Dear Readers (I'm being optimistic & opting with the plural) this novella was written entirely by accident after my sorrow at finally finishing Pterry's last Discworld novel. For some reason I awoke in the early hours and started to write, two weeks later there are 20k+ words. This is the most I have ever written about any one thing at any one time so I'm quite proud of myself. This story is set a short while after 'Raising Steam', just to put things in context. If you do actually read it, any feedback would be greatly appreciated, especially if you see any lines or jokes or anything really directly lifted from any of the official DW books - I'd rather this be an homage to my favourite writer than a rip off. I'd also like it to be as canonical as possible so if you see anything that flies directly in the face of DW canon please do let me know. Finally, I hate the way footnotes are formatted but I've tried my best!
Read & enjoy,
Lovelyruthie
###
Seeing the Light
If there is gold to be found at the end of a rainbow, what treasures might be found at the end of a rimbow?
###
The edge of the Disc was froth and spray and mist. It was noise. It was waterfalls. It was nature at its powerful and most terminal. It was beauty. It was light, the beginning and the end. And on that edge he stood, before launching himself off into the star-studded blackness of the universe.
When he awoke, he knew what he must do.
###
Ankh-Morpork; a place where we learn that tolerance leads to progress, temperance leads to a nice cup of cocoa and a bun and ignorance leads to food poisoning courtesy of Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler. Nonetheless, the city was the destination for all-comers chancing their luck at changing their situation and sometimes it was even for the better.
So it was, that Lily Ann Flach found herself walking with a little trepidation and rather a lot of excitement through the hustle and bustle of the Times Headquarters. Clutching a package to her chest, her senses were assailed by a barrage of sights, sounds and smells exclusive to the realm of newsprint and she loved it. The hungry print machines, presses devouring reams of fresh paper with a clatter, the inky aroma pervading the air. The shouts of the dwarves making sure that said machine didn't start devouring other nearby objects, or people. The unmistakable whiff of goblins, which takes some getting used to. All was met with Lily's smiling gaze, eyes lit like a child at a sweet shop window. Reporters: dashing off, dashing in, slurping coffee, occasionally swearing. This cacophony of business went on around her as Lily took it all in, slowly, almost serenely, making her way further into the offices. She was, after all, about to meet her destiny and make her mark on the world.
She had got quite a way in, completely unnoticed, when she saw the reddish-haired and reddish-faced man she was after, "Mr. De Worde?" she called to him, misjudging just how loud she needed to be to get his attention over all the clamour. Unheard, she tried again, "MR DE WORDE?!" He was darting about a desk, not quite frantic but determinedly looking for something and very much distracted. She moved round the desk to get into his field of vision and the head of the Times stopped abruptly, seeing her for the first time, "Uh...oh? Sorry, do you mind?" He waved a hand at her as if to move her.
"Mr De Worde," Lily did not move, but clutched tighter to the package. She had come a long way and it was more than fate that had brought her here.* My name is Lily Ann Flach and I have a proposition for you."
*In fact it was a one-way ticket on the Ankh-Morpork Hygienic Railway
William De Worde, slim, that gangly kind of tall, looked down at the neat little woman who was clearly the quiet but stubborn type that wasn't going to go away, "But we've only just met..."
The poor attempt at humour sailed over Lily's head, "I was hoping to speak with both you and your iconographer, Otto Chriek?" she asked in sweet, but clipped tones.
"Oh um...Otto isn't here at the moment, he's working on an exclusive." It was an exposé of witch home-remedies that were anything but. Rumour had it that a certain CMOT Dibbler was branching out yet again.
A momentary cloud of disappointment passed over the otherwise hopeful countenance of Miss Flach. She pressed on, now opening the package, "Well, you will have to do!" She set it down on the disorganised desk. "This," she gestured toward the object within with a little flourish, "is the future!" Sat in the middle of the now unwrapped brown paper was a small, dull blue and unremarkable looking iconograph.
William looked suitably unimpressed, "Err...right..." he started, but Lily continued.
"This, Mr. De Worde, is the Pictsie Mark I, my own invention and quite an advance in iconography. It is the first iconograph to completely do away with the need for salamanders." She picked it up reverently, her dainty hands almost caressing it, "You see the secret's in the imps! Through a series of training with filters, selective breeding and a carefully balanced butter reward system the Pictsie Mark I can take a picture in the dead of night yet make it look like a summer's day." Her fingers fluttered absently over the control settings as she spoke.
William then began to properly listen, marked by his asking her to repeat herself, which she duly did.
"You see, your work here at the Times, or rather Mr. Chriek's, was the inspiration for this tecknologgy. I grew up in Ohulan* on the outskirts of Überwald, but Daddy was always very forward-thinking and so we would receive the Ankh-Morpork Times in bundles albeit two to three weeks late. It was the cover of the first of Spune, a most striking image, quite literally. The lightning striking Unseen University's Tower of Art?" Her eyes glazed, again smiling as she recalled it, "A perfect moment captured forever in black and white. I fell in love with iconography as soon as I saw it and," she came back to herself, "I have made it my life's work."
*Ohulan Cutash was a small town with large illusions of grandeur. it had a Mayor, some facilities and now it's own railway station. Lily's family home was technically not in the town so much as set back from it at a reserved distance and the grounds were very near;y the same size as the town itself.
"You mentioned a proposition?"
"Oh yes!" She was about to begin when William spied a returning Otto and with a long arm, waved him over, "Otto! Take a look at this."
Lily's heart leapt into her mouth and she turned to see the inspiration for pretty much everything she had done so far in her adult life, striding towards her. There were no pictures of Otto Chriek because of course, vampires turned to dust in front of an iconograph's flash. But there was no mistaking him, from the conspicuous evening dress, chalk complexion and the toothy grin.
"Take a look at vot?" The vampire spotted first the Pictsie Mark I, then the nervous young lady holding it.
"New iconograph." William explained, "Miss Flach here says it doesn't need salamanders."
Two dark eyebrows raised on the pale forehead of a very interested Otto, "Really?"
Lily found herself nodding, not quite ready to speak to her hero. She proffered the Pictsie for him to take, which he did. Turning it over in long-fingered hands his expression of intensity and interest was in stark contrast to William's initial reaction. It was a little blue box with buttons. It was also a feat of engineering, something wonderful hidden in an unassuming skin, much like its creator who found her voice again, "It's...it's called the Pictsie Mark I." She paused, swallowing, "The Disc's first Salamander free iconograph."
Now she had Otto's full attention. "You made zis?"
Again nodding.
"May I?" Otto asked, raising the iconograph to take a picture.
"Oh." Lily found herself primping her perfectly neat hair and self-consciously posed. "You just..." she pointed to the shutter button then realised she probably didn't need to explain how to operate the Pictsie to a man who had taken thousands of pictures before now and so posed again.
William looked on with amusement and noted Otto's involuntary twitch as he activated the shutter, only to find it merely clicked. No strangled yelp. No pile-of-dust-breaking-bottle-reanimation palaver. Just a click.
Otto blinked and all watched the iconograph as it quietly thrummed and half a minute later out popped a perfectly lit image of Lily. "Mein Gott!" Otto exclaimed as he pulled it from the slot. He was grinning from ear to ear, "How?" he asked simply, so Lily explained about the imps but this time in far more detail than she had to William. As she spoke about the one thing that she devoted most of her waking and much of her sleeping hours to, she seemed to change in front of William's eyes. From a mousey, quite buttoned-up type to a confident, composed and fiercely intelligent lady. He found himself quite liking it, before he thought of the other fiercely intelligent lady in his life and quickly set about finding the thing he'd been looking for before Miss Flach had arrived.
Retrieving the file from between two sticking drawers whilst Lily and Otto enthusiastically waxed lyrical about imps, filter grades, shutter speeds and the mating cycle of the salamander he recalled another less boring part of the conversation they'd had earlier. Coughing for attention, he reminded, "You said you had a proposition Miss Flach?"
Reluctantly the pair paused their tecknobabble, "Yes...yes!" she gestured toward the Pictsie, still held by Otto, "I propose that this iconograph is yours, gratis, as in 'property of the Times'. In exchange for a little...publicity?" she smiled sweetly, "I have premises here in Ankh-Morpork on Bluffwilder Street where I intend to sell all things Iconograph. What better way to showcase the Pictsie; a Times exclusive?" Surprisingly conniving patter from Miss Flach who upon first setting eyes on her, William would have laid bets on being a librarian. Then he thought of Unseen University's Librarian and it made a strange kind of sense. "The exclusive being, of course, the first ever iconograph of a vampire."
William and Lily looked at Otto who clearly hadn't considered that possibility. "Really?" then shrugged, passing the Pictsie back to its creator, "Go ahead zen, I am ready for my close-up." he chuckled, but there was a hint of wariness in his eyes. He was never this side of the lens.
"Will it work?" William asked, intrigued. In the back of his mind he was already calculating how many extra copies a story like this might shift. The CMOT Dibbler investigative piece could be shelved for the time being.
"Um..." Lily replied non-commitally, setting up her shot with concentration. "Watch the birdie!" she quipped as the Times Head Iconographer showed his teeth in what he hoped was a winsome grin.
###
It did work and Otto got to see his face for the first time in at least a century. It had changed a little since his last oil portrait but it wasn't half bad, he thought to himself. William was running the story on page two after a runaway carriage had ended in a half demolished pub* and brought down a newly-built clacks. No one had any serious injuries thankfully, but anything to do with the clacks got front page.
*The now 'Broken Drum' which would continue to serve ale to it's customers whilst simultaneously having it's nth relaunch as the 'Mended Drum' around them.
Sat in the cool quiet of the dark room he set about blowing up the prints taken earlier plus some more experimental shots including his first shelfie* taken in the dark room itself. As the developing fluid did its work he was impressed with how well the imps coped with virtually no light to work by. Lily Ann Flach was nothing short of genius in his opinion. They had continued to talk pictures for another hour before she departed to feed the imps. He was head iconographer but there was not a single woman on the Times payroll in his department. It was refreshing to chat so easily about his work with someone who really understood. Actually it was refreshing to simply chat so easily with a woman. Most ladies tended to keep a respectable but slightly anxious distance.
*The Discworld equivalent of the Roundworld selfie but balancing either oneself or one's iconograph on a shelf.
He continued his work and as his eyes fell upon the image of Miss Flach he began to whistle a jaunty little tune.