The Hospitality House of Jolysi: Month 1, Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Esther of Kris

The two of them walked through the door, where a young man and a young woman, both somewhat older than Andrew, greeted them.

“Welcome back, Corrine!” the man said. “And good evening to you, sir.”

“Good evening,” Andrew replied.

“Big bro, this is Andrew,” Corrine said, giving introductions. “He wants to join our family. Andrew, this is Blair. He is the current manager of the Hospitality House. And this big sis is Zoe; she looks out for all of us siblings here.”

Andrew gave a bow to Blair and Zoe. “My name is Andrew, and I am a human – fae halfling from Alia,” he said. 

“No need to be so formal with us,” Zoe said. “If I may ask, under what circumstances have you lost your previous family?”

“I had been disowned from my family for failing to test into the Alia Capital University,” Andrew explained.

“Hmm… I see,” Blair said. “Then, by any chance did they give you any paperwork saying you were no longer their child?” he asked.

“Actually, yes they did,” Andrew said. “Let me get it…”

Andrew reached back towards his mana wings, and then pulled out a bunch of papers and started sifting through them.

“Whoa! You keep stuff in there?” Corrine said, amazed.

“Yeah… it is pretty advanced faerie magic, so not a lot of people can do it, but I managed to get it to work.”

“It sure is not something I can quite do,” Zoe said, her own large avian shaped wings indicating her humish faerie race. “You should teach me sometime how to do it.”

“Okay,” Andrew said. “Oh, here it is… the separation paperwork.” He handed some papers to Blair.

“Good; that saves us the trouble of having to go to Alia to get it,” Blair said. “I will take this to Father, and he will take care of the rest. It will be a while, so please make yourself comfortable.”

“You must have been tired coming all the way from Alia, so how about you take a seat in our dining area and have dinner, then take a nice, warm bath?” Zoe suggested.

Andrew nodded and sat down at a booth table.

“Is it okay if we join you?” Corrine and Zoe asked.

Andrew nodded. 

“Um… can I join, too?” another voice said.

Hospitality House: Month 1, Chapter 1

Note: I have decided on a special format for my novel: it will be divided into months, and each month will then be divided into several small chapters. What follows is the first chapter from the first month.

Note that this is NaNoWriMo, and as such, this is very much an unrefined first draft.

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Month 1: The 1st Month of the Year 053

Chapter 1: Andrew of Alia (The 4^th Day of the 1^st Month of the Year 053) 

At 17 years old, Andrew no longer had a family name, because he no longer had a family. It was not like his family had died, either; they had simply disowned him. And because he no longer had a family, he also no longer had a home.

This year’s class of students was just too high caliber, he thought to himself. His family lived in Alia, the country that was considered the academic capital of the entire Greater Land of Jolysi. He had attended the prestigious Alia Capital Academy, where only the top students of the country could attend, and had applied for the Alia Capital University, the highest ranked university in the nation, which is so selective that even the average student at Alia Capital Academy only has a 70 percent chance of being accepted. As such, perhaps it was not too unusual that Andrew just could not quite make the cut. However, he came from a family of some of the Capital’s greatest scholars, and both of his older brothers had successfully been accepted into the University, so in order to maintain their reputation, his parents demanded that Andrew get accepted into the University or be disowned from the family. 

Yet, for all his anger at himself for not being able to meet his parents’ expectations, there was one thing that angered him more, and it was not his parents. 

And to think I even passed up on that class trip to Faeran in order to study more for the test, he thought. If I was going to fail anyways, I might as well have gone on that trip. He had really wanted to see the floating islands of Faeran for himself, but dared not bring this desire up to his parents. Of course, it is way too late now to even think about going there…

His parents were at least kind enough to leave him with some money to live off of until he found his own job and place. However, two weeks had gone by without him being able to find either a job or a place to live, and he was starting to run out of money. Desperate and figuring that trying to find anything in the very tight run country of Alia was impossible, Andrew crossed the border into Jolysi.

Once there, he made his way to the nearby town of Jolysi Nord. At this point, he was incredibly fatigued from a lot of walking, so rather than jump right into finding work, he sat down at a bench in the town square for some rest. He was not able to rest for long, though, as he soon heard a voice from right in front of him.

“Hello, big brother.” 

NaNoWriMo: The Beginning

Prologue: History of the Land of Jolysi

A long time ago, the land of Jolysi was a large and prosperous land, populated by the three races of human, elf, and faerie. The humans had incredible physical strength, the elves had keen sensory perception, and the fae had wondrous skill in using magic. For many years, the three races lived together in harmony, intermarrying and forming tribes that had friendly relations with each other, all while living under the sovereign rule of the deity of the land, the great Eiyam, and his human avatar, the King of Jolysi.

However, the evil in the hearts of these beings stirred, and caused a division between the twelve tribes. This division eventually caused a conflict that grew into a war. Known as the Great Civil War of Jolysi, the war drove each tribe to form its own country on the outskirts of the land, while the center of the land became an abandoned wasteland. This war lasted for over two hundred years, until divine intervention forced the twelve tribes/countries to come to a truce.

For many years after the war, the land of Central Jolysi remained a no man’s land, believed to be cursed by Eiyam as a punishment for the war. The twelve countries remained hostile to each other, and no one traveled between countries, even neighboring ones. Then, twenty years after the war, twelve people, one from each country, were led into the land of Central Jolysi, where they worked to rebuild the homeland that the war had destroyed. Soon afterwards, the Kingdom of Jolysi was established. (The entire continent that includes the Kingdom of Jolysi and the other twelve countries is referred to as the Greater Land of Jolysi, or Greater Jolysi for short.)

It was during this time that the Hospitality House was established. Built in the center of the kingdom, it was intended to be a resting place for travelers going between countries. Of course, at the time no one actually traveled between countries, so the people of Jolysi also worked to improve relations between the countries and promote travels. Eventually, their efforts were fruitful, and while the twelve countries still are not quite as friendly as they were before the war, international relations are definitely much better now, and there are plenty of travelers between countries, to the point where the Hospitality House has instituted branch Houses around the country as well.

All this brings us to the present time, Year 053, fifty three years after the end of the Great Civil War of Jolysi, and thirty two years after the establishment of the Kingdom of Jolysi. During the 18^th day of the 1^st month of this year, one young man wanders his way into this land…

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And thus begins my novel for NaNoWriMo, Hospitality House.

If you want to read more… well, first of all, you have to wait for me to write more. But I’ll be posting the entire first chapter here, as well as excerpts of future chapters. If you’d like to read everything I’ve written so far, please e-mail me at the_joy_company@yahoo.com and I can give you the link to the Google Docs document that has all of that (once I finish the second chapter).

One thing’s for sure; this is going to be a fun month once again.