skyetheprophet22

[skyetheprophet22]

Of Dreaming So

Cotton clouds of soft-painted Autumn Soaring elated through the golden reverie Banking over shining dreams of long forgotten Surging full of pure spring energy A gentle stream of trickling bright Dipping lightly in the brisk murmuring waters Giggling at the brushings of flashing silver lights And the gallivanting of a smiling skipping otter  My beloved laying beside me so Tightly embraced as the world fades away And in this great moment my mind knows no woe The soft trilling of piano from which I pray But then I burst forth gasping my distress Then I weep cursedly for my mind of such a mess

[skyetheprophet22]

The Labors of Nothing

Never hath there been a banshee a single soul hath ignored, Stilling, a hellish solitude of an ebony-winged storm.

It fails the lucid stone antlers as silence never fell, She fails to scream that ashes rain young simply for the ember’s tears.

Emptiness is to faith as zero is to infinity.

She utters not the late cinder-fall’s arrival, When pomegranate seeds, nor carcass, withers-up in drizzles.

Without stormy nights an eon shone; And remains that same escalation I disown.

Silence she refuses to speak with the lone path clean under one, The fury refuses to spread her leathery wings and be not as her sisters, But which she fails to see in the banshee is the scream.

The answer she unframes in none but thought Is what to destroy of a grown nothing’s wrought.

[skyetheprophet22]

Afraid

I’m afraid of growing close

It just means you’ll leave

I’m afraid of loving

It just means I’ll bleed

I’m afraid of tenderness

It just means it’s fake

I’m afraid of you

This has to be a mistake

[skyetheprophet22]

Love

Love can be magical

Love can heal

But it can also make people do horrible things

It can make them cripple, maim

Torture, kill

Some would do anything for the one they love

They are willing to shed blood

They are willing to steal life

To become monsters

But sometimes the monster isn’t you

It’s the loved one who makes you do the things you do

And the hardest thing for you can be

Knowing when this is true

And knowing when to step away

[skyetheprophet22]

Spread Your Wings

I can fly 

I can touch the sky

With the wind under me

I can be who I want to be

Everything right now just feels so right

So watch me spread my wings

Watch me take flight

[skyetheprophet22]

Various Writing Prompts

#1 ~

I couldn’t believe it when they told me. The study had been successful. The pokes and prods of needles; the saliva-stealing test tubes; the snakes of IVs and blood-sucking syringes. It all had led to the development of some truly incredible powers. One tiny pill and countless exams and exercises later…now look at me - lifting buses without breaking a sweat and swinging thousand pound bears over my head as if it were nothing. One tiny pill and countless exams and exercises later to be told that my pill was a fake.

“Plecebo?” I choke out in indignation.

First off, how could they? Do I look like a plecebo kind of a person? Of course not! I am clearly the kind of brilliant, self-possessed, humble type of person who would be the perfect addition to any kind of super-soldier army. I’ve watched all of the Captain America movies, after all.

#2 ~

She was a creature of the desert. Of white suns and waving heat and parched tongues. Water was a luxury only the cunning could afford. She had sacrificed the tip of her tongue to a dying raptor for a mere sip. Shade was an amenity provided only by the night; at times by glistening monsters which ate the people and spit them out again. These monsters radiated heat, so there wasn’t much relief to be had. 

This was such a different land than the one of her origin. Here the rain was plentiful, rolling over waxy green leaves and spilling into vast lakes. The sun was hidden by vast amounts of interlinked branches and huddled bushes and hanging ferns. And here something extraordinary happened: the leaves would fall off the trees, a brisk wind would nip through the land, and the cold would creep its way into her bones. 

That’s when she first experienced it. The white rain. At first it was a gentle drifting, carried by the whispering wind. It flurried about her muzzle, tickling her whiskers and numbing her nose.

#3 ~

“Come, Johnny, come,” called the robotic voice.

John groaned. Rolled over in his bed and pulled the blanket over his head.

“Coooooooooooooooooooooooome.”

“Shut-up,” John growled, throwing his pillow at the blinking box of gray gears and beeping attennea. 

“No, no, Johnny,” the robot chastised. “That’s a bad word.”

A second later John was shocked by a spray of cold water. He shot up from the nest piled at the foot of the robot’s charging station, a look of murder burning in his eyes.

“I swear to the fucking Lord above if you do that again-”

Suddenly his whole body seized up. John’s hands flew to his neck to grasp at the shock collar currently zapping into his flesh.

“That’s what bad humans get,” the robot said.

#4 ~

They were the very best society had to offer. Golden children with spectacular gifts who, yes, had their tragic backstories and bad days, but in the end always did the right thing. They protected the helpless and saved the bystanders. They had so much in common, but that didn’t mean they all got along at first. Samuel “Stormsurge” Johnson had a nasty case of survivor's guilt, leaving him serious and brooding and continuously butting heads with the cool and narcissistic Gemma Gilmore, the Nightshade. Robert Randall tried to quell the constant bickering, but usually ended up growing angry himself and lashing out. It took years for them to become a cohesive unit; a specialized team of friends who could take down any manner of villain.

They were a ragtag group of nobodies all molded by the very worst of the world. They had lied, cheated, whored, maimed, slaughtered…They were prisoners to their own dark urges and sadistic thoughts.

#5 ~

There’s not much to say about me. I’m just an average teenager, I guess: parents who won’t get off my back, an addiction to mountain dew, and a tendency to lose track of time when I load up the playstation. I know everyone can relate to the parents thing, but I don’t think you really understand how bad it is for me. My old man is like a ghost, hovering over me and prophesying my demise into the incredibly exciting career of accounting. I’m just like him, he says. My mother is a different story. My dad doesn’t harp on me for not doing my homework or threaten to ground me for staying out past curfew. Nope, he leaves all of that lovely helicoptering to my mother. She literally followed me one day while I was out with friends, creeping down the street in her black Sedan like a panther. It’s not like my friends and I are up to anything suspicious. Just the usual demonic possession and arson that every young devil gets out of their system when they're young. It’s totally different when your parents are the physical embodiments of Death, though. Then everything you do could literally throw the whole universe out of whack. 

#6 ~

The viking in me wants to slaughter everyone in sight. I’ve been up since five am. I’ve endured a forced workout session, 6 hours of classes, and a two-hour lab of training baby freshman and sophomores on how to defend a pretend base in a completely ridiculous and unrealistic scenario, and to top it all off, I’m being yelled at because I cracked a smile. The smallest, most fleeting of grins because one of my peers stuffed a jacket up their shirt and was pretending to be pregnant. The viking wants me to eviscerate the condescending little boy with his holier-than-crown crown perched sloppily atop his head. The guy who was held back a year because he didn’t make the cut the first time. 

WHY SHOULD YOU HAVE TO PUT UP WITH THIS SCUMBAG, the viking roars. SLICE OPEN HIS BELLY AND WATER THE GROUND WITH HIS BLOOD!

It’s oh-so-tempting. To just scream back at this little red-faced punk. How good it would feel in the moment with his fucks and shits thrown carelessly in my face.

But a gentler voice sings out from my right. That’s no way to handle bullies, dear. You must be the bigger person, otherwise you stoop down to his level. 

#7 ~

He had slipped through his fingers once again. The promising trail of death and destruction he’d been following screeched to a sudden halt, leaving him nothing save for another dead little girl and a strange symbol etched into her leaking forehead. His calling card. The gruesome flair he left on all his victims. Further study led him to discover that the symbol wasn’t indicative of a witch coven, as he had initially thought. No magic was to blame for these murders. They had more demonic undertones than anything…He had the behavior patterns of a demon. 

[skyetheprophet22]

Glass Garden

I live in a garden of glass

A beautiful array of see-through plants

But heaven forbid you ever see a crack

For it could all shatter just like that

[skyetheprophet22]

Impurity

My dear God I apologize

For all the sins that fill me

When I was younger I did not realize

How corrupting they could be  

I’ve aimed to be kind and gentle

I’ve strived for purity

But with youth brings mistakes

And I’ve made, and will still make, plenty

[skyetheprophet22]

Redstar's Encounter

The leader of FireClan, Redstar, was padding alongside the border his clan shared with HurricaneClan. His paws had brought him here by pure instinct; a longing deep in his bones for some kind of confrontation. 

He had been restless all throughout the stuffy morning, lazing in the sun outside his den with his mate, Secretstare, trying not to stress about becoming a father. He had been desperate to leave the confines of camp; leap down from his great mountain and stretch the anxious joints that were left creaking in the camp clearing, but Secretstare had seemed so comfortable, and Redstar couldn’t stand making his beautiful mate unhappy. She had saved him from the terrible fate of loneliness after all; a fate the tom had felt resigned to until her and her soft-spoken voice lifted him from his dark, fogged mind.

Redstar gazed across the border, bright cerulean eyes glittering with malice. “HurricaneClan,” he growled. 

The tom’s pelt prickled as he began to remark the border along the sandy beach. An impulse to shift the invisible boundary was stronger than ever. The large, crimson-furred warrior was hungry for territory. FireClan was growing, and with his and Secretstare’s kits on the way, they needed extra prey to keep his clan well-fed and strong. HurricaneClan could attack at any moment, after all. They were notorious for striking without reason, especially in the days before Oysterstar rose to leadership.

As the large cat mulled over these thoughts, a sharp scent struck his nose. He bent to sniff a patch of sand decorated with tiny spiral shells. His fur bristled when the scent of fresh HurricaneClan smacked his senses. 

It was across the border, on his territory.

Studying the ground below him further, the leader found paw-steps speckling the pale sand. The marks were scuffed, and hard to read, but this combined with the undeniable HurricaneClan scent sent ripples of fury through the tom’s pelt.

 Redstar snarled, taking no longer to consider the smell as he pelted after the trail. Finally, a fight!

Redstar followed the trail through the beach, deeper into FireClan territory. The crashing of the white waves of the ocean spurred the leader onward, until finally he saw the looming figure of the Abandoned Bait Shop against the forest beyond. 

His claws itched with anticipation as he rounded the bend, fine grains of sand flying up after his galloping paws. Redstar barely considered the scent tainting the air anymore. His thoughts were alive with battle cries and screams of triumph as he stood tall of his defeated adversary, cerulean eyes burning with a fierce fire. He was ready to fight. He was ready to win!

The large tom skidded around the side of the twoleg structure, then stumbled to a halt when he saw a kit - a small, black-eared kitten - batting at his medicine cat’s clump of catnip sprouting from the corner of the Bait Shop.

“A HurricaneClan kit?” he said aloud in shock. 

He needed a warrior to fight, not some idiotic kit looking for trouble! How could he have not realized he was tracking the scent of a kitten? Redstar peered at the playing HurricaneClan cat, and decided that she looked about six moons old; the source of his confusion.

Nearly an apprentice, but not quite there yet...Doesn’t she know better than to cross the border? She can’t be that stupid!

Redstar shook aside his thoughts. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that this HurricaneClan cat was on his territory, and that was completely unacceptable.

Redstar advanced on the black-eared she-kit, snarling and brushing up his fur so he appeared bigger than he truly was (which was still quite large). "What are you doing?" he growled, towering over her.

The kitten whirled around. Her dazzling amber eyes blinked at the FireClan warrior for a few heartbeats, then broke out into an enormous smile that covered her entire face. “Hi!” she chirped, bouncing on her tiny toes. “I like your red fur! It’s so red. I love it so much! Why do you smell different? You smell like dirt!” she leapt up as she said ‘dirt’, like a frog reaching for the stars. 

Redstar scowled at the kit’s energy and friendliness. She seemed naive to the knowledge that he was trying to intimidate her. 

“Don’t you know I’m a FireClan warrior?” the tom growled, lifting an unsheathed paw menacingly over her head. “I am the leader of FireClan; the most feared cat in all the Seaside Territories. I am Redstar!” He puffed out his chest, pride surging through every fine hair on his pelt.

The she-kit’s eyes widened. “Wow! That’s so cool! I want to be just like you, Redstar! Can you show me how to be the most feared cat in all the clans?” she begged, hopping up and down in her excitement.

Redstar scrambled backwards in disgust as the cream-colored kitten began to jump all over his front paws. His lips curled back. "I am not your friend, and I wouldn't teach anything to the enemy, you idiotic HurricanClan kit," he spat. "What's your name?"

“My name is Clamkit,” Clamkit replied, unfazed and just as bubbly as she had been at the start. “Why is your ear cut? You have such pretty eyes! Wow! Mommy has a scar just like that on her shoulder!" she mewed, pointing out the ragged scar etched across Redstar’s right shoulder.

The FireClan warrior’s cerulean eyes narrowed. The cat who had given him the scar Clamkit was admiring had left with a matching one on her own shoulder. 

Swirlsplash...is this your kit? I heard her mate Wavewhisker died in the ocean…

Whether or not that line of thinking had led to Redstar’s next thought, not even the crimson cat knew, but just then a thought cracked through his mind like lightning.

I can use Clamkit. She could be the answer to my territory issue, and I can get it all without a fight from Oysterstar.

A devious smirk slid across Redstar’s muzzle as the tom beckoned Clamkit to follow him with his tail. “Would you like to see the FireClan camp, little one?” he asked, fake friendliness dripping off every word.

Calmkit’s amber eyes brightened with unwithheld pleasure. “YES!” she squealed. “I would LOVE to see it! I want to meet all of your friends and family and more! Also, I’m hungry,” she added as a bit of an afterthought, black ears cocking to the left. “When we get there can I have a catfish? Y’know, those itty-bitty ones that Mommy catches by the Churning Stones? They’re really yummy, and Mommy says they’re the perfect size for me!”

“Oh, yes,” Redstar nodded in earnest. He rounded his eyes to appear more friendly and honest. “Just follow me.”

“Okay!” Clamkit chirped. She bounced after the FireClan leader, radiating excitement like the glow of the Greenleaf sun above them.

Here we go, Redstar thought, eyes glittering with determination as he led the kit farther away from HurricaneClan land. We’ll see what Oysterstar thinks about this...

[skyetheprophet22]

Write About Spring

My eyes squint up towards the white blaze scorching my skin. I can feel it working. Burrowing into my flesh and marking me red as I stand there. I blink once. Twice. About a million more times before giving up on the sparse clouds stretched thin across the clear blue sky and turning back to the task at hand.

“Come-bye,” I commanded.

Lucy is off without a moment’s hesitation. Her black and white fur flowing in the baked breeze, she charges clockwise around the stock, sending several sheep into a fit of anxious bleating. 

“Perfect, girl. Always perfect.”

Lucy cocks her head over her shoulder and smiles at me. My brother says that dogs can’t smile, but I know it’s a smile. One reserved just for me. When she gets that approving tone usually accompanied by some variation of ‘good girl.’ 

I smile back and we make our way across the fields. The fields here roll over one another just as a baker molds his dough. Some shapings are smooth, flawless, while others are marked by an unsteady hand. Whose hand that is I’m not sure, but I know that they’re either the most beautiful thing in the world, or the most terrible.

I usually end on beautiful. My brother says it’s because I have a full heart, but really it’s just the most logical conclusion. Would something terrible sprinkle the hillsides with blooms of red and orange and violet? Would it track crystal streams throughout the land so that a weary sheppard could rest themselves and their flock? 

Lucy gulps down the water with greedy lashes of her tongue, side-eyeing the sheep as if daring them to step away.

[skyetheprophet22]

Write About a Picture on Your Phone

They’re just names. Inconsequential. Meaningless. How can a name mean anything without a face? Faces hold power, no matter what others say. Hitler would be no more than a phantom - a monster lurking under the bed - if not for the black and white photographs and grainy videos. That’s why he’s still talked about today. You can still go back and see him. Him. Joseph Stalin. Thomas Edison. Jennifer Aniston. Even the people of old lacking cameras had painters and artists to capture their visage and make them real today. Give them souls. What soul is there in a bronze inscription? What weight, and why should it matter to me? There’s no stirring in my heart when the Frank Curtis’ and George T Ewings' are in-memoried-of. They are on the brink of nonexistence, just as the majority of the world is.

[skyetheprophet22]

An Embarrassing Gift

The Love in Bloom bouquet. Goddamn it. Why the hell is she so damn weird? I choke down the flush itching to creep up my face; keep my eyes fixed resolutely forward as the sniggers and stares of my co-workers strike into back. I told her not to send flowers for my birthday, least of all to my workplace, but no-no-no my sister has to do everything her way.

[skyetheprophet22]

Your Parents Chinese Zodiac

It’s fitting that it all started with a dragon. All valiant-red scales and storm-shifting eyes and a voice that could incinerate all in its path. The oldest of all creatures. A towering beast in total command of all it laid eyes upon. An untamable mountain of flesh and bone and fire. He rose out of the mountains. Out of the flames of hell itself to wreak havoc with his breath. Unintentional, for the most part. He never did seem to master that tempest of a temper. All bowed and cowered at his alabaster talons. Respect trembled from their lips, and the dragon was pleased. He was king.

One would think water is fire’s equal; its dominator. The tiger would laugh at such words. Her pelt was of sunset flame licked by stripes of shadow. Eyes of electric blue. Quiet and deadly as a lightning bolt, and never one to strike in the same place. She was a traveler. Paws itching for new lands, new conquests, new purpose. She did not wish for others to cower before her greatness. She was gentler. Benevolent. Some took advantage of this. Used her to gain gifts and favor and salvation. She would let them because she saw goodness in all. Deadly eyes that hardly ever struck.

[skyetheprophet22]

In Which Someone Speaks So Directly and Truthfully That the Listener Is Taken Aback

“I’ve never liked that haircut.”

My hand flies up to the hair, teasing through the bouncy springs - more than a little self-conscious. “W-what?”

“Your hair,” my friend responds, giving a simple shrug of her shoulders. “I’ve never liked it. I think it was better when it was longer. You could do more with it, then.”

I blink several times, eyes surely clouded with confusion as I try to make sense of the sudden honesty I’m being met with.

“Oh, and the way you walk. You walk like someone’s about to start beating the living crap outta you. It’s easy for anyone to see you don’t have any self-confidence. You need to strut. Hold yourself high, like I do.”

“Where the hell is all of this coming from?” I ask, anger beginning to seeth under my skin. It’s evident in my tone. The growl that my words come out in.

[skyetheprophet22]

Ghost

It’s cold. So very, very cold. A creeping, tip-toe of fingers up flesh; a skittering of tiny legs up the back. And yet feeling isn’t a word I would use to describe the sensation. No, it’s not something to be felt. I don’t really feel the cold. No, I just know it’s there. Instinctively. A raw, animalistic suspicion akin to a dog’s alert of a twenty-minute-off storm. 

It’s so very, very cold, and yet so very, very unsensational, and I’m so very, very close to losing it. It’s hard to say exactly what I’m losing (my mind, my faith, my soul), but I can feel it slipping. Creeping up in tip-toe with the cold (or nothing - is it cold or nothing?). 

I’m so very, very much an idiot. A joke about snowballing seems appropriate here. My (lost) mind can’t seem to piece it together. 

I know what is happening.

I don’t know what is happening.

This is the end.

This is the beginning.

My eyes finally decide to open. Too scared to attempt such a thing before. Always too scared. Look down at my hands. Shining; misting; translucent; incorporeal. 

That’s me: incorporeal.

“So this is death.” The words feel numb on my (lost) tongue. Illusory.

No one there to hear them. 

“Indeed it is, darling.”

Someone there to hear me.

Head snaps to look, and see two approaching figures. So brightly they glow. Radiant and terrible and holy and wicked all in the same breath. My eyes long to burn upon touching them. My eyes don’t remember they are (lost) incorporeal.

[skyetheprophet22]

In Which the First Sentence of the Story Ends With “But I Couldn’t Stop Laughing”

Pressed to the centre of my forehead was the barrel of a gun, the other man’s finger poised upon the trigger, but I couldn’t stop laughing.

“Right, this is splendid,” I snickered, my humour-filled body jumping against the restraints tying me to the chair. “I can’t believe how ridiculous this all is.”

“You shouldn’t have tried to double-cross the boss,” the other man growled out. A cocky grin of triumph had taken claim upon his lopsided face. 

I found it hard to reign in another fit of laughter. “Double-cross? Okay, first off, none of this double-crossing business was ever taking place. No, I was just hanging out with a buddy of mine. Meanwhile, back at the ranch you lot assumed that I was some kind of traitor!”

“You’re friend is the crooner from-”

“Ah, ah, ah.” I made my tuts as loud and obnoxious as I possibly could. “I wasn’t finished, you buffon. When someone begins with a first off, you should assume there’s gonna be at least a second off.”

[skyetheprophet22]

Describe Your Friend

A cascade of flaming hair tumbled down her shoulders, woven within silver stars sparkling with the blessing of the Moon above. A pair of light-framed glasses sat perched atop her delicate nose. Constellations of barely noticeable freckles sat underneath their rounded lenses. And so she sat in prayer as the soft murmurs of the forest’s creatures played around her. Night had descended, but the Moon shone down with enough light for her children to see, as did Her faithful companions the Stars. 

Lexi pressed her forehead against the cool, alabaster stone before her. Squeezed her eyes shut and tried to ignore the restlessness and anxiety building up inside of her; the anticipation of a roar sounding overheard that would announce the coming of them.

She drew her silken uniform tighter around her - rearranged the sparkling bow slung over her shoulder before placing her hands together once again.

“Keep the Sun away from this planet,” she murmured to the stone. “Give us the strength to keep our people safe from Him.”