#Millstone River

[frothytundra]

Bowen Park, Nanaimo

[drmorbius12]

In the beginning I knew nothing of pain, only the wide-eyed innocence of freedom, and a mind unchained. My mother was an artist who believed the world was full of goodness, as she painted what she saw in everyone and everything. My father was a carpenter who built many things, and knew the worth of labour and desire, raising his sons to be honest, true and strong.

But so as turns the great Millstone, so it cannot be stopped, and all that lives and dies is ground beneath, leaving both grist and chaff to fall as it may. Knowing which we will become is when childhood ends, and sorrow, joy, and forgiveness begins.

/it's a self-inflicted wound/all my wounds are/

In the city where I was born and raised, there was great promise, but also guile and danger. It is said that opportunity knocks only once, and yet I have been given many, not knowing if I would succeed or fail, create or destroy.

/she loved with a pure love untouched by doubt or hesitation/I am bent but not broken/not yet/

I only know that somehow, for a purpose I have yet to fathom, I have been given a power few others possess. Within that power lies healing and sickness, life and death, and endless forks in a river of time that never stops flowing, with no beginning and no end.

/all my wounds are my own and will be my undoing/

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Sunsweet Prunes

Ray Bradbury: submitted for the approval of the midnight society, i call this the tale of the lazy summer of youth Bradbury: long days down by the river, fishing in miller's pond, afternoons at the soda shop, ice cream sundaes with fabulous unicorn worlds built of whipped cream, nickels for a dime Bradbury: and becky miller's freckled-face kisses Bradbury: sweeter than sunsweet prunes

Bradbury: sunsweet prunes, i tell you Bradbury: the only prune that's sweeter than a nostalgic midwestern childhood Bradbury: and they come in these little individually wrapped plastic packs too King: Poe: Barker: Koontz: Lovecraft: Bradbury: I just think they're neat

Bradbury: according to my stories, in the far distant future of 2001 Bradbury: we shall travel in tubes Bradbury: we'll have flying cars Bradbury: and we'll all be eating our sunsweet prunes out of individually wrapped plastic packs Poe: wait you never said that in your stories Bradbury: i wish i had Bradbury: i would have been 1 for 3 at least

Bradbury: look, they individually wrap these sunsweet prunes in plastic Bradbury: what a world! Bradbury: its like living in the not too distant future Poe: doesn't that create a lot of waste Bradbury:

Bradbury: tearing open this individually wrapped snack pack reminds me of tearing open presents on christmas morning, snow on the ground, ma and pa taking the day off from working the farm, the whole family arriving in a caravan of automobiles, aunts and uncles and cousins by the dozen, oh my! oh my! uncles a little too loud after three egg nogs, cousins playing cops & robbers in the hay loft

Bradbury: and the feasting, the jollity! too many voices all at once, raised in laughter, in song. the twinkle in dad's eye, the red roses in mom's cheeks, grandpa's baritone chuckle. falling asleep to the sounds of bing crosby on the tombstone radio, surrounded by the warm glow of early evening King: wow these prunes sound pretty incredible King: i'm sold! Koontz: [tearing open sunsweet prune container] guys Koontz: i think my prunes are broken Koontz: i didn't feel any of that stuff ray said

Poe: ray are they paying you to advertise for prunes Bradbury: no no of course not! Bradbury: i would never accept money to tell you about the incredible health benefits of america's favorite prunes, sunsweet Bradbury: full of 12 different antioxidents King: can i buy them with my american express card

Neil Gaiman: but ray! Gaiman: using the limitless vista of your inpirational mind to advertise a mere consumer good Gaiman: such a tawdry use of the gift of imagination! Gaiman: it cheapens us as writers just as the low low prices of chipotle cheapens organic rice and GMO-free beans to bring wholesome healthy Mexican inspired fusion cuisine to the masses

Gaiman: you can't leash the phoenix of creativity to the millstone of commerce! Gaiman: she must fly free! Gaiman: free like the secret dragon sauce available now at now extra charge at your local chipotle King: neil's right! Poe: about chipotle? King: about everything!!

[rhaenin-time]

Commodified fantasy takes no risks: it invents nothing, but imitates and trivializes. It proceeds by depriving the old stories of their intellectual and ethical complexity, turning their action to violence, their actors to dolls, and their truth-telling to sentimental platitude.

All times are changing times, but ours is one of massive, rapid moral and mental transformation. Archetypes turn into millstones, large simplicities get complicated, chaos becomes elegant, and what everybody knows is true turns out to be what some people used to think.

It’s unsettling. For all our delight in the impermanent, the entrancing flicker of electronics, we also long for the unalterable.

We cherish the old stories for their changelessness. Arthur dreams eternally in Avalon. Bilbo can go “there and back again,” and there is always the beloved familiar Shire. Don Quixote sets out forever to kill a windmill… So people turn to the realms of fantasy for stability, ancient truths, immutable simplicities.

And the mills of capitalism provide them. Supply meets demand. Fantasy becomes a commodity, an industry.

Commodified fantasy takes no risks: it invents nothing, but imitates and trivializes. It proceeds by depriving the old stories of their intellectual and ethical complexity, turning their action to violence, their actors to dolls, and their truth-telling to sentimental platitude. Heroes brandish their swords, lasers, wands, as mechanically as combine harvesters, reaping profits. Profoundly disturbing moral choices are sanitized, made cute, made safe. The passionately conceived ideas of the great story-tellers are copied, stereotyped, reduced to toys, molded in bright-colored plastic, advertised, sold, broken, junked, replaceable, interchangeable.

What the commodifiers of fantasy count on and exploit is the insuperable imagination of the reader, child or adult, which gives even these dead things life—of a sort, for a while.

Imagination like all living things lives now, and it lives with, from, on true change. Like all we do and have, it can be co-opted and degraded; but it survives commercial and didactic exploitation. The land outlasts the empires. The conquerors may leave desert where there was forest and meadow, but the rain will fall, the rivers will run to the sea. The unstable, mutable, untruthful realms of Once-upon-a-time are as much a part of human history and thought as the nations in our kaleidoscopic atlases, and some are more enduring.

We have inhabited both the actual and the imaginary realms for a long time. But we don’t live in either place the way our parents or ancestors did. Enchantment alters with age, and with the age.

We know a dozen different Arthurs now, all of them true. The Shire changed irrevocably even in Bilbos lifetime. Don Quixote went riding out to Argentina and met Jorge Luis Borges there. Plus c’est la meme chose, plus fa change.

From Ursula K. LeGuin’s foreword to her 2001 collection Tales from Earthsea.

[gabessquishytum]

Hob is trying to act like a normal person with his new boyfriend, Dream.

Not move to fast (it's only been a few weeks) and scare him off (although, he's already found the nicest pair of wedding rings yesterday.).

Recently, one of Dream's exs has been sniffing around him again, trying to come between Hob and his Dream. That is so unacceptable.

Hob has been reining in his more emphatic qualities, but he's made problems disappear before, and he won't stand for Dream being upset or uncomfortable....or anyone trying to get between them.

We all love a bit of unhinged Hob, don't we?

He is trying to be normal, but even though he's just a normal guy, it's like he's got these... 14th century mercenary instincts. He doesn't even know where it comes from! When it comes to Dream and their relationship, he just seems to get this surge of bloodlust. A serious need to protect.

Dream only sees about half of what's actually going on in Hob’s mind, and he finds it all so sweet and romantic. Like how Hob will physically shield him from other people when they're out in public. Or how he never lets Dream lift a finger for himself. And Hob has been a godsend, listening to Dream complaining about Alex all the time. He's such an angel, Dream feels like he's really struck gold in finding him.

And now Alex has mysteriously gone missing, which is... odd. It's nice that he's not bothering Dream any more, and all that. But it does seem bizarre that he'd just disappear off the face of the earth. Dream has talked it through with Hob... and Hob has assured him that Alex will probably show up eventually. He had a funny little smile curling at the corner of his mouth as he spoke, but Dream is sure that's probably nothing...

If Alex does turn up, it'll be at the bottom of a river with a millstone tied around his neck. Hob has no comment on that particular subject. As long as Dream is happy, he's happy :)))))) maybe he'll get those matching rings this weekend.....

[whencyclopedia]

Frodi

Frodi (Old Icelandic: Fróði) is the name of legendary Danish kings in Norse mythology. There is a whole range of kings bearing the same name, pointing to fascinating traditions in both Old Icelandic and continental Germanic storytelling. Frodi features in Snorri Sturluson's Skáldskaparmál, the Ynglinga saga, and Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum, among other sources.

The Golden Age of Frodi in the Skáldskaparmál

In his Skáldskaparmál, part of the Prose Edda, the 13th-century Icelandic chieftain and author Snorri Sturluson explains the origins of many complex metaphors or kenningar. He mentions that one of the terms for gold is the flour of Frodi (Old Icelandic: Fróði), elsewhere the meal of Frodi, and goes on to explain the origin of this metaphor, where he fancifully links Odin to the history of Denmark and partly Sweden. Thus, in Snorri's story, a son of Odin, Skjöld, the founder of the dynasty, had a son, Fridleif, who in turn has a son Frodi. Chronologically, this would have been during the reign of Roman emperor Augustus (r. 27 BCE to 14 CE) and his pax romana. There are some historical elements to this, such as trade between Romans and proto-Danish speakers, with members of the aristocracy forging their prestige through contact with the Roman Empire, but a great unified land certainly did not exist.

Snorri tries to draw a parallel to Jesus Christ in what he tells next, and he also tries to prove how naive pre-Christians were in that they attributed the peace reigning in all northern territories at the time to Frodi. We have a bit from the myth of a golden era, with no murders or thefts. Frodi meets King Fjölnir from Sweden, and he purchases two slave women at the same time two gigantic millstones are discovered, which have the ability to grind anything. So Frodi tells the slaves to grind gold and prosperity and gives them very short breaks, only as long as a song, which is why they name the poem they are chanting Grottasöngr, after the name of the magic mill. The maidens deplore the inability of the king to foresee the consequences of his deeds, because what they in fact ground is an army against Frodi. A sea king called Mysing comes, plunders, and kills Frodi. Mysing orders them to grind salt, which they do until the ships sink, the seas flow into the mill hole, and they become salt.

Snorri probably got these very precise details from the Grottasöngr of the Poetic Edda, which he cites after retelling this story. In the poem, it is revealed that the girls are descendants of mountain giants, and they are the ones who had shaped the grindstone, but Frodi remains ignorant of their lineage, thus losing his seat at Hleidra (Lejre). So, historically, there might have been a reference to the first leaders here; Lejre (also bearing the name Fredshøj or Peace Barrow) had settlements dating back to 500. Dated to c. 650, the remains of a princely burial were excavated down by the river in a barrow called Grydehøj. The man and his grave goods had been cremated, but a profusion of melted bronze and gold, as well as sacrificed animals testify to his wealth. Snorri, however, interprets it from a Christian temporal and mythical perspective. Most probably, it was a saga of the Skjöldungs from which Snorri adopted this notion, as suggested by a 17th-century paraphrase.

Continue reading...

[ramblebrambleamble]

Streaks of fire streaming down from heaven like rain across glass; the dome between worlds crumples in,

Molten

Souls, spirits burning together all one in the eyes of the eyes of the eyes of the wheel, turning, even now.

The faithful say it's beautiful; the un call it death.

This is not what you made us pray for.

And the glass rains down, down, the wheel

Unleashing its payload, unleashing its payload, watch, wish

It was earthly, that the river was blue and gentle, not this oil-slick rainbow firing down, why did no one ask (to have faith is not to question)

What they wanted our souls for. (POWER, power, power, power, the wheel

Turns

And

The millstones of heaven grind on.)

[the-fae-folk]

What do you know about kelpies? And other creaturea like them?

The sheer amount of information there is about Kelpies has filled entire books, and to include in the discussion all the other variants of water dwelling beings who drown their victims would be a scholarly pursuit that would last lifetimes.

However, I shall attempt to give you a place to begin with.

Kelpies are a kind of water spirit that in Scottish Folklore was thought to inhabit lochs. Loch was a word which meant lake or sea-inlet in Scottish Gaelic, though some lochs could also be referred to as firths, fjords, estuaries, straits, or bays depending on the exact nature of the body of water. These lochs, when they were connected to the sea, could be saltwater or freshwater.

These water creatures are traditionally described as being a kind of horse, which is often black. There was one particular story involving the equine spirit from the River Spey in Scottland who had a white coat and would lure victims on its back with its song. Another version, this time from Aberdeeneshire, a council area in Scottland, depicted the Kelpie as having a mane of serpents.

However in many stories Kelpies are thought to have the power of transformation. They can often take the form of humans in order to complete tasks or lure in victims. One such story depicts a kelpie in the guise of an old, wrinkled, grey haired man who is sitting on the edge of a dyke and mending his trousers. A knock on the head from a knowledgeable passerby caused it to return to its horse shape and flee into the water. Other stories depict the kelpie as taking the form of a rough and shaggy man. A folktale from Barra, an island in the Outer Hebrides in Scottland, actually depicts the Kelpie transforming into a young and handsome man in order to woo a human girl into being his wife. Amusingly, this doesn't work quite as intended when the girl recognizes it as a kelpie and removes its silver necklace which turns out to actually be its bridle. Trapped in its equine form the kelpie is taken to the home of the girl and put to work for a year for her father. At the end of the year, she returns the silver bridle and asks if it would prefer human form or horse form, to which the kelpie asks whether she would consent to be its bride if it took the form of a man permanently, she agrees and they are married.

Very few stories of the Kelpies actually depict them as women, though one rather notable one set in Ross and Cromarty in Scottland mentions a tall woman in green, with a rather disagreeable expression and a somewhat "withered" body, who jumped out of a stream to drown a man and a boy.

A common way to detect a transformed Kelpie was to look for something that gave away its true nature, such as having water weeds in its hair.

As mentioned before, there are some items that are associated with Kelpies in Folklore, the most notable of which is its tack (saddles, stirrups, bridles, halters, reins, bits, and harnesses). Stories involve Kelpies who are captured with a halter stamped with the sign of the cross and put to work pulling heavy millstones or other hard manual labor, something which the Kelpies were notoriously unhappy about. One example is a tale in which the Laird of Morphie forced a captured Kelpie to help build his castle, and upon its release it cursed the family with a rhyme.

"Sair back and sair banes Drivin' the Laird o' Morphies's stanes, The Laird o' Morphie'll never thrive As lang's the kelpy is alive"

(Sore back and sore bones Driving the Lord of Morphie's stones, The Lord of Morphie will never thrive As long as the kelpie is alive)

Other Kelpies were said to already appear with bridle and saddles while in horse form, appearing ready to ride, but upon having a person seated in the saddle they would then dive to the bottom of the nearest body of water and proceed to drown and eat their victim. Some stories depict Kelpies who already possess a bridle who can be exorcised or trapped by removing it. My favorite bit of folklore from these types of stories involves a bridle removed from a Kelpie that has the power to transform anyone else into a pony or horse if it is brandished at them.

On pages LXXXV-LXXXVI of the introduction of "The Popular Tales of The West Highlands", as orally collected and translated from Gaelic by J. F. Campbell , I found that Campbell had gone into an overview of exactly how prominent horses seemed to be in these Gaelic tales. Not only are they plentiful in the tales as ordinary but loyal steeds, there are accounts of people being transformed into horses, horses that have magical abilities or attributes to them, horses which appear as the object of riddles, horses that are given as rewards or prizes, heroes who can take the form of a horse, people who can appear as horses and then turn into men, a horse which in one tale is (oddly) to be hanged as a thief, and horses who can grant wishes. Campbell noted that tales of the Water Horses especially seemed to depict them as being some degraded god, the tales of Kelpies describing them as some kind of river or water god reduced to a bogle (A Northumbrian and Scots term for a category of ghosts or creatures that are known to lure humans to death, unsettle them, or haunt areas) or fuath (a class of malevolent spirits in Scottish Highland Folklore).

Now it is time to look at some of the other beings who are closely related to or similar to the Kelpies. First of these is the Water Horse. Originally this term was used to describe Kelpies themselves, and later expanded to be a general nickname for all kinds of lake monsters and the occasional sea monster. Additionally the term Water Bull has also been used for either Kelpies or Water Horses. Interestingly there are those who attempt to specify the terms Kelpies and Water Horses as referring to beings who dwell in either still water as in lochs, or moving and turbulent water as in rivers and waterfalls. At other times the terms are counted as being synonymous, which causes no end of confusion. Water Bulls, on the other hand, not only is used to refer to the other two groups, but also has a history of referring to an actual bull like creature who can mate with ordinary cattle yet still possesses the amphibious and shapeshifting abilities of the kelpie, as well as being generally considered less dangerous.

A similar horse-like creature is the Nuckelavee, a demon from Orcadian Folklore that cannot abide freshwater but instead lives in the sea and takes on a rather hellish form when coming on land. It is sometimes described as being similar to a centaur, except that it has two heads (one on the man's body and one on the horse's), no skin, a single giant eye that burns like flame, and a mouth that exudes toxic vapors. It was generally considered to be responsible for drought and epidemics as its breath was thought to wilt crops and sicken livestock among other things.

More common to the large varieties of myths and folklore of the Germanic Peoples, are the Nixie, Nixy, Nix, Näcken, Nicor, Nøkk, Nøkken, Nixe, Nikker, Nekker, Nøkke, Nykk, Näck, Nykur, Näkki, Näkk, Nicor, Neck, or Nicker. Under this variety of names they are all depicted as some kind of water spirit, usually with shapeshifting abilities. Sometimes depicted as dragons or worms, other times as female river mermaids, a horse-like creature called the Bäckahästen and another called the Ceffyl Dŵr.

The Nordic näcken, näkki, nøkk were male water spirits who played magical music from violins which could lure in children, men, or women who they could then drown in lakes and streams. There are some stories that depict these spirits falling in love with humans and living with them, but usually they end with the water creature returning to its own home. The German Nix and Nixe are types of river merman and mermaid that lure men to drown, often conflated with the more bird-like Greek Siren.

Of course, not all depictions of water horse spirits and creatures are dangerous beings. The Nuggle, of Shetland Folklore, is a male creature who is nocturnal and more prone to mischief and pranks than actual harm.

There are also countless water spirits of various kinds who don't have horse-like forms or any specific tie to the Kelpie other than the fact that they drown people for a variety of reasons. A good example is the Slavic Vodyanoy, depicted as a naked old man with frog-like features, green beard and hair, webbed hands, burning eyes,  and with algae and muck covering his body along with black fish scales.

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

The Fall of Babylon Predicted

1 Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground: there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate.

2 Take the millstones, and grind meal: uncover thy locks, make bare the leg, uncover the thigh, pass over the rivers.

3 Thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yes, thy shame shall be seen: I will take vengeance, and I will not meet thee as a man.

4 As for our Redeemer, the LORD of hosts is his name, the Holy One of Israel.

5 Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called, The lady of kingdoms.

6 I was wroth with my people, I have polluted my inheritance, and given them into thy hand: thou didst show them no mercy; upon the ancient hast thou very heavily laid thy yoke.

7 And thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever: so that thou didst not lay these things to thy heart, neither didst remember the latter end of it.

8 Therefore hear now this, thou that art given to pleasures, that dwellest carelessly, that sayest in thy heart, I am, and none else besides me; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children:

9 But these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood: they shall come upon thee in their perfection, for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the great abundance of thy enchantments.

10 For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness: thou hast said, None seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee; and thou hast said in thy heart, I am, and none else besides me.

11 Therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from whence it riseth: and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know.

12 Stand now with thy enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries, in which thou hast labored from thy youth; if thou shalt be able to profit, if thou mayest prevail.

13 Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the star-gazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee.

14 Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it.

15 Thus shall they be to thee with whom thou hast labored, even thy merchants, from thy youth: they shall wander every one to his quarter; none shall save thee. — Isaiah 47 | Webster Bible Translation (WBT) The Webster Bible is in the public domain. Cross References: Genesis 3:7; Deuteronomy 28:50; Deuteronomy 28:56; Deuteronomy 32:29; 2 Chronicles 28:9; Psalm 19:14; Psalm 35:8; Psalm 52:7; Psalm 62:10; Psalm 129:1; Psalm 137:8; Isaiah 5:24; Isaiah 5:29; Isaiah 8:19; Isaiah 10:17; Isaiah 13:10; Isaiah 13:19; Isaiah 14:14; Isaiah 20:4; Isaiah 22:13; Isaiah 41:14; Isaiah 44:25; Jeremiah 51:58; Matthew 24:41; Luke 17:27; 1 Corinthians 11:5; 1 Thessalonians 5:3; Revelation 9:21; Revelation 18:7; Revelation 18:11

[sunnvanilladiary]

"You can wipe your feet on me, twist my motives around all you like, you can dump millstones on my head and drown me in the river, but you can’t get me out of the story. I’m the plot, babe, and don’t ever forget it."

[ambiguouspuzuma]

Run of the Mill

Noru was the miller's son. It did not matter that his father had passed away, some three years ago, for his ancestry would always be thus, his provenance - even in biographies penned a century from now, if a family tree could be traced back, future diarists of his crimes would write - perhaps in their opening line - that he was born, remained throughout his life, and indeed died, the son of a miller.

Neither did it matter that the mill, the family business, had likewise passed into his hands, and that he had been running it successfully for those three years - in some ways more successful than it had ever been. For his father had built the mill, and that would also always be the case - if histories were written, centuries from now, if the building fell to ruin and was restored, if a museum was formed around its carcass - his father would be listed as its architect, its first proprietor.

If Noru tried to make even a minor change - raise the price of grain in keeping with the scarcity of harvests, for example - his customers, the townspeople, refused to take it seriously. For they had met him as a child, the miller's son, and of course that shy, sweet, flaxen-haired boy would never dream to extort an old man such as them - for surely such a doting son would remember his father's friends, and honour their attested agreements, the handshake inherited with his hands.

They laughed off all suggestions of a change, paying him a condescending compliment together with the original price. He was a chip off the old millstone, they might joke. He would never be a stone himself - never a miller, never a man - his own growth stunted by the pedestal installed above his head, the achievements of the father always held over the son. Long-term customers would come to reminisce, to pay their respects to his dead, but of course offered none of them to him.

"This is fine work," they would say, unable to leave it there. "You are your father's son, and no mistake."

So it was they built him up and put him down, reducing him to progeny when he had aimed for prodigy. It made Noru wonder, sometimes, to hear that said so often. Perhaps it had happened by mistake. Not his conception - his father had told him they'd longed for a child, and in any case he didn't have accidents, to hear the village tell of his career - but his parentage. For Noru to have been born beneath such a shadow, a sapling wilting under a full canopy of leafy boughs.

It was an injustice. He was good at what he need, a master in his own right, and he deserved that recognition, without the greater part of any credit funnelled off to the deceased. He had been born with this mantle, this yoke, a millstone around his neck, and he would never stand tall whilst it tethered him to the past. Noru needed to cut the cord - that much was clear. The only question was how.

The obvious answer was to move - to close down and set up shop a few villages west, where his father was unknown, and he could start again - but that wasn't possible. The mill didn't have wheels, other than those which caught the river's strength or ground his flour inside, and he couldn't take it with him. He was anchored here, rooted deep into the past, and he couldn't change that any more than he could change his heritage.

He would simply have to change the town instead.

It was the only option that remained. Noru had once heard that a person lives on for as long as somebody remembers them, and thus he set about to slay his father's ghost, the spectre that had haunted him his whole solo career. He had grown up in a shadow, but shadows could be banished in the light, and so he planned a cleansing fire to kill his father's memory, to clean the slate, to clear some space for him to rise from the ashes.

The townspeople never suspected that their grain contained shavings of henbane, for that sweet, shy, flaxen-haired boy would never grow up to become a poisoner - for such a doting son would never seek to weaken his father's friends, to lace their bread with white death, the weevil of fetid nightshade, to cause a plague that wiped out all his older customers.

He found he was immune from all suspicion, protected by the very image of that rose-cheeked child - always at his father's knee, helping to measure out the sacks, an old friend once removed - that had sealed their fate, unable to see him as anything else, unable to see the fires coming. But perhaps it took a child to raze a village. In the meantime, Noru saved the best grain aside: ready to take on the role of rescuer, to feed the young and sick, to write a legend of his own. It would take a miller to raise the town anew, and he intended to make that part his own.

[frothytundra]

A Frosty Morning

This morning was frosty in Bowen Park; warm enough for a good walk and cold enough for some interesting sights. Frosty moss on a logFrosty fungusSigns of wildlife, but which?Millstone River FallsIciclesIcicles over an icy streamFrozen tree sapA lovely section of the Millstone RiverMillstone RiverHooded MergansersHooded Mergansers and a Common MerganserMergansers in the Duck PondFemale Merganser

[priafey]

sooo i'm supposed to finishing up some office work right now. however :3 i saw a post with a few 'get to know your character' questions and i couldn't help answering them for gwilin!!

tagging @ladytanithia

questions by @wisteria-lodge

_–_–_–_–_–_–_–_–_–_–_–_–_–_–_–_–_–_–_–

Your character's go-to drink order?

Gwilin will drink almost anything, even liquors manufactured under questionable standards of cleanliness, but he'll usually opt for some plain old mead. The spicier/fruitier, the better. When he's alone, he likes to sip on Bosmeri brandy and fill up his sketchbook.

Their grooming routine?

Gwilin never learned how to shave properly. He always gets at least one nick or cut, when he does, so he'll only do it once Wilhelm, Lynly or Temba start bugging him by saying he's giving the greybeards a run for their money.

His hair is very precious to him. He never cuts it because he likes to think about who he was when his body was growing each part of its length, like it's a diary of who he is. He only washes it with water, and likes to take his sweet time in the river to really soften up and soothe his scalp with his fingers. Conversely, he's always been insecure about how stinky his sweat is, so he sometimes goes a little overboard with the scrubbing and ends up drying out his skin. But the upside is he always reeks of lavender, which is his favorite smell :)

What is their most expensive purchase? Where does their disposable income go?

One time, when he was eighteen, he bought a new millstone for the family farm when an earthquake cracked the old one in half. He had to use the money that he'd been saving up to buy his brother a nice robe for his wedding.

It's very likely Gwilin has never had income that can be categorized as 'disposable'. He makes enough to cover his basic needs and a fresh set of clothes every now and again, but that's pretty much it. The few items he has treated himself with in the past are books and drawing materials. Most of these he gets as gifts from Wilhelm, though.

Any scars? Tattoos?

Tons. Farm work is dangerous as hell. His hands, as well as a decent chunk of the rest of his body, have been cut, bruised, crushed, singed, or stung. His least favorite chore on the farm was harvesting the barley (because of the bugs), and roasting it once it was malted (because of the heat coming off the stoves).

When was the last time they cried? What was the context?

Gwilin will see a bug he really likes and cry over it. He had a very loving childhood and his parents always encouraged him to express his feelings, and warned him that repressing them is a recipe for disaster. The last time he cried was because he felt ashamed for having taken so long to write to his siblings.

Are they an oldest, middle, youngest, or only child?

He is the second youngest of twelve siblings. He feels closest with those who were born around the same time he was; his older brothers and sisters are kind of like distant cousins he doesn't know all that well. His younger sister, Winthir, was a real pain in his ass when he was growing up, and his next oldest sister, Suri, and next oldest brother, Greviil, are his best friends in all of Nirn.

Describe the shoes they're wearing.

His shoes are form-fitting, calf-height, brown leather boots made of goatskin. They are extremely comfortable, which is important for him because he works on his feet most of the day. He'd rather wear a cheap, roughspun tunic and itchy drawers if it means his feet are comfy.

Where do they sleep? What is it like?

Anywhere; Gwilin could fall asleep on a septim. But his usual sleeping arrangements are very modest: a little tufted flax in a rough linen pillowcase, a simple woolen blanket, and a glass of water on his nightstand for when he gets those sleepy midnight bouts of thirst.

Their favorite holiday/celebration/tradition?

Gwilin's parents worried a lot about their kids standing out for the wrong reasons in Cyrodiil, so they always tried to celebrate those holidays most recognized throughout the Empire at home, and purposefully avoided teaching their kids specifics about Bosmeri holidays. But Gwilin was never big on any of them. He especially disliked Saturalia.

When he was fourteen, he read about the Bosmeri Hog-Heart Festival in a book, and was immediately enamored by the idea. Ever since, he likes to imagine what patterns of ocher he would streak his body with and what ornaments his crush would wear while he went out on the hunt, or vice versa. The thought of being tenderly gifted the corpses of feral hogs makes him melt. He is a romantic, after all :D

What objects to they always carry around with them?

Definitely the band he uses to tie his hair up. His work gloves. A snack, preferably cheese. A hunting knife. Some spare pieces of linen or gauze if he gets a splinter or cuts himself at the mill. And a cool piece of polished malachite his brother gave him for his thirtieth birthday.

[ausetkmt]

On a rainy morning in March, George Dawes Green, a seventy-year-old novelist and the founder of the storytelling nonprofit the Moth, arrived at Millstone Landing, about twenty miles north of Savannah, Georgia, on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River. He and thirteen others were preparing to look for remnants of a secret fortress built in the seventeen-eighties by Maroons—people who’d escaped slavery to live in the wilderness. (The term derives from the Spanish word “cimarrón,” which means “unruly” or “fierce.”) Maroons existed in the South from the beginning of slavery, and, according to historical accounts, the population of this encampment—around a hundred—dwarfed that of any other known group. The fortress was said to have been uniquely defended, with a wall, weapons, and sentries; its residents had lived there and in another nearby camp for years until white militias finally found the sites and burned them to the ground. Green had first read about the fortress decades ago; last year, he published “The Kingdoms of Savannah,” a thriller involving a search for its ruins. Early in writing the book, he began reaching out to scholars to turn the fictional search into a real one. Now archeologists, historians, and others were donning rain gear and wrestling with tall snake-proof boots in a parking lot by the Savannah River.

Rick Kanaski, a gray-goateed archeologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge, was part of the expedition. He warned that we were unlikely to find the fortress itself. Instead, he said, “We’ll get a sense of place”—an idea of what the Maroons’ life had been like. Archeology is slow work, Kanaski went on: “Eventually, we’ll be able to tell some life stories about these individuals who were essentially creating their own community, and reclaiming their own individuality, and their own personhood, and their own society, so to speak.” But the first step was to get the lay of the land.

We strapped on life jackets, climbed onto a boat, and headed north. South Carolina was on the east bank and Georgia on the west; the temperature was in the fifties, and gray clouds spat water in our faces. Brown water sprayed up behind the motors. We had a rough idea of where we were going. Running parallel to the river, about a mile to its west, was Bear Creek; historical documents indicated that the fortress had been near the creek, and about two miles north from a lower fork. Green’s research had pointed him toward a region just south of where Bear Creek jutted east and then west, creating a thumb-shaped area of land. His target zone covered maybe twenty acres.

If the ground were dry, the area would be about fifteen minutes’ walk from shore. But we soon encountered a small, winding creek that cut through the lush vegetation. We sloshed across, walked for another few minutes, then hit another creek. This one was waist-deep, and we halted at the impasse. I was shivering, and my fingers had turned blue from the damp and cold. If it were warmer, I knew, we’d be getting eaten alive by mosquitos.

“This actually helps as part of their defense,” Kanaski said, of the forbidding landscape.

I imagined living on this land for years, with scant supplies. What had life been like for the Maroons? How had they survived? How had they understood their own story? Answers to these questions had been lost, like the fortress, in the swamp.

Although Maroons existed wherever slavery did, they are often left out of U.S. history curricula. In her book “Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons,” from 2014, Sylviane A. Diouf, a historian and visiting scholar at Brown University, offers several explanations for this. American Maroon communities weren’t as large as their counterparts in Central and South America, she writes, and they didn’t wage wars against enslavers; their settlements weren’t well documented, and, whereas everyone has heard of the Underground Railroad, marronage “lacked the high drama of the escape to the North.” Diouf also argues that the Maroons’ “narrative of autonomous survival without benevolent white involvement” probably lacked mass appeal.

Nonetheless, Maroons lived at extremes. They faced the constant risk of capture, especially while sneaking supplies from plantations. Some Maroons built underground dens and lived in them for years, occasionally even filling them with furniture and stoves; children were born and raised in darkness. While reading archival documents, “I found examples of caves all over the South,” Diouf told me. “It’s just mind-boggling that that kind of life could exist.” If Maroons returned or were caught, Diouf writes, “severe whippings were the ‘mildest’ punishments.” They could be branded, castrated, dismembered, or executed. After hanging, their bodies might be decapitated, quartered, and displayed.

Diouf dedicates a chapter of her book to the Maroons of Bear Creek. (A 2009 volume called “Maroon Communities in South Carolina,” edited by the historian Timothy James Lockley, also contains many original records from the period.) The Bear Creek Maroons built their first settlement around 1780, at the southern end of the waterway. In 1786, the group swelled in size, and their plantation raids attracted negative attention. That October, the grand jury of Chatham County complained that “large gangs of runaway Negroes are allowed to remain quietly within a short distance of this town.” Militia members located the Maroons and attacked them. Several people on each side were injured, and the militiamen, low on ammunition, retreated. They returned with more men that evening, but were ambushed, and fled.

James Jackson, a Revolutionary War hero and future governor of Georgia, took over the effort to capture or kill the Maroons. A few days later, he brought in fresh soldiers, but by then the Maroons had evacuated. He destroyed what they’d left behind, including houses, about fifteen boats, and four acres of rice. That December, Jackson wrote to the governor of South Carolina, Thomas Pinckney: “Your Excellency may have heard of the daring banditti of slaves, who some weeks since, attacked two of my detachments, & were at last with difficulty dislodged from their camp.” He warned that some Maroons had relocated to South Carolina, across the river, where they were again raiding plantations for supplies.

The following March, Pinckney authorized a plantation owner to hire up to a hundred minutemen—volunteer soldiers who were ready on short notice—for a monthlong search. He sent supplies and offered bonuses of ten pounds per Maroon caught dead or alive. He also asked an associate to hire twenty members of the Catawba tribe—who knew the land and were skilled trackers—to join the search, offering the same reward. The Maroons, meanwhile, had regrouped at a new location, two miles north of the old one, and fortified it.

On April 21, 1787, a group of Maroons went out in boats, planning to collect family members and others who wanted to join them from a nearby plantation. They ran into a group of minutemen, and several Maroons were shot and killed. The militiamen now knew of the encampment’s general location; even so, it took them two more weeks to locate it in the swamp. Finally, on the morning of May 6th, they killed a sentry and rushed through an opening in the fortress’s defensive wall. The Maroons fired a few shots before running away, leaving behind an enclosed area that covered seventeen acres and contained rice and potato fields and twenty-one houses. The attackers chased the Maroons for two miles, killing six of them, then burned down the camp and reported their victory. Later, the Charleston Morning Post would describe how the Maroons “had got seated and strongly fortified in the midst of an almost impenetrable swamp.”

“Running away from a fight was the best strategy,” Diouf said. “People say that’s not what heroes do, but it is. The goal of the Maroons was to stay alive.” Their leader, who went by the names Sharper and Captain Cudjoe, and his wife, Nancy, were among a group that escaped and eventually made its way to Florida. But the second-in-command, a man called Captain Lewis, was captured shortly after the raid and tried, in Savannah, for the murder of a white man whom he had brought back to the settlement before it was discovered. He was sentenced to be hanged, and to have his head displayed on a pole. Some audiences cheered for the Maroons’ defeat, but others celebrated their success. In an editorial, the Massachusetts Centinel admired “those brave and hardy sons of Africa” who “seem wisely to prefer a precarious existence, in freedom, on the barren heath, to the chains of their oppressors, whose avarice, cruelty and barbarism increases with their wealth.” The article concluded, “The spirit of liberty they inherit appears unconquerable. Heaven grant it may be invincible.”

Green is an eighth-generation Savannahian, and “The Kingdoms of Savannah” grew out of stories about the region that he’d heard as a child. The gothic tales often mixed horror with glamour. Once, an elderly relative described a group of escaped enslaved people who’d established a camp on an island in the Savannah River; they’d come upon a pirate ship run aground, its occupants all drowned, and had found gold inside, which they’d taken and buried. Green remembered the story in the early two-thousands, when a friend who was a local professor and historian of Savannah also mentioned a group of escaped enslaved people who had lived in the wilderness. He went to the Georgia Historical Society and pored over the archives. Along with his brother, an archeologist who studied the Taíno people of the Caribbean, he borrowed a canoe and spent a day paddling through the creeks and woods near where the fortress might have been. They didn’t find anything.

“The Kingdoms of Savannah,” which Green wrote about two decades later, centers on the disappearance of Matilda Stone, an archeologist studying the fortress site. The novel is about “a panoply of historical injustices,” Green told me—not just slavery but corrupt police, abusive labor practices, and pollution. At one point in the story, a member of an old Savannah family hoping to solve the kidnapping case is at the library browsing books about Savannah’s history. “I mean that’s what these books are all about,” someone says. “The crimes of Savannah. Every book in here. They’re all just the sickest crime stories you can imagine.” The novel is “sort of a tapestry of stories, which are all based on reality,” Green said. He explained that he’d been inspired in part by Lawrence Durrell’s “The Alexandria Quartet”—a tetralogy of novels set around the time of the Second World War which is “about folks wandering around Alexandria, Egypt, and all of the little ethnic enclaves, and the incredible corruption that rules everything, and how every little enclave is making deals constantly just to survive,” Green said.

Last fall, after the publication of “The Kingdoms of Savannah,” Green organized two events with Diouf and Paul Pressly, a historian writing a book about people who had escaped from slavery. The three soon started assembling a group to search for the fortress. “Historians like me, even public historians—you tell stories, and they just hang in the air, and they don’t go anyplace except for the twenty-five people that you talk to,” Pressly told me. “In talking to George, I realized, This man knows how to bring this into the public arena. A novel is the way you can bring it.” Diouf concurred: “There are more people who read fiction than there are people who read academic books.”

The day before the swamp trek, I spoke with Daniel Sayers, a historical anthropologist at American University who has spent years exploring Maroon history in the Great Dismal Swamp, in Virginia and North Carolina, and had agreed to join the search party. I asked him how he’d proceed once we were out in the wilderness. What would he look for, specifically?

“I’ll probably rely on my Spidey sense—‘Wow, people were here,’ ” Sayers said. His voice was gruff from years of smoking cigarettes and chewing tobacco; he wore jeans, a torn T-shirt, and an Olympia Beer trucker hat. It would be great to find an artifact, he went on, but that was unlikely; he would be satisfied with vibes. The site would probably be on slightly high and dry ground, he thought. “I’m hoping the place speaks to me,” he said.

Savannah, along with other Southern cities, is home to many macabre tours that mix history and spiritualism. In “Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era,” Tiya Miles, a historian at Harvard, writes that, “according to popular lore and common knowledge alike, ghosts dwell in places stained by unresolved conflict—places marked by pain, violence, betrayal, suffering, and ugly death.” That night, before dinner, I asked Esther Blessing, Green’s wife, if we might go on one. She described the tours as “this weird Tarantino-meets-‘Gone with the Wind’ clickbaity bullshit about enslaved people that isn’t even real.”

“They’re telling these fake stories about history,” she went on, her voice rising. “Why are they doing that when stories like this are there?”

In the swamp, we noticed a spot where the creek seemed to be shallower, and decided to try our luck crossing there. But we arrived only at another deep creek. “It looks like what we have is a whole series of dendritic creeks that are interlacing with this landscape that’s not well shown on any of the U.S.G.S. topographical sheets,” Kanaski said. In other words, we were in a watery maze.

“Where we’re standing might also have been where a small encampment of Maroons was,” Sayers ventured. “This is a Maroon landscape we’re in already.” It was a view that offered some consolation.

Dionne Hoskins-Brown, a government marine scientist who teaches at Savannah State University and is the chair of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission, spoke up. “Is it just the terrain that allowed the community to persist?” she asked. “I mean, it’s given us a fit today.”

“Even militia, who are trained to carry their guns and shoot people and track them down—they’re kind of afraid to go in,” Sayers said. “This is a big deal to just even experience this place,” he went on. “We’re in the heart of resistance in marronage.”

Green and a companion returned from a scouting mission. They’d followed the creek in one direction and found no easy way to cross; they wanted to try in the other direction, but Kanaski proposed coming back another day, when the ground was dry. While they debated, Hermina Glass-Hill, a Black activist and historian wearing pink-fringed boots and a red flower in her hair, removed a Congolese vessel—an engraved wooden chalice—from her bag and filled it with distilled water.

“Before we proceed, can we just pour libations right now, since we have identified that this is the terrain of that Maroon community?” she said, building on Sayers’s hopeful notion.

Glass-Hill stood and led us in a round of “Kumbaya”—“Come by here, my Lord”—an African American spiritual, first recorded in that part of Georgia. “Libations is about honoring the ancestors, honoring those who have come before us,” she said. “We want to give thanks to those brave, courageous souls who thought that taking the risk for freedom and the wildness of this place was more safe than staying on dry land.” She started pouring out some water. “To the men, to the women, to the children, who made this place home,” she said. “Ashé.”

[frenchy-and-the-sea]

FFXIV - Penitent

It’s me, I’m back again with FFXIV Write prompts that I never posted. I’ve been chipping away at a different thing and this one caught my attention again.

Prior to her foray to the events of Shadowbringers, Tritchet and her big sister Wickit had what you might call a teensy tiny bit of an explosive fallout, and Tritchet spent a not-insignificant bit of time afterwards traveling alone. That changed during the events of post-Stormblood MSQ, but they never really made up before Tritchet and their other sister Onion got swept away pre-Shadowbringers. This is set a day or so after they are finally reunited, after what is a few days for Wickit and six months for Tritchet.

~800 words, set during the beginning of the Shadowbringers expansion

---

It was the yawn that gave her away. 

She had been holding out, so far. Kholusia wore even the most capable adventurer down eventually, blighted as it was by Light and despair in equally staggering measures; but Tritchet was a capable adventurer with six dreary months of experience under her belt, and she thought she should have been able to hold out for twenty-four measly hours. For her sister's sake. For her own. 

"You should get some sleep, Tritchet."

She sighed; right on cue. Alphinaud had been telling her the same thing for the last four hours since she had woken him for his watch, and she had spent the same amount of time casually brushing him off. The yawn had apparently tipped him off that he was finally wearing her down. She frowned and scrubbed at her stinging eyes.

"I know," she admitted finally, pressing back against the rough wooden wall that was the only thing keeping her upright. “I just… I don’t want to.”

“I will make sure nothing happens,” Alphinaud said, gently. He spoke in a whisper, as she did, careful as ever not to wake the sleeping figure curled up in a nest in the corner of their barren and barely-large-enough room. “I managed well enough on my own before your arrival. I shall remain just as vigilant now.”

Tritchet managed a weary smile. “It’s not as if I don’t trust you, Alphinaud. Twelve knows we’ve been through enough together that I would be stupid not to. And even if I didn’t, Wickit has enough grit in her to make up for the failings of both of us. I just…” 

She trailed off, attention drifting inexorably back to her sister — freshly garbed in her Crysterium finest, dark hair splayed out on the nest of pilly blankets that she and Alphinaud had scavenged and scoured clean in the river, sleeping the long, heavy sleep of someone finally able to put some of her worry down. They had spent the last day and a half crying in turns into each other’s shoulders, apologizing for all of the things that they had and hadn’t done to one another. Tritchet still felt like it hadn’t been enough. The grief that she had pushed down and down and down again across the length of her six-month tour of The First hadn’t gone anywhere in that time; it had just gotten heavier.

Beside her, Alphinaud shifted forward off the edge of his cushion to touch his knee to hers.

“You don’t want to leave her,” he said knowingly. “It feels as though she will be gone again, if you look away.”

The thick knot in Tritchet’s stomach recoiled, squirming away from the feeling of being so easily picked at. When she looked up, Alphinaud’s eyes were pinned to the spot just over Wickit’s turned shoulder, focused on something leagues past the splintered grain of the wood. Tritchet felt her heart clench.

“Alisaie?” she asked quietly. Alphinaud nodded.

“My sister will tell you that she arrived not long after me,” he said, without looking at her. “It was rather long enough, though. Days. Weeks. I knew that she was fine — the Exarch had assured me of that. I’m told that he assured you and Onion of the same. If only assurances stopped the worry.”

He sighed, very softly, and Tritchet felt the grief that she carried — dense as a dying star, heavy as a millstone — flex within her chest. Like recognized like. She slid across the dusty floor to lean her shoulder against Alphinaud's, and found that she couldn't say anything at all.

They sat for a long moment like that, wrapped in the quiet of two people whose hearts ached with the same ragged, pent-up grief, until a yawn clawed its way out of Tritchet that nearly cracked her jaw in two.

“Okay,” she said, when Alphinaud gave her a stern sidelong look, “okay, fine; I’m going. I’ll be asleep before long if I just sit here anyway, so I might as well make use of those filched mattresses.” She stood — painfully, with a faint pop of her knees — and then draped the blanket that she had been sitting on over her shoulders and began shuffling towards the rag-stuffed sack of fabric in the corner that passed for a proper bed in Gatetown. 

She stopped a few steps in, turning back with her heart like the weight of an anchor in her throat. The question was stupid, unnecessary; she asked it anyway.

“You’ll keep an eye on her, won’t you?”

Across the room, Alphinaud turned to meet her gaze, and the look he gave her was not of a half-grown scholar with a penchant for being clever, or even of her friend; it was the steely, iron-gut expression of a soldier receiving orders. 

He nodded, and Tritchet slept the hardest, deepest sleep that she had managed in almost a year.

[deathsmallcaps]

Coloring Storybook Links

Hi! These are links to stories that can be included in coloring storybook. Please click the 'keep reading' button to see them listed out. I would not be includingany pre-ambles on the post in the actual book. These are all stories that are old enough and/or original enough to not have copyright issues.

Snow White

Cinderella

Sleeping Beauty

The Little Mermaid

Mulan

The Princess Who Never Laughed/The Golden Goose

Beauty and the Beast

Rapunzel

Gumiho: The Fox Sister

Alice in Wonderland

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

Crystal the Wise

Swan Lake

Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp

Brother and Sister

The Frog Princess

Godmother Death

 The Nose tree

The 🏳️‍🌈 Youth who went forth to learn the Shivers

Puss in Boots

 The Eyrie

Peter Pan

The Man from Snowy River

The Six Swans

The 🏳️‍🌈Snow Queen🏳️‍⚧️

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Honeyguide’s Revenge

The Whale Rider

Lumaaq & Loon

John Henry

Nana Miriam

West of the Sun, East of the Moon

The Acacia Tree (or, the Millstone)

Tatterhood

Chantha Rasphone