Blog on Koldinium's Tower

Once Upon a Time

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 04:49:26 +0500

Once upon a time, there was a boy, and a girl who hated the boy.

“I hate you”, said the girl.

“I understand”, replied the boy.

Tears began to fall.

“It’s raining”, said the boy.

“It is”, replied the girl.

“It is”, the boy repeated.

The boy took out an umbrella. The girl did not.

“You do not have an umbrella”, the boy observed.

The girl nodded. A gunshot rang in the distance.

Then another and another and another.

“Maybe they’re trying to shoot the rain away”, the girl joked.

“How silly”, the boy replied.

“How silly”, the girl repeated.

“I hate the rain”, the girl then stated.

“I understand”, said the boy.

“What do you understand?”

“I understand why you would hate the rain.”

“Why do I hate the rain?”

“Because you are in the rain. If you were not in the rain, there would be nothing to hate.”

The girl shook her head. The boy was not right.

“Thank you”, she still said.

“For what?”, the boy asked.

“For understanding.”

“Oh, it’s no problem.”

“What’s no problem?”

“Understanding.”

“Oh.”

The girl let her final word hang in the air, then shivered.

The boy handed the girl his umbrella. The girl hesitated, but took it.

“Thank you”, she said.

“For what?”, the boy asked.

“For the umbrella.”

“Oh, it’s no problem.”

The girl did not reply.

The boy paused for a moment. There is only the sound of breathing, and rain, and gunshots far off in the distance.

The boy then inhaled sharply.

“Do you know what I hate?”

“What?”

“Living.”

“Living is everything, do you love nothing?” The girl asked.

“Maybe that is what I love.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing isn’t something.”

“Do you think I would be happy?”, The boy ignored her, and asked his own question.

“What?”

“If I died, would I be happy?”

“No, you would be dead. Dead people aren’t much of anything.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

The girl did not reply.

The boy closed his eyes.

“I love the feeling of the rain on my skin.” He decided.

“I love living, because it lets me feel my favorite feeling.” He continued.

The girl did not reply.

“Goodbye”, said the boy.

“Goodbye”, said the girl.

The boy turned around and began walking away.

A step.

Then another and another and another.

A gunshot rang.

Tears began to fall.

Been a while

Wed, 28 May 2025 00:22:41 +0500


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           |       |  shhh the trees are sleeping
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          // || || \\

Hi, it’s been a bit.

There’s probably not a single person reading my blog but it still feels nice to address the reader like this.

How’s it going? Has life been good?

Maybe I’m not talking to the reader but the blog itself. Hm

Anyway.

My button has said “Kodin’s Tower” despite the fact that I’ve almost completely gone back to “Kold” and “Koldinium”. This has now been rectified, and the new button has a sicknasty dragon on it (All the other wizards are hella jealous).

Also apparently the previous one was 88x30 instead of 88x31. I have no idea how that one happened, but it’s probably spellcaster error (i.e. my error).

Do I have any blog posts in the works? Uh, remains to be seen. Probably not though.

I’ve come to realize that if the website stays exactly the same over the years, that’d probably an accurate representation of who I am too. I’m not a big fan of tinkering. So I’m trying to feel less guilty about not updating and stuff.

I’m trying to pick up my daily writing practice again so we’ll see if the blog updates more often.

Till next time.

Red Sun

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 18:00:09 +0500


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Ahmed awoke to the sound of a blaring alarm. He hit the snooze button and shut his eyelids tightly and tried to will himself back to sleep. It was no use, the sound of the wind wouldn’t let him.

He begrudgingly dragged himself out of bed, letting loose a singular punch on the warden of his prison. The alarm clock seemed rather unfazed. He scoffed.

Time to get to work.

He plumped down onto his desk, and turned on his computer, which immediately started collecting data from the weather instruments of the Lab. He already knew the results, he didn’t know why he even bothered checking. It’s been a relentless storm for 3 months, and it would be a relentless storm for another 3.

His comms were down so he wasn’t even reporting it to anybody. He found it funny, in any other line of work, if someone didn’t report in for 2 months, they’d send a rescue party. Well here they can’t and won’t, not until the storm clears for the year.

The readout stabilized and Ahmed was surprised by what he saw. Today, was a clear day. One of few in the seasonal storm. If he had windows, he would see the red sun shining brightly.

That changes little, the clear weather won’t hold for long.

Still, he appreciated the respite. He streched and got back to his routine. His main work was maintaining the bio-dome: a small piece of earth’s ecosystem and atmosphere. Here, there were some plants and animals, carefully chosen to be able live indepedently of human caretakers for hundreds of years. Some air from here gets sent up to the atmosphere of this planet, SS-19; slowly getting it to mimic Earth’s. It’s seem to be working, before Ahmed lost contact, he heard one of the other labs experienced water rain.

Or atleast that’s how Ahmed understood it. The exact design of the dome was down to hundreds of experts from that many fields; he doubted any single human could truly understand how it works completely. Luckily, he just dealt with the metal bits. He could understand the metal bits.

He goes and checks the various machines necessary to the dome’s function. The CO2 extracters were working. The heating systems seem good. He then enters the maintenance shaft, and checks that the dome’s outer shell hasn’t been breached anywhere.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ahmed notices a photo, half-crumpled in the corner of the maintenance shaft. It’s him, with his family, and he’s laughing. God how long has it been since he laughed? Like, really laughed, with his belly. He missed the feeling.

A thought occurs to Ahmed. Since the weather was good, he could go out of the bio-dome and actually repair his comms himself rather than waiting for the repair corps to fix it for him. He’d love to talk to another human again.

Ahmed began digging through his many closets for a space suit. His work meant that the atmosphere composition of SS-19 had gone from 1% oxygen by mass to 15% oxygen by mass, but there were toxins in the air so it was far from breathable. Eventually, he pulled it out from underneath a pile of dirty laundry Ahmed had not bothered to clean.

He gingerely held his nose out for a sniff. It reeks. But Ahmed had smelled worse, he didn’t know how long the good weather would hold for, and he could wash it after he came back. He donned his stinky armour quickly and filled his oxygen tanks, then practically sprinted outside.

His enthusiasm died very quickly outside the bio-dome. SS-19’s strong gusts rampaged over the surface, having very little care for little men in little space suits who stood in their way. Despite this, Ahmed maintained his balance and began climbing the ladder towards the communication systems.

The bio-dome was a massive metal hemi-sphere that protected the plant and animal life brought here to terraform the planet from the currently not very friendly weather conditions. It blocked signals by necessity, so all antenna had to be positioned outside it, and outside it they had to be repaired.

Ahmed reached his prize, the antenna. Immediately, he noticed the problem. It was unplugged. Just that. Just unplugged. Ahmed was thankful that it was something he could fix. He just plugged it back in. Relief set in.

It was at that exact moment, that Ahmed noticed a small smudge on the horizon.

Shit.

It was the storm. Approaching fast.

Far away now, but the winds were already blowing fast enough to knock Ahmed over, the storm could probably pick him up and fling him to the opposite hemisphere.

Ahmed rushed down the ladder, cursing the fact that he couldn’t quite catch a hold of his breath. He was winded, but that didn’t stop him from charging full force towards the entrance of the bio-dome.

He stumbled through the airlock and landed square on his face, or rather the face-side of his helmet. The winds were slowly getting louder as they swept around the metal surface of the bio-dome.

Ahmed slowly got up and moved inside to his computer.

“H-Hello?”

Words were difficult, it’d been a while since he spoken. He coughed and continued with more confidence.

“Can you read me? This is Engineer Ahmed Rehman, from Lab 814”

For the longest time, there was silence. Ahmed repeated himself.

“Can you read me? This is Engineer Ahmed Rehman, from Lab 814”

Then from within the static, a voice.

“I can read you, this is Dr Eliza Jackson from Lab 816”

“816? They finally got someone over there.”

“Yeah, though I’m not sure what good a physician is for terraforming”

“You’ll be fine, it’s mostly just reading. Speaking of which, been able to get into contact with HQ?”

“Negative, you’re the only person I’ve talked to.”

“Sheesh, then who am I supposed to give these weather reports to? I got a whole novel’s worth here! The first week’s pretty boring because it’s all storm, the next week picks it up by being all storm and then the third week is where there’s a twist.”

“Oh?”

“Yep, it’s all storm”

Ahmed bursts out laughing at the stupidity of his own joke. There was silence on the radio, if Eliza found it funny, she didn’t show it. Not that Ahmed particularly cared, he was simply enjoying the sensation of laughing in a long while.

And then a thought crept up from the back of his mind. A doubt that once raised could not be dismissed.

“Say, you said I’m the only person you’ve talked to?”