#alternate stanza i considered:

[timeclipsed]

🎧

want to know about a song on my muse's playlist? send in a 🎧 & i'll randomly pick a song along with which lyrics i think symbolize them the most! (status — accepting!)

i can't fight this 𝕗𝕖𝕖𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕘 it's not in my head not ᵏⁿᵒʷⁱⁿᵍ something i did, baby i can't fight this 𝕗𝕖𝕖𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕘 i'm out of ᶜᵒⁿᵗʳᵒˡ got to 𝚐𝚎𝚝 𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚔 to the life that i know

FREAKING OUT — MYSTERY SKULLS 01:43 ━━━━●───── 03:33 ⇆ㅤ ㅤ◁ㅤ ❚❚ ㅤ▷ ㅤㅤ↻ ılıılıılıılıılıılıılıılıılıılıılıılıılıılııl ᴠᴏʟᴜᴍᴇ : ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮

[perpetualcynicism]

…𝚂𝚞𝚖𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚢: In which replying to a mysterious letter leads you back to the one place (and person) you could never quite forget. …𝙶𝚎𝚗𝚛𝚎: Childhood friends to lovers. …𝚆𝚊𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜: None. …𝙻𝚎𝚗𝚐𝚝𝚑: 2,256 words. …𝙰𝚍𝚍𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕 𝚒𝚗𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗: Gender-neutral reader; renga is a collaborative form of Japanese poetry which consists of a 5-7-5-7-7 syllable scheme; Heizou Hasegawa is a character from the novel series Onihei Hankachō by Shōtarō Ikenami, who acted as possible inspiration for Shikanoin Heizou, who was inspired by a real figure—an interesting and more comprehensive explanation of this can be found here. Reblogs and comments are appreciated.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

𝙰 𝚃𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚜𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝙱𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝚂𝚊𝚔𝚞𝚛𝚊.

It is a letter which appears under your door, written in an elegant hand on a plain slip of paper, left unsigned. You are addressed by your pen-name at the top; the rest reads as follows:

I have heard countless tales of your famed verse, and read many of your novels on my travels—no, I will be honest; I confess that I’ve read all of them. I cannot help myself. Such wit and mastery of words as you possess is simply astounding. In particular your most recent tale, A Thousand Boughs of Sakura, was exceptionally engaging in how you utilised verse to leave hints in the text towards the true identity of the culprit; and I must say that you almost fooled me with the shocking conclusion! 

In the spirit of your skill, and my current being in town—entertain a poor soul with a game of renga, will you? I’ll start:

—Secrets tossed on wind

The rest of the paper is blank, as if the author has already anticipated your compliance to the proposal with complete confidence. 

The letter’s arrival itself is nothing out of the ordinary: you often receive such messages from fans, offering praise, questions and comments regarding your publications. It is, however, one of the rare occasions where the subject of interest has been yourself, rather than your work, and the first where a request has so specifically, not to mention so directly, been made of you.

Indeed, from the request to the manner of writing, the letter initially strikes you as terribly entitled, and you have the mind to toss it away and forget about it—but, skimming your eyes over the message again, you hesitate. 

Despite the novel being released a few weeks ago, this is the only letter you have received to pick up your writing technique: using differences in the pronunciation of kanji to suggest alternative meanings to the phrase; implying hidden messages through synonyms which, though identical in meaning, contain different radicals to the alternative word. Whoever the sender of the message is, they must have an acute eye for detail—a quality you can respect. Perhaps this mystery reader of yours is worth a moment or two.

You walk to your desk and unthinkingly pen another verse:

—All one must do is listen

You hardly know where to leave the reply—it is not as if your messenger has indicated their whereabouts, beyond ‘currently being in town’—yet somehow you trust that it will find its intended recipient. You pin it in a corner of the local noticeboard, and think no more of it for the rest of the day.

——————

—To hear the rustle.

Penned in the same elegant handwriting, this is the new line which has joined the previous verse when you pass by the noticeboard on the following day. You remove the letter and take it back to your home, where you spend a few moments considering how to respond. 

Your reply, as you pin it back up, reads thus:

—Verses penned by unknown hand 

The next day, another line:

—Anonymity’s respite.

And so is your first complete stanza concluded. You thumb the edge of the translucent paper, considering how next to proceed. 

Of course, the first thought to arise is that there is no need to ‘proceed’ with this game whatsoever: you have fulfilled this reader’s request at no great benefit to yourself, and there is no obligation compelling you to elaborate upon it further. You could end this playful exchange now and feel hardly the worse for it. 

And yet, that peculiar hook, on which your career and passions are founded—that irresistible inclination named ‘curiosity’—has taken hold somewhere within you, is tugging you gently in the direction of the mystery. You wish to know more of this enigmatic admirer of yours; you wish to know why something about him (you feel, somehow, that it is a ‘him’) feels almost familiar. If nothing else, you enjoy the creative interplay. 

You raise your brush to the page, and continue the poem. 

—Where is respite found?

—Asks the cowering sinner

You read over the line once, twice. Something, a niggling feeling in the deeper recesses of your mind, is beckoning to you, inviting you to wonder at this choice of words.

It feels like your partner is hinting at you, playing with you much in the same way you do with your own audience. You wonder what the clue may be, return to the previous lines you have composed together, come to a tentative hypothesis. 

You think you know the direction in which to guide this inquiry. 

—Shed of virtue’s mask

—Like young blossoms in summer

—Trembling in fear of cyclones.

You return the letter to the noticeboard. Over a week has passed already; what began as a favour on a whim has grown into a routine, even a commitment. 

There is room yet remaining on the paper for one more stanza; one final chance to crack the code, to solve the puzzle laid out for you. This method itself, you acknowledge, is a clue. 

You feel much like Hasegawa, the protagonist of A Thousand Boughs of Sakura; reading between the lines and hunting down scant hints to identify the criminal before it is too late. (In your novel, the criminal turns out to be an old acquaintance.)

The difference is that you are no detective; merely an author, a poet. Your skills reside in capturing the immaterial, not assimilating the real. 

Even so, the opening line of the final stanza gives you confidence that you are on the right track.

—What is a cyclone?

—But that which intuits vice 

—Wielding intellect 

—Catching arrows with bare hands

—Leaving no buds to fester.

My, what a beautiful poem we have composed! Our hearts must truly beat in harmony with one another. Your intellect is as sharp as I remember. 

Midnight, tonight. I will see you at the usual spot.

——————

The letter does not specify where you are to meet, nor does it need to. Since childhood, there has only been one location you frequented enough for its significance to become instinctual. You head toward the coastline, where there grows a certain sakura tree overlooking the shore, identified by its gnarled trunk which is twisted with age. 

There is a reclining silhouette already outlined against the tree when you arrive. Perhaps the details have changed here and there—the height, the clothing—but the figure itself, you could not mistake for the world. 

In unmarked silence, you join Shikanoin Heizou beneath the sakura tree. 

For a time, neither of you speak. What is there to say? You have not seen each other in years. Circumstances, not to mention your own selves, have altered within the rift of time you have spent apart. The last time you met was in the early moments of adulthood, when he took on the mantle of a detective and your aptitude for writing began to raise you into company higher than anticipated. 

Thinking back on it now, you never said a proper goodbye; he simply had to leave one day, and subsequently you drifted out of each other’s lives through no devices of your own, as a cloud disperses into smaller fragments and is scattered on the wind. You never received any letters from him, either; it did not occur to you to send one of your own (and if you had, how were you to know where to send it?). But you never forgot him—Archons, never. 

The fact that he is here now gives you hope that he did not forget about you, either. 

The silence grows, deepens, becomes uncomfortable. Somebody will have to take the first step; and this time, it is your turn. You run your tongue over dry lips. 

“What a surprise it is to see you here, Heizou.”

For all of your usual eloquence, any skill with words has abandoned you now. You feel exposed and frightfully inexperienced, like you are sitting at an empty page in your father’s study, wondering how to compose your first haiku. 

He smiles, and the world is stable again. “Not much of a surprise, I’m afraid. You figured me out.”

“You wanted me to,” you reply, and you find yourself falling into a rhythm of effortless exchange similar to the renga game—except this time, you are not separated by ink and paper, but face to face. The interaction feels easy, like the rift of time between you is nothing at all. 

You ask, “What were your reasons for approaching me through letters, rather than directly? Diverting as your puzzles were, surely it should have been far simpler to greet me in person, not wait until now.”

“I couldn’t risk speaking with you any earlier, for both of our sakes. Until recently I was part of an undercover investigation, and had I been recognised, the confidentiality of the case may be compromised. And on your end, I figured it would be embarrassing for somebody of such high standing as yourself to be seen hanging around somebody like me.”

Something is off. His explanation is sound, but there’s a matter he hasn’t addressed. “A letter signed with one’s name alone ought to be privacy enough—yet it was your choice to remain anonymous,” you point out.

Another smile lifts the corner of his mouth, this time a touch meek. His eyelashes lower as he glances downwards. “Would you rather the honest answer, or the one which will flatter me?”

“Offer me first the flattery,” you propose, “and only the honesty if I fail to decipher the truth myself.”

“My intention was to test your discernment. I remember our childhood battles of wits fondly, but after such a long time, I wasn’t sure how your character held up. So much time spent in high society can change somebody; I wanted to know whether you were still the same person I knew before taking any action to introduce myself.”

“Am I still the same person?” you ask out of interest. 

“Of course you are.” The reply is so quick, comes so naturally, that it warms you. 

So, that is the flattery. 

You scrutinise the man in front of you; his posture (the way he leans against the tree trunk, yet drums his fingers on the wood), his expression (how his eyes glance between you and the floor, like he’s just as shy and skittish as you are, perhaps even more so), his explanation (which is obviously false—he read your works, meaning he must have been aware at least to an extent of your personal development).

“And the truth,” you conclude after a careful period of reflection, “is that you were afraid. Afraid that, after all this time, I would hold towards you feelings of contempt for leaving so abruptly. You did not sign your name in fear that my knowing your identity would provoke me to be hostile, or to rebuke your advances.”

“And would you have done so?” 

“I never thought ill of you, Heizou,” you say. When you say his name, his eyes widen by a touch, brighten a little. “Not once, even if I tried to. And…” You sigh, leaning back against the tree beside him. “You may comfort yourself with the fact that I was afraid, too.”

Heizou looks away, in thought. Silence settles upon you once more. This time, you are comfortable in it. Yes; there is comfort in having Heizou standing beside you once again, close enough that, should you wish, you could…

(He flexes his hand, and you know you are thinking of the same thing. Neither of you act. It’s still too soon, too hasty, to go there yet. You want to get to know him again, from the beginning, before going there.) 

“Is it really true, that you read all of my novels?” you blurt. 

“Every single one,” he replies in earnest. 

You scratch your neck. “Was it… ahem, was it obvious that Hasegawa was based on you?”

“I did notice some similarities, yes,” Heizou admits with a chuckle. “In fact,” he continues, a smirk beginning to creep onto his face, “if my memory serves me correctly, you describe him as handsome no less than seven times.”

Heat rushes to your face. You cough into your first, and Heizou laughs again, the sound full and bright and everything you’ve missed in the last few years of your life. 

“Don’t worry—you were subtle in every other part of the story. I wasn’t exaggerating in my initial praise, you know. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such attention to detail in the narration as well as the plot itself. It really is extraordinary.” 

You’re accustomed to receiving praise from fan letters and colleagues, but getting it from Heizou feels different, somehow; it feels more valuable, more real. “Thank you,” you smile, suddenly all bashful and self-conscious again. He smiles back. You have to look away.

“What do you plan to do now, then?” you ask, changing the subject to something less involved with yourself. “I assume your incredibly-confidential, undercover-agent case is over.”

“I’ve been considering staying here for a while—until another case comes up, at least.” Now he’s the one to look away. A slight hint of red dusts his cheeks, a shyness reveals itself in the upturned corners of his lips, and his voice takes on a softer, more self-conscious note. “This might be a little presumptuous of me, but… I was thinking that I could stay with you. If you’d have me.” 

Your reply is so quick, comes so naturally, that it warms you. 

[dapperrokyuu]

RULER OF MY HEART (Studio LICO | Alien Stage: Round 5 Song) - English Translyrics

Hi! Alien Stage BANGER? Time to make lyrics! Not much to say other than Round 5 has Changed Me(TM) and the fact that Ruler of My Heart sounds so good doesnt help, lol. Now we can sing along with society's prince, Luka... *tosses him like a hacky sack in my mind* AND OUR LOVELY MIZI, UWAHHH-

As always, feel free to use, as long as you credit me! If anyone wants further thought process clarification for any lyrics, feel free to ask too! I have notes under the Read More to that end and some alternative lyrics as well! Have a wonderful day, fellas!

Translation Base: Captions in original video.

You can turn away from– You can even outburn– The light and sun, my star.

You’re the perfect subject, With the whole world within Those saddened eyes of yours.

My savior is such a beautiful soul… I don’t believe. You’re a liar. When our darkness starts to overlap each other, Let me take it all away…

Ruler, ruler of my heart, Ruler, ruler of my heart, Ruler, ruler of my heart,

Your beauty is eternal.

Ruler, ruler of my heart, Ruler, ruler of my heart, Ruler, ruler of my heart…

The walls are so endless… It’s a fall with no ground.

In a single moment, breaking down–

My sight comes to an end, My ears start to go deaf. Collapsing, my world.

My savior, such a beautiful lady…. Make me your god, I can give you everything. When our darkness starts to overlap each other, Let me take it all away…

Ruler, ruler of my heart, Ruler, ruler of my heart, Ruler, ruler of my heart,

Your beauty is eternal.

Ruler, ruler of my heart, Ruler, ruler of my heart, Ruler, ruler of my heart…

— Break —

Ruler, ruler of my heart, Ruler, ruler of my heart, Ruler, ruler of my heart…

Ruler, ruler of my heart Ruler, ruler of my heart Ruler, ruler of my heart…

---

NOTE 1: First stanza was the most awkward to make and probably still is the most awkward in general. But I couldnt think of an alternative thats without even more awkward sentence structure. And I think it works out in terms of Luka uncomfortably dogpiling Mizi with compliments, while also calling her “The light and sun, my star.”

NOTE 2: Sad vs. saddened has an odd difference in nuance in my mind but using a synonym for sad felt more jarring and excessive. Left it as is because it does get the point across, and maybe its just me overthinking it, lol.

NOTE 3: Ive considered changing “I don’t believe. You’re a liar.” to something like “Dont believe it,” or “Dont believe you,” but I try not to change lyrics that are already in English. I also think the awkwardness serves to portray Mizi’s state (of struggling to sing) in Round 5 very well and that there may be some intentional play on words of taking the “You” from “You’re” to finish the first phrase, so it works out.

NOTE 4: The original translation of “The endless walls / A fall with no ground” is actually pretty interesting to ponder about and I encourage others to do so about Luka’s character!

At first, I personally interpreted it as walls being obstacles to a goal, in which, no matter how much you overcome, there is another to face. And then the fall part is simpler to understand and just illustrates the hopelessness and despair of such a situation.

Thinking more, I considered joining the two lines and perceiving the walls' ���endlessness” in terms of “height,” which would be why the fall would be perceive as "with no ground." Even if you were to overcome and stand at the top of such a wall (potentially referring to Luka’s position as a winner of Alien Stage), the situation is terrifying. And of course, falling from such a height (dying) is terrifying too. So this lyric could refer to how Luka views life as terrible either way (theres no winning) and/or that, despite his “advantageous position,” he’ll never be able to properly overcome his circumstances as a human pet.

Anyways! *kicks my feet* I translated the wall line as ambiguous to either interpretation because the ambiguity is likely the intention and I think theres value in all those takes.

ALTERNATIVE LYRICS (Line 9 and 27): “When our darkness overlaps onto each other” You have to pause on the “o” in “overlap,” which is a bit awkward. The current lyric works out well since the syllable that needs to be paused on is a single word (“starts”). This line rhythmically was probably the most difficult to tackle, haha.

ALTERNATIVE LYRICS (Line 14 and 32): “Your beauty is forever.” As someone who prefers not deviating from a translation as much as possible, to be frank, that just sounds bad, imo, lol. But if you prefer that option, go for it, I guess!

ALTERNATIVE LYRICS (Line 21 and 22): “I will lose all my sense / I will go blind and deaf” I enjoyed the first half implying that one’s losing their “mental” sense (mind), but felt that it deviated from original meaning too much.

If youve read this far, thank you for listening, haha! Again, have a wonderful day! c:

[aspoonofsugar]

Inside

Inside A new me, I'm ready But who will I find? Inside I've gotta let go but could I lose my mind?

So, we are midway through our journey in volume 9...

Let's see if we can understand something more about the opening song, shall we?

In short, I think it is obvious now the song describes the idea of ascension and (probably) Ruby's feelings when it comes to this practice. The refrain keeps mentioning Ruby's main conflict. The need to let go of herself, but also the fear of who she is deep inside.

There is the hope of finding an easy way out. And the fear of discovering one's real identity.

That said, the interesting parts are the other stanzas, which are slowly acquiring more meaning as we discover more about the story.

Let's focus for example on the second part of the song:

Waves of gold overwhelm my senses A fire blooms Why should I fight to connect with a world I cannot exhume?

(Trusted love) That world is ungrateful A family estranged (Hatred won) What I'd give in exchange To be happy without trying

To her tree

The first stanza reminds me of the Blacksmith. After all, it mentions gold and a fire:

The Blacksmith forges new selves. She turns metals into gold and brings them to a new level of refinement and perfection (alchemy). And she does so through fire obviously. So, it is not farfetched to think these lines are describing the process of ascension from the point of view of someone experiencing it.

The second stanza describes Ruby's feelings over losing in Atlas (trusted love, hatred won) and how she is slowly losing hope. That said, there is an interesting tidbit about michrocosm and machrocosm:

That world is ungrateful A family estranged

The world (Salem) and the family (Summer). Ruby's 2 main burdens. The external conflict and the internal one. It is to escape both Ruby is thinking about ascension:

What I'd give in exchange To be happy without trying

Still, she is clearly misinterpreting what ascension really is about. It is supposed to be transformation through acceptance and not falling apart through oblivion.

Finally, this part still has two rather mysterious verses:

Why should I fight to connect with a world I cannot exhume?

What is the song talking about here? The macrochosm or the microchosm? The word world seems to suggest former, but the very final verse gives us an alternative interpretative key:

Inside our worlds unwind

A world can also be someone's inner universe, which I think is the case here. Exhume means to unbury. The world Ruby doesn't want to dig up is her own personal world. What's inside of her.

And then we arrive to:

To her tree

This verse is sang by a chorus. The chorus with the exception of the (trusted love) and (hatred won) seems to be relating Alyx's story. For example, let's consider the first part:

Sinking down into depths of nowhere I am undone Clasping tight onto memories I know They'll be overrun

(By a girl) We must live with balance But balance is blind (Lost her world) Vengeance is a riptide In a fairy tale, she'll find

Once again these two stanzas seem to describe for the most part the process of ascension. Losing yourself into nothingness and losing all your memories. The second stanzas specifically conveys anger and the idea of revenge. I wonder is this is meant to refer to Neo, as a mirror of Ruby's internilized anger. Or something. Still, the parts in parenthesis are the most interesting ones:

By a girl - Lost her world

To this we add:

In a fairy tale, she'll find - To her tree

The majority of the song is sung in first person. It is I or we, at most. It is not difficult to imagine Ruby singing it to herself, given her current state in the series. Still, some parts are just she. As if there is a story within the story. Alyx's. Or someone else's?

Is the she still Ruby? And others are simply commenting on her pain? This might be the case for Lost her world and In a fairy tale, she'll find. What about memories overrun by a girl? Is this a reference to how Ruby herself may choose to overrun her own memories? Or is the one overriding memories someone else? Someone who can say the tree is hers?

Has Alyx become the tree herself? Has she ascended into the tree? Or is maybe the tree and the she the Blacksmith?

Time will tell :P

Also, obviously this might all be wrong :''') Not all songs and not all parts of a song are meant to have a plot-related meaning. Inside is pretty clear thematically and it might just convey the idea of a story within the story and RWBY's struggle to reach the tree.

[thebaffledcaptain]

Music of the Revolutionary Century: How Stands the Glass Around

The first tune in this series is possibly my favorite Revolutionary War tune (made known to me by Brandon F—he has a great video on it if you're interested), though to call it such would technically be a bit of a stretch. The song first appears, to our knowledge, in a 1729 opera called "The Patron," but earned the alternate name "General Wolfe's Song" when it was allegedly sung by General Wolfe the night before his death at the Plains of Abraham during the Seven Years' War. Now, he probably didn't sing it, all things considered, but it's no question why it would have been associated with so morbid an event—it's a remarkably morbid song in itself. I find the last stanza particularly haunting:

'Tis but in vain I mean not to upbraid you, boys 'Tis but in vain For soldiers to complain Should next campaign Send us to Him that made us, boys We’re free from pain But should we remain A bottle and kind landlady Cures all again

The Druids do a suitably haunting version (the entire album is excellent but unfortunately only available on Youtube), which I choose specifically because I feel it's the most faithful to the actual context in which it would have been sung (I'm fond of John Townley's version, as well, but it's a little more upbeat). Here, stripping it down to the vocals and the churchly four-part harmony (the phrases feel a little more isolated, perhaps resigned, because they each cadence into themselves, whereas in Townley's version they lead harmonically into one another), it feels eerily evocative: four soldiers sitting around a fire in the chill night air, knowing that in the cold brightness of the morning they will march into the valley of blood and death... any significance they've ascribed to their own lives has been chipped away over time by their impassive, grueling reality, leaving them with only the nihilistic freedom of knowing they have nothing left to lose.

[obaewankenope]

The thing I learned when analysing poetry in high school English Literature class was that it depended entirely on your own experiences and perspective. Of course there was the Syllabus Approved Answers to things but, largely, if you can look at the material and use it to justify or support your perspective, you're gonna get a good mark on your exam. At least, that's what I got and I largely didn't bother with the "conventional" arguments and explanations.

When reading poetry, it's important to recall that you may not be the audience that poem is meant for but you're still an audience. That means that your interpretation is still valid and if you can look at that poem and go "okay that third line in the second stanza makes me think of this thing (x) and not that thing (y) my teacher says it should, how can I argue my perspective instead?" and usually, the answer is simple:

Metaphor.

Symbolism.

Personal. Feelings.

Literature analysis is subjective and dependent on what you have been through, read, experienced, and how you think. There can be a "right" analysis that comes from the author themselves, and every other analysis is simply "different" or "an alternative perspective/analysis".

For example, The Last Duchess by Robert Browning is a poem that forever sticks in my brain from high school. By and large, it's basically just a poem about a noble going on about his late wife who he felt was just too... Unsuited to being a good representative of his family and his status (as a Duke). There's implications that she was easily impressed, unreliable, possibly unfaithful, and that the Duke was/is a possessive, jealous, objectifying individual.

A feminist reading of the poem would centre on how the poem is an example of how women were perceived at the time the poem was based. Late 1700s if my memory serves (it may not). With how a woman is meant to act as an accessory to her husband, especially with nobility. There is a crassness to the poem when the Duke talks about his late wife and her "flighty" nature:

She had

A heart—how shall I say?— too soon made glad,

Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

Sir, ’twas all one!

It sounds flowery and like nice prose but a feminist reading can easily go "he thought she was sleeping around/unfaithful and thus this is a shameful thing that he brings up with a stranger who saw the painting (after the Duke purposefully points it out) and shows the Duke has no respect or regard for his late wife or women in general for how casually he remarks on something that, in terms of polite society, would be impolite and even crude to discuss with a stranger".

That reading, btw, is one I generally agree with.

A more neutral reading of the same lines could argue that the Duke saw his late wife as vapid, or easily impressed by compliments but that she lacked any suitable political skills or sense for the position of Duchess. Again, the exact same lines could suggest this, especially: "Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er / She looked on, and her looks went everywhere." Essentially, this differing reading could argue that the Duke cared for how inept his late wife appeared to others, how easily led she was, and the negative impact that had on him and his position. Again, it relates back to his worth and his value, and using the Duchess as a tool to measure the Duke's worth and status.

And for both of these readings of the poem, the following lines can be used as supporting evidence:

She thanked men—good! but thanked

Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked

My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name

With anybody’s gift.

Reading #1: suggests she "thanked" men in particular by having extra marital affairs and considered these more important than the status and prestige an inherited, landed name affords her husband (but not necessarily herself, as, like the name, the Duchess only has value to the men in her life, especially her husband who benefits from both his landed title, name, and having her as his 'arm candy' to show off).

Reading #2: the Duchess was free with her kindness and friendliness, even to those below her "station" and the Duke thought this insulting to his family name and his position as a Duke. This pulls in classicism and traditionalist ideology of the belief that the common people were unworthy of respect or value unless they attained wealth, education, and better breeding which the nobility and upperclasses valued.

Both readings are valid and both readings would get you good points in an exam. I can't quite recall which reading I did but I'm pretty sure I spent most of my exam time ripping into the Duke and chatting shit about historical classicism and the societal devaluing of women as possessing their own agency and value.

Either way, I got high marks because my reading differed from what my teacher had been angling my class towards and I used the poem and additional knowledge to back up my perspective.

So yeah.

Any analysis of a poem, a piece of literature, any sort of media that is consumed or created, can be argued for if you're able to use the material and additional knowledge to back it up.

Hello, sir! I'm annotating and interpreting one of your poems, "Conjunctions", for an assignment. Do you have any advice on how to go about dissecting this work, or poems in general? Thanks much. :)

Read it silently to yourself. What's it about?

Then read it aloud. What do the sounds do? What kind of verse is it? Are there things the words do when spoken aloud that you weren't expecting?

What's the overall effect of the poem? How do the things in the poem add up to create that effect? Where were you at the start of the poem? Where did it leave you?

What do you think it was about?

[mynewfancyblog]

Poetry

Link to the poem: Chemistry Anonymous by Claire Burch | Poetry Magazine (poetryfoundation.org)

“Chemistry Anonymous” by was a poem written in 1946 by the American poet Claire Burch. The literary piece represents morbid experiences, bonds, and distress.

Considering that the work was created just after World War II ended, it is not surprising that it is about that tragedy. Overall, the poet connects the war to chemistry with a metaphor, explaining that it is impossible to truly understand either without direct, often visual experience (“The chemistry of war is hard to know… I only saw its dark results one morning, there is a lot to learn; I am learning”).

Additionally, the poet connects soldiers in war to elements with the phrase “the… fiction that men are brothers.” Most elements will react with each other, but those bonds can be strong, weak, or even explosive. The war acts as a unifying cause that elevates nationalism, but irony is that the soldiers fighting are still not attached to each other in any specific way. This connects to how compounds can be formed and decomposed repeatedly as long as the conditions are right, and considering that this is regarding a morbid event, death could absolutely be the condition for separation. 

The next stanza states “Go find small comfort in the ground or in a greater chemistry! He dies…” This paints a picture of how poorly the people were coping, and how they only want answers, only to portray the harsh image of death shortly after. It doesn’t matter how much you know, or even how much you prepare, death could still be implement. This is specially relevant for the specific time period as the threat of a nuclear scare was becoming more common for the governments and the public. Even earlier, the haunting line “Mysterious. I never saw it grow” shows how quick the violent, gruesome actions happen, with or without us.

Finally, the poem closes with “There is no mystery but that of wrong on the long shadowed beaches of the young” which symbolizes two things. The first is that the deaths are happening at places that would previously be considered innocent, and the young men in the war go through improper funerals by being buried in the sand. Though alternatively, it shows the emotional detachment of the poet, as with how the tide comes onto the beach and almost resets it, the land being fought on is similar. There’s people there until there aren’t, and the cycle resumes over the desire for more territory. In the end, it connects back to a chemistry lab, no matter what is done during an experiment, all of the chemicals are disposed, the glassware is cleaned, and it seems like nothing happened there at all.

(447 words)

[bandsanitizer]

okay okay but like high and place in me as complementary songs for so many reasons.

starting off with the epistolary-adjacent feel. like they aren’t letters but there’s this aspect to their sound that gives this pre-recorded message imagery to the song. that luke was aiming for a voice mail vibe with place in me which he absolutely nailed. then with high there’s that vinyl record crackle going on that conveys this sense of playing something recorded. then added to the lyrics in both songs being written towards a certain person but progressing in a way that also conveys time passing.

notably verse one of high says “today” and “waking up” then the chorus hits and there the use of “mornings” in verse two before back into the chorus and repetition is used a lot throughout the song. similarly, place in me uses a bit of repetition particularly with the first two verses/stanzas with “hold on” and “with eyes wide open” into the chorus with “call me in the morning” (which another parallel is luke’s use of mornings/waking up in both songs) and then the third/middle verse “how many chances does it take?”

and then speaking of the that verse there’s the line “no words left to play on” in place in me which when you look at high’s lyrics plus the music&production, there’s a bit of word play going on in the chorus with high/highly and lie/like, along with the song getting higher when “high” is sung.

so considering the continuity of place in me coming after high, and high being something narcissistic—with recognition of mistakes (“I need to stop letting me down”) there’s a lack of apology and it’s pretty arrogant—compared to place in me where there’s recognition of the mistakes in a different form along with apology (“I’m sorry that I let you down”). plus the lyrics in place in me: “now with my eyes wide open / I’m nothing but a fake” if we consider high to be this post break-up bordering angry/denial “I know I did something wrong but I just want you back” then place in me is along the lines of the grief of post break-up that still focuses on mistakes but “I know I did something wrong but I’m afraid to lose you” with a key difference being high assumes a state of affection of liking of “this is you losing me” while place in me with the ending is like “I don’t know how to be without you. please don’t go”

and I think about this in terms of growth. that these could easily not be break-up songs and more of “we got into a really bad argument” songs. and I think about what it implies to go from this state of feeling like you changed so that makes you almost deserving of forgiveness? this “well now i’m just disappointing myself” whereas place in me is focused outwards on “oh i hurt you.” and particularly with “i never meant” repeated in the opening of the verses it’s this sense of “oh I hurt you. I didn’t intend to, but I still did. and then I reacted poorly.” that the poor reaction (“I’m so apathetic”) could even be a reference to high itself? and place in me is recognizing the shit apology that was and offering this in place. that it’s still equally along the lines of some level of maybe they don’t deserve this so why ask? but it’s way less self-centric about it and even though it is, it’s still something mroe genuine. more thoughtful. less narcissistic and more of “I know I’m really caught up in my mistakes right now and I’m sorry but I’m trying so please stay”

and I guess for a running theme of wfttwtaf being what luke describes in slip away where there’s fears of them leaving and this need for him to run away, it’s like place in me is that inbetween. it’s him catching himself in the midst of walking away from his mistakes bc “what can I do? how could I possible change?” and as the person the songs are directed to leave in this “please stay. please be patient with me” and then go into bloodline and the whole “your heart can’t keep a vacancy for me / only you know how long you’ve got to go” where overall it’s grappling with this understanding that he probably couldn’t handle another person leaving but also doesn’t know if he’s worth sticking around for/deserving of the patience that sticking around takes.

so like with “when facing the things we turn away from” it’s facing the mistakes instead of running away—for both people in the relationship and analyzing where to go from there, which is almost essentially what comedown is. it’s this eventual give into the fact that you cant keep running and the acceptance of however things go from here is how it is meant to go. and back to place in me and high, place in me is an interesting comparison in how much those songs do and don’t differ. that high is self-centered and naracissitic while place in me is within a similar realm of something selfish but not how high is. and both struggle with this idea of “I made mistakes but I don’t want you to leave so how do I get you to stay?”

alternative idea is going from high’s “I called to tell you that I’m changing” but they don’t answer and the voicemail aka place in me is left but by the time he’s finished with the voicemail it’s back to the angry/bitter sort of pain that pulls out the feeling of “but you don’t have enough respect to see me try”

[keshetchai]

I need you to seriously consider that you are comparing me saying "this phrase being added to the end of the Ashkenazi minhag haggadah is not dependant on Medinat Israel or Zionism, and also has obvious religious meaning," to the coerced complicity of death camp inmates in the genocide of our people.

Do you realize how absolutely ungrounded in reality that sounds? Or do you honestly believe anything I said is in any way comparable to a system designed to terrorize fellow Jews?

Also hey I can also look at this sefaria sheet that rightfully points out Ha-Levi didn't invent this phrase. That's what "one of" means. There are earlier variants.

Ha-Levi’s poetic phrase – “Next year in Jerusalem” – is one of the very earliest instances of it in extant Jewish sources. A variation, “in Jerusalem next year,” appears in an eleventh-century piyyut for Shabbat ha-Gadol composed by the French Rabbi Joseph ben Samuel Bonfils, known in Hebrew as Yosef Tuv Elem, attested in Ashkenazi Mahzorim through the modern period. (Bonfils also authored Hasal Siddur Pesach, which was later incorporated into the conclusion of the Passover Seder. Even though in most contemporary Haggadot “Next year in Jerusalem” immediately follows Hasal Siddur Pesach, these two passages’ inclusion into the Haggadah seem to have unconnected histories — “Next year in Jerusalem” was included earlier, and at first they were two separate Seder customs.) Some early Geniza documents use the phrase “Next year in Jerusalem” as well, often as a formulaic wish or greeting – including in a letter about Judah ha-Levi’s arrival in Alexandria on his way to Jerusalem in 1141!

And hey, since you're soooooo worried about historicity, did you spend two seconds thinking about the fact that this phrase ISN'T universally formalized in haggadot?

The custom of concluding the Seder by reciting “Next year in Jerusalem” became more widespread with time, almost the default practice, especially by the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when Jewish communities all over the world had easier means of sharing texts and traditions. Its meaning was adapted to numerous contemporary circumstances and contexts. Yet in many Haggadah traditions it was never added, and in some it was deliberately omitted.

Or hey what about the fact that the temple is still a major feature of Yom Kippur? Did you....just forget that? Or do you not understand how Yom Kippur as a holiday relates to the Temple? I think you're fixating on my identifying passover as a temple festival to the point of missing the forest for the trees.

Jews of all backgrounds are familiar with the phrase “le-shanah ha-ba’ah bi-Yerushalayim,” “Next Year in Jerusalem.”[i] It makes two appearances annually in Jewish liturgy: at the conclusion of the Passover Seder and at the conclusion of the Ne’ilah service of Yom Kippur. Although the phrase is not found in any Hazal sources, it appears in sources from the early Rishonim. The custom to say “Next year in Jerusalem” on Passover existed as early as the 13th century,[ii] and the phrase itself appears even earlier in piyyutim (liturgical poems) for both Passover and Yom Kippur.[iii]

R. Yosef Tuv Elem, living in 11th century France, wrote a piyyut named “A’amir Mistatter,” which was adopted as the yotser for Shabbat Ha-Gadol. It consists of 25 stanzas, which alternate between describing God’s creation of the world, His miraculous redemption of the Jews from Egypt, and His future redemption of the Jews from their exile. The final two stanzas, which end with the phrase, “In Jerusalem next year,” describe the ultimate restoration of the Temple service: “The whole-hearted who wish to make Him great/ with joy will He lead them to His Temple/ There all of Israel will serve Him// Raise Your wondrous arm/ To gladden the nation which suffered/ In Jerusalem next year.”[iv]

And

R. Yosef Tuv Elem’s piyyut draws a parallel between the lines, “There [in the Temple] all of Israel will serve Him” and, “In Jerusalem next year.” This juxtaposition clarifies what Jews hope will occur in Jerusalem next year; namely, that the Temple service will be restored and Jews will gather there to serve God. In R. Yehudah ha-Levi’s piyyut, “Next year in Jerusalem” is the phrase which God uses to declare the end of the Jews’ exile. The fact that “Next year in Jerusalem” appears in two piyyutim in prominent places – the concluding lines of a stanza – shows that neither author created or popularized the line himself; the phrase was already well known among the Jewish community and each paytan merely shaped the refrain into his piyyut.[vi]

&

Although Jews pray each day for their immediate redemption, “Next year in Jerusalem” signifies something more – their longing for the return of the holiday sacrifices. Yom Kippur and Passover are unique in the Jewish calendar because, more than any other holiday, their fundamental identities are inherently and integrally bound to the Temple service.

"The Meaning of Next Year in Jerusalem," April 14th, 2014. I guess Kol Hamevaser: The Jewish Thought Magazine of the Yeshiva University Student Body is ALSO full of pick-me ahistorical kapos now!

By the way, since everyone seems to find it impossible to imagine that this phrase isn't universal to the haggadah text despite it originally being an Ashkenazi minhag thing specifically, here's a contemporary alternative that is fairly well known!:

It's Rabbi Arthur Waskow's The Freedom Seder. Liberation Now! Next year in a world of freedom. Waskow wrote it in response to current events:

In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King was planning to take part in a Passover Seder with the family of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched and prayed and struggled alongside him against racism and militarism in America. But ten days before the Seder, Dr. King was murdered, called across a different river to a different Land of Promise.

His death called forth a Black uprising in many American cities, followed by the US Army's armed occupation of many inner-city communities, including my neighborhood in Washington DC.

Walking past the [US] troops as I prepared for that Passover 41 years ago, I was overwhelmed to find myself feeling and thinking, "This is Pharaoh's Army!"

&

During the years since 1969, the original Freedom Seder has seeded a great harvest of new versions of the Seder that have spoken to many forms of freedom: feminism, peace between Israelis and Palestinians, ending the danger of nuclear holocaust, achieving eco-sanity, solidarity with Latin American movements against tyrannical rulers, personal spiritual liberation and more.

(This is actually text from "Seder for the earth.") This is, by the way, almost certainly a direct influence on the haggadah you reference.

And some other examples that have nothing to do with anti-zionist specific Seders!:

There's also the American Jewish world Service (AJWS)'s "next year in a more just world!" Which STILL includes "next year in Jerusalem."

Jewish World Watch's Uyghur Freedom Seder uses "next year may we all live in freedom in our homes and homelands!'

HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) also adds a blessing beforehand:

And hey that haggadah you refused to link? Well I did look it up myself and:

Oh, it literally still says the words next year in Jerusalem in there. Almost like they weren't denying the phrase exists and predates Zionism. Almost like my point that people are clearly dunking on a strawman because they don't actually look at what they are criticizing is proven.

And look, I don't like JVP, I have my own criticisms, but since THAT was the Seder that I originally saw being snidely criticized, I regret to inform everyone playing "gotcha!!!" that their Nirtzah looks like this:

Wowee!!! it says "next year in Jerusalem," in the anti-zionist JVP Seder. on purpose even! Because it's not dependent on political Zionism or contemporary right wing Israeli nationalism. Whodathunkit!?

I think the silliest thing about: "how can you do an anti-zionist Seder?? It ends with next year in Jerusalem! What are u gonna say, NEXT YEAR IN BROOKLYN?? /loud scoffing"

— is that it's just obviously the stupidest pile of words strung together. Like gee, idk:

The seder ends with "L'Shana Haba'ah B'Yerushalayim," and the haggadah text is over 1,500 years old. Do you think Zionism is equally as old somehow?

Do you think Zionism owns the Jewish connection to Jerusalem?

Do you think Jerusalem completely stopped existing at any point since the fall of the second temple?

Are you confused about Jerusalem continuing to exist, whether or not you are any flavor of Zionist?

do you genuinely believe that if the government of Medinat Israel was dismantled completely tomorrow, and it was fully a Palestinian state, or it was a new binational state, or even if it was two states, or some other thing — do you believe that Jews would simply stop caring about or visiting Jerusalem?

If you don't think Jews would suddenly break a 1,500+ year old tradition of saying "L'Shana Haba'ah B'Yerushalayim," if the state of Israel stopped existing suddenly, then do you think Palestinians would somehow systematically prevent Israeli Jews from doing so? If you believe that, have you considered why you believe they would be able to go from significant disenfranchisement, oppression, and ethnic cleansing directly to being a police state against Jews overnight? What does that say about you? Why is that your assumption? If you believed this, why would you support it? If you don't, then what is the point you are making here?

Basically if we imagined an anti-zionist, post-zionist, or non-zionist future — what, exactly, would be preventing Jews from still saying "L'Shana Haba'ah B'Yerushalayim,"?

Do....do you think Jews only ever moved to Israel was because of Zionism?

Do you not realize the phrase is also indirectly influencing the idea of returning to Jerusalem for pesach for a rebuilt, third temple? Because there is no temple now. So there is no requirement for people to spend the festival in Jerusalem. Are you confused about the fact that we don't currently complete ANY of the pilgrimage festivals, because it's impossible to do so?

Did you think "L'Shana Haba'ah B'Yerushalayim," was a Zionist statement somehow? Why?

[moonnhare]

the beheading of saint valentine

in a recent meeting, i was asked to describe my love language. the answer was easy: i pledge acts of service and relish touch. what i said, verbatim, was that i fall a little in love with anyone who touches me a beat too long. your embrace always lingered.

[a request, a prayer, a red fountain of heat bubbling towards my cheeks. i am terrible at masking emotions! how does one shove a blush down?? you shouldn’t talk, anyway— “don’t bring up abc in voice calls.” hypocrite.]

despite the rather gory occasion, today was not bitter. it was the opposite: filled with caramelized prose, chocolate-soaked stanzas, delicate fruits of fantasy. [arms looped around hips. a cheek turned against throat. racing heart; fingertips and collarbones and bedhead and—fuck— what’s everybody writing down? i think i missed a slide.]

campus was filled with flowers and i was gripped by the urge to buy one for you. unfortunately 900 miles might have left it in an undesirable condition. consider this a valentine— pretend it’s all written on heart-shaped cardstock and lined with lace. pretend i’m scribbling in a child’s writing. pretend a red lollipop is affectionately taped onto the back.

[dearest apologies for the 5:15 disappointment. now you’re starting to look like me! did you think about how we were awake together for a brief moment of time? a moment of overlap. i wish i could have spent it in your arms.]

[note to self: that last part sounded stupid. fuck. think of something better. something original.]

reading “shrimp emotions” between stunning lines of prose certainly caught me off guard, but you have a point. shrimp(s?) are small. life and love are infinitely large.

i like to think loss becomes, eventually, like meditation. [bear with me; this is not grim!] we let a thought in, spend some time with it, ruminate on it, and then, when the hour comes, exhale and let it go. easy as breath. enjoy the thoughtless half-second before the next idea enters, then start the process again. people say meditation gets easier with time. i’m not very good at it yet, but i’m getting better. i’m growing up. imagine all the thoughts we have yet to think— all the people who we will become important to and then lose. we are rooted in memory. love exists in memories. i still think affectionately about everyone i’ve written about [you, fondest of all]. i miss some more than others.

[it’s good to hear that i don’t have to miss her. it feels like it never happened. a clean beheading; not a stain left on the guillotine.]

if you want to tell me, please do. send a letter [a real one, if you want] or call. while on the topic, call any time you need me. [note: i turn my phone silent to sleep. call twice to bypass. i will answer.] i [probably] won’t laugh if the story is this important to you. i will laugh if you need to lighten your burden.

fuck. come over. there has to be a time when you are at home [original] and i am here. i’ll meet you at the train station and make this real. lavender skies remind me of you somehow. i look down at the stars and think warmly of you and this alternate dimension where we are peaceful and loved and perfect. the sky can be wherever we want it to be; we can travel across constellation bridges to a mountaintop where everything is visible: breath, scar tissue, wildfires, and growth, but most importantly, each other. you’ll love it. i love it, so i want to show it to you. i don’t often think a pretty sight is worth a trek, but this one is. [subtext: you are. observation: a couple sat there, pressed close above the city like reigning gods. i burned, i hungered for you.] shrimp emotions: everyday experiences are once in a lifetime. i think that encapsulates something— let me find the words. i think that’s what we write, and how we write, and how we see things. each poem is a unique and repeated experience; an every day occurrence that feels hot and new and so bright i have to shield my eyes when it crests the horizon. [note subject “shrimp emotions” for further investigation. use in future writings]

you are growing. [i am growing.] your pen crests the horizon. it drags over my skin, calling heat and gooseflesh. a low-voiced hymn awakens the old satyr and a flick of the lighter ignites a new god. duality and dichotomy. i’ll be your lab rat, your guinea pig, your caged monkey any day. spring could not come slower [but thoughts of you fill my days— they are flashing by, but i ache to see you. i burn to see you. i don’t know if i’ve felt desire this deep.]

[your kitchen. your hands. the lids of your eyes. my own lids, alight for want of sleep, and myself, alight for want of you. tenderness, softness, desire for early mornings and a tug out of bed. desire to awaken before dawn and fall asleep again, gravitating towards warm bodies like moths to light. cold weather. embrace to stave off the chill. everything spinning through my mind in sleep, in waking, in study, in writing. i want you. i want touch. time passes so damn slow. we should not be so far from each other this fourteenth.]

[theowlandthekey]

Embracing Hel

Embracing Hel

Three roots standon three ways under Yggdrasil’s ash: Hel under one abides, under the second the Hrimthursar, under the third mankind. -Poetic Edda, Grímnismál, Stanza 31

Who is Hel? In the vastness of Norse mythology, she is rarely given much due. She does not go on adventures for glory and fame as many of the other gods do. She does not seem to bother overmuch about the future of the world like Odin, nor does she stir up trouble like her father, Loki. She’s content in her dominion of the death, Niflheim, and seems well placed out of the troubles of men and gods. So much so that it often feels she is neglected when compared to the rest of the pantheon.

Hel is featured as a character only once in the Prose Edda, when the god Hermoor rides to Hel on behalf of Frigg and offers her a ransom for the return of the god Baldr. Hel agrees, stating: “If all things in the world, alive or dead, weep for him, then he will be allowed to return to the Æsir. If anyone speaks against him or refuses to cry, then he will remain with Hel.” Baldr was well loved and so it was thought this would be easy to accomplish. But when the jotunn Þökk refuses to weep, Baldr is consigned to remain in Niflheim in service of Hel.

In nearly all other mythos, Hel is mentioned only in passing, referenced rather than focused on. Every other god gets a myth where they are the protagonist of their own story. So why is Hel overlooked? Because of the fear she inspires at the prospect of a life lived without note or valor? Because her appearance was considered so repulsive that, while acknowledged as a goddess, she was put as far away from Asgard as physically possible so as to avoid offending the others with the sight of her?

As much as I love Norse paganism and link myself to it, I find plenty of people who speak with Odin and Frigg, Loki and Thor. Never once have I met someone who says with a smile that they speak to Hel. That’s fair. How many people do you know talk to Hades or Osiris or Mictlantecuhtli on a regular basis, even among the gothiest of pagans? Why even bring this up at all? Last December (2019), I was doing a Krampus Walk with a bunch of women from the International Wenches Guild. (That’s a whole other story.) At the end of the walk we gathered up in a local alternative religion shop to warm up and grab a few things for the pre-Yule rush. Up on the shelf, something naughty my attention. It was something I'd never seen before in all my years of goblin-like hoarding of witchy stuff. A statue of Hel looked back at me, sitting on a throne with a knife in one hand and a bowl in the other. By her side was a wolf, and her skull seemed to be grinning at me with interest. I went back to that statue three times, telling myself I didn't have the money to be spending on things right now. But when I picked her up to examine her, I knew I wasn't walking out of the store without this statue. I brought her home, placed her on my altar, put a few coins in her bowl, and there she stayed.

And then Covid-19 hit.

I've never been one to rely on religion in times of trouble. It's never done much for me one way or the other. I've long held the belief that witchcraft involves handling your own shit before calling on anything else to help out. But this? This is one of those things that is well beyond the control of most humans to handle alone. It's emotionally exhausting, mentally taxing, and physically dangerous. We're all doing the best we can, wearing masks, sanitizing, washing, distancing, doing all we can to prevent things getting worse despite the best efforts of the world to remind us that we are inevitably only human and the risks are infinite. It's humbling to say the least. So, it's in this time of stress and disorientation that I find myself drawn to Hel.

Family Ties

“The following night the goddess of death appeared to him in a dream standing at his side, and declared that in three days’ time she would clasp him in her arms. It was no idle vision, for after three days the acute pain of his injury brought his end.”

-Gesta Danorum, Saxo Grammaticus (12th century)

Hel's name means 'to hide/to conceal', giving it a cruel humor. She was, after all, respectfully banished from Asgard due to her physical appearance, or perhaps because Odin foresaw her part in future events. She is described as being half blue and half flesh colored, though the depiction has altered over the years to mean half flesh and half corpse. Hel is said to be gloomy, dour, and even fierce looking, which suggests a woman with little time for nonsense within her realm. Despite all this, she is said to have a vast hall called Éljúðnir and many servants as befits her station. Everything that surrounds her seems to speak to the fears of the people who believed in her. She has a bowl called 'Hunger,' a knife called 'Famine,' curtains called 'Misfortune,' and a bed named 'Disease'.

On the plus side, she does have a dog named Garmr, said to be the 'goodest of boys'.

The best of trees | must Yggdrasil be, Skíðblaðnir best of boats; Of all the gods | is Óðinn the greatest, And Sleipnir the best of steeds; Bifröst of bridges, | Bragi of skalds, Hábrók of hawks, | and Garm of hounds.

-Poetic Edda, Grímnismál

Her father, Loki, is well known for his mischief and chaos. But her mother, Angrboda, remains largely overlooked beyond being acknowledged as the mother of Loki's three 'darling' offpsring. Angrboda, being a jotunn, is not well looked upon as the Aesir seemed to find themselves constantly at odds with the jötnar. The Aesir and the Vanir form the two principal tribes of gods within the Norse pantheon, the forces which held the world together and brought forth order in which life could thrive. While the Jotunn were more elemental, primordial beings who were born from chaos and presented challenges to the structured order of the world.

It's important to note that Hel is not the only goddess who fits within the overlap of Norse mythos complex Venn diagram between the Aesir, Vanir, and Jotunn. Loki himself is Jotunn as is Skaði, while Freyr and Frejya are Vanir. However, Hel's connection to Angrboda as her mother and Loki as her father seem to be enough to condemn her in the eyes of the ruling Aesir, as well as make her a subject of fearful respect.

Her brother, Jormungandr, is the infamous Midgard Serpent. The middle child of the brood, Jormungandr was tossed from Asgard by Odinn into the ocean where he was said to grow so large he encircled the earth and bit his own tail. If you're familiar with gnosticism (or Full Metal Alchemist) you would recognize the ouroboros symbolism inherent in the mythos as connecting Jormungandr to the cycle of life, death and rebirth, another primordial concept. At Ragnarok, the serpent will be said to release its own tail and fight Thor, both of them doomed from inception. Thus, the old world will end, and a new cycle will begin.

Fenrir, Hel's younger brother, is likewise doom driven, foretold to devour Odinn at the end of the world only to be killed in turn by Odinn's son Víðarr. The theme of the bound monster, I believe, is connected to the concept of man trying and failing to forestall his own fate. Another primordial concept of change as an inevitability.

And yet there is Hel. Out of all her family she seems to stand alone as the most consistent of her bloodline. The black sheep in a family of black sheep. No sagas recounting her heroic adventures, no epics building to the rise and fall of greatness. Only a goddess fulfilling her function to take in those who died of sickness or old age. It is not known for certain whether she survives or dies during the events of Ragnarok, only that Loki will have 'all Hel's people with him' during the final confrontation.

Symbolism

Throughout my research into Hel's mythos, it's clear she was viewed with begrudging respect by her own people. As a goddess, one couldn't afford to be less than deferential when dealing with her (assuming of course that they dealt with her at all). But how they felt about her can be discerned from the associations given to her through her items and surroundings. I began to collect a series of symbols associated with her. Each one tells us something about how she was perceived among the Norse people, and gives us some interesting modern-day interpretations when applied.

50/50 – In all the descriptions of Hel, she is said to be half flesh and half either discolored or corpse-like. Like most cthonic deities, she has a liminal quality to her, being representative of a transitional state of being. Balancing neatly between life and death, Hel is a crossroads deity, guarding over the boundary lines (though not traditionally associated as such). She has the ability to release those sheltered under her threshold, although she demands a price as is her right. This also puts her squarely in the category of a liminal being, one whose mere existence challenges the social classifications of the time. Liminal beings are often described as both immensely powerful and dangerous, depending upon the situation and perception of society. They are undeniably eerie, and yet inspire awe for the way in which they transcend limitations of the self.

Hel's Hall – Éljúðnir is the hall of Hel, located within Niflheim and aptly named as her realm is said to be barren and cold. It's said to be a mansion, and it would have to be considering that she is responsible for sheltering everyone who didn't die gloriously in battle. Her hall then becomes a symbol of her status, a recognition of her as a goddess with her own realm and duties. With hospitality being such an important social factor to the Norse people, I find myself hard pressed to believe Hel is needlessly cruel to her guests. Like any mead hall, it is a center for social activity as well as her residence, if a somewhat foreboding one.

Hunger, Famine, Misfortune, Disease – It seems Hel is often deemed responsible for all of the troubles that plague humanity. A rather dire proposition, but isn't it better for someone to oversee these things rather than letting them run amok? Given her connection to the primordial forces of chaos, it seems fitting that Hel, the stable one in her family, is relied upon to control the disorder that society faces from time to time. The objects deemed as a part of her entourage are significant to her personality. Even in the modern times, these troubles are never far from humanity’s mind, with much of the world facing them on a daily basis. *A bowl (Hunger) is often symbolic of receptiveness, or of fertility, neither of which seem to fit Hel herself. For many the bowl represents a scrying tool, portending to the future. It's not unusual for cthonic deities to be connected to omens and portends. So, it may well be that the 'Hunger' her bowl represents has less to do with wanting food and more to do with our hunger to know our own fates. An empty bowl representing the unknown fate of humanity as a whole may present as a bit nihilistic, but it does seem to fit. *The knife (Famine) as a tool which represents the ability to defend or attack. A knife can help fix a meal or it can protect a family. In this case, 'Famine' represents not only the absence of plenty, but the seeming inability to provide for one another, thus weakening everyone as a result. Famine is not just about food, it's about the failure to provide. For a society that was heavily reliant upon all of its people to survive day to day, this would have been a terrifying concept.

*The curtains (Misfortune) are used to draw over the windows and shut out the light. This is what 'Misfortune' does. It clouds reason and empathy and makes it difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Curtains can also be symbolic of one’s desire to hide from the world, to shelter themselves or to keep others from finding out something they find shameful. It may feel safe, as if we are only protecting ourselves. But Hel's curtains are, I believe, named Misfortune for the sake of choosing whether or not we draw them closed or open them up.

*The bed (Disease) is often used as a symbol of intimacy or rest. A bed named Disease could also easily be a colorful metaphor for STIs, though in this case I believe it was meant to represent the fear of dying in ones bed of old age or disease, thus missing out on Valhalla. For Hel to have a bed named Disease suggests an unexpected nurturing aspect to the goddess, as the sickbed is often where we find ourselves the recipient of the most care from others.

In this way, I believe Hel's tools exist as a reminder to society that these things will always exist, and that in order to combat them, people must constantly struggle against them to better survive together.

Garmr – Another in the long list of ferocious subterranean hounds associated with cthonic deities, Garmr was said to be her guard dog, standing bloodstained by her side. He is her faithful protector, as well as the guardian to the underworld. The hound is often a symbol of loyalty and ferocity, but in this aspect I believe it relates more to the black dog associations with death and ill omens. Again, I've yet to see anything relating to Hel being a seeress or an oracle of any sort, but there always seems to be some connection between death gods and omens of the future.

Hel in Practice

Change is uncomfortable. Humans have always preferred stability, even if it's inequitable, because we'd rather function in practice than succeed in theory. Hel is a paragon of balance within chaos, affording the opportunity to change and progress through the inherent suffering of life as it is. And yes, I'm aware of how nihilistic that comes off. But here within the instability of our current world, I find a kind of comfort in that rational. Change is eternal. Tomorrow is an unknown. Control what you can and stay by the people you care about. Keep moving. You are not dead yet.

Rune: Hagalaz “Hail”

- The rune of Hagalaz is practically unanimous with misery. Which makes it's appearance less than desirable during a reading or when found in the day to day. That being said, some degree of unfortunate occurrence is unavoidable in life. It is unalterable. However I find it's distinction kind of like finding a crack in a dam. You now know there is a problem. Maybe you can't 'fix' the problem, but you can stem the damage and keep the outcome from being worse than it absolutely has to be. Hagalaz is about weathering the storm and coming out the other side of it knowing the work that must be done.

Realm: Niflheim

- Niflheim is one of the nine realms of Norse Mythology. A world of coldness, fog, and the primordial darkness. Ymir was born here. Hvergelmir, the source from which many rivers flow, begins here. Níðhöggr the dragon/serpent dwells here, gnawing at the roots of the World tree Yggdrasil. So it would seem Niflheim is a a place of beginnings, endings, and ultimately change. According to the mythology this is where those who died too old, too young, or on the sickbed end up. And yet for all it's forbidding geography and weather, Hel is said to be put in charge of caring for those who arrive. Hall: Éljúðnir

- If Hel is meant to care for those who did not die in the glory of battle. Many times we see this as crowds of dead souls wandering endlessly in the freezing mists. But when I think of Hel's hall of Éljúðnir, I think of a place which is a respite from the cold. It is said to be sprayed with snowstorms, meaning that it stands against the raging storms of the realm, providing shelter to those who dwell within. What if her hall stands alongside Valhalla and Fólkvangr? What if she is the world-weary and cunning inn-keeper who offers bread and mead to those brave enough to find their way to her doors?

Appearance: Dour and fierce looking in expression. Half flesh and half dead.

Tools:  knife (Famine) bowl (hunger) curtains (Misfortune) bed (Disease)

Color: black white grey/silver blue dark purple

Animals: wolves/hounds serpents ravens worms

Plants: yew/ash wormwood rosemary mistletoe mustard seed blackthorn

Offerings: tobacco garlic figs mushrooms rye bread black cherries dark chocolate mead coffee, black espresso

[stronghours]

THREE QUEENS OF DOMESTICITY

Ava’s husband Reuben, as Ava informed Domme Lux in the unfinished basement beforehand, had only contributed to the collaring ceremony through draping the gaping drywall with swags of lavender gauze and twinkle lights from Christmas, which blistered the fabric in a damp whimsy Lux hadn’t thought the man capable. But then, Ava said, she had never brought a boy into the household before, and she thought it was only fair to respect Reuben’s distance in the matter. Where he was, she didn’t say. Evey, one of the four usual girls, was already naked but for papery hospitality slippers and trying to tame the blank concrete with a shredded mop. She squeezed the handle to a thin, practical breast each time she lost hope. Her clavicle was tense with little red marks.

Ava sat on her own padded stool applying lotion to her arms as she held court with Lux, Celeste and other colleagues regarding the guest list and particulars. She possessed downy Marilyn Monroe skin and her expression was luminous, while Lux, simultaneously underdressed, clammy, and overheated (it was summer, high noon outside, but Halloweentown below) started to feel the depression sink in. She’d chosen to wear a sleeveless mock turtleneck cinched in via a skintight pencil skirt and knee-high chunk pumps, and it all looked charming enough to her when she texted a picture to Jules. Sexual language arts teacher or Lorelai Gilmore season 1-2? She’d typed. But Jules had been AWOL since Thursday and now Lux had no chaperone and no wisdom. Ava didn’t let it go unremarked.

“It’s June,” she informed, like Lux didn’t know. “So, he’s sucking up to his leather daddies and his drag queens, while the rest of us behave like grown-ups. Correct?”

Guests arrived. Lux decided on strategic retreat and glued her spine to a far swampy corner and gradually became happier to have interpreted the dress code on the conservative side. Ava sent out the invite via her personal newsletter, with the esoteric instruction to dress within the modes of business or pleasure and it became clear of the basement filling nobody had made a collective interpretation. Celeste, shivering underneath her partner’s bomber jacket had prevailed on a frail sundress and the man in front of Lux wore a boxy Uniqlo blazer on top and a polyester jockstrap that read PIG BOY in an eternal ring around the waist. His white ass loomed beneath her line of vision, a sobering reality check to Evey and the other girls kneeling like wraiths up front, their smudged outlines harkening more toward Salo than Ava would ever intend.

Candles were lit. Lux could not get rid of the haunted house excess bringing her mood down, even as Ava, up front on her dais and methodically strapping her bagged up new boy onto his striker frame, vamped in a costumy corset of sectional purple brocade (Jules) opera-length latex mittens (Jules) and slick black shoulder plate and hood of indeterminate material (no doubt made by an enemy of Jules), and if Jules himself would ever show up, as promised, Lux could decide what was worse: Ava mixing materials or mixing designers.

But what was worst above all, she already knew, was that three poems had already been read and Ava was reading one still. She read one stanza per one buckle. Her new boy, before being lowered into his body bag, had read one himself to clarify his submission. His face had been beaky and palling. He had flat blue eyes. She liked him much better totally hidden from view and wondered how a hardline heterosexual like Ava could entertain delicate styles in women but such insipid taste in dudes.

A ray of light split the room like a knife and vanished. A couple people moaned, blinded in one eye. The crowd to Lux’s left grunted and spat, ruffled, then parted. She didn’t notice Jules until he had a cold hand behind her neck. Even with walls on both her sides, he found a blind spot.

He stuck his tongue in her ear, knowing full well she couldn’t shout him down in this scenario. “What’s up sugar,” he said, barely acceptably hushed. “How many poems has it been?”

“And the moonrise over the hill,” Ava recited, yanking a new strap, “Rises in tune – to your mind upon my person – to your body upon my person – to your devotion to my person –”

“It’s been this one for a while,” Lux said. She grabbed him and squashed him to her side. You had to meet Jules nuisance per nuisance when he felt energetic, or he’d trample you to death. When he was overbearing, she preferred him coldhearted, and when he was frosty, she preferred him needy. It was wedding season, and he hadn’t had enough brides to wear him out. “What took you so long?”

“Stopped for food. I’ve been up for uh…thirty-six hours.”

PIG BOY’s head turned back fractionally, then he thought better of looking and faced front.

“Wedding?”

“Shereen Allure made the Miss Continental Elite lineup. She got her hooks in me. She needs an evening gown, an interview moment, talent outfit that’ll stay together through the twenty fucking backflips I know she’ll want to do – baby, sweetie, honey, let me just stone you a fucking leotard, but no, she wants everything to sweep the toes. Insanity.” Jules craned his head around PIG BOY’s shoulder, and, seeing the wild look on his face, she wormed her hand underneath his shirt and pinched his ribs before he could think of speaking above sotto voice.

“Work function,” she warned. “Work function!”

“I wouldn’t go to my boss’s wedding,” Jules said, but he shriveled back into her shoulder obediently. “Gross. What’s she wearing?”

“A couple things of yours.”

“Against medical advice.”

Ava’s boy was buckled in midway up his ribs. They had to last to the neck. Somebody close to the front of the house darted forward to re-light the tea candles extinguished in their little glasses, scattered among Ava’s stilts. Lux thought: Suck-up.

“Cocksucker,” Jules hissed into her neck.

Profound is your sacred neck –

Ava claimed.

And affectionate, my lips, on its nape –

The boy in the bag didn’t judder or wince or squirm or move an inch. If Lux hadn’t been around to watch him step inside it, she would have considered him a mannequin. More guests arrived, fashionably late, and she and Jules alternately jostled the roach hotel between her ankles as they bandied to stay upright. PIG BOY had enough of them and forced his way further into crowd.

“What’s his name, anyway?” Jules asked, of bag-boy.

“Shawn. Mark. Uh…Jake.”

“Fucking John Donne up there has a boner for a goddamn Cody.” Jules wiped his nose on her shoulder. “I can’t breathe down here. Come on, ta-ta.”

The basement door opened into a little cairn staircase and led them blinking into the lawn (a lawn!) a black walnut tree dripping with green baubles (a tree!). Jules assisted her over the porch railing (a porch!) and spanked the dust from the seat of her skirt. They entered the gleaming kitchen, already occupied by Ava and Rueben’s straightest friends who, thin-lipped, met their sangrias with unenthusiasm.

“One thing I will say for Ava,” said a woman wearing a mock turtleneck similar to Lux’s own, “She certainly has…flair.”

A man turned to Jules and asked, helplessly, how long these things lasted. The preliminaries, Jules asked, or the mingling, or the primary ceremony, or the potluck or the afterparty? And while he laid out the etiquette Lux stared at the dustless countertops and the seafoam green cabinets, smooth to the touch, and their silver handles and the tile floor and the padded breakfast nook with its stained glass overhead light and the jazzy track lights situated over the looming kitchen island. Lysol lingered underneath the tawny fumes of a candle labeled CARMEL TRUFFLE SUNDAE and the photo pasted to the candle, she was ashamed to say, made her hungry. A kitchen-aide, which Lux had seen featured in some of Ava’s private photoshoots, gleamed, an untouchable ruby atop a mounted wall cabinet.

Jules’s conversation partner said he had tried to muscle through the ceremony but one of Ava’s slaves (the man himself hedged, politely, and referred to her as Ava’s housemaid) had accidentally brushed him with her nude bosom and he thought, well, better safe than sorry and beat it to safer pastures. “I don’t want to get her in trouble,” he claimed. The sangria was doing nothing to free him from this downward spiral of nakedness.

The mock turtleneck woman held the pitcher out to Lux for a sniff. “It’s virgin,” she pronounced, disgusted.

Jules shifted his backpack into the nook. He removed a pair of purple Easy Spirit pumps, a wad of pantyhose cut off at the thigh, two rolls of duct tape, a greasy paper bag from a Vienna Sausage, a Ziplock of loose bronze eyelets, a lacy bridal bralette and ouvert panty set Lux thought she had permanently lost and finally a half-empty bottle of white rum, which he handed around.

“She and Reuben,” the mock turtleneck woman confided, tit for tat, “Had two cash bars at their wedding.”

“I get it’s a private residence,” the man continued, wide eyed, as he tilted the bottle drop by tiny drop into his cup. “But is the nudity like – mandatory?”

“Don’t be shy,” Jules suggested, happy in his eternal revolving door from Bitch to Hostess. “Really tip that bad boy in there.”

The man turned on Lux, aghast. “Mandatory nudity?”

“Jules,” she said. “Bathroom escort, please.”

The floors were fake grey wood and if they’d been in socks, they would have slipped and slid like newborn colts through a framed gauntlet of Ava and Reuben’s documented civilian life. On the right, a picture of Reuben T-posing against the horizon of the Grand Canyon. On the left, Ava’s Reiki Master III certificate from Sat Nam. A family reunion and matching T-shirts (Ava’s side of the family). A newlywed embrace at the foot of an anonymous waterfall in the Upper Peninsula. She’d seen all this before, well acquainted with the ground floor of Ava’s house, but now she wondered if Zach-Cody-Jake-Shawn, petrified below her feet, was feeling the weight of the roof on his chest like she felt.

Jules, on his own agenda, bypassed the bathroom door which was modestly shut and tugged her toward the staircase.

“Oh shush,” she warned preemptively. “We’re not allowed!” They’d never been upstairs before.

“What? They don’t have a bathroom up there?”

“She’ll know,” Lux said as they tiptoed upward. She imagined their footfalls pounding through the ceiling of the basement and Ava, coolly, directing her eyes toward the ceiling and right up Lux’s skirt.

“If you quit being so aware of her, she wouldn’t be aware of you,” Jules counseled.

Every door upstairs was closed, sanded and paper-smooth and plumbed correctly in their jambs. Her apartment had more in common with Ava’s basement. Melancholy prevented her from noticing Jules bypassing the obvious bathroom door where the shadow of a jailed cat paced and opening another. It was Ava’s and Rueben's bedroom.

“Uh-oh,” Jules said. “What an honest mistake.”

 “Stop, stop, stop,” she begged, dancing backward, but the arrested step of somebody entering the downstairs hallway had her shoving him inside. Jules grabbed her wrist before she could slam the door shut in panic and guided it closed himself, soundlessly.

“Somebody’s coming!” She hissed.

           “Nobody’s coming,” he said. “Not upstairs, at least.”

           Next door, the cat mewed piteously.

           The bedroom, to her surprise, held no accoutrements of Ava’s work at the club, not a stocking on the ground or a corset thrown over the back of a chair. The only suggestion of her taste for grandeur Lux recognized was the four-poster bed and the plum carpet. Even the makeup mirror standing up on the desk was just an electric plastic-framed Conair. The same kind Lux, at 14, had hidden underneath her bed.

Jules touched one of the bedposts. “You think she ever spread-eagles ol’ Rueben on these babies?”

Reuben worked in software. He had a crew cut, no distinguishing features, and upper veneers. When grouped together, he referred to all of Ava’s dommes as you kids. Alone, he called Lux Little Lady and Jules Hey, It’s My Man! Before thumping him with lethal force between the shoulder blades. Lux didn’t want to imagine Ava and Reuben fucking in the four-poster bed. But, on contemplation, she realized it was an impossible task.

She peeked into the master bathroom long enough to confirm Ava installed a whirlpool tub. Jules had already thrown open her closet and was sifting through hangers. He stood rumpled in his flip-flops and she was worried his hands would leave marks.      

“She’ll know someone was snooping.”

“Did she ever notice when you and Celeste moved everything in the dungeon three inches to the left on April Fools?”

Lux sat gingerly on the desk chair. The Conair makeup mirror was still lit, and she checked her hairline, her face, her cleavage (she’d been paranoid for two months that she was shrinking) in the mock turtleneck. In a silver stand-frame was a black-and-white of Ava alone, on her wedding day. She posed in black-and-white before a crumbling brick wall, body positioned forward but facing right, absurdly fresh, and nearly sweet-sixteen in a sweetheart neckline and ruffled cap sleeves.

 Jules loomed like a vulture over her shoulder and judged for himself. “Not what I would have picked for her,” He decided.

But Lux couldn’t look away from the picture. Ava, pre-Entrance, pre-homeowner, pre-stable-of-subs, pre-whirlpool tub. In the sterile silence of the bedroom, she had nothing to cloud her thoughts. “Ava always knew,” she announced. “Look at her expression. She knew all along.”

“Knew what?”

“That it was always going to work out. That she was always going to lock this down.”

“Lock what down?”

Lux tried to set the picture frame exactly where she’d left it but couldn’t quite recall. She pushed Jules away from her, annoyed, and tried a different a different route. “Do you think he really loves her?”            

“Reuben?”      

 “No, Zach – Jake – Shawn – whatshisname. In the basement.”

She felt Jules descend into sulky silence, that his magpie-plan of breaking and entering was not rendering hilarious fruit. She heard the bedsprings creak and two little claps as his sandals hit the floor.

“We make fun of her,” Lux insisted. “But she’s got the husband who loves her, and four full-timers cycling in and out of this beautiful house with a beautiful tree and green grass underneath and now this new kid. He wrote her a poem. She can inspire people to do things like that.”

Jules huffed.

Lux prodded: “Remember her interview in the Reader a few Prides ago? She said she owes it all to her Unapologetic Femininity. A successful woman constantly births this psychic potential in observing bodies.”

 “He wrote a shitty villanelle and climbed into a gimp bag in front of twenty-three perverts, so Ava’ll suffocate him with her titties for three years. That’s psychic potential?”

 “And what about Carmen, and Robin, and Deanna, and Evangeline?”

“What about Analise Petro? She split from the coven pretty fucking publicly.”

“Years ago. And she was immature. You and her were the same age.” At that time, Lux hadn’t made the decision if Jules, then a furious little boy-twink, would be nemesis or pal. She’d half-believed Jules poisoned Analise against Ava on purpose.

Jules, blissfully not thirty, ignored her. “Evey is my age,” he claimed.

“Carmen is thirty-six.” Lux, thirty-two, fretted, twisted her fingers. “Think of the responsibility. It’s all in her hands and she just���molds it.”

“Because of her essential femininity? You’re out of your mind.”

Downstairs, the sliding glass door to the backyard rattled. A few hoots of laughter drifted ghostly through the walls. Then the doors rattled twice, and silence seethed.

           “They change until they stay the same,” Jules said, too self-assured for someone sylphing on a strange bedspread with dirty feet. “And they’ll stay until they go away. Right about when Ava stops making them feel safe.”

“With –?”

“With her social nets and her two-story house and her dual income,” Jules said, sitting upright.  He was all the sudden blank-faced, voice poisonous, and she wondered automatically if his mother had been calling him late in the night. “With her sex gear she commissions from me. With the soothing atmosphere that Carmen interior designs, that Robin cleans, and the fucking homemade meals with the kitchen aide that only Deanna knows how to use. And you want me to think she’s this red-hot all-natural Madonna? You know better.”

Jules was rumpled beyond repair. He wore a tank top she’d gifted for his 27th birthday. It had ITALIAN FILLY printed on the front, and already the letters were starting to peel. He glared. Lux questioned the sincerity of his anger, if he only played it up because he noticed she was too sad to dig up anger herself, anger she felt all the time when she was perfectly alone, but she decided she was too pleased being noticed at all. Maybe in half an hour, she’d be happy enough to preen.

She got up and went to him on the bed and he sat up like a human being so she could clap his face in her hands. But he wasn’t done yet.

“She’s only a woman because she’s surrounded by one hundred sycophants who let her be one,” he sneered, and she felt the little muscles in his jaw. “Sisterhood is powerful!”

She slapped him on the mouth, but only a little bit. “What does that make me?” She asked, houseless, sycophant-less, suspicious her only sisters were biological.

“A woman who doesn’t need her yeast infections to remind her that she’s a woman.” He squirmed in her grip, for her enjoyment only, and his face reddened where it usually got red, close to the ears before it began to band his big nose. It was almost enough to make her forget she was only attracted to him when he was worn down to a nub of exhaustion. Usually, he was belly-up on the floor, with one arm thrown over his eyes, and one of his wrists in his carpal tunnel brace. Something about that brace lit her ass on fire. It made her want to pull down the blinds and eat him alive through his armpit. “Are we going to do something horrible to this bedspread or what?”

“Close your eyes.” He had an insane habit of kissing with his eyes open, and even she, the honorable first girl who’d ever fucked him, hadn’t trained him out of it. “Close your eyes,” he countered, and pulled the zipper on the back of her skirt so he could pull out her turtleneck out of her waist. It jammed. They struggled.

“Suck it in,” he ordered thoughtlessly, and the second she pulled in a deep breath she every inch of him sprang, alert, into a frenzy she couldn’t understand. He caught her around the waist and rolled them both off the bed and into the space between the wall and the gap where the bedclothes hung. She was just about to shriek at him when she heard bare feet pat-pat outside the bedroom door. Jules swept her under the bed (you could stack three bodies on top of each other, under there) and followed her himself just as the door opened.

Lux curled into a little ball. Jules elected to lay flat like a tapeworm.

A woman’s voice cooed. Lux waited. Doom squeezed her heart. But the voice wasn’t Ava’s.

“Sugar-pants, sugar-pants,” the voice caroled sweetly.

Then she saw the bare feet tip-tapping over the carpet, and she clocked the voice as Evangeline’s. She had freed the cat from the bathroom, and presumably held it in her arms, sweet-talking it. Lux dared to roll over to face Jules. He pinched his nose shut against a sneeze.

“I know baby, fluffy-baby,” Evey said. The desk chair scraped when she settled down into it. “You don’t like it in there. I know. I know. No huggle-wuggles for baby in there. You’re claustrophobic. So am I! Ugh!”

Evey gagged. She sobbed wretchedly for five whole minutes (Lux counted). The cat’s purr reached torrential volumes of pleasure. Near the end she reached for Jules’s hand, and they lay, foreheads together, too shy to look each other in the eye as Evey opened a drawer somewhere for tissues and was paralyzed by an attack of hiccups. Lux had to put all her muscle into not echoing her in sympathy.

Evey muttered to herself. “I’m claustrophobic, so I can’t let Her put me in the bag. If I can’t go in the bag, then I don’t get a poem.”

Click. Tap. Click. The drawer shutting. The lights of the makeup mirror turning off.

“I don’t get a poem,” Evey asserted. “I don’t get a poem.” And lower – “I’m not allowed to have a poem. I can’t have a poem. Or a tattoo.”

The cat gurgled.

Evey fled, down the hall, where a door slammed. Then, as if to fix the breach of discipline, the door opened again, and was closed so quietly Lux wasn’t sure it was closed at all.

She and Jules waited, then parted and unearthed themselves on either side of the bed. Jules zipped her skirt and together they patted down the bedspread. He had the faraway look in his eye he usually had when he was thinking about pattern-drafting and Lux replayed in her brain Evey’s Ugh! She wondered if one of her clients had ever gone home, away from her, looked in their bathroom mirror, stuck out their tongue and gone Ugh!

“Come on,” Jules said. The cat, abandoned again, eyed him from the desk chair. “Let’s go down and pay our respects to King Tut.”

And to the cat: “What the fuck are you looking at?”

If he’d acted smug at having his cynicism proven, she might have hit him for real. She’d hit him for real – which in their shared experience, meant purely out of anger – twice. The first time he’d deserved it. The second time he punished her, said she hit like a nelly fag and blocked her phone number for a month. Then he reemerged as swiftly as he’d removed himself, but pointedly, with an uncharacteristically physically proximate boyfriend who lasted exactly three months. She considered that his way of informing her she had been on probation.

“I’m lonely,” she said, because that was the problem.

“I’m literally right here, idiot.”

But when they reached the staircase the noise of the swelling party in the kitchen reached their ears. They decided to go down separately, for the sake of modesty, and Jules went first. He kissed her ear, conciliatory, and she watched the high yoke of his shoulders descend until she was alone again.

Who needed it, she thought, the fifteen-dollar candles and the floors constructed so they do not have to be waxed, the fleet of morose women and the sexless men? Years ago, she’d walked into Jules’s squalid, long-gone basement apartment with a frayed leather harness and been shocked at the sight of the missing Analise Petro sleeping on his futon. Split by her own precarious position in Ava’s club at the time, she’d whipped out her phone, as if to rat them both out then and there. Jules never even looked up from the dress form he was taping.

He asked: What do you give a cunt to convince her a community matter is a private matter?

He clipped off the tape with scissors longer than his hand.

A house!

Lux wanted a house. She wanted to jam her hooks into a hunk with big delts, and huge tits, and chain him up under the bed, somebody the opposite of Jules in every way, and she wanted to bake a successful quiche and she wanted, most of all, her and her sisters’ beloved childhood mutt Chessie, who had leapt off the family pontoon one 4th of July weekend on Indian Lake to his idiot death, to be revived and come trotting up the staircase and into her arms, panting with joy, not because he had been resurrected, but because he loved her best of all.

[thekisforkeats]

Killing Care and Grief of Heart (Let all the Broken Pieces Shine, Chapter One)

Info: The Magnus Archives, D&D AU. JonMartin in this chapter, more ships to be added. Rated T. Post-Canon. Jon is amab nb and uses they/them, Martin is a trans guy.

CWs: Character death, stabbing, grief, webs, manipulation, apocalypses, alternate realities 

Summary: MAG 200 from Martin’s viewpoint, setting up what is to come after. The idea of Martin being Orpheus and Jon being Eurydice comes from the poem “Eurydice’s Retort” by Aiden. The poem quoted is the last stanza of Margaret Atwood’s "Orpheus 1" from Selected Poems II: 1976-1986, published 1987. The chapter title is a line from William Shakespeare's Orpheus.

-------------------------------------------------------

It’s easier than Martin had thought it would be, killing Jon.

He’s thought about it before, of course, and well before he walked through his own Domain and spoke to the other version of himself. Thoughts of Jon’s death have been a constant companion for the weeks (months? years?) they’ve been walking through the Apocalypse, and for more than a year even before that.

Keeping Jon alive was the whole reason he kept working for Peter Lukas, after all.

The first time he thought about the idea that he might wind up responsible for Jon’s death was some time after they went through Oliver Banks’ Domain, the one with all the roots. Jon had been waxing philosophical that night(?), while they were resting in one of the between-places. They’d gotten to talk about the classics, about story and narrative, about how the dream-logic of everything they were dealing with could be understood through the lens of myth and metaphor.

That was when Martin had brought up Orpheus and Eurydice, pointed out that Jon had played Orpheus in diving into the Lonely to bring Martin out. He had quoted Margaret Atwood’s poem, the one from Eurydice’s point of view. Jon, of course, had never read the poem (and honestly, how is he so in love with someone who could barely stand to read anything once, let alone twice), had questioned Martin as to why he liked it so much. (Martin’s answer: melancholy. It’s about Eurydice not really wanting to come back to the world of the living, after all.)

“But you didn’t want to stay there, not really,” Jon had said, looking perplexed.

“Well… no… I mean, I sort of did while I was in there, but once you got me back out…” Martin had sighed. “It fits, that’s all I mean, and it was the first time you’d really used your powers the way you’ve been doing here. You killed Peter Lukas, you drew me out of his Domain, you’ve been doing it ever since. You’re Orpheus.”

Jon had looked at him for a long moment, with those piercing eyes that always took Martin’s breath away, and then said, “That’s ridiculous. I could never make the mountains bow themselves when I did sing.” (Of course he knew Shakespeare, and Martin did love Shakespeare but in this case he really did prefer Atwood), and then Jon was smiling at him and saying, “You’re Orpheus, love.”

“Now who’s being ridiculous?” Martin had countered. “You’re the one who went in there to rescue me. You’re the one who led me out. Forget the Lonely, I’d have been lost in the tunnels forever without you.”

“Ah, but,” and Jon had put up a finger, “I’m the one who actually died.” He’d grinned, as if he were winning something. “I died, and you could not stand the thought, and so you dove into the underworld of whatever plot Peter and Jonah had concocted, and you sang your sweet words at them, and charmed them, and pulled me out of the hell they were trying to trap me in.”

“But… you’re the one who led me out of the Lonely,” Martin had repeated, baffled.

“Yes,” Jon had said softly, “and the problem with Orpheus and Eurydice was always that Orpheus could not trust that she would return to him. He went into the underworld to begin with because he didn’t trust that the gods would reunite them when he died. When he was leading her out he could not trust that it hadn’t been a trick, that he hadn’t lost her, and so he turned around to be sure. His doubts brought everything crashing down around them.” His gaze had been gentle, soft, maybe a little chiding. “If Eurydice had been leading the way, and Orpheus could have seen her the whole time, they would have made it out together.”

The thing neither of them had said aloud was that in the end, whatever Martin had done to pull Jon out of the “underworld” of Jonah’s plans hadn’t worked. The entire world had fallen in around them instead.

Jon had kept the thing alive since then, occasionally calling Martin ‘his Orpheus,’ usually when Martin was making up some ridiculous doggerel to amuse them both. And Martin didn’t mind, and was honestly somewhat flattered, but it started something gnawing at him. Two things, really: first, that Orpheus was the hero of the tale, and Martin did not want to be the hero, did not want to be the one upon whom all responsibility sat. Making choices for himself was all good and well; he didn’t like the feeling of maybe having to make choices for all of humanity.

The second was the nagging, aching remembrance that in every version of the myth Orpheus ultimately loses Eurydice. Death will not be overcome for long, no matter how charming one’s music. The idea that Jon would die to end this Martin had considered more than once. He hated the thought, and would rather die himself than see his lover sacrificed once more.

The idea that Martin himself would have to kill Jon to save the world? It fit perfectly. He knew it fit the moment he first thought of it, and it felt as if his heart were breaking in slow motion ever since.

Orpheus could not return to the world of light and joy with his Eurydice, after all. It just didn’t work that way, no matter how they twisted and turned to try to avoid the truth.

When they’d made a plan Jon had not wholly acquiesced to, Martin had felt that throbbing ache in his chest again. When he’d gone to talk to Jon, and hugged him, and Jon had talked about how everything was his fault… he knew. He just knew, and he did not like the decision he could feel settling in his chest. Jon was going to do something stupid, and Martin was going to have to be the one to fix it.

He could not trust Jon. That was the long and the short of it, he’d thought, as he’d stood there holding the smaller man in his arms, listening to his sniffles. And because he could not trust Jon, he’d stopped when he should have been following the other man, and turned to the others, and told them to go and blow up the gas main now. He’d turned away, and when he’d looked back, Jon was out of his sight and too far gone for Martin to catch up in time to stop him from killing Jonah Magnus and taking his place in the Panopticon.

Ironically enough, this time what doomed Orpheus was looking away from his lover, instead of looking at him.

So now Jon is in the Panopticon, because he could not be anything but self-sacrificing, and because Martin could not trust him long enough to just go after him, could not trust that he would have been able to talk Jon out of killing Jonah once they’d got up there. He’s in the tower, hooked in as the Pupil of the Eye, and Georgie’s lit the gas main already, and the whole thing is blowing up while Jon screams in pain.

For just a moment, Martin has a fleeting memory of Basira telling him that she’d convinced the police not to just burn the Institute to the ground, and oh, if she hadn’t done that…

Well, no use for that now.

For everything Martin’s said, every moment he’s refused, aloud, to admit that he could kill Jon if he had to, he’s known for some time now that he can if he must. He’s thought about it over and over, turning over everything, thinking about how to kill the Archivist. The answer is simple and obvious. Jon already gave it to him, before they’d left the Institute, and it’s narratively appropriate in that dream-logic mythic way the Fears work. So he knows what he has to do.

Martin pulls Jon out of the Panopticon, and they say they love each other, and they kiss. And then Martin pulls Jon’s head back and stabs him swiftly, once in each eye. Jon only gasps once, the first time, and maybe he’s already dead by the time Martin stabs the other, but he won’t take the chance of leaving the job half-done. It’s clear that it was the right choice--stabbing someone in the eye shouldn’t kill them so quickly, but the Eye was all that was keeping Jon alive, and so he’s dead now, gone.

And so, Martin thinks, Orpheus loses his Eurydice. Atwood’s poem echoes in his mind:

Though I knew how this failure would hurt you, I had to fold like a gray moth and let go. You could not believe I was more than your echo.

Martin sobs, then, just once, and he’d keep sobbing but there’s a rising static, the sort he’s used to hearing while listening to the tapes. And then he sees that actual tape has come into the Panopticon writhing up from between cracks and over stone to wrap itself around Jon, around his legs and arms, trying to drag him away.

Martin cannot speak, he’s too wracked with grief, but he’s damned if he’ll let the Web take Jon from him, not now. Wherever Jon is going, he’s going too. That was the deal. So as the web of magnetic recording tape grabs Jon and pulls him through the air like he’s some sort of insect to be wrapped up and devoured, Martin holds him tighter, refusing to let go.

The tapes are somehow strong enough to pull them both out of the Panopticon, through the air, across the landscape. There are other things being pulled toward wherever they’re going, a thousand or a million, too many to count. Martin can see the web of magnetic tape criss-crossing the landscape, touching all the places they’ve been, the Domains they’ve traveled through, the avatars they’ve encountered. He can see with eyes that should have belonged to the Web had Peter Lukas not gotten hold of him and claimed him for the Lonely. He can see the extent of it all, the scope of the plan, the thing the Web had wanted all along--the Fears, bound up by the Archivist’s Knowing, connected by the tapes at a thousand little points, dragged screaming out of this reality toward the hole at Hilltop Road.

For a moment it strikes Martin as a thing of beauty. Wretched, horrid beauty, but beauty nonetheless. A plan at least three decades in the making, finally come to perfect fruition. Reality re-made in order to allow the Fears to manifest strongly enough for the Web to bind them and pull them out and… ascend.

They fall toward the hole, and then into the hole, and then suddenly Jon spasms in Martin’s arms. Martin clutches him more tightly so as not to lose him, so he’s right there when Jon’s mouth opens and sound begins pouring out. Words, but more than words, and none in his own voice. It’s as though he’s become the tape recorder, playing a statement. People talking--Basira and Georgie and Melanie. The world is safe, it seems. The plan worked. And maybe it’s better than Jon’s dead, because surely whatever the people who remembered ‘the Archivist’ would have done to him would have been far more painful and horrific than Martin stabbing him in the eyes.

The Admiral’s okay. Martin wishes Jon were alive, so he could know that much at least.

The voices echo in the darkness they’re falling through. Basira’s voice: “What do you want me to do with this?” She must mean the recorder she found in the ruins.

Georgie replies, “Leave it. We’re done with tapes.”

“Want me to smash it?” That’s Melanie, because of course it is.

Basira says, “I think… we can probably just turn it off.”

Martin can almost hear the shrug in Melanie’s voice. “Okay.”

There are footsteps, two pairs, presumably Melanie and Georgie walking away.

Basira addressed the tape recorder. “If anyone’s listening… goodbye. I’m sorry, and… good luck.”

There’s a final flick, and then Jon actually speaks, despite being dead, the words resonating in the darkness:

“STATEMENTS END.”

Martin almost sobs, clutching Jon, eyes squeezed tight. He’s not sure he ever liked Basira much, and he really barely knew Georgie and Melanie--and really it’s been so hard, for so long, to be sure he liked anyone much, aside from Jon--but he takes the good wishes for what they are, clasps them into his heart. Wherever the Web is taking them, it has to be better than what they’re leaving behind.

Wherever it is, Martin is sure there won’t be any more recorders, any more statements. They, too, are done with tapes.

Next Chapter

[bluepenguinstories]

Remoras Full Chapter XXXV: Lion-Drawn Chariot

When I woke up in the morning, I wasn’t planning on saving anyone’s lives. Then again, did anyone ever plan those sorta things? Like, “so at noon I plan to go out and save someone’s life.” Nope. That sorta thing just didn’t happen. Maybe it was a Superman thing, I imagine Superman didn’t wake up every morning and go, “I think I’m going to save some lives today.”

But lo and behold, when I woke up, I checked my phone right away (‘cause I’m always on that phone) and noticed a very concerning text.

Now, you may ask yourself, “Cybele, aren’t you exaggerating?” And lemme tell you, hypothetical ‘you’, no. No I was not exaggerating one iota:

Unknown Number: Could you please come get me? No pressure if you’re busy or asleep or anything. Take your time. I’ll probably be dead by the time you get here, anyway.

My eyes widened and I jolted up.

“Who?” Was my first question. Some unknown number just told me they’d be dead, and they listed the address to a hotel. Flags didn’t get much redder than that.

“Okay, think, think: Sunny might have gotten a new number,” I paced about and brainstormed as to who it could have been.

Yeah. That checks out. It’s just like Sunny to go off and get herself hurt. Of course she’d want me to bail her out.

It’s been a while since I’ve heard from Sunny. Probably a good six months. It was only a couple weeks ago that Ray finally gave me a call and explained the situation back at the diner. No wonder they went silent. I always figured Sunny stayed inside the diner with Ray due to the circumstances they faced, but it was true that she had trouble keeping still.

Yes, that’s true, but she’d stay at the diner with Ray if the circumstances are as dire as he said. I don’t doubt for a second that Sunny would help keep things together with Ray.

So if it wasn’t Sunny, then who? Frantic, I looked back at the phone.

What if I overslept and someone seriously was dying and now I’m too late?

Well, I could put that thought to rest: the text was only sent a few minutes ago.

“Still doesn’t give me time to shower...ugh...well, I’ll just slap on some deodorant, spray some rose water, and call it good. Whoever it is should consider themselves lucky that I’m showing up at all.”

No, that wasn’t the right attitude to have. Someone might have been dying for real.

“I’ll definitely save you,” I declared, still not totally convinced it wasn’t a scam.

To be honest, I was somewhat relieved to have an excuse to get back in my plane and fly around. Even if it turned out to have been a waste of time...no, it wouldn’t have been, because I’d be doing something I loved: flying.

Way back when Ray delivered that horrible news, I didn’t know what I’d do or where I’d go, but he had no problem with me taking the plane with me. It may have been the case that he figured if I took it with me, others wouldn’t have a means of getting to the diner, but whatever the reason, I just liked having it around. Things just didn’t feel right without it.

Oh, and it sure was a super fast aircraft, too! I arrived at the hotel parking lot within the hour. Now, as one could imagine, it was hard to find parking, so I had to park way in the back, and I was positive that there would be many a car furious with me for taking up so much space. But screw them, I wouldn’t be around that long, anyway!

When I stepped out of the plane, I looked around to find the parking lot near empty. Just a few cars here and there, kind of scattered like a tic-tac-toe board. Guess there was nothing to worry about (when it came to taking up space)!

“This is the place, right?” I was perplexed when I walked forward. Really, what did I expect to find? I had no idea and from the look of things, there was nothing to expect. It was just some normal looking hotel. OK. Layout: some tall, gold, fancy hotel, an awning, a few marble stairs. Some of the windows on the upper floors looked a bit busted, but aside from that, it had a sheen about it. Like, pristine sheen.

I continued to walk forward, in somewhat of a daze. It was rather early in the morning and I hadn’t had a coffee or anything like that. Closer, my foggy eyes not really clearing up, then my heart thumped on high alert in a single instant: blaring sirens of ambulances filled the air.

I shifted all around and tried to figure out what the commotion was. My head turned in a rapid manner, much more than a simple shake. Then, I spotted the culprit: a small body, collapsed and lying on the ground.

Take your time. I’ll probably be dead by the time you get here, anyway, those words echoed in my mind with an accelerating intensity as I sprinted toward the collapsed figure. Once I caught a better look, I filled with dread.

I recognize this person.

She was sprawled out, on her back, a fresh, dark wound on her right shoulder. Her hair was no longer green, it was blonde, and she wasn’t wearing any glasses, either. What she wore instead was a dark purple hoodie, jeans, and a pair of fingerless gloves. Fabric from her hoodie had been torn on the bottom and a fresh, gaping cut was visible and the blood which ran down from it obscured the skin of her stomach. It didn’t look deep enough to have penetrated any organs, but it was still a concern, nonetheless.

Just witnessing it put me in a sort of shudder, a repulsion which I had to fight back against. Nerves against my eyelids tightened and I felt a strain on my eyes along with a reservoir of tears ready to form from beneath the surface. It was as if a gust of wind had struck them.

I knelt down, my heart still on high alert. The rush of endorphins, not to mention the stress and adrenaline, was all the energy I needed to wake me up for the morning.

Please still be alive. Please.

I placed two fingers up to the nape of her neck, sucked up a small amount of saliva, and drew heavy breaths. Two seconds. I swear, the longest two seconds I ever felt. Rapid fire thoughts pounded against the edges of my skull. It was enough to make me wonder if my head was about to split open, or if my heart would give out, unable to handle the anticipation. My breaths were heavy to the point that I sounded like I was in some sort of frenzied state.

At last, I felt a pulse.

What a relief. What a relief. What a rel –

“Ma’am! Get away from the body!” I heard someone shout behind me.

I turned my head to see an ambulance parked (well, ‘parked’ was a little generous, as it had been swerved to its side and burnt skid marks could be seen just behind the vehicle’s tires) and two paramedics who looked ready to push me aside.

Of course. It just has to come to this.

“I think not,” I defied them, “I’m this young lady’s primary care physician and I’m going to take her to my clinic with me. She’s requested if in an emergency, then I am to come get her directly.”

They both looked at each other, confused.

“Can we see proof?” One of them asked.

I fished out a fake doctor’s license as well as a forged note. Such (illegal) methods weren’t used often, and it was never something I enjoyed doing, but it’s come in handy at times when I’ve had to bail Sunny out. Her idea, of course.

“Oh, well, uh, okay,” their confusion still showed through their voice, but nevertheless, they fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

“May I borrow one of your gurneys so I can get her onto my plane?” I asked them.

“Plane?”

I nodded.

“Yes. Do you have a problem with that?”

Acting was never one of my strong suits, but it turned out when you had just the right things to appear official, people tended to believe you. Needless to say, I got Demetria onto my plane and got right to work with the gauze.

Man, I’m really not a doctor. If only Cole-Slaw was here. She’d know what to do. Or she’d chew me out for not knowing what to do. Either way, I’m sure she’d be of more help.

In any case, she’d live. That much I knew for sure.

When I got home, I was too on edge to really do anything. I just sat on the couch and waited for her to wake up. Long stretches of time passed, and I would check in on the room I placed her in, with no such luck. It was concerning, to say the least, but I held out hope.

She needs rest. I’ll let her be.

Despite how serious it was, eventually the worry stepped aside and I got out my journal to write a couple of quick poems. Neither of them were all that good, but they didn’t need to be; their main purpose was to get my mind off of things. One of them started out like this:

Slumbers are a fickle thing.

So I go to the cupboard and pull out a box of cookies.

One by one, shoveled into my mouth.

Then I go back to bed, unable to sleep

due to the pain in my stomach.

But it was worth it.

What does it have to do with anything?

What is the meaning of sweetness?

An array of crumbs fall out of my pockets

and I’m visited by the sandman, who tells me

that he’s about to pour more crumbs in.

That bastard always gets the better of me.

Like I said, it left a bit to be desired, but I wasn’t done with it. Maybe in the third stanza, it would start to shine. But before I could get to that, I was interrupted by a rustling in another room, followed by a low groan.

I got up from the couch and followed the sound into the other room. Demetria stood hunched over in front of the bed I had laid her in. She propped herself up by holding onto the front-facing corner of the bedpost, but it was clear by the way she wobbled and her poor balance that she would fall back down onto the bed.

“Ow...ow...ooh,” she hissed and groaned, alternating between the two.

So she fell back down. Onto the bed.

“Owww...god damn it…” she moaned, adding, “I can hardly move. Ugh...I can’t believe I’m not dead.”

I shook my head and placed my hands on my hips.

“I swear, you’re just as bad as Sunny,” I scolded.

“Right, ‘cause if I’m going to have a role model, it may as well be Sunny,” she replied, deadpan in her delivery. She then turned her head and looked my way.

“So...you got my message?” She asked, her voice low and hoarse.

“Yeah. Mind telling me what happened?” I tapped my foot.

She looked away from me.

“I’d...rather not.”

That wasn’t what I expected to hear, nor really what I wanted to hear, but I respected her decision.

With her good arm (the one that wasn’t all covered up in layers of gauze), she covered her eyes.

“Can I...can I stay here a while?” She wheezed, then coughed.

“Judging from your injuries, I’m going to say you don’t have a choice. Now try not to move around so much, and please, get some rest.”

What she said next kept me from leaving the room.

“You shouldn’t have picked me up. I didn’t want to be saved,” I heard her say through her low mutter.

“I don’t believe that,” emotions welled up in me. Yes, she was in a great deal of pain, but there were quite a few mixed feelings I had. Feelings I should have held back or saved for later, when she was recovered, but I couldn’t help myself. “If that was the case, you wouldn’t have sent that text.”

“I’m not worth it,” she replied, though it didn’t feel like a reply at all. It felt like she ignored everything I said, and was just continuing off of the last thing she said.

Don’t say that, I thought. I almost growled it out, but I stopped myself.

“Get some rest. Please,” I told her instead, my voice not low, but instead weepy.

She gave a short nod and I noticed tears run down her cheeks. My head hung low and I had to force myself to turn away and step out of the room. Her clear pain and anguish had me at a chokehold and I felt a tinge of regret leaving her alone like that. But if she was going to rest, she would need her space, so I pulled up the curtain and ducked my head, then left the room.

This house I bought was rather large, much more space than I needed. But I was rich and since I could afford to, I wanted to get something nice. Not to mention the fact that I was so used to living in a large airport, even though I didn’t own the airport, it was still a home to me, and I just didn’t feel at home without the wide, empty spaces.

So I lived in a tall house, all to myself. Most of my stuff was relegated to one bedroom (of which there were a few rooms; they all sat empty, save for the one Demetria was now in). If I wasn’t there, I slept on the couch. My kitchen, though wide enough to have its own “island” (I never quite understood why they called that thing in the middle of kitchens in big houses an island), but that too sat mostly empty. There were a few things in the fridge, but that was about it. I didn’t cook. I could have, but I was rich, and I wasn’t used to cooking, so I always just ordered takeout.

The room Demetria was in was kind of a little architectural experiment, as it was originally a walk-in closet tied to a separate (empty) room, but I took down the closet doors and replaced it with a butterfly pattern tapestry that hung from the wall instead. No, I never planned such a thing, but I had a bed in that little room. It wasn’t an especially large bed, as it could only fit a twin-sized mattress, but it was the perfect fit for Demetria.

As I said, I never planned for her to stay here, but I always thought it would be nice to have guests over. I mean, I had a couple friends here and there, and they lived thousands of miles away, but that was nothing for me since I had my own plane. That said, no one ever expressed wanting to stay over, all telling me the same thing, that they “didn’t want to impose” (really, guys? It wouldn’t be an imposition if I was the one offering).

One questionable decision I made was removing the ceiling light and putting a lava lamp in the room instead. Yeah, it looked cool, but the way it lit up the room and reflected off of the curtain gave the room a distinct red tint. Like the room was on fire. Considering how bloodied up Demetria was, it seemed rather inappropriate now. Hindsight, am I right?

So I sat on the couch once again and flipped on the TV. Usually it just sat there and gathered dust, something which it was rather good at, but I decided to turn it on just to have some background noise. Channel after channel I skipped through until I stopped at a local channel and noticed it was a recording of an opera titled Atys.

No, I had no idea what it was about. It was an opera, did anybody ever know what was going on? Yeah, didn’t think so. But it was nice to see all the pretty outfits, and it sure sounded pretty, too. So it was settled, I’d watch a bit of that. Then, I too began to doze off.

My rest didn’t last long.

Shrill screams forced me awake and in a panic, I rushed to the room.

I found her, sat up against the edge of the bed, a look of shock, anger, terror, or a mix of all three filled her face as well as beads of either sweat, tears, or both. Her breaths were loud and heavy and she shook in place, as if paralyzed in fear. I looked to where Demetria stared ahead, but saw nothing, only the shadow of the lava lamp which sat on a table next to the bottom end of the bed.

“Is everything all right?!” I shouted, unable to hold back the concern in my voice. I rushed over and sat at the edge of the bed.

“Demetria...Demetria…” I tried to get her attention but my soft voice betrayed me. In a conscious manner, I sharpened my voice and shouted:

“Demetria!”

She blinked and then her eyes darted around and although she still heaved, her breath began to slow down and her eyes relaxed.

“Sorry. I had a nightmare,” she stated, as if it wasn’t such a big deal.

Not knowing what else to do, I leaned in and pulled her into my chest and held her tight.

“Ow, ow. My shoulder,” she complained and I let her go just as fast as I held her.

She sat there and rubbed her left eye, then her forehead.

“It just happens sometimes. Those same images haunt me,” she continued. I didn’t know what she could have meant, but that initial bout of screaming was enough of a concern as it was.

“Was it about something that happened to you?”

She gave a short nod, then buried her head in her hands. I heard no sniffles or weeps, but the silence itself was enough of a worry.

“Do you want me to give you some space?” I offered a rather foolish gesture, but the best I could offer without knowing what else I could do at the moment. As she gave no response, I waited a few seconds, then got up, figuring the answer was “yes”.

As soon as I started to get up, though, she tugged at my arm.

“Can you stay here? I’m afraid to go back to sleep,” she begged. For added measure, she lifted her head up and gave me puppy dog eyes.

“Yeah,” I gave in. As much as I hated to admit, those puppy dog eyes were adorable. “I don’t have anywhere I need to be in the morning. Making sure you’re well is my main priority right now.”

She let go of my arm, reeled it back to her side. Again, there was a lull, a standstill. Neither of us must have known what to do or say next. At least that was the case for me.

“You’re probably wondering how I got like this, huh?” She spoke up at last. Her face was still obscured, her voice muffled, but it was a voice nonetheless.

“Yes. I would like to know, but I’m not going to force it out of you.”

She lifted her head up and leaned it against the wall.

“To be honest, I’d like to know, too,” she replied with a dry, hollow reply. Even though she forced a slight smile, it was clear from her tone that she was anything but pleased.

“You don’t know how you got your injuries?” I was perplexed.

“I killed someone,” she answered. “Correction: I killed quite a few people, but the one who gave me my injuries was just one man.”

“My God…” the words escaped me. It wasn’t that I was all that shocked; Ray definitely gave off “former yakuza turned househusband” vibes and Sunny was a chaotic bundle of joy who I’ve had to pull out of messy situations several times. It might have just been that Demetria didn’t strike me as the violent type, but then again, my frame of reference was rather narrow, so it wasn’t like I had a complete impression of her. Maybe that would all change once I spent more time around her.

“I know, right? Not very heroic of me. For the record, I never considered myself a hero, but at the same time, I never thought I would be capable of doing such things. Let alone willing. But here I am, I went from someone who wanted to prevent the deaths of others to causing them. So much for protecting people.”

“I’m sure you had a good reason, though,” I argued. After all, rude as she may be, I refused to believe she was a bad person. She turned to me, her lips folded into a frown.

“Do you think that makes a difference?” Her eyelids were half-shut and she looked ready to nod off. “In my mind, I did it to protect others. But there could have been a better way to go about it. Maybe I just wanted to satisfy a bloodlust. I don’t know.”

“I don’t know, either,” I echoed her sentiment.

“Even now, I see the horror in their eyes. How they were torn to shreds.”

“Are you talking about the people you killed?”

She shook her head.

“No.”

I wasn’t sure what she was referring to, then. There was still so much she wouldn’t tell me, and maybe I didn’t want to hear the details, but I still wanted to help in any way I could.

“Have you ever seen someone being eaten alive?” She asked. It struck me as odd, just as random, if not more than her previous statement.

“No, I can’t say I have…”

“It’s not a pretty sight. That shit sticks with you.”

Just what kind of things have you experienced? I was a little baffled, to say the least. Just the idea made me shudder. She rolled her eyes, then turned her head away.

“I wanted to be badass so I could impress someone I had a crush on. Then...I was exposed to things I never should have witnessed. So my motivation changed. I wanted to be stronger so I could protect others. But I admit, I still wanted to impress her, too. I’ll think about back then and think of how if I were stronger, they would have survived. Or if it was someone else who went there, someone better. Someone who wasn’t me.”

“We all have things we regret,” I tried to tell her, which wasn’t really all that helpful, I know.

“You don’t understand,” she sharpened her voice. It wasn’t quite a shout, but it still had a bite behind it. “The reality is that if I hadn’t gone there, they would have met the same end. It’s easy to play the ‘what-if’ game, but there’s no way to know if there was anything that could have been done, and somehow that’s even worse.”

She paused again, closed her eyes. Part of me hoped that she hadn’t gone to sleep just because I didn’t want her to wake up screaming again.

“I’m stronger now. I’m badass. I got what I wanted, but at this point, I’d rather go back to being how I was before: meek, timid, someone who minded her own business. Hell, I tried to go back to being her, but I can’t. She’s gone now. Every attempt to return to my old self just felt like fighting back against a current.”

“I may not know what it’s like to go through all the things you have, but I do believe that even if you can’t return to how you were before, you can still be who you want to be. Even if that person is different from how you envisioned yourself to be. Hell, I know it’s hard. I know, but you can still find comfort in who you are right now.”

It seemed like the most poignant thing I’ve said all day, and yet everything I said in that statement was something that I continued to struggle with, myself.

Rather than reply, she drew a heavy breath. Her head slumped over to her side, and I realized that she had gone back to sleep.

I felt a faint spell overtake me as well and there must have been a couple of microscopic versions of me who struggled to hold my eyelids open, but to no avail. Soon, I faded away, into the sea of unconsciousness.

When I awoke, it must have been early in the morning as a bright light shone through the room. I struggled up and found myself in much of a haze. Then, a pounding came. Well, there wasn’t one. At first I thought there was, but it turned out to be more of a notion in my head or my heart telling me that someone was at my front door. There was no basis for such a feeling, but I was compelled to follow it, nonetheless.

Through the sluggish movements, I reached for the handle on the door, then pulled it open. Upon doing so, a blinding flash of light burst into the house and I couldn’t see anything in front of me. No front yard, no dirt, no grass, no neighborhood. Nothing but the flash of light.

Soon, that dissipated, and the shapes of the environment right outside my house took hold. It was a slow process, though, and it seemed to be sapped away, or drawn in to a particular spot in the middle of my peripheral vision. Right in front of me, a little below me, until I saw who, or what was at my door: a little girl with ashen hair, soot and dust. Her large, beady eyes, like what a stuffed animal would have. Corduroy, was what she reminded me of. That little bear from a picture book way back when I was about her age. She wore a thick cloak, hood off. Actually, it might have been a short-sleeved T-shirt and jeans. It was hard to tell which, as if whatever it truly was, my mind couldn’t decide what to see.

“May I help you?” I asked her.

She stared ahead rather than look up at me. Like there was something she was focused on, maybe something that she wished to steal from my home.

Oh, relax. She’s probably just a girl scout and trying to sell me cookies, I scolded myself. It was all I could do to feel at ease. Not that I felt dread around her, or that she held any malicious intent, but I still felt a little uneasy.

“Can I come in?” She looked up and asked at last, her voice soft and ethereal. She also didn’t look up at all. I didn’t see her head move, but I could tell I was the one being addressed.

Careful, Cybele. She might be a vampire. You know how those little girls who ask to come in are. First you say yes, next thing you know you’re strung up on the ceiling and a flattened husk of who you were, with a pile of your blood dripping down and staining your carpet.

...I really needed to get more sleep.

“Uh...Sure?” It must have been the tiredness in me, but if I was going to get eaten up by a vampire, it may as well have been early in the morning.

“Thank you,” she chirped, or blew forth the words, like a Magpie or a wind chime. But it was also gentle, and breathy as well. Neither a whisper nor a shout. Closer to the former than latter, but not really reaching the quietness of the former, either.

Another oddity was that after that, she didn’t move. I invited her in, but she didn’t walk in. I figured that was that when I closed the door and just chalked it up to a weird occurrence.

“Interesting home you have,” that same soothing and unnerving voice returned, and I turned to see her walking through my living room. Well, I could have said that, but she didn’t wander. She was close to the door. Right behind me, in fact. Despite her not having walked in, not even floated in (like a ghost would have at least been courteous to do), she was there.

For whatever reason, I walked over near where the room was where Demetria slept, but stayed outside the door frame and remained in the living room. Whatever that child wanted, she was already in my house now and probably wouldn’t leave until I figured what it was that she was here for. More than that, I needed to know who or what she was, if she was anything at all.

“So, what should I call you?” I blurted out the question. She didn’t seem bothered by it at all.

“I wonder…” She looked around as she replied, “what do you think you should call me?”

“Anything?” I blinked.

“You would call me ‘Anything’?” She asked, as if entertaining the idea.

“Well, I mean, if I can call you anything I want to call you...what’s to stop me from calling you ‘Lampshade’?”

“What’s to stop you indeed.”

That still didn’t seem right. Everything reminded me of ‘be not afraid’, that kind of angel vibe.

“Are you an angel?” I wasn’t satisfied with calling her a lampshade. It was just the first thing I could think of that was next to me (there was a lamp next to the television set).

“Is that how you wish to see me?”

Another odd question. It seemed neither meant to mock, be an admittance, nor denial. Just a genuine sense of wonder.

“I…I don’t know,” I was at a loss. “At least tell me your name.”

“My name?”

“You know, like my name is Cybele.”

She smiled, even if it didn’t look like her lips made any such creases.

“Ah, Cybele, the Anatolian mother goddess. If that be your name, you may be most wonderful, indeed.” “Gee, I don’t know about that. I certainly don’t want to be anyone’s mom. No offense, but I’m not interested in raising any kids.”

“Why would that bring me offense?”

“I don’t...uh, anyway. What brings you here?” I felt like I was getting nowhere, and worst of all, I didn’t even know what she wanted.

She walked forward in a way that felt more like a glide. Despite it being one foot over the other, it was fast, but also light, and didn’t look the least bit like a run. As she approached me, for whatever reason, I fell back to the floor, and she passed right by me, into the room where Demetria resided.

I got up and followed her in. There was no reason to suspect as such, but I still didn’t want any harm to come to Demetria. Especially when she still had her injuries.

But when I saw the mysterious little girl, all she did was stare at the bed where Demetria lay.

“She’s seeing disturbing visions right now,” the girl stated. Lampshade or whatever else there was to call her.

“How do you know that?” I asked. It was probably true, though, that she was having bad dreams, but I still wanted to know the basis of how she knew. Hell, how she knew Demetria at all.

“We met once before, under less comforting circumstances,” the girl replied.

“She told me she’s been having nightmares.”

“Nightmares...little imps who ride on horses?”

“No, like, bad dreams. Like, we humans get tired, and when we get tired enough, our body starts to shut down and we let our consciousness fade for a little while. We call it sleeping, and when we sleep, we often have dreams. They can be weird and unusual, sometimes mundane, though. Sometimes pleasant and sometimes terrifying. It depends less on the content of the dream, but more on the vibes the dream gives off.”

That was weird, too. I didn’t know why I felt the need to explain what sleep was. Not to mention, it wasn’t just people who slept, most animals did.

I saw a smile curve up from the side of her face.

“Thank you. I’ve been wondering what sleep was for a while.”

“What? You don’t know what sleep is?”

She turned her head from side to side.

“I’ve yet to experience it, but now that I understand the general concept, I am interested in finding out what it’s like for myself.”

“That’s odd. By the way, it’s not just humans that sleep. It’s most animals. Err...living creatures.”

She gave a single nod.

“I have met other organisms. Salamanders are one of my favorite, but I am partial to humans. They’re who I wish to study the most.”

“Are you...not human?” It seemed so obvious, but I had to ask anyway.

“I could be.”

I suppose simple questions warranted simple answers. Not that it answered anything, at least not in my mind.

“Tell me, Cybele, do you believe in reincarnation?” She asked at last and I jumped from where I stood, startled to be addressed by name.

So you know of such concepts like reincarnation, but not sleep?

“I’m not sure. I suppose it’s possible. Haven’t given it much thought.”

“What about resurrection?”

“Even less sure about that one. I’ve heard about people coming back from near-death experiences, but that’s it.”

“Recreation? Reconstruction?”

“Well, there’s facial reconstruction surgery. Why do you ask? Do you think it’s possible?”

She let out a soft laugh, like a giggle. It really took me aback that she was capable of such things.

“I don’t know, either, Cybele. I was just interested in what you believed in.”

“Well, I’m sorry. I guess I’m not all that interesting.”

“Quite the opposite; your perspective interests me as much as any human’s does.”

That sounded like a compliment. It might not have been, but I couldn’t help but blush and smile.

“So what do you want with her? Are you here just to watch?”

That time, as if I asked the magic question, caused her to give a definitive answer.

“I’m going to transfer some memories into her. They’ll be in an unused space in her mind, so she may not even notice.”

“Will it hurt?”

“It won’t hurt. She may have dreams pertaining to those memories, but it shouldn’t affect her personality. Not any more than her personality’s already been affected by her experiences.”

“Will it help with her nightmares?”

“Mm...it might. It might also give her new nightmares. I can’t say, as this is the first time I’ve done this.”

“Still...to think you’re capable of such a thing. Are you all-powerful?”

“I could be. However, there are things I’m much more interested in than that.”

She didn’t do anything with her hands, no magical beams of light shot out. There was nothing to indicate that she did anything to ‘transfer memories’, but after a few seconds of silence, she spoke up.

“It is done,” she stated.

“What was the purpose behind that?” I was a little awestruck at what little awe I had to be struck by.

“I’m just interested in seeing what might happen,” she stated, somehow both a definitive and non-definitive answer.

She shuffled out of the room, still the same gliding motion. Once again, I followed her. She hadn’t quite gotten out the door yet, so I decided I had more I wanted to ask her.

“Wait,” I tried to stop her before she could leave. “Before you go, I just want to know: am I dreaming right now?”

“Mm...You’re not sleeping, so by the definition you gave me, I don’t believe so. Unless it’s possible to dream without sleeping.”

“I don’t know...if it’s possible,” I yawned. That wave of tiredness I felt after Demetria fell asleep was starting to hit me again. I dropped down to the floor in response to my body’s demands. It wasn’t a pained collapse, I fell on my own volition.

“I’m starting to get sleepy,” I declared. Once again a yawn escaped me.

“How interesting. Would you like to sleep?”

I nodded my head. Now I felt like the kid in the situation.

“Can you sing me a lullaby?” I requested.

“Lullaby? What’s that?”

“You know, like a simple little song to get me to sleep.”

She lowered her head, as if deep in thought.

“Ah. I know one. Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are…”

With that, I drifted back off into sleep and the mysterious girl departed.

True morning was something far different.

For starters, the room was still dark. Well, I noticed light from outside the room. Of course, being that the ‘room’ Demetria and I were in was once just a big closet with no windows...yeah, it would make sense that it was still dark, even in daylight.

Oh yeah, that was the other thing: I woke up in the same place I fell asleep at in the first place, which was on the floor next to the bed Demetria slept in.

To my right was the bed. As I forced my way to a shabby half-awake state, I heard a shuffle from the bed and looked up to see Demetria sat up. She let out a low groan, her eyes squinted, then looked down where I was.

“Ugh...I just had the weirdest dream,” she rubbed her eyes with her palm and grumbled.

“Yeah?” I yawned. “What was it?”

“Well, I was in a fight with my cousin’s wife. We were both on a rooftop and she didn’t really seem like she wanted to fight, but I kept egging her on, and, well, she slashed me in the stomach, and I fell back. Last thing I remember was a stick being put in my mouth, then I woke up just now.”

That’s...disturbing?

“Huh. That is weird, indeed,” I commented.

“I know. We may not have gotten along much, but I wouldn’t want to harm my cousin’s wife. But I’m guessing it’s not so much because it was her, and it was more because of the fight I had at the hotel, and the guy who I didn’t want to fight slashed me in the stomach. Plus, my cousin’s wife did yell at me just the other night. But the context was a little different. She was upset, and I couldn’t blame her for that. Those people had no right to show up. I don’t know all the things she had to deal with, but I could only imagine how painful that was for her just to witness. As for rooftops…”

She scoffed, then gave a slight smile.

“Only thing I can recall is when I went to a place called Olympia and hid out on a rooftop to avoid guys shooting at me. Man, that place was a trip. Weird enough to have been a dream, but no, the actual dream I had felt real somehow. Like I lived it. Even if it may have just been a mishmash of various events over the past couple days...no, it didn’t feel like that at all.”

I was at a loss. From all the flakes of information she let slip, I could tell she’s gone through a lot. Much more than I would have expected from her.

“Well, for what it’s worth, I had a weird dream too,” I related.

“Yeah?” She sounded curious. “What was yours?”

I thought it over. I tried to think of what was weird about it. Actually, I tried to think about it at all, but couldn’t.

“Um...sorry. I thought I was gonna have something to tell, but I forgot,” I pouted.

“Eh. It happens.”

“So,” I hopped to my feet, “how about some breakfast in bed?”

“What are you, my housewife?” She groaned.

“No,” I frowned. “But it’ll be harder to recover on an empty stomach, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to get up much at the moment.”

“Are you gonna feed it to me, too?” She really wanted to make things difficult. Here I thought she’d have been more pleasant after a restful sleep.

“I...I haven’t thought that far. But if I have to, I will. Now, I’ve got yogurt and toast. That should be light on the stomach.”

She shrugged, then winced. For a moment, she must have forgotten how much pain her shoulder was in.

“Fine. I guess I can go for yogurt and toast. It’s something.”

It was settled: I made my way into the kitchen and pulled out a cup of Greek yogurt from my near-barren fridge.

“Greek yogurt, because...oh, never mind. Bad joke,” I scolded myself under my breath. Next was the toast. Whole grain, because that seemed like something she’d like.

After the bread popped out of the toaster and I had a spoon for the yogurt, I headed back into the room and handed them to her.

“Thanks,” she told me, then held up one of the slices of toast and bit into it.

“Ah!” I just remembered something very basic. Something which should never have been forgotten. “You’re going to need water. Lots of water. I’m also sure you’ll need to use the bathroom from time to time. Hmm...I don’t have one of those pee bags like doctors and nurses have…”

“Ew. I wouldn’t want to use one of those, anyway,” she spat. Ugh. Add that to the growing list of concerns: crumbs all over the bed.

“OK. Well, if you need help getting up, let me know and I’ll help you. I still don’t think you should walk all that much until you’re more healed, but at the same time you’re going to need to sooner or later.”

She nodded.

“Got it. You don’t have to act like my mom. I’m capable of taking care of myself.”

That kinda ticked me off, not gonna lie. Maybe it wasn’t the best time, but I just had to say something.

“I’m aware of that and from the way you say you didn’t want to be saved, you know what? Maybe I really should have left you there,” I hated every word I spewed out and I felt on the verge of tears.

“I’m sor…” She began, but didn’t finish the word.

“No. Even if I’m upset, you still need help. I don’t want to boss you around, I just want to help you. It seems like most of the times we’ve met up, I’ve done things for you and helped you, and in some cases, I just wanted to be nice. But even so, I can’t help but feel like I’ve been used.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right.”

Hearing her said that just about broke me. I didn’t want to hear such a thing. Yet she continued:

“You gave me a chance, you offered to be my friend, and I never once considered taking you up on your offer. For my part, I didn’t even want a friend, be it you or anyone else. It’s not that I don’t appreciate all that you’ve done for me, but at the same time, I used you. You were convenient and I took advantage of you.”

I was speechless, unsure whether to be angry or heartbroken. But all in all, what did I expect? We didn’t know each other very well, haven’t interacted much, and yet I chose to help her out time and time again.

“I...I know I shouldn’t when we don’t really know each other very well, but I still care about you,” I brought myself to tell her.

“Why? I don’t understand,” she objected. To that, I let out a hollow laugh.

“Neither do I. I just do.”

She took a couple bites out of her yogurt, then spoke up again.

“You shouldn’t,” she argued again.

“I never said that I should, just that I do,” I countered.

She scoffed, took a few more big bites of the cup of yogurt, then set the empty cup off to the side, on the nightstand.

“I’m such a hypocrite, aren’t I? Here I am, admitting how inconsiderate I’ve been, and yet I’ve been the same way as you.”

“You have?”

“I grew to care about others who never gave a shit about me. Some of them should’ve been expected, though, but I at least thought when I left that I meant something to Sunny and Ray. But no. Instead, he texts me saying he never wants me back and blocks me. Just goes to show how little I was valued. He’d probably still welcome Remora with open arms, but me? Not a chance. It’s like –”

“That’s not true!” I interrupted her. As much as I felt for her, I couldn’t let her keep going on about that. Maybe Ray didn’t want her to know, but I believed that she needed to know. “He probably told you that to keep you safe.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“He came clean with me about it recently, and it’s hard to believe, but if it’s bad enough that he wants to keep everyone away, then I have to believe it.”

“Believe what?” She leaned forward.

“He told me about a fog. Apparently people have gone through that fog and gotten all beat up. It’s not a blizzard, either. It’s like the air is still, and the air is warmer near the diner than the rest of the arctic. He said it’s like there’s these invisible enemies that bring harm to others. Many injured people have shown up at the diner and he’s been trying to take care of every single one, but the airport is closed off because he wants to try to keep the damage to a minimum.”

“Why would he tell me that, then?” She grew angrier, and the explanation had the opposite effect of what I was hoping for.

“I don’t know. Maybe he figured if you knew, you’d try to go back.”

“He’s goddamn right, too! What? He thinks he can take all that on his own?”

“I don’t think that’s the case, but even if it was, you aren’t the only one he had stay away. Where do you think we are right now?”

She looked around the room.

“I don’t know. I just woke up here,” she replied. Which, fair point.

“We’re at my house, over in Alaska. I bought it after Ray ordered me to leave. He gave me enough money to pay for a hotel, and I had enough saved up to buy my own home from all the funds he’s given me.”

“Damn, Alaska, huh?”

That’s what you focus on? What about the fact that I’m loaded? I’m totally not strapped for cash at all, it’s awesome!

“He didn’t even want Sunny to come back, but she was stubborn and came back anyway. So while I’m not quite sure who this Remora person is, I doubt he’s making any exceptions.”

She thought over what I told her, then asked:

“How long has it been like that?”

“Not long after I took you back home.”

“So months, huh? Are they still alive?”

I nodded. Thank goodness they were, too.

“Apparently it eases up sometimes, and he’s able to escort some people out, but he still wants to prevent others from entering.”

“Sounds like they’re doing fine on their own, then,” she concluded. I was rather surprised to hear her say that, considering how she said she cared about them and all. But at the same time, I didn’t think it was a good idea for her to try to enter, anyway. At least not while she had injuries of her own that she needed to heal from. She didn’t need any more.

“I wouldn’t go that far. But my point in telling you all that is this: you have more people who care about you than you think. Hell, I’m willing to bet you care about more people than you think, too.”

“Heh,” she managed a smile. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Now, I offered it to you before, and you don’t have to take it, but would you like to be friends?”

She looked down.

“I don’t know...I’m not really someone you’d want to be friends with. In case you forgot, I’ve killed people. I’m not a very good person.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

She pursed her lip. It looked like she was ready to pout.

“Yes. I’d really like a friend,” she said at last. Elation welled up in me and I felt like I could hug her, but I resisted, not wanting to exacerbate her pain. Still, I wanted to show her how happy I was to hear that, but it would have to wait as a vibration sounded off in Demetria’s pants pocket.

“Oh, my phone!” She sounded startled. She reached in and pulled it out, then answered.

“Hello?” She answered. “Oh, hey, Ves. Can I set it to speaker? It’s kinda hard to talk right now. Yeah, everything’s fine, it’s just kind of hard to hold my phone right now.”

I gulped. Like, do what you gotta do, but I felt like I’d be eavesdropping. Knowing that, I should’ve left the room. But to be honest, I kinda wanted to hear what was talked about.

“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for yelling at you the other night,” the woman at the other end’s voice came through. She sounded a little weepy and mournful, but maybe it was just the reception.

“Don’t be. You have every right to react the way that you did. You didn’t deserve that.”

“Still, I don’t think you deserved that, either. Juniper helped me calm down and she suggested that you’re probably going through some difficult things, yourself. I want to be there for you, the way that Juniper was there for me when I dealt with difficult things. I don’t think you need to deal with it alone.”

“Thank you,” croaked Demetria in a near whisper. “Yeah, I was in a bad place. Both physically and mentally,” she looked over at me and smiled. “Now I’m only in a bad place mentally. I’ve got someone with me who’s helping me through some stuff.”

I couldn’t help but smile back at that.

“Are they like Juniper?” Ves asked.

“Sorta. Not really. It’s not romantic or anything. But I’m glad to have her around.”

“I’m glad too.”

“Thanks.”

“I just want you to know that you’re always welcome back here.”

“Thanks, Ves. I just think it’s best if I don’t right now.”

“I understand. Won’t you at least come back to get your stuff? You left it here.”

Demetria jolted upward.

“Oh shit, I did?! I’ll head on out right now!”

“No way you’re going out with those injuries,” I stopped Demetria. She was sat up and blankets pulled out, ready to hop on up out of bed. Once I told her that, she sulked.

“Injuries? Also, who was that?” Ves sounded like a smoothie blend of confusion and worry.

“Hi, I’m Cybele. She got pretty badly hurt, but she’ll survive. I cleaned up her wounds a bit and she’s all bandaged up right now, but I don’t think she’s in any state to be running around.”

“I see. That’s really concerning.”

“Yeah, well, if you want, I can get her stuff for her,” I offered.

“I don’t know...I don’t really like the idea of people I don’t know coming over…”

Fair, I thought. I bet I wouldn’t like that either.

“...But if you’re a friend of Demetria’s, I think I can trust you.”

“Great. I’ll be on my way.”

“Will do. Thank you, Cybele, and thanks for looking after my cousin-in-law.”

Ah, so she’s the one who Demetria had a dream about getting into a fight with. I wonder if I should ask her about that.

But I didn’t. She hung up and I stretched my arms.

“Looks like I’m heading out. Mind texting me the address?” I turned to Demetria and asked.

“Not at all. Thanks for doing this,” she began typing away at her phone.

“No problem. I’m sure at least some of those things are important to you. Now, before I go, feel free to wander around the house, but please try not to push yourself too hard.”

“Got it. See you in a little bit?” She asked.

I nodded, then waved.

“In a little bit.”

I flew out at once and I think the whole trip there took me maybe two hours at most? I wasn’t sure. Not that it mattered. Even if her stuff was way off in Indonesia, I’m sure I would’ve flown out to get it.

As soon as I found a nice empty patch of dirt to land in, I hopped out of the plane and approached their door. They lived in some remote place, far off from any cities or towns. Little bits of grass, some tilled farmland, a greenhouse, a shed, and a little chicken coop. Really, it looked like a nice place to hang. That said, I wasn’t sure if I could live there. As much as I was used to living in remote places, myself, I needed a certain...aesthetic that the country life they seemed to live lacked.

In any case, I walked up to the steps of their house, the wooden stairs creaked, and I knocked on their door. When the door opened, I was stunned at the beauty on display: a tall woman with glasses and near-white hair opened, and she was dressed in some kind of white robe.

“Whoa, you’re hot,” I blurted out. She raised an eyebrow.

“Do you always speak without thinking?” She asked.

“No, I swear I don’t. I’m sorry. Anyway, it’s nice to meet you.”

“Likewise. You’re cute, yourself, with that ponytail and cap of yours. You remind me a bit of Juniper.”

I wasn’t sure who that was, but soon I did, as out stepped another beauty: a woman with blonde pigtails and muscular arms wearing a small tie-dye shirt and skinny jeans.

“And you’re cute,” I remarked.

Juniper, at least I presumed, beamed a bright smile.

“Thanks!”

“Isn’t she?” Ves gestured her arms as if to present her.

“Indeed! Anyway, I think I’m getting sidetracked.”

“Ahem,” Ves coughed into her fist, then changed into a more serious expression. “Yes. I as well. Tell me, is Demetria okay?”

“Well, like I said, she’s badly hurt, but she should recover. Her wounds don’t seem to be infected, and I don’t think she broke any bones. So at least there’s that.”

“Just what did she go through?” Ves mouthed out the words.

“I’m not sure if she wants me telling you, but I’m sure you can ask her.”

“Of course. I don’t want to pry.”

“I’ll go get her stuff!” Juniper declared, then walked off. As she did, I turned to Ves.

“Did you two get into a fight?” I questioned her.

“No,” she lowered her head, and turned to the side. “The other night I yelled at her. I had a mental breakdown. But it was nothing physical.”

“I’m glad to hear that. She just told me about a weird dream she had, so I got worried.”

“A dream?”

“Yeah, she said in the dream you guys fought on a rooftop, and then you slashed her stomach, and she fell.”

Ves took a step back and looked horrified.

“That’s...that’s…” She began, and it looked like I brought something out that she didn’t want to think about. “That’s strange. I don’t know what to make of that,” she said at last.

“Yeah, it was a dream, after all. Sorry, it was probably silly to bring up.”

“It’s all right. I appreciate your concern.”

I took a bow, then when I stood back up, I rubbed the back of my head.

“Oh, you know, it’s nothing special.”

Juniper came back out with a backpack and a couple pairs of shirts.

“Here ya go,” she handed them to me.

“This all?” I was a little surprised to see so little.

“Yeah, I guess she was a light traveler,” she shrugged.

“Well, I’m sure she’ll still appreciate it. Thank you guys,” I waved goodbye to them both, then hurried on my way back home.

Thoughts ran through my head as I approached the house.

Will Demetria still be there? She better, just so she doesn’t get herself hurt further. But at the same time, she does strike me as the type of person to run off.

It was a worry which turned out to be unfounded, as when I entered the house, Demetria was there in plain view: not in the room, but on the couch.

“Hey, I’m home,” I announced.

“How’d it go?” She turned and looked over to me.

“Eh, they seemed like nice people. Not really much happened. I just got your stuff, then left. How about you? How are you doing?”

“It’s been hard to get around. Had to prop myself up against the walls and stuff, but I managed. Found the bathroom and everything.”

“I’m glad to hear. I’m also glad to see you’re still here.”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve got a destination in mind for where I want to go next, but I’m going to wait until I’m all healed up.”

“That’s good to hear.”

She seemed to be in brighter spirits than earlier in the morning. I went ahead and plopped down on the couch beside her.

“So, wanna order take-out?” I offered.

“Oh, hell yeah! I’m starving!” She roared.

“What do you like?”

“I’m cool with whatever...but also I’m vegetarian. So there’s that.”

“Fine by me. How about Chinese?”

“Totally! I bet there’s noodles and shit.”

I snorted.

“Yeah, there sure is.”

I went ahead and ordered online, then when I looked up, I gasped upon seeing what Demetria held up.

“By the way, I found this while you were away. Neat stuff,” she had a devilish grin on her face and I wanted to yank my journal away from her.

“Please don’t tell me you read it!”

“A bit. Here and there. Neat stuff. Though I’m sure I could write better.”

“Oh yeah?” I huffed.

“Yeah. Poetry’s easy. Anyone could do it. Here: ‘Roses are red. Violets are blue. Uhh...Fuck. I can’t think of anything else. How are you?’ See? Easy.”

I burst into laughter.

“Well, I had a good laugh, at least.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she dismissed. “I get it. I’m a comedic genius. No need to rub it in.”

The rest of our night went fairly well. We seemed to bond a bit here and there, something I never imagined.

Soon days passed and she walked around more and more as the days went by. On one occasion, I found her with her laptop open and sat up on the bed.

“I’m actually thinking of taking online classes to finish up my Master’s program,” she mentioned.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. It’s kind of a big deal for me. I dropped out for kinda stupid reasons, but truth be told I was losing interest in my studies, anyway. Still, I don’t like to leave things unfinished, so even if I’m no longer interested in marine biology, I’d still like to complete my program so I have something to show for it. For my own sake, anyway.”

“Well, I think it’s a good idea. I support your decision,” I gave a thumbs up. “Still, sounds difficult. I don’t think I could do online classes.”

“Eh. I don’t see myself liking them, either, but I don’t want to show up in person. I feel like I’d be a disgrace to whatever campus I ended up on.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t be like that.”

“I know...it’s just regrets and stuff.”

“I know how that can be, too,” I admitted. “Still, if you need any help with tuition, let me know. I’m pretty rich, after all.”

Gee, I really tried to brag about that whenever I could, huh?

“Thanks, but I got my own money,” she pulled out an envelope. “It was a birthday gift from...err...someone. It’s not important who.”

“If you got enough to pay for tuition for your birthday, sounds pretty important to me.”

“Trust me, it’s not. I feel bad even using it, but a gift’s a gift.”

I wasn’t going to press any more about the subject, but I was glad to hear that she was considering doing something meaningful.

All in all, it probably lasted about a month in total before she (at least said that she) was all healed up. I didn’t expect her to leave so soon, and her bag wasn’t packed, but by coincidence, I happened to be the one who sparked her departure.

“I’ve gotta say, this is a pretty cool place you got,” she wandered around the house while I sat at the couch and tried to think of another poem to write up.

“Yeah! I’m loaded! Ray paid me well!” I shouted. All I knew was that she was somewhere upstairs. “I didn’t even check my bank account before or after I bought this house, because I was pretty confident that I could already afford it!”

Yeah, it was shallow, but I had to take pride in something, I suppose.

“Whoa, really?” She called back. “How much you got?”

Out of curiosity, I decided to go on my phone and check. I figured I must’ve had like, a couple million or something? Seemed about right. However, once I checked my bank’s app and saw how much I had, my jaw dropped and I had to hold back a scream.

“No!” I wailed and kicked my legs against the base of my couch. “I’ve got less than a thousand! I’m running low on money!”

Demetria ran down the stairs and slid down the railing. I looked at her and was about ready to break into tears.

“I don’t wanna get a job!” I whined. “People might misgender me, and I might have to deal with customers. It would be horrible!”

“Why would they do that?” She tilted her head. “Oh wait, never mind. People are dumb, especially customers.”

“Argh. I should’ve checked my bank account sooner! This house cost me most of my money! Now I don’t know what I’m going to do!”

“Relax. I’m sure I can get you some money to get by.”

I looked at her, my eyes widened.

“Really? How?”

“Eh. I’m resourceful. You’ve helped me out, and it seems simple enough for me. I just need your help to get around a bit.”

Of course. I mean, I didn’t know how I could trust her, but I just had to. Between taking the word of a violent friend and having to find a job...well, the answer was pretty obvious to me. That, and, I didn’t mind so much helping her out, as long as I didn’t feel like I was just being taken advantage of.

“Great. I’m going to pack up. I was about ready to leave anyway, so this is a perfect opportunity for me.”

“So soon?”

“You know me. Always running around. I’ll try not to get myself killed before you get your money, at least.”

“All right,” I laughed a little. “So where to?”

“Chicago,” she declared.

Really? Chicago? What could’ve been so good about there? Well, if she was so confident she’d find what she needed there, then so be it.

[shimyereh]

Almost none of the manuscripts to Ch.6 survive. I think about that a lot. We’ve got three discarded stanzas recorded secondhand by someone who remembered hearing Pushkin recite them, and two short arcs in manuscripts (one discarded digression, and some of the final stanzas of the chapter). That’s it.

How quickly did Pushkin nail down the shape of this chapter? What other things did he consider? Were there other ways the duel could have gone?

It’s a little ironic, because this is a chapter that’s already so poignantly full of alternate realities. What if Onegin had handled things differently at the party? What if Lensky had told Olga about the duel? What if Tatyana had somehow figured out what was going on and intervened? In most chapters, I find alternate realities lurking unpublished in the manuscripts: characterizations with a different twist, little incidents that go the opposite way. In Ch.6, the what-ifs are right there in the published text.

But the most striking tension between alternate realities comes right after Lensky’s death. Pushkin’s immediate reaction is to start speculating on different paths Lensky’s life might have taken. Maybe he would have matured in his craft and gone on to write something immortal. Or maybe he would have just lived a stunningly ordinary life and died of old age, surrounded by loving family. (A discarded stanza reveals a third path: maybe he would have become a polemic figure, and died in exile or by execution like some of Pushkin’s Decembrist friends.) The real tragedy isn’t the great poetry Lensky never wrote, it’s that we’ll never know what might have happened next.

[nosunsetsjustsilence]

The Manics and Gender Identity, Part 1

There is a lot to unpack in Nicky and Richey’s early lyrics pertaining to gender, particularly in terms of identifying with women. Richey approaches the subject — as he is wont to do — with regard to the exploitation and degradation of the female image, while Nicky’s attitude is more inquisitive and casual. Both use lyrics to express their own personal “What if?”

Make no mistake: I’m not claiming that either Nicky or Richey is/was non-cis or trans or anything other than curious. But it’s clear from their personal lyric struggles and hard-won lifestyle choices that this was a different time they were living in. In the 1990s, gender identity was not a topic with any kind of mainstream recognition, at least beyond those who wanted a “sex change” or girls who were considered “one of the boys”. I think it’s fascinating, at least from my perspective, to go back and examine the themes of gender dysphoria, identity, and frustration in lyrics written before any of it was part of popular conversation, and in a way that emphasized the then absolute cultural disconnect between desire and society.

Also, it’s important to note that both Nicky and Richey have presented gender in ways that don’t have anything to do with lyrics. Nicky is comfortable in traditionally female clothing and wears dresses on and off stage; both band members wore makeup and feathers on a regular basis. I’ve tried to write about gender in terms of lyrics only, but at times I do take examples from visual media.

Finally, keep in mind that yours truly is non-binary, and the discussion will hopefully not reek of a cis person watching queer men from behind bars in a zoo.

Special thanks to @sinisterrouge for vetting this before I posted <3

Little Baby Nothing

Although Richey seemed to find comfort in claiming that his lyrics were about the larger world — in the case of Little Baby Nothing, feminism and the way women are perceived in media — a closer look usually reveals a personal stake. When I discussed the meaning of this song previously, I emphasized that the “Little baby nothing” in question is clearly Richey himself, writing in the first person and deconstructing his own image to align with a kind of mindless female groupie used for sex.

My mind is dead, everybody loves me Wants a slice of me Hopelessly passive and compatible Need to belong, oh the roads are scary Hold me in your arms I wanna be your only possession

Richey often refers to himself as a “slut” and a “prostitute” and uses self-referential porn star imagery in his lyrics (So Dead: “You need a fix I’m your prostitute”, Yes: “there’s no lust in this coma even for a fifty”), aligning the industries of pornography and music performance in very vivid ways most often pertaining to exploitation. Appropriately, singing pivotal stanzas on this track is none other than Traci Lords, arguably most famous (especially in the early 90s) for an underage porn scandal.  

What’s more, in the lyrics booklet for Generation Terrorists, there is a quotation or excerpt included for each song. The following corresponds to Little Baby Nothing:

“The male chromosome is an incomplete female chromosome. In other words the male is a walking abortion; aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.” -Valerie Solanos.

Ninety percent of what the Manics said and did in their early years was intended to be shocking and/or ironic. Of course they were trying to incite anger and riots, the questioning of institutions, and a teardown of normalcy. But the fact that Richey later used part of this radical statement as the title to one of his songs (“Of Walking Abortion”, natch) proves that he took it somewhat seriously, even if only in the most simple sense — that part of him resented his own maleness.

Life Becoming a Landslide

This is another song I’ve previously discussed, mostly in the arena of Nicky and Richey individualizing their distinctive voices into lines that can clearly be attributed to one or the other. In a song about nature vs nurture and the plastic confines of greater humanity cracking down on who or what someone is really supposed to be, we have:

Life becoming a landslide Ice freezing nature dead Life becoming a landslide I don’t wanna be a man

As far as writing style goes, Nicky was always fairly straightforward. Richey loves to convolute his message with proper nouns and alternating verb cases and a lack of a subject just to throw  people off, but here’s Nicky, my boy, just saying, “Dude. Being a man sucks. I don’t like this.”

He could mean that being human in general sucks. But, since his attitude towards women leads me to believe he would not abbreviate humanity in this way, and given his and Richey’s track record with gender and Nicky’s well-documented gender presentation, I think it’s clear the lyric means that he doesn’t want to be male. Because he feels it doesn’t suit him, for whatever reason. And that nature failed by making him a man instead of a woman.

Yes

‘Yes’ is an incredible song. Its major-chord melody juxtaposed against Richey’s raw portrait of degradation is truly a thing to behold. The theme? Being used, prostitution both literal and metaphorical (“For sale? dumb cunt’s same dumb questions”), exploitation in the name of capitalism (“In these plagued streets of pity you can buy anything”), and reaching the lowest possible point of existence (“Purgatory’s circle, drowning here, someone will always say yes”). But the chorus — the chorus boasts one of the rawest images of sexual violence the band has ever used:

He’s a boy, you want a girl so tear off his cock Tie his hair in bunches, fuck him, call him Rita if you want

Wow. Okay. Where to begin? The implication here is that gender, along with everything else, is mutable if you have enough money and power to abuse people. However, it appears the change would be made not to entertain others, but to appeal to a specific person, sexually (���fuck him”). The “you” in question is clearly attracted to women, so the narrator offering to mutilate himself to please them can be seen as a last-ditch act of desperation. (“It feels like this massive defeat,” said a friend. “You can make him a woman to pleasure someone, but what’s left to change after that?”)

Richey wrote most of the song; “Rita”, obviously, is the name used for an alternative female identity. But who would Rita be? Richey seems to be wondering. Would she still be me? And would the change even be worth the affections of whomever he’s speaking to? If the means are so drastic (and difficult to picture without experiencing secondhand pain), that answer would usually be “no”. But the song is called “Yes”. I would say yes to anything at this point, Richey is saying, even the most extreme sexual violence imaginable, if that’s what you wanted.

4st 7lb

This is an extreme example of Richey using world issues to examine his own nature. Although anorexic himself, Richey writes “4st 7lb” from the point of view of an obsessive young girl admiring thin models. There could be multiple reasons for this, not the least of which is that when a person fails to fit the “classic” case of an eating disorder, they are often ignored. So, Richey says, you need me to be a teenage girl? I can do that. 

(Note that in 1994, when this song was written, any eating disorder demographic outside the “white girl who loves fashion too much” model did not exist by medical standards and was usually subject to ridicule.)

Karen says I’ve reached my target weight Kate and Emma and Kristin know it’s fake Problem is diet’s not a big enough word I wanna be so skinny that I rot from view

Embodying the anorexic female stereotype allows Richey to criticize both the world and himself; by creating a parody of a young girl with an eating disorder, he creates commentary on how ridiculous and counter-intuitive her thought process actually is. The song is brutal and often focuses on nudity and sexual imagery, as it has been suggested in studies that eating disorders occur in those who are trying to annihilate their own puberty. Though Richey was well into his 20s when he wrote this, he often expressed a loathing of aging and the entire concept of adulthood.

Stomach collapsed at five Lift up my skirt my sex is gone Naked and lovely and 5 stone 2 May I bud and never flower My vision’s getting blurred But I can see my ribs and I feel fine My hands are trembling stalks And I can feel my breasts are sinking

Ultimately, “4st 7lb” hits hard as both an experiment in identity and a vicious satire of the rich white girl eating disorder cliché. Although the lyrics do not express a desire to become female, they do indicate that Richey feels everything might be easier and fit more neatly into a box if he were a girl.

[Coming in Part 2: The Girl Who Wanted to be God, Tsunami, Born a Girl, and Pretention/Repulsion.]