ephesus-the-cornish-poet

[ephesus-the-cornish-poet]

Brendan’s New Groove - for xFlowGrattix

Commissioner: xFlowGrattix

Contact: Discord

Order: a gift for one of my friends, moving from one side of the country (Australia) to another. (...) a somewhat cliché/stereotypical story about the bird leaving the nest to explore the world on their own. The bird venturing to settle down with a nest of their own and finding something to work on.  It's more of a parody (he's 25 after all). (...) you can use the Kookaburra. He's a very calm man - an introvert in need of an exciting twist in his life.  He does have a strong relationship with his parents, working in their business for a few years, moving multiple times in those years.

Desired word count: ~1600

Final word count: 1744

NOTE: this story's protagonist has been stereotyped and exaggerated for comedic purposes.

Brendan’s New Groove

I'm leaving the nest now. Finally.

Hey, just because Dad called me "Bren-down" after my first lone flight attempt, doesn't mean I'm doomed to follow him all my life. If anything, I'm totally Bren-done with these bland, plain-looking nests he makes us live in!

Okay, credit where it's due - he and Mom put some effort into making our homes, well, homely. Putting sticks across the hole where we may tumble out, jabbing straws through the gaps, adding leaves for cushioning until we've shedded some. Still not enough to make us forget we'll be moving again for business, but enough to keep us little cunts comfy in the meantime.

Those two old-timers climbed the social ladder real good, too. From mopping floors and cleanin up tables, they went to owning a fishin business togetha. Swept themselves roight off the dirt into the skies above, with just each other and elbow grease.

Still, a bird's gotta move out eventually, ya know? I grew comfortable with adult language; I should get used to doing other adult stuff, the good kind of stuff. I mean housing and pay cheques, of course - get your pervy minds outta the guttah!

Sure, flying all the way across the bloody country, for good this time, is no small business; but I'm not the first kookaburra to do it. Probably not, at least. Actually, I don't know of any other kookaburras who moved to the west coast. I mean, it's gotta happen... roight? and those other blokes gotta know something, if they fly 3000 kilometers just to get there, and stay. Granted they ride planes, but that doesn't really put it closer to here - if anything, it's even more of a hassle than flying on their own wings. At least I got my big bro Kurt to rely on while I look for my own thing, and I'm sure he'll have my back in case of trouble.

Plus, kookaburra social expectations are a bitch to meet - I mean, croikey... Do we really need to cackle and laugh out loud, all mornin and evenin, every single day; just to remind everyone we're still here? Or are Mom and Dad trying to compensate for my smaller bill size, bless their misled hearts? Really ruffles my feathers, ya know.

So I'm moving, too. Not my first time, since we've been all over the place as a family; nor even last, cause I'll stay with Kurt till I find a place to nest on my own. But it's the furthest I'll probably evah have moved, and the first step to livin alone.

Even if it took me five fuckin minutes of hyperventilation to brace myself for a phone caw to the airline. Not cause of anxiety, but they're just that much of a hassle to deal with; never had any problems this big with anyone else. They don't even accept scree-mail reservations for national flights, even though we are now Premium clients. Well then, I'll just wing it and book from another company. Take that, ya cheeky little shits.

When packing up my stuff into castorbean leaves, Mom gave me a walnut shell full of grubs and other wrigglers to eat on the fly. I remember she and Dad once argued the ethics of eating baby insects, it bugged me that he was against it for some obscure reason. That's a can of worms I'd rather not open, but what's a young adult bird to do? I took the buggers and thanked her, then stuffed it into my straw travel bag before Dad could see.

Just as I'm about to leave, Dad shows up with a lunchbox of his own for me, perch meat wrapped in a eucalyptus leaf. I'm not saying this cause he's my father, or cause he's a kookaburra; but he's king at fishing. His Murray cod, in particular, is considered a delicacy in local seafood restaurants. Though he's clumsy with certain fish, like how he tends to drop his bass mid-flight. Attempts to catch needlefish also fall flat, despite all the pointers and tips he receives, dulling his enthusiasm.

So anyway, after that hassle, I'm a bit too tired to swear so I decide to tone it down a bit. I also need to recha'ge my energy, and don't particularly feel like talking to even more folks. But with such a faraway journey in soight, I figure it would be noice to check on my other big bro, so I head for Adam's nest.

Lo and behold, our lil one Abid is there with him, plus a ton of our closest mates - even my good friend Flow has showed up. Turns out they decided to get togethah and ambush me into an impromptu party! It's lunchtoime too, but somehow Adam waited a bit too long to take the food outta the fridge. I have a couple-hour margin before I gotta head off, so I hang around as he puts those chef studies to use on the needlefish. I stay sharp and take the opportunity to ask him for pointers for when I'll be living alone; the moment my hand touches the pan though, Flow goes: "Oh shet, guys - food's turned Lebanese now." Know how some people make you wanna hug 'em as toight as ethically possible, but also kinda wanna beat the livin loights outta them? Yeah, that's how it feels to have brothers and best friends.

Anyway, I hug em one last time before I head for the airport, and no matter how much we try to be big boys, things still get a little sappy (okay, VERY sappy). So we stop tryin to hold back tears and bawl our beady little eyes out, until I really REALLY gotta head off to the airport.

Well, I shoulda remembered there was a reason I gave myself two hours of margin. Now, you don't just burst into a terminal and mosey on to the gates, roight? There are security checks to go through, and other lines to queue at, before boardin your plane.

Then there's me, burnin through all of that time, the sentimental twat that I just had to be. So watch me speed my way through all the checkpoints, almost forgetting to send my heavy travel bag off to the luggage area. Luckily by the time I reached the gate, the boarding line was still there so I could catch my breath before boarding. That was after five suitcase bumps to my shin, almost tripping on the escalators twice, and a family arguing against my attempts to cut in front of them.

Not a lot to say about the floight itself - airline food is mediocre at best and the passengers are worse, as always. There is the usual 'Big guy who takes up an extra half-seat with his girthy shoulders' (thankfully not next to me), the 'Creepy staring child' (sadly roight in front of me), and other all-too-familiar types. Icing on the cake, a half-dozen screamin kids; and I can swear the little shits squeal louder near me to avenge that other family I tried to cut off at the airport. At least I know my oldest bro will pick me up once we land, so I take comfort in that and rest my mind a little.

After a century waitin for the plane to taxi to the terminal, and another eon bein squished 'tween cranky, sweaty strangers next to the luggage conveyor, I hop out to the arrivals area. Sure enough there is Kurt, flutterin up to me with a big grin stretched across his smug bill, to hug me toight and chatter loudly. He even grabs my travel bag, while I stretch my cramped-up limbs troyin to urge the blood to flow normally again. After that he flaps away from the airport, the bag gripped in his talons, looking back regularly to make sure I didn't lose him even though I've been here before.

As I follow him, I recognize the city isn't all that different from what I remember of my previous visits, which is a relief. Means I'll have some level of home ground advantage, whoilst bein unfamiliar enough with the finer details for it to be challengin.

Then it dawns on me why Kurt keeps checkin on me - he's takin a wide detour to show me the most recent food places on the way home. That sounds tiring, and it is for a while; but in the end, I'm grateful for the exercise and new knowledge. There's a pond full of koi, which we've seen before but he's only tried it recently, and it's pretty good he says. We then fly through a dense forest, and he points out a fast-food joint - that is, a bent tree full of leaping bugs on its joint. Just as we're looking, a kingfisher (not a kookaburra, she has blue extremities) makes a dive, but the grasshopper she was aiming for jumps away; that food is too fast. Further away, some sheep are grazing on a relatively flat, green hill. Another bird (a dollarbird, Kurt says) tries to hunt for fleas on them, but the fleas flee; his gaze flicks to the last flea, but that flea flees too! Complaining that he's being fleeced, he flies off the fluffy fleece, flipping the bird at the sheep, who looks annoyed but mildly amused.

It feels great to finally reach the familiar marri tree, seein it blossomin and a toiny bit grown since I last saw it. As I touch down on the northeast branch, the widest, I take a moment to enjoy the scrape of its brownish bark against my scaly foot.

"Make yo'self at home, but not too much!" teases Kurt, even as he drags the travel back to my favorite fork of the tree.

I smile, feelin electrified. From seein my bro in a more relaxed place, knowing he's got my back in case shit goes wrong, and lookin forward to a brand new loife. Or maybe from the loight of hot embers in pinecones all ovah the place, hot coals undah the water collector... He's an engineer specializin in that kinda setup, which adds a bit of a zap to any kingfisher's loife. As if the whole tree were rootin for me to branch out to new experiences; I could bark in excitement, I'm on a hair twig-ger - and a bit sappy.

And it dawns on me again, I am an adult. West coast, bettah prepare yo'self.

Fuck yeh!

[ephesus-the-cornish-poet]

Flower Gratitude - for xFlowGrattix

Commissioner: xFlowGrattix

Contact: Discord

Order: “A dream that starts off with fighting of ponies. The ponies wear necklaces’ that display the seven sins. He’s trying to save a mare. After he saves her she flies off without thanks. A scene follows with an “out of body experience” that shows all of his feelings bursting out of his heart. The feelings resemble a dragon or two dragons fighting each other. He goes for a fly in the dream. He crashes, getting hurt in the process. He stumbles away towards the dawn. The dreams ends there.”

Desired word count: 1500

Final word count: ~1900 (~1600 trimmed, sent privately)

Flower Gratitude

It's all-out war in here.

I know the mare is close, I can hear her scream for help. If only I could get past those ponies in my way.

There's seven of them and only one of me. They each wear a necklace, each fights me differently. Each one is a blank-flank, too.

The angriest one is a red earth stallion with demon horns, orange mohawk and thick fangs; a ruby losenge swings across his chest with each savage assault. Then there's a greedy one, a yellow unicorn with cascading orange mane and gold coin earrings; a pouch hangs around her neck, stuffed to the brim with stolen goods. There's a jealous earth mare, green coat with teal striped bangs hiding her eyes; bucking and insulting bitterly, she presses a fake-emerald mask against her face, its straps swaying loosely over her shoulders. Even an alicorn has joined the fight; purple with magenta-striped hair, he gloats about the smallest hit he lands, puffing his chest with a broad multi-faceted iolite on a platinum chain. An orange unicorn stallion, barely able to move his overweight body even with levitation magic, tries to get a bite out of me with sharp dirty teeth;  his apron is topped with citrine gems, fitting with his short amber mane. I receive more physical suggestions from a blue pegasus who flutters around swaying their hip, sends me kisses across their cyan mane and over the azurite-studded collar. Finally, a sky blue pegasus sits back and watches with a sneer, white mane messy and wings atrophied; a very fake-looking aquamarine hangs on the string around her neck.

Mustering my strength, I push the horned male aside; he rolls into a ditch I didn't even know was there. I take a hoofful of gems out of my satchel and throw them behind me; the yellow mare leaps for the shinies, the jealous one on her heels. Turning to the alicorn, I make a mocking comment about his lack of crown; taken aback, he flies off crying. Now that it's less crowded around me, the hungry unicorn and the lusty pegasus try to reach me; as neither wants to share, they argue with their teeth. Leaving them, I turn to the lazy one; she's already walking away, her wings uselessly fluttering in a pitiful attempt to take off.

Victorious, I look ahead; I'm in a valley between two cliffs, rocky faces looming ominously on either side. Spreading my wings, with a tuft on the first joint inherited from my batpony mother, I go airborne and begin to fly.

On the first flap of my wings, the scenery changes; from bare stone, I go to grassy earth. Another flap; lush vegetation sprouts from the floor, sustained by a stream meandering beneath my hooves. On my third, I hear birds chirping, see squirrels clinging to the trees around me.

My fourth wing flap leaves all that wildlife behind me; the place is back to being a valley, the cliffs are closer together joining into a U-shape on the far end. Five steps after a successful battle, I find my damsel in distress lying on the valley floor, legs secured to it with thick chains.

She's an alicorn of pure snowy white on a delicate-looking slender frame, her golden mane and tail tied loosely, a horn slightly curving backwards over her sad teal eyes. As I alight near her, I see some kind of sheath is covering her horn and suppressing its magic. Careful not to scare her, I approach slowly, reach out with my hooves, and pull the sheath off.

From there, I watch as she uses her own magic to snap the iron cuffs off her legs, extends her frail neck and wiry wings, and flies away. I call out to her, but without a word of thanks (or even a look of scorn), she disappears into the distance.

That makes me wonder if I should've left her there - or perhaps acted as one of the sinful ponies. Should I have been harsh on her, or tried grabbing her while she was disabled, or told her she wasn't worth saving? She could've at least told me her name, and where she was going; what if she came across more trouble on the way?

I want to fly after her, desperately talk to her, yet I can't even move; I seem to be frozen. Actually, no, that's not quite true... it's only my body that is frozen... and I feel myself slipping out. Somehow it feels like it should worry me, while it also feels no different from peeling off dirty clothes.

It's a strange experience, to say the least; when I turn around to look behind me, Flow Rising's face seems as astonished as I am. The light grey pegasus male stares at me with magenta eyes framed by a mane of dark blue. Orange hair streaks across his mane, a poof of the same color over the first joint of each wing. I am still connected to that body's heart, with a ghostly thread that plunges into its chest.

Then I look ahead again; to my surprise, there's a Western dragon facing me, glaring at me in cynical frustration. He shares the pony's color pattern, but enhanced: shimmering silver scales, spikes of translucent sapphire along his neck and tail. He's big enough that, when he spreads his navy-blue jointed wings, they span the entire width of the valley.

Suddenly, I realize I am a dragon as well, though my colors are inverted; I see dark grey scales on my arms.

The other dragon takes off; worried about what he might do to the alicorn princess if he finds her, I rush up after him. Our combined force creates strong winds blowing along the valley beneath as we fly higher and higher, until we are among the stars.

Eventually I manage to catch the tip of his tail; tugging back with one hand, I thrust the other forward with claws out. It's not that easy, of course; my rival kicks wildly, almost shaking me off but I hang on with both hands. He continues flapping straight ahead, deliberately, piercing through the night with obvious purpose.

I slowly drag myself forward, as if climbing a rope, clinging to his scales with my claws. Occasionally he gives a wide swing of his hip, sending a wave along the thick tail, and I slip back by a foot. But I'm not giving up - I continue inching along, until I can grab him by the ankle and yank.

Thrown off-balance, he coils his body and slashes at me; I narrowly avoid his claws and respond with my free hand. He kicks his other foot in my muzzle; I give the ankle in my grasp a nasty twist, making him roar in pain. We plummet through the clouds; at least I've succeeded in diverting the powerful dragon from his primary target.

We burst through layer after layer of snowy white puffs, which reminds me of the princess I saved earlier. Thinking of her ungratefulness makes me uncertain, since I keep wondering if she was worth the trouble. My opponent sees that hesitation and takes the opportunity; white-hot fire shoots from his maw and strikes me in the chest. He spits more flames in rapid succession, and while my hide protects me from the heat, the blasts are enough.

I open my mouth in a silent scream as his leg escapes my grasp and I'm blown away - far away, very quickly. By the time I look back up, the dragon is already nothing more than a small silhouette against the clouds over a starry backdrop.

I spread my wings in an attempt to put myself upright and to chase him again, but there's no time as I'm too close to the ground.

My wing hits it first, followed by my shoulder and back; the crash is hard enough that I feel things break. Oddly enough, there's no pain, just the snap of bones; for some reason, I'm also back in my pegasus body, at the bottom of a round crater.

I roll onto my intact shoulder and carefully lift myself back up, trying to assess the full extent of my injuries. My entire right side appears broken in several key parts; I can only carry myself with my left legs, one wing dragging along the dust. I limp aimlessly, unsure where the valley even is, unsure what else to do except keep moving.

I wonder what happened to the white alicorn princess, but there's nothing to do about her at this point. Has she been caught and chained with her magic nullified again? All that fighting and persistence to protect her, was it all for naught? Does she even care what happens to me after I got her out of that miserable spot?

Then there are doubts... I'm not sure who those ponies are, I don't even know whether they were actually bad. Chances are they were sustaining her, so the very reason she was in a disabled state was because I defeated them. Can that be why she left without a word, why she wanted to be away from me as soon as she physically could?

Still, I wish she'd at least told me first; I just wanted to do what was best for everybody, so I want to know if I made a mistake. I don't even recall why I was fighting those seven ponies on my own, but I figure I must've had a good reason to engage them.

My broken side still doesn't hurt me at all, but it still feels weird when I try to move one of my right limbs.

Finally, after what feels like half an hour or so, the first rays of the sun pierce the sparkly night sky. I stare at it, not afraid to be blinded, and indeed my eyes don't hurt; in fact, it feels nice. It's bright but not painfully so, it's warm but doesn't burn, it's joyful and welcoming like a mother's embrace.

I notice my right side is getting better with each step, starting with the wing which gets straightened until it looks intact. The odd feeling is still there, so I try not to move it too much; instead I twist to the left so my injured shoulder is exposed. Immediately the brightening rays push pieces back into place and mend my shattered bones. I move much more freely, although the sensation reminds me that things are still fragile, so I take it slow and don’t try flying.

All I can do is stumble on, trying to reach the rising sun so I can bask in its healing light with my entire body. I don't even bother thinking about the other dragon; if I'm back in my normal body, then in all likelihood, so is he.

As for the princess, she probably knew to go for the dawn light anyway, so there's no need to worry. I think I did the right thing, after all - the damsel is free, my disappointment and hostility are in check.

The sun becomes brighter and brighter until it fills my entire vision. I reach for the orb of golden fire-

...and wake up with a grunt as I fall off my bed. Ugh. I hate rude awakenings.

[ephesus-the-cornish-poet]

Taking literature commissions!

I did a quick search to come up with reasonable prices and conditions. Please tell me if these are okay and if there’s anything unclear.

Tentative prices

Poetry: 0,5€ /verse (0.6 USD, 0.8 CAD, 0.4 £)

Short story, chapter: 1,5€ /100 words (1.7 USD, 2.3 CAD, 1.2 £)

Terms and conditions

Contact can be made via email (fiction.scientist@yahoo.com), or tumblr (ask here but it may not go through). If you know me elsewhere (Discord, phone, IRL) that is acceptable, but I need written medium.

Beware that I may be busy or away, especially in summer; if there’s a deadline, please contact me a month in advance.

I’m fluent in English, French and even Turkish; you may ask me to write in any of these languages.

Things like horror and sexual references are okay, but I will not write anything explicit, so keep it PG-18 (exceptions may be negotiated privately).

I will of course send you drafts and take feedback.

Payment can be done when you are satisfied with the result, or when the deadline arrives (if any).

I use Paypal only, no deviant-points or bitcoins or whatever. Prices can be rounded up or negotiated, just play nice.

By default, commissions are posted publicly with credit to the client. Please specify if you prefer to stay anonymous or keep it private.

In case of non-payment or under-payment, I reserve the right to publish the work in my own name, no credits given.

Poetry:

I require information on what type of poetry you want, which theme, story or feeling(s). If it’s a gift, I need to know the person’s character, occupation and hobbies (link to a social network/forum profile is okay). For song lyrics, please send me the tune.

My usual poem format is in quatrains, often with an ABAB rhyme scheme and a meter of 6-12. If you prefer any particular pattern(s), please specify and I’ll tell you if I can do it.

Stories:

I need to know the setting (timeline, location…), characters, atmosphere and mood.

In case of well-developed universes with established timelines (long-running webcomics such as Housepets! or String Theory; popular franchises like NCIS, Sonic the Hedgehog, Star Trek etc.), accurate behavior or references may be harder. Albeit there are franchises (and time periods) I’m more familiar with; you can of course ask me.

You won’t pay extra if I write more than you asked for. I may get carried away in prose, but don’t worry about being charged more for it.