? I can see people wanting posters, books, decrees, paper airplanes, papier mache, wallpaper, and who knows what else.

[kelkyag]

O_o

I must admit, I assumed that taking the leaves off the trees was Not Done, whether by taboo or guardianship or physical impossibility ...

[aldersprig]

Me, too...

[sauergeek]

I'd certainly believe it's Not Done, but at some point -- possibly even recently -- I'll bet someone tried.

[aldersprig]

Trees need fertilizer...

[thnidu]

What K. said.

Is "toot" short for Thimbleful Thursday (TT)?

[kelkyag]

You asked the same question on the last piece tagged tootfiction.

[thnidu]

Sorry, my bad: I should've followed the links. I wasn't sure what you meant by "think it's a new world" – "I think"? "You should think"? – And I didn't understand what your reference to Mastodon had to do with anything, and I still don't.

Hey, now I better go back to sleep. Not that I'm really much awake now: I fell asleep in the middle of composing this last night & just woke up maybe an hour ago. I have had breakfast, mostly, but that's all. I feel rather Oesterle work to engage.... Incapable of making sense, must replace brain.

[aldersprig]

(you’re replying to kelkyag, but I’ll answer)

Okay, one thing at a time.

The reply there was: You asked it it was anyone we knew; I think it’s a new world, so not characters we know yet.

tootfic=fiction on Mastodon.

[thnidu]

Ahh, clear now. Merci bien.

[aldersprig]

De rien. :-D

[kelkyag]

Hopefully aldersprig's answer made more sense once you were awake, but to throw more words at the problem ...

As a reader, I interpret "Think it’s a new world" from the author as "this piece is not explicitly set in any existing setting ('verse) that the author is already writing in, but it's not explicitly a new separate setting and so it's possible that it will work it way into an existing setting." (For instance, I (kelkyag-the-reader) could see this piece fitting into the Things Unspoken 'verse. Or it could just continue to be its tiny shiny idea all by itself.)

Mastodon is a new, distributed, open-source twitter-like social media platform. They call their messages "toots" the way twitter has "tweets". "Toots" allow ~500 characters instead of twitter's ~140, so it's a somewhat more generous and flexible platform for posting very short fiction.

[thnidu]

Indeed it did. And thank you for the additional info.

[aldersprig]

A “toot” is what Mastodon calls a post - 500 characters rather than 140.

https://tootplanet.space/@aldersprig

[clare_dragonfly]

Ooooooooooooooooh.