Fiction Narration Demo
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees have been stripped by recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seem to lean towards each other. Black and ominous in the fading light, a vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness, there was a hint in it of laughter, but if a laughter more terrible than any sadness, laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and in communicable wisdom of eternity, laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the wild, the savage, frozen hearted northland went, but there was life abroad in the land, and defiant Down the frozen waterway toiled a string of wolfish dogs. Their bristly fur was rimmed with frost. Their breath froze in the air as it left their mouths spouting forth and spew MSA vapor that's settled upon the hair of their bodies and formed into crystals of frost. Leather harness was on the dogs and leather traces attached them to a sled which dragged along behind. The sled was without runners. It was made of stout birch bark, and it's full surface rested on the snow. The front end of the sled was turned up like a scroll in order to force down and under the bore of soft snow that surged like a wave before it on the sled securely latched was a long and narrow oblong box. There were other things on the sled blankets and ax and a coffee pot and frying pan, but prominent occupying most of the space was the long and narrow oblong box in advance of the dogs. On wide snowshoes toiled. A man at the rear of the sled toiled. A second man on the sled in the box. The third man whose toil was over, a man whom the wild had conquered and beaten down until he would never move nor struggle again. It is not the way of the wild to like movement. Life is an offense to it, for life is movement, and the wild aims always to destroy movement. It freezes the water to prevent it running to the sea. It drives the sap out of the trees until they are frozen to their mighty hearts. And most ferociously and terribly of all, does the wild, hairy, and crush into submission man, man who is the most restless of life ever in revolt against the dictum that all movement must in the end come to the cessation of movement, but that front and rear toiled the two men who were not yet dead. Their bodies were covered with fur and soft, tanned leather eyelashes, and cheeks and lips were so coated with the crystals from their frozen breath that their faces were not discernible. They gave them the seeming of ghostly masks undertakers in a spectral world at the funeral of some ghost, but under it all they were men penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence. Honey adventurers bent on colossal adventure, putting themselves against the might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abyss of space. They traveled on without speech, saving their breath for the work of their bodies. On every side was silence, pressing upon them a tangible presence. It affected their minds as the many atmospheres of deepwater affected the body of the diver. It crushed them with the weight of unending vastness and unalterable decree. It crushed them into the remotest recessions of their own minds, pressing out of them like juices from the grape. All the false odors and exaltation, z and undo self values of the human soul until they perceived themselves finite and small specks and motes moving with the week cunning and little wisdom amidst the play and interplay of the great blind elements and forces. An hour went by. In the second hour the pale light of the short, sunless day was beginning to fade when a faint cry arose on the still air. It's sword upper word with a swift rush, until it reached its top most note where it persisted, palatable and tense, and then slowly died away. It might have been a lost soul whaling. Had it not been invested with a certain sad fierceness and hungry eagerness. The front man turned his head until his eyes met the eyes of the man behind, and then across the narrow oblong box each nodded to the other. A second cry arose, piercing the silence with the needle like shrillness. Both men located the sound it was to the rear, Somewhere in the snow expanse. They had just reversed A 3rd, and answering cry arose Also to the rear, and to the left of the 2nd Cry. They're after us, Bill, to the man at the front. His voice sounded hoarse and unreal, and he had spoken with apparent effort. Meat is scarce, answered his comrade. I ain't seen a rabbit sign for days thereafter They spoke no more, though their eyes were keen for the hunting cries that continued to rise behind them as the fall of darkness they swung the dogs into a cluster of spruce trees on the edge of the waterway and made a camp. The coffin at the side of the fire served for seat and table. The wolf dogs clustered on the far side of the fire snarled and bickered among themselves, but evidenced no inclination to stray off into the darkness