"The sun does not shine above us, but within us."

My entry for this week’s Single Frame Story Challenge on the theme ”Illumination”.

Whiskey Day and Botgirl Questi have started a new challenge, to create a single picture that tells a whole story, based on a word or phrase.

The first challenge is ”Last Words”, entries due by this Friday night, 10 August.

This is my entry. (Also on Flickr.) It's best viewed at full size.

Tura has written a story about an elf.

The Writers’ Dash is held every day at 6am and 6pm Pacific Time in Second Life, which works out to 2am and 2pm in my timezone. Which means I can only participate in real time at 2pm on Sundays. But I can have a go any time for practice. This is my first attempt. The subject is ”Elf”. It took 40 minutes, not the prescribed 15.

Tura is very drunk.

Tura rarely wears mesh.

This is one reason why. There’s a set of standard shapes that have been worked out from analysing many avatars’ proportions (which you can get for free on the Marketplace). The nearest one to my shape is ”small”, for which the non-bone body settings are:

Body Fat: 7

Torso Muscle: 35

Breast Size: 52

Love Handles: 28

Belly Size: 3

Leg Muscle: 50

Butt Size: 38

Saddle Bags: 33

As it happens, all of my sliders are within a few points of these settings, except one: Torso Muscle. Mine is 85. ”Small” is 35. I tried dialling it down to 35 and...no. No. Tura Brezoianu is not that shape. Tura has really strong shoulders and arms, and 35 looks skeletal to me. This is a basic part of what Tura is. Even the ”large” size of this dress isn’t big enough at the top, and then it’s far too large lower down.

...carnal nightmares of rooted flesh that wallowed and fought and coupled in noisome ooze...

— Clark Ashton Smith, ”The Maze of the Enchanter”

A build in progress I glimpsed on SL. I wonder if there will be foul things with chancrous blossoms flaunting themselves on infernal obelisks. Shall living parasitic mosses of crimson crawl on vegetable monsters that swell and bloat behind the columns of accursed pavilions?

I finally finished the tower of St. Mary-le-Bow, and presented it at MadPea Show and Tell today, temporarily held in a skybox while the sim down below is being remodelled.

Jernberg