You and Me

On the first day of the world

You stapled me to the floorboards

Too busy watching the stars

To see me bleeding at your feet,

Too far away for me to touch your peach skin

But close enough that I could smell your dandelion scent.

I am still here, as are you,

Though an eternity has passed,

Long enough for your hair

To tumble out the window

And weave among the constellations,

Long enough for your blown breath

To spin the worlds upon their axis

And give life to dirt,

Long enough for my blood to turn to rubies

That catch enough starlight for you to turn

And see Me.

Sometimes, I just want to write. To find some quiet corner or hole where nobody will see me or hear me and just release my imagination to eat away the paper until the holes left behind sprout words of such brilliance that, when I finally hold them up to the light, they look like stars.

But then reality strikes. I am reminded by my culture and my country and my friends and my family and myself that writing will not pay my bills, will not fill my fridge, will not ensure my comfort when I am older, and is something that people do in an attempt to avoid getting a real job. So I force myself out of my hole and go to work and when I come back to my paper, blank and whole and lifeless, I’m left wondering if anything I want to write will be worth it and, if it is, if life will let me finally write it.

But, every once and a while, I stare life in the face, lift my chin in defiance, and insist that I shall be a writer, that my words will burn through people’s souls and leave them wishing my stories were reality. And I sit and I write and I dream of the day when that is all I will have to do, when I will surround myself with books and maps and figurines in my home and type until my fingers bleed, and then type some more, because that is how you make a story. You create something and, when it is finally good enough, you cut it away so others can bleed with you.

– Katelyn Gentner, Future Novelist

Discarded Light

So, I recently wrote the poem Ink Dreams for an assignment in my poetry class (Yup, I’m taking a poetry class this semester. You are hereby warned of the incoming poetry), and I’ve gotten a great reception from you all. The assignment was to write a poem with this prompt: “_____ drips from______ fingers while they sleep.” In addition to Ink Dreams, I wrote one other poem and I have decided to send it out to you for feedback. It is a little less refined than Ink Dreams, but that is mainly because I am not sure what to do next. Enjoy!

 

Sunlight drips from your fingers while you sleep

Past the hangnails, the torn fingertips,

The clinging ingrained dirt

Pooling on the floorboards,

Rippling over the discards of your life,

That have attained so fine a layer of dust

That it floats when you open the window to elicit a breeze

In your stagnant body.

You lay in the middle of your circle of sunlight

But cling to the darkness under your pillow,

Basking in the shadows

And fearing the light.

Ink Dreams

Ink drips from my fingers while I sleep

Dropping onto a lake of words

That flows down a river

Of Consonants and Vowels

To pool onto my notepad.

Words bloom into bloody flowers

That grow in a man’s abandoned ribcage

And are trampled underfoot

By wolves that feast upon children’s nightmares

And cuddle with the victims of their prey.

In the morning it dries

And I am left

With a blank page.

After

I’m back! I’ve decided, in the midst of holiday spirit and cheer, to grace my blog with a longer post. The following is one of my longer pieces, one which I am considering expanding into a novel, and as such is not finished (though, really, is any work ever really finished in an artist’s eyes?). I hope you enjoy it and any comments you have are welcome, and if you have any questions about the world I’ve created I would be happy to explain them. So, without further ado, I give you… After.

She scraped at the mud, her nails digging into the soft clay, ignoring the wet dirt that stained her arms and clothing. Her tears mixed with the rain in an endless deluge, running tracks through the mud that tarnished her face.

Raven strode down the road that led into the town of After, her long gait confident and strong, her back anchor-rod straight, and her hands idly tossing a stray rock back and forth as she stared into the middle distance. Her hair was pulled into a braid that reached the middle of her back and her clothing roughly made: a long sleeved shirt, a vest, and pants with boots, all of which were covered in a fine layer of dust. Even so, she walked as if her body was clothed in the finest silks, no hint of the destitution represented by her clothing carried into her demeanor. She carried nothing with her, only a pouch belted to her waist. She was not allowed to carry anything on a compass quest beyond her clothing and her totem.

The compass quest was a custom unique to her town that very few people had the fortitude and strength of heart to undertake. Compass quests were not for the light hearted; to be alone with only one’s thoughts for so long tried the soul. Those who sought spiritual enlightenment, forgiveness, or acceptance traveled to each compass point until they found their totem and then returned before setting out on another. It was common for a traveler to leave After for years before finishing, and yet it was uncommon for anyone to actually take part in the tradition.

Raven rubbed the area over her heart where her compass star tattoo was emblazoned upon her skin. Every initiated infant of After was given a tattoo so that if their fortunes lay elsewhere, they could always find their way back. She didn’t often get to find her way back on her quest.

Raven had not returned home for quite some time, not since she achieved her last compass point, but After seemed just as obliviously content as before. The alleyways refused the darkness, the courtyard invited travelers, and the people laughed jovially. The town’s circle structure caused the roads to lead in a spiral to the main courtyard, with eight roads that ran along the eight compass points piercing through the spiral to the middle. The town’s crest, the four-pointed compass star that was stamped in the center of the main crossroads, had faded, but she could still remember the mayor’s pride when the paving finished in her early childhood. He had insisted it would put After on the map.

On the north side of the square, she saw Jeremiah Thorsson pounding a piece of metal with his hammer. Jeremiah’s face and bald head were pockmarked with burns, and his white beard was ratty and uneven. His muscles, refined through years of blacksmithing, rippled as he worked, straining against the confines of his skin. Raven often speculated that one good flex would rip his shirt, which contributed to the way he tended to scare children with just a glance.

Jeremiah barely contained his boisterous soul, with his deep, abiding love for stories of all kinds only being hindered by his extreme shyness in the face of newcomers. When Raven was a child, she mustered up her courage and faced the fearsome giant. He tried to shoo her away, but she marched right up to him and stuck her hands deep into his beard. He had yanked his head back, bewildered, and loudly bellowed, “What do ye think yer doin’?”

Raven, refusing to back down, planted her hands on her hips, and returned his yell with her own statement. “I’m lookin’ for a bird. My momma’s always tellin’ my daddy that if he grows his beard too much, birds are gonna nest in it. Your beard’s the longest I’ve ever seen, mister, so I was lookin’ for birds.”

That had been her introduction to Jeremiah Thorsson, and her induction into his smithy. He would allow her to sit on a stump in the corner and, sometimes, would tell her stories about the town and its people. By the age of fifteen, Jeremiah had told her all the stories he knew about the town, most of them multiple times, and was forced to resort to telling her the little he knew of countries and kings far away since he refused to tell her anything about where he came from. She learned of the civil war that plagued those who lived to the north and the peace those to the east improbably enjoyed under a dictator, which Jeremiah insisted was highly dubious and he did not believe one bit. She had soaked it all up and then insisted he tell her more. He once told her that if she wanted to know about so much, she should just go find out on her own. He didn’t know enough people who traveled to the places she asked of.

Jeremiah had introduced her to her wanderlust. Whenever she left After, she really only missed him.

Her face was buried into Jeremiah’s chest and his strong hug could barely contain her shudders, though she wasn’t sure if she shook from the cold rain that had soaked through her clothing and streaked into the crevices of her body or from what had happened. “Tis, alright, lass. Twasn’t yer fault. Twas simply an accident.” He kept repeating it over and over, and she noticed that his voice shook just as much as her body. But that was all right. For the moment, she would believe him and would allow his voice to drown out the panic that surrounded their huddled forms.

Raven walked up to him and bowed with her right hand twisted over her heart as she recited After’s ritualistic greeting. “May the stars lead you ever homeward.”

Jeremiah looked up from his work at her with a broad grin, and then returned her bow and greeting. “And may yer compass guide ye when the stars are cloudy.”

They stood straight and Jeremiah seized her up into a fierce hug. “Raven, m’girl, ‘tis good to see ye! ‘Tis been far too long since ye returned to After.”

She pulled back and grinned fiercely into his face as she repeated the town’s unofficial adage. “Well, it is the place you only think of after you leave.”

He guffawed loudly as he set her back on her feet and slapped her on the back, causing her to rock forward onto her toes in an effort to keep her balance. “Indeed ‘tis, lass. Did ye come to tell me some of yer stories?”

“I’m only in town for the day to pay my respects to my parents and return my totem. The stories will have to wait for when I return.”

“Yer leavin’ again?” Jeremiah scowled at her as he leaned back on his anvil and crossed his arms, his muscles bulging with the motion. “Tis not good to travel so much, lass. Ye should come home and settle down a bit. One day ye’ll return and not feel like ‘tis home anymore.”

“Don’t be silly, Jeremiah! How can After not feel like home as long as I have you to scold me whenever I return?” He scowled and she laughed. “Don’t worry, I’ll stop soon. I’ve gone to all of the compass points but south, and a compass quest cannot end until all points have been acquired. I’ll stop once I know what it’s like there.”

“Hmph. See that ye do.” Jeremiah hesitated for moment, and then quietly questioned, “Lass, have ye found what yer looking for?”

Raven jumped and her smile fell. It was rare for anyone to ask anything directly about a compass quest; general practice dictated that no one addressed the issue except in ceremony. She looked down at her boots for a moment and then softly answered. “Jeremiah, I’ve traveled to seven of the compass points. I’ve seen things that your stories could never have prepared me for, experienced hardships that no amount of preparation would make me able to face. Mountains, rivers, lakes, even a bit of ocean have not been able to stop my quest, and yet every time I return to After I feel like not a day has passed since it happened.”

Jeremiah’s face saddened and he ran a scarred hand over his face before looking straight at her. “Twasn’t yer fault, lass. They wouldn’t’ve wanted ye to do this to yerself. Don’t forget that yer already a part of this town. Ye don’t need to earn yer right to be here.”

He pulled her into a gentle hug and she allowed herself to press her face into his chest for a moment, sucking in his smoky scent that always carried an unexplainable hint of apples and ignoring the scratch of his beard on the side of her face, before pulling back. She didn’t deserve comfort. “I’d best be going.” He nodded and she could feel his eyes watching her as she retreated to the other side of the square, where Humphrey Humbertson’s bakery resided. She was always happy to see Jeremiah, but his concern for her combined with being home always poisoned that happiness.

Humphrey Humbertson was a sour man. Personally, she thought it was because his parents didn’t have any original naming sense. That, or it could be that he was the only outsider who resided in After. As a result, he lacked the tattoo that proclaimed him as part of the town and dealt with the discrimination from the residents. He, and his ancestors, would be denied the tattoo until they resided in After for five generations and, at some point in those five generations, at least one member of the family must participate in the compass quest as Raven was currently doing.

Whether from his parents’ abysmal naming sense or not, Humphrey’s acidic personality would have driven off all of his customers long ago if not for the fact that he baked the best bread in all of town. People ignored his permanently crossed, bushy eyebrows, his angry sighs, his piercing glares, and his angry haggling in return for his sweet breads, and sweet bread was precisely what Raven was seeking. Her parents had loved sweet bread and it only seemed right that she bring it to them as a present after being gone so long, even if it meant that she must deal with Humphrey.

Humphrey’s back was turned when she walked into his shop, so she managed to steal a moment to pick out her sweet bread before he noticed her presence, enjoying the soft smell of freshly baked bread that wafted out of the oven he was working at. He hummed something softly to himself, a slow melody that she could not quite make out as he set aside the freshly baked bread and slid a new batch in, then stopped abruptly at the sound of her clothing rustling as she walked up to the counter.

He kept his back to her as she set the bread on the counter and bowed with her hand twisted over her heart. “May the stars lead you ever homeward.”

Humphrey harrumphed, finally turning to face her with a scowl, and ignored her greeting to demand suspiciously, “What, you’re back already? Doesn’t seem like this quest of yours is very difficult after all. Not that it matters, really. No amount of traveling and contemplation will exonerate what you did.

Raven smiled at him, ignoring her urge fight with him, and simply slid the money across the counter to him. She’d rather pay his ridiculous price than haggle today. No amount of money saved would be worth his poison. “I’m afraid my trial has yet to end. I’ll buy this sweet bread, so if you’ll excuse me, I have more errands to tend to.”

She strode out and, as the door closed behind her, she heard him comment sadistically, “I don’t know why you bother buying that bread every time you come back. It’s not like they’ll enjoy it anyway.”

“Serves them right. Only idiots would go out into a storm like that. And you, blacksmith, don’t coddle her!” She flinched further into Jeremiah’s chest, burying her face into his beard in an attempt to avoid the words Humphrey sneered through her back and into her heart, each word chiseling a splinter of guilt into her sorrow. “She needs to realize what she has done! Do you think they would have gone outside if she had simply stayed put? There is a limit to being foolish!”

She sighed and headed north, into the outskirts of town. Her adventures as a child led her here just as often as the smithy, because here stood After’s library.

An unassuming building, squat on the outside with closed hinges that guarded against the sunlight, the library had stood as Raven’s haven when Jeremiah ran out of stories to tell, and had been the first place she ran to when the fuss of everyone in the town had finally made them forget about her that night. The gargoyles still stood guard on the steps, one of them missing a wing and the other a horn, their garish gloominess a stark contrast to the bright sunshine that reflected off of the white houses on either side. She used to sit beside these lonesome guardians and finger their ridged wings while reading her newest book, losing herself in the protagonist’s adventure and wishing for one of her own.

She reached out and patted one head as she climbed the steps, then dusted off the flakes of granite that clung to her hand as she quietly padded into the dingy darkness of the library.

The first floor did not hold her attention; it never had. It held municipal records and other trivial matters that were important to the governance of the town. A thick cover of dust covered the untouched older books, their contents all but forgotten in the wake of new records. The real treasures were cloistered secretively for any knowledge seeker, and only those born into the village and given their compass tattoo were shown the truth of the building.

She headed to the back corner and pushed in a specific swirl in the design of the bookcase. The shelf pushed out and she pulled it laboriously forward so that she could slip through the opening. She lit the torch at the top of the stairs before closing the bookcase behind her, and then set forth down the steps.

She passed by the first two landings without stopping. These doors held the books that she ravenously read as a child, rooms full of so many books that she used to place stacks of them around her in order of what she would read and curl up in a corner from day to day as she made her way through them. Now, the adventures she had once loved held little of her attention that she never ventured lower. She hadn’t gone any lower before that night and now it was the only reason she visited the town at all. There hadn’t been a need to go lower, before.

She reached the end of the staircase and stopped to stare down the hallway at the eight doors.

“Are you sure, my dear? This is not something to be done lightly. A compass quest will consume years of your life and… you truly are not at fault, child.” The mayor, an elderly pudgy man with a floppy toupee who considered himself the father of all the residents of After, looked at her with worry as they stood at the end of the hallway, but she was resolute.

“I will atone for what I have done.”

Raven shook her head, then set off down the hallway to the seventh door, naming each door as she passed by. “Southwest, West, Northwest, North, Northeast, East, Southeast.” She stood in front of the second to last door and placed her hand on the compass on its face, where a stylized SE on the bottom right corner was the only clue for which compass point it belonged to. She gently pushed the door open to reveal the glittering contents within.

The people who lived in the southeast were greatly fascinated with gold and fashioned everything out of it. Cups, pots, bowls, jewelry, even bits of their clothing. As such, any townsman of After who took upon themselves the compass quest brought back something with a type of gold, the amount depending upon the extravagance of the item, and the room glimmered like reflected sunlight as the torchlight bounced off of the pieces. Each offering was specific to the person, unique, as each sought something different in their quest. When they left the town, the mayor assigned them a totem to seek and, until they found the item, they must continue to travel in each compass direction.

Raven reached into her pouch and pulled out a stylized dove. Its entire body was a shell of golden vines that twisted and turned in such a way that no beginning or end could be found. Its eyes were roses, its feet gripped a brass branch, and its beak formed a thorn that she accidentally stabbed herself on more than once in her journey home. Its wings were leaves that were lifted in the moment before flight, stretching forth to catch drafts of imaginary air, useless since it would forever remain grounded. Entranced by the bird the moment she had laid eyes upon it in the market place, she was fortunate that the token she sought was a dove or she never would have been able to spend so much time examining it.

It took her a year to find this compass point, the longest of all of them so far. Even North only took her half a year.

She walked along the right wall until she found space on a shelf and placed the dove between a golden shield and a sword with a golden hilt. Its reflected glimmers joined the myriad of others in the room, its luminescence blending with the others until its individual beams were lost.

“Your totem on your journey shall be a dove. Seek it at each point of the compass and then return to After. Until all eight points have been visited and you understand the significance of your totem, you will no longer be considered a resident of After. Meditate for now and I will return to send you on your way.” The mayor turned and left as she sank down upon the soft heather and cried into her hands, the tears slipping between the cracks of her fingers to run down her arms.

Just one compass point left, then. Raven turned and left, closing the door softly behind her. She glanced at the South door for a moment before heading back up the stairs and out of the library. She did not have the right to enter that room yet.

That left only one more stop before she headed out of town once again. She followed the roads back into the courtyard, this time not stopping to greet anyone, and turned onto the road that led south to the very edge of the village, where the graveyard resided.

She opened the rusted gate and picked her way along the path to reach the graves near the back edge. They stood side by side, the granite weathered but still fresh looking since the incident ten years ago. She kneeled between them and solemnly broke the sweet bread in two before placing a piece on each respective grave. Then she closed her eyes and meditated, as she had before every new compass point.

 “What do you mean, you’re sending me away? They aren’t my parents, you are! And how could you have hidden this from me? Didn’t you think I had a right to know the truth about my beginnings? Just… I can’t face you right now. I won’t!” Raven turned and ran outside into the rain, ignoring the shouts of her parents as they called her back. She had to think and their excuses would only clutter her thoughts.

She ran into the woods as the rain fell until soon a storm surrounded her and she couldn’t see anything in front of her. She huddled against a tree and cried as the storm wept with her. Her howls blended into the wind, her tears joining the river that fell across her face, and she curled into a tighter ball with each sob that wracked her body, pressing herself into the bark of the tree until she could feel the individual grooves pave their way across her skin.

“Raven! Thank goodness, yer safe.” She jumped and looked up as Jeremiah emerged from the storm and hugged her tightly. “We were sure ye were lost.”

“Leave me alone, Jeremiah. I just want to think a little before facing my parents.” She pulled herself away from him but he tightened his grip, holding her fast.

“Raven, when ye ran away yer parents came into town to get help and as we entered the forest, they led the way into the storm.”

“They shouldn’t have done that. I just need some time to think.” Raven tried to yank away again but Jeremiah’s arms were like a vise. That’s when she noticed that he was shaking, as if he didn’t know how to control himself. “Jeremiah? What’s wrong? You’re shaking.”

 “Twas hard to see, lass, and there twasn’t anyway to avoid it.”

“Avoid what?” Raven stared up at Jeremiah, unable to grasp what he was saying.

“Yer parents…” Jeremiah looking down at her and she noticed that it wasn’t just rain that streamed down his face. “Ye have to understand, lass, that ‘tis not yer fault. This freak storm is to blame.”

“Jeremiah, what happened?” Raven grabbed his shirt into her fists and stared at him, fear clouding her mind. Why should she feel guilty unless something horrible had happened?

“Yer parents were checking to see if ye had climbed the mountain a ways and… well, twas a lot of rain lass and the mud was loose… by the time we got there, twas too late.”

 “You’re wrong! Show me where they are. Show me now, Jeremiah! My parents aren’t dead, they can’t be.” Raven pushed Jeremiah back the way he had come until he sighed, wrapped his hand around hers, and led her through the storm’s wrath to the mudslide where everyone was gathered. On the edge her mother’s hand was stretched out of the mud, her wedding ring covered with dirt, her fair skin marred and smudged. Her mother’s perfect hand, the one that had brushed Raven’s hair and knitted Raven’s scarves and deftly moved chess pieces, lying there limply as the rain slowly streaked through the mud and left tracks across her skin. She couldn’t see her father anywhere. She surged forward, pulling her hand out of Jeremiah’s grasp to help dig them out only to realize that no one was doing anything. The town stood around her parents, talking quietly as if unsure of what to do.

“Why haven’t you saved them?” Raven burst out, running forward and beginning to dig. “We can still save them!” Behind her, no one spoke as she started to frantically dig with her hands. She pulled the mud away in clumps as she slowly uncovered her mother’s arm. “Help me. Help Me!” The scream tore from her throat as she desperately scraped at the clay that covered her parents. She saw the edge of her father’s boot and dug faster, ignoring the mud and rain that covered her body. It pushed itself up her arms, a stain that spread more and more as she burrowed farther along their bodylines. She started to cry, the tears coursing down her face as she weakly scraped at the mud, until Jeremiah gathered her into his arms and pulled her away. She fought at first, pounding his chest and screaming uselessly, no words just noises of desperation, but he simply held on until she gave in and cried into his shirt.

Raven quickly wiped away a tear that trickled down her cheek and then leaned forward. She reached out with both hands and touched her parents’ gravestones, running her hands over their engraved names. She shuffled forward slowly on her knees until she sat between the two headstones, then leaned over and kissed them each.

“Mom, Dad… I love you. You will always be my parents. I promise that I will never forget you.”

She pushed herself backwards to her original position and bowed low with her hand twisted over her heart. “May the stars lead you ever homeward and may your compass guide you when the stars are cloudy.” Then Raven got up, turned South, and started walking.

When Raven reached the edge of town, she heard clothes rustle and looked over her shoulder to see Jeremiah bowing with his right hand over his heart on the road behind her, his figure saluted against the backdrop of After. “May the stars lead ye ever homeward and may yer compass guide ye when the stars are cloudy.” He raised only his head and looked up into her eyes, his mouth a grim line before he spoke again. “Be sure to come back home, Lass. Ye do belong here, whether ye still believe it or not, and ye won’t find what yer lookin’ for out there.”

Raven gave him a small smile before she turned her back and kept walking. After did not hold what she sought. It hadn’t for a long time.

Advice 2

So, I had to give up on NanoWrimo. School decided that this semester wasn’t quite hard enough, so it procured three research papers and a creative writing portfolio for me to put together and then lumped on top of the pile of misfortune two final cumulative exams on the same day.

Great.

So, I have a partly finished novel that I am forced to put aside until the semester stops dogging my heels. In the mean time, I am also taking a larger hiatus from here. Don’t worry, it is only three weeks. I will be back before you know it. I do, however, want to offer this to you until then.

So, my creative writing professor here at college is Dr. Robert Vivian, a man who walks around the world in perpetual wonder. He is amazing and offers some of the best advice when it comes to writing that I have ever received. This is my third semester in a row with him and I regret nothing except that I have taken all of his creative writing classes and can no longer continue (though, I am currently trying to devise a way to change that… we shall see). His curiosity about the world can never be fulfilled and he is continually astonished by the beauty he is surrounded by.

Seriously. You may think I am exaggerating, but I am not in the slightest. He refuses to hold his creative writing in a normal classroom because he feels his mind is too confined and moves them permanently to a corner in the library where we are surrounded by books and that unique smell they give off or the basement of the chapel where occasionally piano music drifts through the floorboards as we work. He offers assignments where he simply gives us a list of characteristics and asks us to write a story where they are all included, has us create a fictional town and then insists we propagate characters to fit inside, takes us outside to sit in the sunlight on the lawn and write about a ray of light on some object, or sends us on a scavenger hunt for the last half of the class period to find the oldest book in the library and then write about it (by the way… I highly suggest you do these prompts. They are quite engaging.).

So, I have decided to share a bit of his wisdom with you. He is a firm believer that writing comes from a place of other, a dream space that sends us inspiration to the point where we are simply a conduit of words and phrases to place upon the page… sound familiar? Yeah… kind of like my theory about my Muse. That probably explains why I like him so much. The following link is a paper he wrote about the writing process and I do hope you will take the time to read it. He wrote it several years ago, but it is still relevant to what he teaches and the writing process in general. He explains his theory in more detail within and I think it will help those of you who are actually managing to finish NanoWrimo or simply write and are looking for some new inspiration/writing advice.

http://www.sosyalarastirmalar.com/cilt1/sayi3/sayi3_pdf/vivian_robert.pdf

Godspeed!

Advice

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-ultimate-guide-to-writing-better-than-you-normally-do

This is a link to some good writing advice. I know, I’m due for you to read some of my reading, but the pieces I’ve been working on aren’t quite ready for public viewing. They’ll be done soon, but in the interim I thought I would give you something to check out.

I think that, of all the advice given in this, the most important is that writing is a baring of your soul. Every character, every impossibility, every suggestion was deliberately placed upon the page and contains a piece of you inside. The characters, I feel, are even more like this. Whenever I create a character, I place a piece of myself inside of them to ground myself in their reality. They are real the moment I place them upon the page because they are me in some form. It’s important to remember this not only when writing but also when reading. Delicacy is always important when critiquing a work, as it is special to the writer.

So… yup. That is my thought for the day. If all goes well I will actually have one of my pieces finished soon to let you look at, but at the rate they are going the page length is going to be ridiculous. I might just have to think of something else to post.

Random Scene 4

I just wrote this and… I really like it. There is, however, some info you need first. I wrote this using a prepared list of characteristics for certain types of creatures I’ve made and two of them are in this scene. Suffice it to say that Kira is a mage, so no extra explanation is needed for that. The shapeshifter’s characteristics are what you would usually expect, except that they usually can only stay in one form at a time, which is what makes this character so interesting. In addition, there is a siren in this. Sirens, in this universe, can be male or female and they can take a person’s will from them with any type of contact combined with a strong feeling towards the siren, i.e. hatred, love, or, in this case, anger, and a song.

I hope you like it, as this wasn’t what I had originally planned on posting this week, but the general would not be silenced. She wanted her story to be told and my Muse would not shut up about it either. So… yup. Enjoy! Comments/advice is always appreciated!

General Allura was a blur.

Kira had heard about people who fought using human and beast forms simultaneously. It was a rare and incredibly difficult ability that used up a phenomenal amount of energy. Combatants were said to be almost inert afterwards but many said it would be worth learning. The advantages of sudden claws and teeth combined with the extra movement it lent a fighter made them a whirlwind of sharp points and joints that an opponent would be unable to predict.

Hearing rumors about it was one thing, but to see it in action was a mixture of breathtaking, terrifying, and sickening. General Allura used her transformation to dodge under attacks with specific bone rearrangements and then straightened the bones back out to lend more force to a blow.  One moment striped fur slithered across her skin and then it sunk in to show her bones press against human flesh as they rearranged. Her face, when Kira caught a glimpse, switched from pointed snout to human features that were hard to look at, but in either form her teeth were bared in an animalistic snarl.

Even more surprising was to see the assassin match her blow for blow. He dodged and punched and twirled around her, forcing the general to push herself to keep him away from her back. His flurried attacks would have taken down the King in a heartbeat, she was sure, had he been given the chance.

They suddenly locked blows, his knife scraping against her sword as they stood as close as the blades permitted, and then Kira saw the assassin’s left hand flick forward towards the general’s side.

The general, however, was equally quick and pulled a knife from her back sheath and into the assassin’s hand. He cried out and dropped the needle he held, then jumped back and turned to run.

The general was equally quick, though. Her legs rippled into a tiger’s and she pounced down upon him, holding a knife to his throat with one hand and kneeling upon his hands. He was effectively pinned.

He was not, however beaten. His face, pressed into the tiles and hidden by his mask, revealed enough of his eyes for Kira to see a gleam of triumph. His jaw clenched and his body suddenly bucked as his eyes rolled back in his head.

Then his pupils rolled forward and focused. He opened his mouth and sang.

It was beautiful and yet, harsh. His voice could not be matched but there was a certain amount of fury in the tone that made her heart start to beat faster and her hands clenched. Beside her, she heard Dillion gasp in fear, “Siren,” before his voice was drowned out in the beauty. She closed her eyes and swayed to the music and then it dawned on her. Siren. Voice. Music. Manipulation.

She forced her eyes open and drew her mind back into herself, forcing herself to ignore the magic’s lure. She looked at the general and her heart froze.

General Allura’s eyes were also closed, but she was moving. In the interlude of Kira’s own entrapment, the general had gotten off of the assassin and was now moving towards the King with purposeful steps, her sword and knife held before her. The assassin was going to use her to kill the King.

Kira quickly drew upon her magic, in her desperation plunging all of herself into the well of fire in her soul, and threw a rope of magic around the siren, her intent simply being to cut off the siren’s voice and end the spell.

Her desperation, however, had pushed her to lose control and too much magic leaked out. Rather than simply cutting off the assassin’s voice momentarily, Kira cut his vocal cords completely and, in the process, destroyed the siren’s source of power. Her magic, surrounding her very self, took control and kept weaving it’s own spell. It raced out of his vocal cords and along his limbs, freezing them into immobility so that he suddenly crumpled onto the floor in a heap. Before it could do more damage, Kira ripped herself out of the fire and cut the magic completely.

All of this had happened in a manner of moments. The general stopped in her movement towards the King, puzzled, and then realization dawned and she turned back to the assassin with a snarl, only to see him immobilized completely.

Heart’s Beat

The clockwork heart in Quentin beat mechanically, like the beat of a drum that ushers a warrior into death. Each step marched perfectly to its cadence as he strode along the path out of the town, unwaveringly leading him away from her. Adara kneeled upon the road behind him, clutching his ring and keening her sorrow.

He supposed he was being cruel, though cruelty only remained as a memory and not as a feeling. But it was her fault that he no longer felt anything. So now he walked, just a wraith sheathed in a man’s flesh. Emotion simply a memory, his love for her so distant that if it were a star, it would be lost in the inky blackness between the beams of light. Just an abstract memory his mind could no longer focus upon.

Not that it really bothered him, not anymore. Once, he would have hated himself for making her cry.

Behind him, her wailing became decipherable words as she gave out a last plea. “Wait! Wait, please… Quentin, please… don’t leave me. I’m pregnant.” Her entreaty, and her sudden announcement, caused the crowd watching their debacle to stir in anticipation of his surrender. They believed he was leaving out of hate and he would return out of responsibility, but he no longer felt either of those things.

His feet continued their trek without pause, unfaltering upon the path. His heart no longer beat for her.

Stories From Our Pasts

Imagine a six-foot tall, broad shouldered imposing man riding a unicycle down a city block, holding a baby underneath his arm and laughing while his short, five foot four dumpy Italian wife runs after him screaming.

It’s one of my parent’s favorite stories, how he carried me down half the block while my mother panicked and shouted, “Give me back that baby!” My father’s face always transforms with the telling, his cheeks growing rosy and his eyes sparkling at the recalled mischief while my mother huffs in remembered frustration. It goes hand in hand with the story of my father taking me to the neighbor’s house to get my diaper changed in fear of the poop, or of him throwing up off the front porch after I threw up in my crib and, upon smelling the vomit when reentering the house, continuing to the back porch to throw up there. These stories inevitably bring another to all of our minds, one that I can actually remember and still makes me laugh upon thinking back upon it.

When I was growing up, we lived in a small suburb and my aunt and uncle were six blocks down the street. It was common for a family bike ride to culminate there. We spent enough time visiting that I still feel comfortable walking in without asking and could probably find anything you were looking for in the house.

In this case, though, the trip to visit was via unicycle and it was just my father and me.

I was probably four or five years old, still small enough to ride on my father’s shoulders. He placed me up there, warned me not to pull his hair, and popped up onto the unicycle. After carefully balancing back and forth by the porch so he could grab a beer for each hand, since he didn’t want to impose when we arrived, we cycled off down the street.

Now, unicycles are trickier than bicycles. In order to get off, you have to fall forward and reach back to catch the unicycle with one hand, and the problem with this particular incident is that my father’s hands were full.

I remember that we were at a point in the sidewalk where I had to duck a little to avoid some low-lying, bright green branches and the movement must have triggered something in my body, because I farted.

Naturally, I did what any child would do upon thinking about farting while sitting on her father’s shoulders: I snickered. And as I did, I started to fart more, which then induced me to greater hilarity and more farts. With each laugh, I rocked back and forth and yanked on my father’s head, causing him to turn this way and that as he tried to balance.

My father started off asking me what was so funny, but soon he started to laugh with me, so that he was teetering back and forth on the unicycle with two beers in his hands while I clutched at his head and he couldn’t get off because he couldn’t catch the unicycle.

When he asks me what was so funny today, I just shrug and say, “It was.” In fact, it still is, even more so when I picture what we must have looked like. Can you imagine seeing a six-foot, broad shouldered man riding a unicycle with a farting young girl on his shoulders yanking on his head and both laughing hard enough to induce tears?

Then the conversation will move on to the hole that my brother dug in the sandbox that was as deep as he was tall, the giant snow pile my father made in our front yard after plowing one year that caused my brother to bust his lip or how my parrot fell down the stairs while yelling for my mother. One guarantee I can always give is that if you place my parents in a relaxed, stress-and–worry-free-guaranteed atmosphere with friends, they will start telling stories. It is one of the few times I can see them smile so much and the flashbacks to the past are a welcome release to happier times after so much focus on the future.