Ankhiale
Training Master
The Village Fool
Posts: 2,619
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Post by Ankhiale on Apr 14, 2013 7:26:50 GMT 10
Title: Theft of Cultivated Land Rating: G Word Count: 218 Pairing: Alanna/Jon Round/Fight: 1/A Summary: I have not stolen cultivated land. Tortall is one-third desert, and that's not the worst of it.
Tortall is one-third desert. There is no getting around that fact.
It is also nearly that much in mountain, though some parts of the mountains are, admittedly, fertile. Rivers do run through the central grasslands and the valleys, and they have the Drell, now, but the largest lake in the land is a salt lake. Winters are too cold and long up north, and summers too hot and dry down south. The principal source of food in too much of Tortall is fish. Or, worse, imports.
The Jewel shouldn't have triggered such a widespread famine. In any other nation in the world - even Carthak, for all its whining - it wouldn't have.
Jon stares at the grain report Gary has left him. He used to laugh at these. Now he stares until his eyes are bone-dry, desert-dry, and reaches for his pen and the paper Gary always includes, the one for requisitioning more money for more imports.
Tortall's population is booming. Sometimes, Jon thinks of unthinkable solutions.
A map has been tacked on to the back of Gary's report, this time. Jon recognizes Alanna's looping scrawl.
There's an extremely narrow band of fertile lowland right above Trebond, she's written. It's not much, and it's currently Scanran.
She doesn't need to write more. Jon remembers the Drell.
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Muse
Knight
Official Rogerfic Curator
Junior Overlord
Posts: 2,160
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Post by Muse on Apr 16, 2013 13:30:57 GMT 10
...is it bad that I would like to see this come to be? Like, to see a weird mirror of the Drell River Valley, but with Tortall being on the advancing side, with the glimpses of Alanna and Jon as older, but still reflective of their past? This series makes me THINK, Alix. I love it, as I've already said.
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