#i live in a national forest so like not that unheard of

[brodudepants]

It's really weird living somewhere where bears are discussed and treated like most people talk about/ treat raccoons

Just now there was a loud shout from my downstairs neighbors

"HEY! GET OUTTA HERE!"

I'm sure it was accompanied by some waving of arms

Sure enough, when I get to a window, I see a bear ambling down the side of the busy hwy I live off of. The next door neighbor and my downstairs neighbor are talking about how if they don't lock their cars at night, a bear is sure to get in. They're laughing over it. Jovial about how the bears are "assholes" but easy enough to chase off

Idk its a weird perspective to live in

[psychopompstories]

Claws That Catch

Content Warnings: Death

No one I guide dies in peace.

I've never understood why. The others, they have their facets. Each called to a certain variety, but variety they have. Even Crow, whose charges pass as leaves fall in a forest. As the seasons turn, or natural causes end life before it’s potential time. So many sorts of endings she sees.

I see only violence.

A screaming ambulance pulled into the hospital intake area. I slunk by bustling mortals in scrubs and protective gear as they gathered around the vehicle to respond to the flickering life inside. I didn’t know this one, but they were mine, whoever they were. The anger coiled inside me, fury at the pride and ignorance of the selfish mortals gathered outside the hospital to protest covering their faces, cooled somewhat. My charge did not deserve my anger. They had suffered enough.

The medical personnel were doing their best to staunch the bleeding, but my charge would not survive. Even so, I followed as they moved the pale mortal. The end came before we got inside. Gurney wheels kept turning and they rushed in anyway, leaving a disoriented spirit behind. She leaned against the wall and sank slowly to her knees.

I moved close, until I could hear her weeping into her hands.

The others often get the chance to love their charges. To see the joyful moments of their lives and the peaceful moments of their passing. Not to say I don’t love the ones I’m called to, but love for them and rage on their behalf are one and the same. Many meet their death with no idea when they got out of bed that morning what kind of fate awaited them if they got into that car, or walked down that alley.

The ones that I watch for a long time...

The battered, the abused, the emotionally manipulated. The subjugated and the exploited. War-torn and traumatized by the violence that was a part of their daily lives.

But some of my charges were like her. Victims of an unexpected fate.

I stepped with care until I was before her, lowering myself into the least threatening posture I could. When the weeping tapered off, she lowered her hands and made a wretched sound. Then covered her mouth and looked at me, the whites of her eyes showing.

“It’s over now,” I said softly.

We sat like that for a long time. Hospital personnel moved by us, voices called for aid, nurses and doctors practicing their lifecraft. It faded into the background for me, as it did for her. Muted. Distant. The sound of the world became muffled and indistinct. There was nothing but this moment, this...grappling with the truth.

“What happened to me?” she whispered.

I allowed the question to linger, unanswered, for a moment. Then simply asked, “You don’t remember?”

She shook her head.

“Are you certain you wish to?”

A long silence. The ghost covered her face with both hands, trying to breathe though she didn’t need to any longer. Eventually she lowered her hands again. “Does it matter?”

I shook my head. “Not to me. I am here to show you the way onward. What path you walked that brought you here matters only to you. So...does it matter?”

Slowly, she got to her feet, bracing herself with one hand on the wall. “I want to know.”

My tail did a little flick, and I scented the air around her. The smell of blood became a trail, one I could follow, though there was no sign of blood on the ground to show her path. I began to walk, and she began to follow. Arms around herself, head low, eyes tracking the living as we passed them, though no eyes turned to follow her.

The world blurred. Moving through this in-between place was not the same as moving within the living world. Here, the pull of a memory, or regret, could draw a soul across oceans and continents to the places their lives had taken them. Most did not travel so far in search of their way onward. It was a fairly modern thing, for mortals to have tread so far in their travels. Not unheard of, in the past, but not like this new age of economy class plane tickets and trade between nations.

Eventually, we came to a place with flashing lights and yellow tape. A hulking beast of a truck was in questionable condition, but the little Civic it had struck was in no state at all. Seeing the place they had pulled her from, I was distantly surprised she had survived as long as she had. She seemed to think so, too, staring with wide eyes at what was left of her car. She was white as chalk, all colour faded from her. Colour faded from the world around us, bleeding away, leaving the landscape a pale reflection of itself.

Shock.

“It’s over now,” I said again. She looked down towards me, and I reached out a paw, claws extended. A slow bat, that would have caught against living skin, but my claws passed right through her. No more harm could come to her now. Not by my claws, or any others. The only terrible fate that could befall her now would be to become...stuck. Stuck here, in this moment.

Even as the living world began to move on, I could see echoes begin to take shape.

Mortals often wonder what makes a haunted place. Moments like these do. A death that cannot be accepted, cannot be moved beyond. An echo that could resonate against itself for decades and make a truly unsettling place for the living. Humans could feel it, if they paid attention. All living things could, but humans most of all struggle to accept this natural part of life. They...think too much. Dream too deeply. The things they feel echo so strongly that even after death, some need to be shown the way.

Not all humans need a guide. Some find their way all on their own. Others simply need directions, and follow willingly. Peacefully.

But no one I guide dies in peace.

She turned away, breathing in short little gasps. Her eyes closed, her shoulders shaking, arms tight around herself. Down to her knees again, huddled on the asphalt, unseen by all the uniformed officers and onlookers. I moved close and laid by her, my back against her thigh, purring. Human science has suggested that a cat’s purr can calm, even heal. I often found it was all that could bring traumatized, tormented souls back from the edge.

It was not a happy sound, for me. But it wasn’t for me. It was for her.

Eventually her shaking calmed and the world began to flatten, a lifeless gray. My gaze sharpened, ears turned to the sound of her, a dangerous moment now. I waited for her to speak.

“But why?” she whispered.

“Many reasons,” I murmured. “Most no longer matter.”

“What do you mean they don’t matter?” the woman demanded, through grit teeth. Rage began to flicker around her. “How can you say that?”

“Look at me.” My voice cut with precision.

Her head came up and my eyes locked with hers. “It. No longer. Matters. That life has ended, child.”

“I’m not--”

“You are.” I did not speak sharply, but softly now. “You were, once. And can be again. But you are now, as ever, mortal. And mortal lives end. The how matters not, once you have passed beyond one life. There is no more to learn here and now. Do not give up on choice. You did not choose this, but you can still choose.”

Tears began to roll down her face. “Choose what?”

“To move forward,” I said, “rather than shackle yourself here, looking ever back at what was done.”

She looked back towards the accident, fear, grief, and regret all flickering around her, making the edges of her silhouette break up like static. Her hands clenched into fists, her body curled into itself, and she screamed. The wail went on for so much longer than living lungs could scream. The air around us shivered with it, fragments in the gossamer veil that separated the world of the living from the dead. Nearby, a flock of sparrows alighted from a power line, twisting and whirling in the air as they fled the distant echo of a dead mortal’s agony.

I was still, because I did not fear her. I feared for her. She couldn’t harm me, but she could harm herself. I was silent, because such things have no words to define them. Humans liked to say that death wasn’t fair, but death was fair. Death was brutally fair. It didn’t give a damn if you were living out your golden years, or an infant in the cradle, when it came for you it did not discriminate or hesitate.

But I could not force her to accept this. The choice was hers, and hers alone.

Eventually the sound faded, like the reverberations of a tuning fork. She sat there for a while, all the tension seeping out of her, until she was wilted and still. The jagged angles of the world softened and the faintest blush of blue returned to the sky above us.

“But...I just bought a house,” she said, making a helpless little gesture with both hands. She didn’t sound angry anymore. She just sounded...somewhere between frustrated and resigned. She laughed, a broken sound, but a laugh nonetheless. “And met a guy who wasn’t a total piece of shit.”

She covered her face with her hands, and I thought she would start to weep again. Her shoulders began to shake and after a moment or two I heard muffled laughter seep between her fingers. It wasn’t amusement, not really. It was closer to hysteria, the sheer weight of everything often produced such strange bouts of laughter in people. When everything was so hopeless, it was either despair....or laugh.

“I know,” I said, with the faintest trace of a smile in my voice. “It is never easy to leave behind all that you had. But if you aren’t finished with living yet, you don’t need to be.” Not all souls needed to hear that. Some knew already, deep down, that this didn’t have to be the end. But many forgot entirely the experience of their previous lives. “This life is over. Another, if you choose to accept it, can be yours.”

She’s quiet for a long time. As she considered, I noticed a familiar face from the corner of my eye. Sitting on the tailgate of the truck that had killed my charge was another spirit, who was also weeping into his hands. Dog sat next to him, speaking quietly to him. He glanced my way and our eyes met for a brief moment, and we were in immediate, silent agreement. I moved so that when my charge looked at me again, she was looking away from where Dog sat.

For some souls, there might be closure in facing the one that brought about your death. In this case, I didn’t think it would do either of them any good to see each other. Dog, it seemed, concurred.

Finally, my charge got a stubborn look on her face and pushed her hair back from her face, taking a deep breath and exhaling in a huff. “Fuck it. Let’s go again.”

I nodded as well. “Very well. Follow me.”

When I returned, Dog was waiting alone. We didn’t exchange pleasantries or even much of a greeting, just a brisk nod. Without any preamble whatsoever, I asked, “Was he drunk when he killed her?”

“Does it matter?” Dog asked, tilting his head at me, ears quirked up.

“I want to know.”

“Tough shit.”

I bristled at him, but he just looked at me, serene. “He wasn’t one of yours, and you’ve no right to ask. Whatever he has or hasn’t done is past now. He killed himself in that accident, too, need I remind you?”

I lashed my tail once. “In that thing? How? I’d ask if he forgot to wear a seatbelt, but-”

There was no warning. Somehow I ended up on my back, with a magnificent set of teeth bared and directly above my face. I tried to squirm, but Dog leaned closer to me and snarled a warning that stilled even me. Spirits might not be able to harm us, but we could harm each other, with enough time and effort. Neither of us could be destroyed, but we could make existence... troublesome for each other, if we chose.

“You may be my elder,” Dog snarled, “but I will not stand for your insolence, Cat. I have never shown disrespect to your charges, you will do me the same courtesy.”

I scowled up at his maw, but had the presence of mind to question whether it was worth it. Dog did not deserve my anger either. “...as you say, Dog.”

He stepped back and I pulled myself upright, smoothing down my mussed fur with a few grooming laps. “My apologies,” I mumbled. “These times are trying.”

“They are,” Dog agreed, calm once again. His anger could be terrible, but it rarely lasted long. “I’m sorry, too, Cat. That was unkind of me.” He sounded genuinely regretful.

I twitched my tail and made a small tip of my head, conceding that it would not be held against him. It was not the first time he and I had clashed, not even close to how we used to fight years before, and it would not be the last. But such things were not worth holding grudges over. Eternity was a long time to hate someone.

Lock appeared from down the street and cantered towards us, mane and tail steaming. They came to a breathless stop near us and tossed their head. "Dog! It has been too long, my friend."

Dog gave a joyful bark of greeting. "Lock! You look well. More here than you’ve been in a while, eh?"

"Indeed," Lock agreed, placid. "The world is changing again, brother. Not all of the mortals see it yet, but many do, and more with each passing day.”

They looked between the two of us, sensing that they’d just missed something, from the abashed way Dog held himself to the way my fur was still messy from being flipped onto my back. They gave us both a stern stamp of their hoof. “Do the two of you not see enough of war, that you would start one between you now?”

We both looked away. Dog’s tail thumped the ground a few times with embarrassment, my own tail flicked with feigned ambivalence that Lock could see right through. I summoned the self-awareness to take responsibility, and raised my head to look up at them. “The fault was mine. I am...tired.” The word was heavy.

“More so than any time before?” Lock asked, curious. “I have seen you weary, Cat, but not like this. What ails you?”

I sighed. “The world is changing, but too slowly. The systems they have built are murdering them, Lock. The breadth of the violence inflicted on this world by psychotic hoarders is...it’s too much. Violence is my calling, but this? The destruction of an entire planet’s ecosystems, millions of deaths from this new disease, and for what? A broken structure that destroys exponentially more lives than it improves? Thousands being worked to death so a single man in the grip of absolute narcissism can touch the stars? Even the pyramids were not such a useless waste of lives.”

Dog made a grunting sound, and I thought he would disagree, but instead he nodded slowly. “I remember when mortals first touched the stars. It made history, and inspired millions. Now it is done for no reason but ego, and inspires nothing but more desire to consume.”

Lock considered that. They did a small shake of their head. “I will not deny your point, Cat. But do not lose hope. They are waking to the truth. We cannot help them, but we can do our best to ease their passing. Many lives will end in the coming years, and many of those deaths will be unjust. We must believe in the beauty of their potential, and not its darkest, most destructive face.”

I drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly. It was impossible not to be inspired by them. They, more than any of us, had true faith in humanity, and always have. “I will try, my friend.”

No one I guide dies in peace, but it’s my job to make sure they depart this world in peace. This has always been my job. More so than the rest, I am called to those whose deaths begin to form a loop. An endless echo of pain and regret, a soul that becomes a wraith, tormented and lost. That is not a fate I would wish on anyone. No matter how terrible.

Or so I tell myself.

END

If you enjoy the Psychopomp Stories, consider tossing a Coin for the Boatman or Treats for Dog at https://www.patreon.com/frassysass

[didanawisgi]

I came across this on Facebook and decided to go ahead and share it, I do not know the author. If you do, feel free to share. - REGIII

Surviving the Great Reset

I've been working on an article on the World Economic Forum's 'Great Reset' which is an attempt to collapse the current economy in order to then offer a 'solution' in the form of a high-tech, neo-feudal world government - with 'Carbon pricing' cast in the role of the late Caesar Diocletian's Edicts (on maximum prices), being the economic policies responsible for the last 'Dark Age'.

Historically, the only thing that has proven capable of bringing about a wholesale restructuring of a sophisticated economy, is war. Hence all the 'war footing' rhetoric around climate/ covid, the nauseating Churchill impressions and infringements of our civil rights heretofore unheard of in peace-times. Nuclear weapons have made war against another advanced nation very unlikely (see, M.A.D.); that said, expect to hear much rhetoric to the contrary, from our compromised 'Global Leaders'. For this reason, various 'crises' must instead be engineered and propagated into the public mind so that they can be politically exploited, in much of the same way as war historically has been.

I'm unsure when I'll get around to publishing, and so I've decided to post draft 'bits' of the final chapters on how to survive what's coming - for reasons I hope are self-evident at this point.

As some of you know, throughout my early-mid 20s I was an active part in a nation-wide resurgence of land-rights campaigns, using 'direct action' tactics like squatting land, to draw attention to the socially intolerable and economically inefficient concentrations of land in this country; whilst promoting low-impact, human-scale alternatives to the prevailing economic 'wisdom' of land, as a store of wealth - a legacy of the Norman conquest.

During this time I spent three British winters living outdoors in simple structures (benders, yurts) many of which we built ourselves. Back then, and over the decade that followed I spent much of my time studying wild foods and nutrition, it was more than just a hobby. I once attempted to live solely on what I could forage or otherwise 'acquire' ;) from the forest - I didn't last long. Surviving without the conveniences of modern life is a steep learning curve and one which many of you may be forced to climb over the coming years, as the controlled-demolition of the current economic model really starts to get underway. I heard someone say that 2020 was "like 9/11, every day" - but trust me when I say, you ain't seen nothing yet!

So when the lights go out, the taps/ pumps run dry and supermarket shelves are as barren as England's once fertile soils. What then? I mean, aside from the contrived 'solutions' the emerging World State will be oh-so keen to present us with, as if that wasn't the plan all along...

Well, I'll tell you what but first, here's the top three (natural) ways you're likely to perish in such a world.

Warmth (hypothermia can kill you cold, in around 3 hours)

Water (dehydration or water-born disease - around three days)

Food (three weeks before you're looking at irreparable damage)

Now, with those priorities firmly in your head - here are the things that might keep you alive...

WARMTH

Wearing woollen clothing rather than cotton/ nylon, may well save your life. Wool, unlike cotton, will keep you warm and even when it's wet. Cotton is not only a poor insulator, but the cooling effect caused by water rapidly evaporating from its fibres can and does kill. Honestly, I know it sounds silly but in a world without central heating our ancestors depended upon wool to keep themselves warm. Cotton or synthetic clothing, will not do the same.

Get a log burner. Depending on the National Grid to keep you alive, is not a good option these days! If you are unable to have a log burner where you live currently, consider stocking up on gas bottles as a temporary solution, to allow you to cook and keep warm for long enough to find an alternative; and realistically, when the grid goes down, no-one is going to care about you running a chimney out of your top-floor apartment window. Just make sure to get what you need to be self-sufficient, now! How are you going to stay warm without electric or gas? Have a plan. Prepare.

Fire-starters are essential, keep well stocked in a wide range. Have short, medium and long-term options.

Short term: disposable lighters; safety matches (last longer than strike-anywhere in my experience)

Medium term: petrol lights + flints + a jerrycan (or ten) of fuel

Long term: ferrocerium rods; flint/ steel; and finally bow drills (Ivy for the base, Buddleia for the shaft), char cotton cloth for an effective tinder.

WATER

We're very lucky in the Forest, likewise Wales has many springs that can be relied upon for drinking water. Look for signs of 'adaptation', large stones intentionally placed near the source is a good sign that the water has been used in the past. Of course, be wary of potential sources of contamination from either agricultural or industrial run-off, especially up-land from the source. Ceramic filters are inexpensive, the branded 'water dispensers' are not, buy ten filters rather than a 'dispenser' and rig-up an old demijon or plastic jerry-can to act as the filter housing. Filters clog, so stock up. Charcoal (wood burnt in a low-oxygen environ, i.e. in a metal tin with a tiny hole) filters heavy metals, nitrates, other chemicals.

FOOD

There is a word in the English language that is a bar against all hunger, a remedy for the worst depredations of poverty and a great leveller of inequality; it is by this word that soil and all life that walks upon it is nourished and sustained.

... and that word is: ruminant.

Ruminants are how you will survive long term, whilst avoiding futile efforts like trying to grow enough calories to survive without mechanised agriculture. Sorry veggies, but without coconut-oil colonialism, ruminants are the only thing that stand between you and certain starvation.

Our ancestral Forester's knew this all too well, which is why they were resolute in their defence of our ancient Commoning Rights, to graze sheep and other animals in the 'Forest Waste'. No matter how oppressive the economic/ political conditions of the day, with a few dozen sheep you can survive.

For the vast majority of our time on this planet (i.e. the 99.999% of our history before mass-transportation and industrial agriculture) human life in Northern climes has been entirely dependant upon the ability of ruminants (sheep, cows, deer) to convert grass (cellulose) into Omega-3 essential fatty acids, proteins and bioavailable vitamins and minerals. Nature will thrash your ideologically-driven dietary compulsions, every time. Do not fight it.

In terms of energy expended to digestible calories produced, sheep and cows are the most efficient source of food by orders of magnitude.

Metabolic history.

We are said to have been 'recognisable' bi-pedal hominids for some 2.7 - 3 million years, and throughout this time our diets consisted primarily of wild game, fish/ crustaceans along with some fruit in summer and nuts/ roots in autumn. You can think of the fruit and nuts as 'supplements', sugars that provide calories which your body preferentially burns, allowing you to store the more important fats (from game), in preparation for winter. Bearing in mind most of this time we've been in an Ice Age and so fruits and nuts were an occasional treat. Not a staple food. In terms of our calorific staple, i.e. the fuel that we use to power our bodies day-in, day-out - high-quality dietary fats are quite literally the only game in town.

Sugar/ carb based foods are rare in nature, that is why we didn't evolve an hormonal 'off-switch' (like ghrelin) to tell us when we've eaten enough sugar. For millions of years our bodies have evolved to rely on fats, specifically Omega-3's as our primary source of fuel. It's slow burning, and once you've adapted your body to efficiently metabolise and use Omega-3s as your primary calorific fuel, a single meal will provide you enough energy for 3 days of solid hiking. Carbs on the other hand are fast burning, low-energy density and that is why people must constantly snack to maintain blood-sugar levels.

Relying on easily available carbs is not a luxury you can afford, and adapting yourself to a ketogenic diet (burning fat for fuel) is arguably the most effective thing you can do to stay healthy now, and to prepare for the real world (without Govt subsidised, nutritionally inferior grain-based junk foods). There is no dietary requirement for carbohydrates - none. On the other hand, without a source of Omega-3 ESSENTIAL fatty acids, you will not survive long. Unless you're near the sea, ruminants are your only option for getting the necessary fats. Now...

"Get theeself zum ship, lad... afore it be too late!"

[lady-divine-writes]

Klaine one-shot “Artistic Differences” (Rated NC17)

Summary: Kurt and Blaine have known each other all their lives. They've loved each other almost as long. But as Blaine uses his love for Kurt as inspiration for his music, Kurt has yet to reciprocate. And since painting is Kurt's entire world, Blaine is worried about what that might mean for the two of them. (2703 words)

Notes: I had been writing this for the @klaineadvent Drabble Challenge 2020 prompt 'opinion'. I finally finished it. Wee! XD

Read on AO3.

Baby, you're not alone...

'Cause you're here with me...

And nothing's ever gonna bring us down...

'Cause nothing can keep me from lovin' you...

And you know it's true...

It don't matter what'll come to be...

Our love is all we need to make it through...

Blaine stops singing when he notices an echo haunting his lyrics, lingering on the high notes for longer than written. He listens with eyes closed, smiling at his keyboard. 

His boyfriend Kurt, humming behind the melody. 

Blaine has been ironing this song out for the past three hours now but Kurt hasn't complained once about the constant stopping and starting.

He never does. 

Blaine peeks over his shoulder as he continues to play with the harmonies and watches Kurt, focused on the canvas in front of him, swaying to the rhythm of the music, happily sandwiched between his two passions - art and music.

It's a mild and sunny Saturday - a whole day devoted to cleaning up commissions and tying loose ends on weekly projects before their one day off together. Blaine and Kurt share a studio space - normally unheard of for an artist and a musician, but they make it work. It helps that they've known one another for so long that being alone together is the same as being alone with themselves. That also means they get the inside scoop on what the other is working on long before the public does.

And what they're not working on, which has begun to bother Blaine.

Blaine adores everything his talented boyfriend comes up with. Even regarding his more controversial works, there isn't a thing Kurt has painted that Blaine finds objectionable. Kurt puts his heart and soul into every painting, no matter who it's for, and no matter the subject. A writer from Artforum once wrote: "Kurt Hummel goes beyond the veil to showcase not just the external, but the core of every subject - their drives and motivations. It pairs nicely with the transparency of his own soul, which shines through the gouache and the gesso to leave the viewer with a tangible piece."

And therein lies the root of Blaine's problem.

A glance at one of Kurt's canvasses and the world knows everything it needs to about what he loves.

But one subject in particular has gone wholly unrepresented.

“How come you've never painted a portrait of me?” Blaine asks.

"Hmm... what's that, love?" Kurt mutters, switching out brushes, then moving from a blob of Titanium White to a smear of Winsor Blue.

"How come you've never painted a portrait of me?" Blaine rises off his piano bench and relocates to the wooden folding chair behind Kurt's easel in the hopes of pulling his attention a bit. "You've been an artist for as long as I've known you, and I've known you your entire life. But not once have you ever painted a portrait of me."

“Why do I need to? I have you right here," Kurt says, pretending to bop the tip of Blaine's nose with his brush. "Besides, these aren’t personal." His gaze bounces between the three canvases set on easels in an arc in front of him. "They’re bought and paid for.”

"But what about your private stuff? You've shown me your sketchbooks and your digital art files. Unless you have some hidden folder marked 'secret boyfriend art' that I've yet to come across, there's not a single piece of me in any of your work."

Kurt doesn't steer his gaze away from the apple he's adding highlights to to acknowledge his pouty boyfriend, but the corner of his mouth hitches. "If you say so, dear."

"I know so," Blaine grumps, crossing his arms over his chest and dropping back in the chair so hard he nearly topples it over.

"That's your opinion."

"You're evading."

"Is it really so important to you?"

"Yes! It would be nice to be immortalized by my artist boyfriend!"

Kurt snickers. "Are you that much of a narcissist?"

"Your art is important to you! More than that - it's your life! You paint everything that you love! You've made dozens of paintings of Finn, your father, your mother, your Navigator... "

"My Navigator is my baby. It deserves love. I don't get to drive it much living in the city," Kurt defends. "Besides, those paintings I posted on Instagram landed me a huge contract with Lincoln, and that paid for our month-long tryst to Bali. You're welcome, by the way."

"I'm not saying I'm not grateful... " Blaine pauses, the smile on his face a souvenir from thirty straight days of overindulgence in sex and alcohol. "I think I more than proved that on that private beach? Under the moonlight?"

"Yeah, you did," Kurt growls, silently hoping that will be the end of this discussion.

"But... " Blaine picks up and Kurt's heart sinks.

No luck.

"... nowhere am I present in your work. Not that I've seen. Not even in the abstract. And that makes me think... " 

"Think what?" Kurt mutters, his playful attitude fading the longer this conversation drags on.

Blaine sighs, realizing how much like a spoiled toddler he sounds. But he's in too deep to stop now. "That you don't expect me to be around long."

Kurt's snicker turns into a full-blown chortle. "We've been together forever! You staked a claim on me in kindergarten! Are you suddenly going somewhere?"

"Can't you take this seriously?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because it's ridiculous!"

Blaine huffs. "Great. So my feelings are ridiculous."

"No, Blaine, your feelings are valid. This argument is ridiculous. Believe it or don't, you don't know everything about me. Or my work. What does it matter what I put on a canvas? I told you that I love you! That I would always love you! I tell you over and over and over! Those are my words! My truth! Listen to my truth!"

"B-but what if you change your mind?" Blaine grimaces when that toddler inside him begins throwing an all-out tantrum.

"Then I change my mind!" Kurt groans, slamming his free hand down on an open tube of Dandelion Green, sending a thick ribbon of paint a good four feet. "I'm allowed to change my mind! And so are you! But I don't see that happening!"

"Then why won't you marry me?"

Kurt pulls a face, probably without thinking about it. "Because I'm not very fond of marriage."

"Why not? Your parents had a great marriage! And your father has a wonderful second marriage!"

"But your parents don't have a very good marriage, do they? Nor your older brother, who's been divorced twice already! " Kurt argues, frustration causing him to forget himself and clean his stained hand on the untucked hem of his shirt instead of a rag. That should be a huge red-flag for Blaine to back down, yet he doesn't. Common sense? Sorry, don't know her. "And the national average isn't that great, either. Doesn't it mean more that I choose to stay with you instead of feeling obligated to?"

Blaine doesn't have an answer for that, even though the answer is obviously yes. Of course, it does. And in high school, that would have been enough to shut Blaine up. But admitting to that feels too much like conceding, and this one time, this is an argument he wants to win. "Did you hear that song I've been working on?" Blaine asks, switching gears so quickly, it puts Kurt on edge.

"Yes," Kurt replies, his voice becoming tight quickly. "It's lovely."

"I wrote it for you."

"Thank you. It sounds wonderful. Another huge hit in the making."

"It's the 15th song I've written in your honor."

"Wow," Kurt says dryly, predicting the direction this is heading. "That many?"

"Yes."

"Well, that's an incredibly kind and loving gesture, one that I didn't know required reciprocation."

"It doesn't require reciprocation. But it would be nice."

Kurt rolls his eyes at Blaine's agenda. Tit for tat. Is that how this is supposed to work? "From what I remember, those songs made you a pretty penny."

"So?"

"So, it's not like you wrote them for me and kept them between us. Most of those songs are chart-toppers."

"But I didn't release them for the money! I wouldn't care if they didn't make me a dime! I put them on the albums because I'm not afraid to let the world know how I feel about you!"

Kurt's brow furrows as he fights through a blooming headache to decode that declaration. Once he gets it, he gasps. "I'm not hiding you away if that's what you're implying! You go with me EVERYWHERE! Every gallery opening, every art show! There have been articles written about our relationship! You're no dirty little secret!"

"I never said I was."

"No?" Kurt chuckles bitterly. "You're sure implying it a great deal!"

"That's not what this is about."

"You're right. It's not. Blaine!" Kurt tosses his brush into a mug of water and starts pacing the floor. "I am a gay artist walking a very fine line."

"I'm a gay artist, too!" Blaine says, offended.

"But you're a musician. And a songwriter. Musicians are supposed to use love as their muse. Writing about your relationship is expected... unless you're Taylor Swift, apparently."

"Yeah. What's up with that?"

Kurt shrugs. "I don't know. The point is that the second I make a piece of art about our relationship in any way, shape, or form, I'm afraid that's all it will be about, no matter what I intend."

"Isn't art supposed to be subject to interpretation?"

"That's just it! If I hint that my art has anything to do with you, that will become the only interpretation. Because too many straight people see the homosexual experience as solely about the right to fuck who we want to fuck and nothing else. I make a portrait about you or dedicated to you, and after that... " Kurt's eyes leave Blaine's face, scanning the room and his canvasses all around for help making his argument. He finds a painting of a forest they hiked through in Bali and stops there "... a tree that I paint will no longer be just a tree. It will become a symbol. In a forest of evergreens, if one needle is slightly browner than the rest because the paint oxidizes weirdly or whatever, then it'll be about you and me on the skids and nothing else. And I don't want that to happen."

Blaine turns in his chair to find the painting Kurt is staring at. On the surface, it's trees, dirt, and sky, but underneath, it's much more than that. That painting of their beloved paradise is perfection - so much so that he can feel the sun on his face, the breeze kissing his cheek, smell the sunscreen on his skin. "I understand what you're saying, but... "

"But?" Kurt grinds out between his teeth. This is the frustrating thing about arguing with Blaine. Even when he says he sees Kurt's point of view, he doesn't seem to really.

And when he's not winning, he gets dismissive.

"... I think you're overthinking things a little."

"And you're not?"

"Another evade," Blaine says, pointing at him in a way reminiscent of his brother's only acting technique.

Kurt grabs the hair at his temple and pulls to keep from flinging the palette in his hand like a frisbee at Blaine's head. "Isn't it more important that you know how I feel about you? You inspire me every day! Your love, your support, your music - they feed my soul! But do I have to plaster it on a wall to make it real?"

"That's kind of an empty question because you don't! There are no paintings of me! Not even in our apartment! And I'm sorry, but I think that's very telling!"

Kurt nods, his lips pulled taut. "You're right, Blaine. Not one. And it is very telling." He drops his palette on his work table and circles the room, grabbing finished canvases and carrying them over. He positions them purposefully, placing some under UV lights he has mounted to runners on the ceiling. 

"What... what are you doing?" Blaine asks with worry, wondering if Kurt is about to do something hasty, something that will ruin his paintings, waste all those hours of work, jeopardize the money he has yet to collect for them. 

Kurt doesn't answer. 

He doesn't even look at him. 

He works silently, his shoulders rigid, his footsteps heavy as he collects paintings Blaine forgot about, paintings that had made Blaine bristle because they were of places they had been to together, things they had made a point to see only with each other, but not a one included him. Those Kurt flips upside down.

He swipes a squeeze bottle of clear liquid from his army of supplies. It could be water. It could be paint thinner. Blaine doesn't know, but he's not certain he wants to find out. He's about to leap off his seat to stop him, but Kurt switches off the overhead lights, turns on the UVs, and Blaine stops. He watches in horror as Kurt douses the flipped canvases in fluid, but the paint doesn't run. Whatever is in that bottle, it sticks, but only in certain areas, and before it dries completely, Kurt dusts the paintings with a fine powder, one that brings hidden images to life beneath the lights.

“Oh my God,” Blaine mutters, stepping back to get a better look.

Every painting, in one way or another, is of him. Of them. And not just recently. There are images of them from college, high school... middle school. There are profiles of Blaine in the negative space between flowers of one painting, and in the clouds of another. A fluorescent image of teenaged him playing guitar to a silhouette of Kurt sitting beside him. There are shadows of them dancing, singing, even a daring one of them making love up against a wall. 

And the flipped landscapes? Their vacation pictures, as it were? The glowing dust reveals portraits hiding in plain sight, painted upside down and invisible to the naked eye. All of these images, Kurt painted in ways where no one would detect them if they weren't looking for them. If they didn't know they were there.

And they are in every. single. one.

Now that he's seen this, it's safe to assume all of Kurt's works carry similar Easter eggs, even paintings long gone.

"Why... why didn't you tell me about this?" Blaine asks, too stuck on stupid to move, walk from painting to painting and examine them properly.

"Why did I need to? I love you. I've told you. What else did I need to prove?"

Blaine shakes his head slowly, ashamed of himself. What an imbecile he is! Kurt is absolutely right. He loves him! He didn't need to prove it! The hurt Blaine felt - that was on him. It wasn't Kurt's responsibility to fix it. There isn't a day that goes by where Kurt doesn't show his love to Blaine in one way or another. Blaine didn't need this. He really didn't.

And right now, he doesn't feel he deserves it.

On a side note, how wrapped up in his own crap has he been that here, in this space that they share, where proximity has forced Kurt to memorize every song Blaine has been writing for his latest album while he paints, that he never realized just how frickin' talented his boyfriend is!?

"Kurt... " Blaine finally finds the strength to take a step forward, drawn to that ghostly image of them making love. It's a simple shadow of the moment, but it evokes a powerful memory "... these are incredible. How did you... ?" Blaine expects an answer before he can finish. Kurt is rarely shy about discussing his work.

Though Blaine should use this opening to his advantage - apologize since those should have been the first words out of his mouth.

But he gets nothing.

"Kurt?" Blaine looks over his shoulder in search of his boyfriend, ready to make amends. 

But Kurt is gone.

[dweemeister]

NOTE: This is the first (and perhaps only) film released theatrically during the COVID-19 pandemic that I am reviewing – I saw Wolfwalkers at the Vineland Drive-in at the City of Industry, California. Because moviegoing carries risks at this time, please remember to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by your local, regional, and national health officials.

Wolfwalkers (2020)

In interviews prior to and after Wolfwalkers’ release, co-director Tomm Moore has described the film as the last panel of Cartoon Saloon’s Irish folklore triptych. That triptych (an informal trilogy) began with The Secret of Kells (2009) and continued with its centerpiece, Song of the Sea (2014). The global environment for animated cinema has transformed since Kells, and now – unexpectedly – Cartoon Saloon finds itself a hub for not just hand-drawn animation, but animation that rejects the crass commercialism emerging from mainstream animation studios (mostly from the United States). With the triptych completed (as well as 2017’s The Breadwinner), one can trace Cartoon Saloon’s evolution from their beginning to its present artistic maturation. While the film asserts its own uniqueness in the Cartoon Saloon filmography, there are connecting strands – aesthetic, spiritual, thematic – of the studio’s previous features apparent throughout. Upon a week’s reflection, I think Wolfwalkers is the studio’s second-best film, just behind Song of the Sea. Even at second-best, this level of artistry has rarely been seen in this young century.

It is 1650 in Kilkenny. Robyn Goodfellowe (Honor Kneafsey) is an apprentice hunter and only daughter of Bill (Sean Bean). Robyn and her father are expatriates from England, and some of their Irish neighbors will not let them forget that. Oliver Cromwell (Simon McBurney) – referred to as “The Lord Protector” throughout the film – has invaded Ireland and looks to secure his conquest over the Irish people (Cromwell is a despised figure in Ireland and lionized by some in England to this day). On an ill-advised trip outside the walls of Kilkenny, Robyn encounters and eventually befriends Mebh Óg MacTíre (Eva Whittaker in her first film role; pronounced “MABE”), a Wolfwalker. As a Wolfwalker, the animalistic Mebh can leave her physical body and take the shape of a wolf while slumbering. Mebh’s mother – who is also a Wolfwalker – has been missing for sometime while Cromwell has ordered the slaughter of all of Ireland’s wolves. Things are complicated when Bill is tasked by the Lord Protector to destroy the wolves living in the woods surrounding Kilkenny.

From the opening moments, lead background artist Ludovic Gavillet (2016’s The Secret Life of Pets, 2018’s The Grinch) sets the contrast between the scenes within and outside Kilkenny’s walls. Kilkenny is suffocatingly geometric, with squares and rectangles dominating the background and foreground. Backbreaking work defines life in Kilkenny, all devoted to the residents’ English conquerors, God, and the Lord Protector. Rarely does the average city resident venture outside the looming outer medieval walls (there are two sets of walls in the city). The structure of Kilkenny is inconceivably box-shaped when seen from a distance. It appears like a linocut. In that distance are the countryside and the forests. As one ventures further from Cromwell’s castle, expressionist swirls define the foliage that seems to enclose the living figures treading through. Green, brown, and black figures twist impossibly in this lush environment. Seemingly half-drawn or faded figures suggest a depthless, dense forest – similar in function to, but nevertheless distinct from, Tyrus Wong’s background art for Bambi (1942). In both Kilkenny and the forest scenes, selective uses of of CGI animation capture the dynamism of certain action scenes – two running scenes in particular employ these techniques (once in joy, the other in terror).

So often in modern CGI-animated films, the animators seem to grasp for heightened realism and minutiae. In such movies, too many details are packed into frames that can only be appreciated if prodigiously rewatched or paused mid-movie. It might feel like completing a visual checklist. In Wolfwalkers, the half-finished details amid breathtaking backgrounds, angular (or round) humans, and simultaneously threatening and delightful wolves almost seem to announce that, yes, humans drew this – and they did so with such artistic flare. In keeping with the references to triptychs in this review, the film itself sometimes divides the frame into thirds (a top, middle, and bottom or a left, center, and right) or halves in moments of dramatic weight. The thirds or halves are separated by dividing lines and are used for various purposes depending on the moment: to save the filmmakers from making two extra cuts, juxtapose differing if not contradicting perspectives, and intensify the emotions portrayed. Less utilized in this film but even more radical than the aforementioned techniques is the film’s use of shifting aspect ratios. Wolfwalkers is principally in 1.85:1 (the common American widescreen cinematic standard, which is slightly wider than the 16:9 widescreen TV standard), but there are notable moments which temporarily dispense of these standards. Like the division of the screen into thirds or halves, the shifts in screen aspect ratio help the audience focus and understand what is occurring on-screen. The most memorable screen aspect ratio shift appears before an eruption of violence.

The Secret of Kells, too, was set in a city designed in a perfect, orderly shape. That film, like Wolfwalkers, evokes Christianity for narrative purposes. But where Kells celebrated God and found religion as a source of comfort, Wolfwalkers’ depiction of Christianity – specifically, Cromwell’s Anglican zealotry – is without redeeming elements. Under his breath, the Lord Protector prays to God that he will execute any providential commands by any means necessary. In public, he announces his actions as essential to rid Ireland of the lupine paganism that inhabits the wild. Without saying as much, Cromwell’s orders are nevertheless Anglican England imposing its will on Irish Catholics. Irish cinema, until the late 1990s and early 2000s, was usually deferential in its depictions of the clergy and religious practitioners (almost always Catholic). Though it is not unheard of for an Irish film to be critical in portrayals of religious belief, it remains uncommon. And though Cromwell is Anglican and not Catholic (and despite the fact he remains vilified in Ireland), Wolfwalkers’ cynical depiction in how he wields his religiosity as a cudgel is an extraordinary development in Irish cinema.

Tied to the film’s depiction of religiosity are its undercurrents of English colonialism and environmentalism. The latter will be obvious to viewers, but the former might cause confusion during a first viewing because it seems to be, at once, on the periphery and yet central to Wolfwalkers. Cromwell being referred to as “the Lord Protector” for the film’s entirety is indicative of screenwriter Will Collins’ (Song of the Sea) decision not to provide much historical context within the film. English colonial oppression usually occurs off-screen or is implied. This seems inconsistent with Cartoon Saloon’s work on The Breadwinner. That film identifies and openly describes Taliban injustices.

So what gives? As much as those who admire animated film disdain perceptions that it is solely for children (like myself), animated film is oftentimes a gateway for children to be exposed, eventually, to other corners of cinema. Can children understand Anglican-Catholic tensions in Cromwellian Ireland? Perhaps (especially British and Irish children), if presented with enough care. But the answer probably lies with the fact that the thematic goals of Wolfwalkers are more aligned with Kells and Song of the Sea than The Breadwinner. Cartoon Saloon’s Irish folklore triptych is concerned with how the Irish are inextricably, spiritually, bonded to the environment. There is a balance between humanity and nature – a mystical connection that, when disrupted, brings harm to all. The Breadwinner, though very much a part of Cartoon Saloon’s filmography, is grounded in recent history and, because of recent developments in the Taliban’s favor concerning the Afghan peace process, present-day concerns. In the film, fantastical stories are used to bring Parvana’s family together as the Taliban tighten their grip before the American invasion. This has little bearing on the folklore-centric storytelling of Wolfwalkers, but Collins, Moore, and Stewart’s editorial decision to downplay the film’s historical basis tempers any messaging they wished to convey.

Wolfwalkers meets The Breadwinner in its depiction of a young girl growing up in a male-dominated society. This film’s lead was supposed to be a young boy. But the story, to Collins, Moore, and Stewart, just did not click with the original male protagonist. As such, the trio made the decision early in the film’s production to switch the protagonist’s gender. Robyn, an English transplant to Ireland, is allowed remarkable freedom to do whatever she wants with her time in the opening stages of the film. This arrangement cannot persist as her father falls from the Lord Protector’s good graces. She is relegated to washing dishes from daybreak to dusk in the scullery – a task that she, in her heart, rejects for its gendered connotations. Robyn wears a Puritan’s frock while at the scullery, a uniform she has no desire for. While outdoors beyond the Kilkenny walls, she wears what her father wears – pants! – while out hunting wolves. Other than her father, few in the city care for Robyn’s intelligence and instincts. Most everybody ignores her protestations and truth-telling about the things she has seen in the forest. By film’s end, she is vindicated, in spite of Cromwell’s (and, to a lesser extent, her father’s) bluster and bravado.

This film also contains potentially queer subtext between Robyn and Mebh. Writers more skilled than I will provide better analysis of that subtext. Nothing explicit is shown, as the two are still children. Yet the nature of their friendship, the themes contained in Wolfwalkers, and some unspoken moments between Robyn and Mebh seem to relate a possible queerness. The film also does nothing to present either girl as heterosexual. Queer or not, Wolfwalkers shows the viewer a blossoming friendship between two girls – not without its tribulations, but rooted in their common earnestness.

Unlike previous films in Cartoon Saloon’s Irish folklore triptych, there are no notable original songs in Wolfwalkers. French composer Bruno Coulais and Irish folk music group Kíla are Cartoon Saloon regulars and return for Wolfwalkers. The musical ideas for Wolfwalkers’ score are not as apparent as the previous films in the triptych, as they are not quoting a song composed for the film. But the use of Irish instruments in their collaboration lends at atmospheric authenticity that only heaps upon the film’s sterling animation. Norwegian pop sensation AURORA has altered the lyrics and orchestration to her 2015 single “Running with the Wolves” to accompany a running scene that, by the filmmakers’ admission, was inspired by the running scene from The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013, Japan). The scene pales in comparison to the context and music from the late Isao Takahata’s final film, but Wolfwalkers is a movie more than the sum of its parts.

Production on Wolfwalkers was in its final stages as the COVID-19 pandemic reached the Republic of Ireland. When the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, announced a countrywide lockdown on March 12, 2020, Cartoon Saloon had already started preparing for a lockdown contingency three weeks’ prior. Clean-up was divided between Luxembourg-based Mélusine Productions and Cartoon Saloon’s headquarters in Kilkenny. After assessing the needs of the clean-up animators, both studios moved to remote work where the most pressing complication was their Internet bandwidth slowing down upload speeds.

Cartoon Saloon’s Irish folklore triptych is finished. In the last eleven years, the studio has proven itself one of the most interesting and important animation studios currently working. They have even proven they can make quality films without its primary director, as evidenced by Nora Twomey’s The Breadwinner (Twomey’s next project for Cartoon Saloon is My Father’s Dragon, slated for a 2021 release). Though just an indie studio with limited resources, their standing in animated cinema has only strengthened with this, their most ambitious film to date. It might seem like a rehash of the animation from Kells, but Wolfwalkers has improved upon its predecessor, and boasts perhaps the most beautiful artwork of any animated movie released this year. The film’s grandeur belongs on a movie screen, but, understandably, very few will have the opportunity to experience it in such an environment. This latest, ageless triumph will outlast these extraordinary times.

My rating: 8.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

[phykios]

the marble king, part 9 [read on ao3]

“Have you ever seen snow before?” Alejandro asked him, one bright and startlingly cold morning, as though all mornings here were not equally startlingly cold.

He had enlisted Percy’s participation in a round of hunting this morning, something light-hearted and fun to occupy their time while their spouses dealt with the latest political nonsense from the big cities, something to do with a union of nations and a dissatisfied noble class. Annabeth had done her best to explain it to him plainly, but his ears simply could not hold onto all the people, places, and events she discussed, and he had unwittingly begun to filter out her words after a few minutes or so. Rather than volunteer his no-doubt clumsy and ill-witted assistance, he had reluctantly agreed to be dragged outside.

At the very least, the garments the family provided him were quite warm. Still, he had a very large nose, and he was certain he could no longer sense the very tip of it.

“I have, sir,” he grumbled, flexing his frozen fingers inside of their large, furred mittens. “It did, in fact, snow on occasion in the South. As well, I have spent some time in Dardania, where it would snow heavily and frequently.” That had been the few months he had spent under the tutelage of Lupa, mother of Rome. She had been a harsh teacher, sterner and far less forgiving than Chiron, but she had beaten into him a kind of fastidiousness and respect for the harsh, wild climate of the mountains, teaching him to see the beauty in the rugged, barren landscapes.

“Terrible stuff, no?”

“Absolutely wretched.”

“In my hometown, Sevilla,” he said, “there usually falls a soft layer of snow, but only up in the mountains. When Magnus first brought me here, I had assumed the land was under some sort of magical spell, and we had been charged with freeing the people from the grip of endless winter. Alas, imagine my sorrow when the curse was not lifted, and winter came once again in a few short months.” He sighed, melodramatic, and Percy snorted. “Still, I have grown used to it. It is not so bad if you dress warmly, as you have discovered for yourself. The summers are my favorite, of course--I believe you may feel the same.”

Percy, wisely, held his tongue. To admit to your host that the thought of staying here for nearly a full year made your stomach roil, was nearing the absolute height of rudeness. Rather, he swallowed instead, stretching his mouth in a grimacing smile that, he prayed, looked convincing.

“You would not think it, but the summers can be quite warm. Not nearly the temperature to which you are accustomed, obviously, but warm all the same. But the true joy is the length of days; to make up for this endless, blasted darkness, the summer days are stretched far beyond their natural limit, and believe you me, my friend, by the end of summer, you will tire so much of the bright nights that you will beg for a little darkness.”

“I have heard tell,” he said, with a faint touch of horror, “that some days, the sun never rises, and the people are plagued with eternal night. Is this true?”

He shook his head. “Not so far South, but yes. The ancient peoples of this land lived quite comfortably in such darkness, and still do, if you can believe it.”

Closing his eyes against the bright glare of the sun on the snow, he tried to imagine a life lived in perpetual night, to never have seen the glory of Apollo’s light, to live only in the wan glow of fire, to never be able to ascend the tip of a mountain and look out into the beyond, the peaks and valleys bathed in the warm, golden glow of the sun.

He found he could not.

“You mentioned you had lived in, what was the name? Sev--Sevi--”

“Sevilla,” he said. “Perhaps you may know it better as Hispalis, or Isbiliyah?”

Oh, blast these slippery tongues which he could not speak! “Hispalis, yes,” said Percy. “I have never been myself, though I could indicate its location on a map.”

“In that, we are once again quite similar,” joked Alejandro, “for I could say the same of your fair city.”

“What was it like?” he asked, hoping that all this talk of warmer climes would help him to forget the cold. “Your Hispalis?”

Alejandro smiled, bright and free, his face shining in the sunlight. “Even I have heard tell of the beauty of your Constantinople, and though I have never seen the famed St. Sophia, I know in my heart that Sevilla outshines her even on her darkest days. The summers are long and hot, the wind from the sea bringing the scent of salt and spice in through the open windows of the old stone walls, curling and twisting as they wend their way towards the sky! Oh, Perseus, you have not known true beauty until you have seen the arches and gardens of the Real Alcázar, or watched the sun set from atop the Torre del Oro!”

So ecstatic was he, that Percy could not help but smile alongside him. “Do you ever miss it?”

“Only every day of my life. Well,” he amended, “the city, yes. There is no fairer jewel in the world than Sevilla, and I shall fight any man to the death who should disagree, but I can say with certainty that all that I have here, with Magnus, is infinitely better than what I had left behind.”

“What did you leave behind?” Percy asked. “If you are comfortable sharing with a stranger, of course, I should very much like to know.”

Trudging forward in the snow, Alejandro shook his head fondly. “You are no longer a stranger, brother, and I am happy to share. Much like your wife, I, too, was sent by my father to live in a religious order at a young age--the Monasterio de San Clemente --only I did not run away before my foot ever touched consecrated ground. Though,” he acknowledged with a sardonic tilt of his head, “I am certain you can imagine just how little I cared for monastic life.”

“Because of your…” he trailed off, unsure of how to phrase such a delicate topic. “Your situation,” he finished, lamely.

Alejandro snorted a laugh, the corner of his lips curling upwards. “My situation, yes. In any case, by the time I was expected to take certain vows, it came to the attention of the Abad that not only had I been shirking my duties at the monastery to a level previously unheard of, but I had, at the same time, also been in training at the convent around the corner, as one of the sisters.”

Startled right out of his chest, Percy laughed, a bark in the cold, quiet forest. “Malaka,” he chuckled. “I cannot even imagine what they might have thought.”

“It was quite the eventful week,” he said, suffused with an odd sort of nostalgia. “But, unlike my dear sister, my own father was not so accommodating, nor so open minded. There was nothing for me in Sevilla but beautiful buildings and a family who no longer wanted me--thus, I had no qualms about accompanying my husband to his ancestral home. After all,” he shrugged, gesturing to the dense forest, its dark green needles nearly black against the bright, white snow, “one could argue that this is my ancestral home as well.”

Yes, that was a topic about which Percy was somewhat perplexed. “Forgive me if my question is indelicate, sir,” he said, “but I confess, I am not so knowledgeable about your pantheon. If the Aesir hail from the far North, how is it that Loki came to sire you in Hispania?”

“You misunderstand me, friend, for Bölvasmiðr was not my father, but my mother instead.”

Percy blinked, stopping in his tracks. “Oh.”

And he had thought his family tree was complicated.

A rustle in the trees, then Alejandro held up his fist, a gesture for quiet and stillness. He cocked his head, listening intently, slowly turning round. Only when no further sound presented itself did he relax.

Percy blinked again, suddenly feeling as though he had somehow lost a handful of time.

“Well,” said Doña Alejandra, “onward, good sir.”

Trudging forward, she charged on ahead, leaving Percy to scramble behind her in her wake.

“Think you,” she asked, “that the Magians did not command the southern seas as skillfully as they did the northern ones?”

“The Magians?” he repeated, dumbly. Percy’s head swam, the cold freezing all his thought processes until he was as stupid as all his enemies claimed him to be.

“Ah, I do not know the word in your tongue,” she said, frowning. “The northern raiders, the ones whom Anja tells me were contracted to protect your precious emperor.”

Percy looked away, attempting to recall the word. Annabeth had said it, months ago, in the little room with the single candle in Athens--”The Varangians?”

“Yes!” she snapped her fingers. “That’s the one. Magian, Varangian, here they call them Vikinga, meaning one who seeks adventure. Charming, no? They certainly ventured as far as their ships could carry them, all the way round the western coast of Christendom until they sacked Sevilla some six hundred or so years ago. They must have brought their gods with them, I presume, and then the cabrónes never left. How amusing it must have been,” she laughed, “to suddenly find themselves in a land of endless summer, vying for attention with all the rest of the divinities who had already made themselves quite at home.”

“I suppose,” said Percy.

“Sevilla has always been a city of many faiths, all bumping up against each other. The Christians, the Moors, the Jews; they all brought their Lord with them when they settled on the beaches of Andalusia. What is one more, I say? The gods, without fail, shall always follow their believers.”

Would that were true, Percy mused, at least as it pertained to himself.

He shivered, a cold wind blowing against his face quite unexpectedly.

“Hold.” Alejandra thrust out her hand, stopping Percy in his tracks. “Quiet.”

Magnus had authorized Percy the use of his crossbow for hunting, but given how hopeless Percy was with a standard bow and arrow, he did not have much hope that he would be able to successfully target and kill any mobile creature with it, but Alejandra appeared to have the situation well in hand, raising her own crossbow, her mismatched eyes staring intently above the tree line, her finger near caressing the trigger.

With a crack, a thwack, and a loud braying noise, something large toppled over beyond a few trees, landing in a snowdrift with a soft thump.

“¡Guau!” she crowed, pumping her fist in the air. “We shall have a feast tonight, I can promise you! Now, make haste, thalassinos, for it is cold, and I am in dire need of a skirt.”

They did, indeed, have a feast that night, a feast of venison and good, red wine. Percy had been privately dreading what strange and terrible creation might the cook have prepared, such as the sour, fermented cabbage, or the meatballs in a brown, cream sauce which Annabeth had sworn up and down tasted just like his mother’s keftedes. She had been so incorrect in that assumption, Percy had briefly considered divorcing her on the spot for such an infraction.

Yet the meat was simply, marvelously prepared tonight, roasted with salt and paired with a wine imported from somewhere in Francia which was a little too sour for his taste, though Percy certainly was not one who frequently partook of the beverage. At the agoge, wine had been strictly forbidden as part of Lord Dionysus’ punishment, and so Percy had only really gotten to have it during his brief period with Legion.

After days and days of salmon, Percy almost felt guilty to be enjoying meat other than fish, as if his father would somehow be aware of it, and be displeased with him.

The thought strikes him about as quickly and severely as a bolt from the heavens--a sensation with which he was, unfortunately, well acquainted.

His father. Gods above, his father.

Startled, he dropped his cut of meat, wincing internally as it landed on the wooden table with a soft thud, disrupting what had been a lively conversation which he still could not understand. As a hawk, Annabeth sharply turned towards him, grey eyes full of concern. “Percy? Are you alright?” Fredrik, Magnus, and Alejandra looked on him as well, all in varying degrees of worry or bewilderment.

“Ah--yes. I am fine. Please, do not let me interrupt.”

She raised a brow, unconvinced, but with pursed lips, turned back towards her cousin, resuming what must have been an utterly fascinating debate.

Alejandra reached out towards him, laying her hand on his upper arm. “Truly, you are well?” she asked, her voice low.

He nodded. “Yes, of course. I merely--remembered something which I had forgotten.”

“Oh?”

A part of him, deeply held and strikingly jealous, did not really wish to share with Alejandra, even though he considered her his closest friend in Svealand, but given how patient she had been with him, how supportive and understanding she had been, he supposed he owed it to her. “At the agoge,” he said, slowly, “before every meal, it was our custom to make an offering to the gods. We would take a portion of our food, the best portion, and toss it into the hearth, so that our parents may bestow us with their blessing when next we had need of it.”

“Into the fire?” Her expression was dubious, one eyebrow delicately arched.

He had the distinct sense that she did not believe him. “The gods, they feed off the smoke,” he said, somewhat embarrassed. “They do not eat food like you and me.”

“Oh, I do not doubt that,” she said, “I am merely surprised, is all.”

He frowned. “Regarding?”

“That your father demands so much praise.” She tilted her head, considering. “My divine progenitor expected quite a lot from me as well, but usually not so much sycophancy.”

“It--he--” Percy stammered. “He did not--it was not demanded of us, that we praise them so.”

“Was it not?”

“No,” he insisted. “It was respect, politeness, not… not groveling or fawning or the like.”

Alejandra still looked quite skeptical, but she did not push the issue further. “Well, if you feel so strongly, then you are free to use the fire,” she said, indicating towards the large hearth against the wall. “Go on. Make your offering.”

It was a simple enough task. There was a particularly fatty piece of meat, glistening in the firelight, all ready to go. All Percy had to do was walk over to the hearth, place the food onto the coals, and speak the words which he must have said thousands of times: here’s to the gods. The ritual was uncomplicated.

And yet.

Percy glanced towards Annabeth, deep in conversation with her father.

He racked his brain, but he could not recall a single instance of Annabeth making an offering during their stay in Birka. Styx, he could not even recall a single instance of her making an offering during their journey North. If he truly thought about it, long and hard, he vaguely remembered throwing a fish into the fire one night, camped next to those horrid, horrid rapids, as he gave thanks for Annabeth’s life, and then… and then the days had begun to blur together, day after day of endless sailing, of a sick, hard pit in his stomach that screamed at him to turn ‘round, to go back to where he belonged.

“Would it be rude, do you think,” he asked his hostess, “to make such an offering to the Olympians in the land of the Aesir?”

“I should think not,” said Alejandra. “Certainly, neither Magnus nor Uncle Fredrik would take offense.”

“And you?”

“Oh, I care not,” she said, with a twist of a grin. “Neither, I think, would your wife.”

Would she? He could not say. Perhaps she would think him a fool to be chasing after the approval of one who had long since abandoned him, or perhaps she would take it to mean that he was ungrateful to the land and the family which had housed him during these long winter months.

In the end, he could not make a decision. The evening meal stretched on, with Alejandro, for he had become a man during the meal, attempting to corral him into some kind of conversation, and sadly failing, until only Percy remained. “Will you be along shortly?” his wife had asked him.

Percy had nodded, though he could not say for certain how long he would linger at the table. To be alone in the dining hall was far different than it was to be alone in his bedroom. At least out here, he could pretend that he was still in the pavilion at the agoge, or the villas of the Legion, lingering over a pleasant meal and more pleasant company.

The fire still glowed, nearly burned all the way down to its embers, warm and soft, pulsing.

Many years ago, on the eve of the final day of a great and terrible battle, he had met with the spirit of the flame, the goddess of the hearth, and had entrusted her with the task of safe-guarding Hope so that he would not be tempted to give it up, and surrender to despair. She had challenged him to a riddle, of sorts, and in solving it, he had gained the key to defeating Lukas and the Titan king.

Hope survives best at the hearth, he had told her.

Hope now fluttered in his breast, weak and small, but there, alive.

If he made his offering, here in this foreign land, even after all this time… would his father, somehow, hear him?

He stood up, the chair scraping on the floor. Snatching up the last portions of his dinner, he stepped over to the hearth, whose light slowly dimmed with every passing second.

Percy went down on one knee, and laid the last slice of wheat bread on the still-glowing coals. His fingers trembled so much, he nearly dropped it.  “Lord Poseidon,” he murmured, “ Asphaleios, Epoptes, father.”

For a moment, there was only quiet.

Nothing happened. The flames did not rise, sudden and hot. There were no voices, speaking to Percy within the corners of his mind.

There was nothing. Nothing, just as it was when he was but a child, and he did not yet know of his father who had been too much of a coward to claim him until it was nearly too late.

Slowly, he blew out a breath, his shakes easing. At least now he knew.

When he returned to his bedroom, Annabeth was already asleep. Wasting not a moment, he shed his daytime clothing, slipping on as many pairs of socks and undergarments as he could get away with, then slid in beside her, turning on his side away from her.

At least now he was certain.

***

There is the smell of salt. Figs. Flowers, and smoke.

Percy opens his eyes. There is sunlight, bright and pulsating, the sun itself far closer to the earth than it should be.

He sits up, taking in his surroundings. Lush, green fields, an undulating sea of flowers in full bloom. Sea birds calling overhead, crying out for each other, swooping careless and free.

He knows precisely where he is.

Having gone to bed bundled up in the warmest clothes he could find, it is something of a shock when he stands up and sees himself clothed in nothing but a chiton and a pair of sandals. It is all well, however; the morning sun is hot, and the rocks are sharp, and he is grateful for the protection.

The wind, sharp and tangy, pushes him towards the edge of the plateau, and he goes willingly. It is one, two, three, ten steps before he reaches the edge of the cliff, the breeze buffeting his clothes, his hair, and he holds out his arms, letting the force of the air weave between his outstretched fingers. Dried grass crunches beneath his feet. Before him, the bluest expanse of the water, a dip-dyed cloth of lapis lazuli stretched all around him, bunching about the islands off in the distance. Far, far off, he can see the top of a mountain, can see the snow as it dusts the very points and tips, the fingers of the earth which still reach for the dome of the sky.

Down on the beach, at the very edge of the water, he sees a man. A moment’s hesitation, then he begins the long trek down the cliff.

With each step forward, the earth comes up to meet him, a staircase down from heaven, until he has joined the man on the beach. The man does not turn to greet him.

He is tall, with thick, curly black hair, skin tanned nut brown from hours in the sun, hours upon hours and days upon days of burning, peeling, healing, over and over and over again. He, too, wears a plain white chiton, a rope tied about his waist in a simple sailor’s knot, and on his head, a crown of celery leaves.

Beside him, his trident has been stuck in the sand.

“Father.”

The earth-shaker turns to him, his twinkling eyes the color of the water beneath his feet, the same as his own. “Perseus,” he rumbles in return. “There you are! I was wondering where you had gotten off to.”

A child all of twelve, Percy had knelt upon first meeting his father. Now, he does not move a muscle.

With a groan, Poseidon eases himself down onto a nearby rock, one hand pressed to his back. “Come,” he says. “Come and sit with me awhile. You have traveled quite far, no? I would hear one or two of your adventures, should you wish to share them.”

Percy cannot move, too busy drinking in the sight of him.

During the war, the great Titanomachy, he had looked every bit as ancient as he truly was, with white hair and deep furrows carved into the skin of his face, but he does not look so haggard now. Indeed, he looks much the same as when Percy last left him. Still, Percy can plainly see that he is hounded by some grievance, some great worry that will not leave him, hung around his neck like a stone collar. He can plainly see, for it is the very look Percy himself wears when something is troubling him.

His request rebuffed, still Poseidon does not appear to be too bothered by Percy’s immobility. He looks out to the sea, lifting his face to the salty breeze coming off of the water. “Thálatta, thálatta,” he murmurs, an ancient litany. “The sea is never the same twice, but oh, how I have missed this view.”

Heart slowly rising up his throat, Percy tries to calm his breathing. It would not do, he thinks, to go into hysterics before the lord of the sea.

Above them, Helios’ chariot races across the sky, faster and more quickly than any natural day, shadows shifting from West to East before his very eye, growing longer with each breath.

“Our time is short,” says Poseidon, gently, the calm, even push and pull of the tides. “I know you must have questions. Speak, and I shall answer.”

Questions, yes. He has a thousand, each one vying for his breath and his tongue. But there is one question which will always come first. “My mother?” he croaks, his voice hoarse.

The god of the deep smiles, affection softening the harsh lines of his face. “Safe,” he promises. “She and her family both. Where they landed, I cannot say, but I saw to it myself that they passed the blockade unharmed.”

Good. That is good. His mother, Paul, dearest Esther; they are all of them safe.

His heart thumps wildly, sorrow and rage blocking his throat. The core of him shakes so violently that he is worried he will shake himself apart, here on the rocks, dissolving into nothing more than sea air.

“You have always been a good son to your mother,” Poseidon says, “and you are right to ask after her, yet I cannot imagine that you have no more questions for me. Go on.”

Percy draws in a shuddering breath.

“That night, in the city…” It haunts him still, the flash of light above St. Sophia, the vision he’d had of the lords of Olympus as they took flight. “What happened?”

He looks towards Percy, frowning, his thick, bushy brows drawing together. “I am sorry that you bore witness to it. Such sights are not made for mortal eyes.”

“Rachael saw it, too,” he says.

“Indeed. My nephew’s oracles are blessed, yes, but cursed as well, to see more and know more than any of their peers. No doubt she still suffers as well, wherever she is now.”

“But what was it?” he presses. He will not be denied answers, not after so long.

Poseidon sighs, casting his gaze down to the sandy beach. The wind blows in cool from the placid waters, ruffling the fabric of his clothes.

In his mind, in his memory, Poseidon always looms so large. The first time he ever saw him, his father had towered above him on his fisherman’s throne, a pillar of might, a beacon of strength, the power humming just beneath his skin, even when he brought himself down to Percy’s size. To see him among the mortals, no one would have mistaken him for anything other than what he is; a lord, a king, a divinity of unimaginable strength.

Now, though. Now he simply looks tired.

“What you witnessed,” he says, “has happened twice before. Always have we accompanied our believers, even through metamorphosis and transfiguration. Once, we dwelt atop Olympos, and there we ruled over the land of Hellas; then, they built temples to our glory on Roma’s mightiest hill. And then when the emperor moved his seat of power to that village on the coast, the place they called Constantinopolis, there we followed, and there we remained for a thousand years. But no empire can last forever, my son. Not even Rome, for all its glories, all its might and all its power.” He smiles, softly, sadly. “Not even us.”

The birds call overhead, singing as they soar above the caldera, as they always have, as they always will. Percy cannot hear it for the pounding of his heart.

His father’s shadow falls over him as the sun begins to more fully set, dipping below those far off mountains. The dome of the sky burns a bright orange now at its edges, blue turning to deep, inky purple, as a few glittering stars appear, a latticework of light.

“The hour grows late,” intones the god of the sea. “Choose your last question wisely.”

He raises his head, looking into his father’s gaze. He can feel his edges blurring, his fading form as he is called away from this sacred space.

There is only one thing he wishes to know.

“Why?”

His father does not require him to further specify.

He sighs, turning finally to face him.

“Because it was our time,” is all he says.

The sky shifts above him, the blue glow of the moon as she rises above the horizon casting the waters in a cool, otherworldly green. “What,” Percy breathes, “what does that mean?”

“It means, my son, that there are powers far older and stronger than my brothers and I. Powers that we cannot overcome. Laws that we must obey.” His eyes are hard, sharp like the cliffs. “I could not have stopped the siege anymore than I could have stopped the tides--and even if I had possessed such power, I would not have used it.”

The cries of the city echoed in his ears, phantom screams and ghostly wails from nowhere but the inside of his own mind. “All those people,” he whispers. “The city of Constantine stood for a thousand years, and you simply sat by and watched it happen.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “We did.”

Percy shakes his head. “I know--I know that the Romans gave themselves over to the trinity god, and I understand why your lord brother would be angry with such disrespect, but all of those who still believed--everyone at the agoge --what reason did you have for abandoning them? I--we made our sacrifices to you every day, walked the earth and vanquished monsters in your names and for your glories. We died for you,” his voice rises with each word, a dragon in his chest, “Carlo and Silena and Lukas and countless others--and what of the sailors who prayed in your name without knowing it every time they put to sea? Or the soldiers who petitioned the heavens for mercy, or the women and children who ran through the streets in fear and in terror and begged for your protection,” and he is weeping now, tears falling easily from his eyes, “were we not enough? Had we offended you in some way? Had I--was I--”

He cuts himself off with a curse, turning his head to the side. He cannot go on.

A hand comes to rest on his shoulder. Percy looks up through the veil of his grief and sees its mirror image in his father. “Of course not,” he murmurs.

“Then,” he sobs, his chest heaving with the force of his breath, stuttering, shaking, “then why? Why did the lady Athena abandon her ancient temple? Why did you l-leave me?”

Valiantly, he holds his grief to his chest, his fists wrapped tightly around it, nails digging into his palms. Yet Poseidon sees right through him. “Do not hold back your tears, my son,” he kindly commands. “I see that you have not given yourself the time to grieve. There is no shame in your sorrow. Let your lamentations fill the sea, until its very borders have burst, and you have drowned us all with the force of it.”

And so he shatters.

He weeps, weeps for the end of the world and the passing of time. He weeps for the thousand year old walls reduced to ash and dust, for the celestial dome of St. Sophia, for the last breath of Rome and the desecration of her body.

He weeps for his mother, cast adrift from the only home she had ever known. He weeps for his friends and allies, vanished into the air. He weeps for Annabeth, for the shattered look on her face when she first beheld the ruined Parthenon, for the loss of her home and her freedom, so indelibly tied to him as she is now.

And he weeps for himself, for the loss of the city which had raised him.

“There,” says his father. “Let your grief be a raging river--let it wash all away.”

Percy crashes to his knees, the sand rough against his skin, and he weeps, his hands tearing at his hair, beating his breast.

And then, eventually, he can cry no more.

Poseidon has fallen to the ground with him, down on one knee, his hand still on Percy’s shoulder. There is no shame in his gaze, no cloying pity, only understanding. “I prayed to you,” he says, broken, battered, bereaved. “Every night, I prayed to you. And I know Annabeth did the same. Was it not enough?”

“You could have martialed the whole of the world to our ways,” Poseidon says. His voice is impossibly soft, the whisper of a rope on a sail. “It still would not have been enough.”

Percy dips his head to the earth, his eyes stinging. “And so the city is lost,” he murmurs. “And the gods alongside it.”

All those temples and shrines, the streets and churches, the ancient walls and the little alcoves, the city cats and crowded marketplace, all that history--lost, lost forever, swallowed up by the inexorable march of time.

“Lost?” Poseidon hums, rubbing at his chin. “I suppose, yes. I daresay, should you ever return to the city of Constantine, you shall find it a very different place from how you left it. Buildings shall have gone. Streets shall have been renamed. Even their beloved St. Sophia shall become unrecognizable. Such things are static, and easily taken by prideful men who reanimate corpses in order to demonstrate their own sick sense of superiority.” He speaks with such authority, such sureness, it cuts deep at the heart of Percy, that even one of the city’s protectors could cast it aside so easily.

“And yet,” he goes on, “are there not still people within those walls? Are there not men and women, at this very moment, who will slowly come to call it their home? Who will learn to love the street corners and the smell of spice markets, and the way the sun rises over the seven hills?”

Percy tilts his gaze up towards his father.

“There are many thousands of people to come who shall make their homes within the ancient walls--more than you could possibly imagine,” Poseidon says. “The city shall not die, but endure; perhaps not in the way that you remembered it, but endure nonetheless. Countless souls will come to live, love, and die in the city of Byzantion, in the footsteps of all who have come before them. And as for the gods, my boy,” and then he grins, roguish and knowing, as though he is privy to a humor which no one else can tell, “think you so little of us? Though we may no longer haunt the dome of St. Sophia, we are by no means gone.”

Despite himself, he gasps lightly, filling his lungs with air and with hope. “Truly?”

His father nods. “ Olympos, this thing that they shall come to call the flame of the West: it still lives, somewhere in this world, and it can still be found, by those brave enough to seek it out.”

Standing, Poseidon rises from his crouch as a tidal wave, a fluid column of grace and strength, and turns to the sea, stepping forward. Before his very eyes, the years seem to fall from his countenance, his shoulders pulling back, shedding the pain and sorrow of a thousand years until he looks out onto the sea with nothing but unbridled wonder, sheer curiosity, unfettered joy.

Was this how he was before the dawn of mankind, Percy wonders, when the world was new?

Percy joins his father again on the edge of the beach, that liminal place between land and sea, night and day, life and death, dream and wakefulness.

“Do you know why the gods have children?” his father asks. Percy shakes his head. “It is so that they can do the things that we cannot. Immortal we are, yes, yet not omnipotent, nor all-powerful. There are restraints on our hearts, chains around our hands, even as we ourselves so desperately desire it to be otherwise--and so we sire heroes, to undertake the mightiest and noblest of quests, to bring about the changes we wish we could do ourselves. Yet there is another reason, one far greater and more powerful to my mind.”

He lifts his face to the night sky, gazing into the blackness between the pinpricks of light.

“Try as we may, nothing lasts forever in this world--no man, nor empire, nor thought. Not even the gods. One day, we, too, shall fade from the memory of man, and the last traces of us shall only be found in the ink of the poets--and in you.” Turning to Percy, then, he puts a hand on his shoulder, warm and heavy. “You, Perseus. You carry me within you, as surely as you carry the power of the sea itself. You and your children, and your children’s children, they shall carry the echoes of us into eternity: proof of our very existence. What is it your wife likes to say? Ah, yes,” he says, eyes twinkling. “‘Something permanent,’ I believe.”

Percy flushes. He was not aware that his father knew about that particular development.

Night has fallen in the dreamlike wilderness. The stars wheel overhead, thousands of them, in shapes and stories more vast and complex than Percy can make sense of, even as the fog of morning begins to set in.

“Oh, my son,” says his father, faintly, as if from very far away, “it seems our time has ended. Soon the dawn shall break, and so I must go now.”

Caught in that soft place between wakefulness and sleep, Percy reaches out his hand, suddenly so full of fear. He has so many more questions. He has so much more to know. “Wait--” he pleads, “Father--”

“If you should like,” he says, “you may seek me out in the city of old soldiers. Even so, I do not think we shall see each other again.”

The city of--“Where are you going?” he cries.

“When you see your mother again,” Poseidon says, smiling, “do give her all my love.” The lord of the sea then raises his hand, a final salute. “Know that whatever else you do in this life, it has been an honor to be your father. Hail, Perseus, prince of the Diolkos, hero of Olympus. Hail, and farewell.”

“Father!” Percy begs. “Please!”

The mist covers him in totality, swallowing him up like the stone of the Erechtheion, stealing him back out to sea, leaving Percy alone on the cold, dark beach.

He awoke to the cold, dark bedroom of the manor on Lake Malӓren. Annabeth had already vacated the marriage bed.

It was all very well, for there was no way Percy could hide from her the tears as they fell onto his cheeks.

***

Winter persisted, its grip on the land fierce and unyielding, and the festival season came to an end--not that Percy could tell, cooped up in the manor as he was. For what purpose was there to go outside? The sun did not shine in the accursed North, it seemed, a heady dream for those who had never known its warmth and splendor.

He was aware, distantly, that something was wrong with the state of his emotions. This constant, endless disinterest and apathy, it was not like him. Food did not satisfy, rest did not soothe him, nor company chase away his grey, drab feelings. One night, Annabeth had even invited him to accompany her on a midnight excursion; the moon had been dark, she had said, and the stars very beautiful. But he had declined, turning over in his--their--bed, and attempting, in vain, to find some kind of unconsciousness.

Tonight, during the evening meal, as he pushed his food around his plate without ingesting a single bite, listening to the rest of the household prattle on about whatever the intriguing developments of the little town were, he felt it particularly strongly. The evening wore on, and all Percy could manage to stomach was a slice of bread and a little bit of fish. By his calendar, they were well into the Lenten season, and by rights should not have had such a spread before them; then again, none who ate at this table were remotely interested in a fast for a faith they did not follow, so he supposed he should be grateful that they were not obliging him to eat only bread and salt for six long, cold weeks.

His apathy must have been quite apparent, for he saw Annabeth sneaking glances towards him all during the meal.

At last, his wife was finally paying attention to him, and he could not even enjoy it.

Eventually, the noble household departed to their various evening activities, whether it be reading, writing, swordplay, what-have-you, until only Percy and Annabeth remained. Still she looked queerly on him, worry creasing her brow in that way that he remembered thinking was beyond adorable. Tonight, it barely even crossed his mind.

“Percy,” said his wife.

He grunted in response.

“You should have some more fish.”

He shrugged, pushing his meal away. “I am not hungry.”

“You have barely eaten of late,” she argued.

Be that as it may, it did not change anything, so he stayed silent.

Annabeth sighed.

More often than not, their conversations would end in an awkward, stilted silence. It was as if, during those months that they traveled together, they had spoken every possible word to each other that could be said, and now there was nothing left for them to discuss. They awoke, ate their meals, went to sleep as husband and wife, but there was no affection between them, nor friendship, nor even the bitter words of their famed, legendary rivalry. There was, plainly put, no feeling to be found. She was trying, he recognized, trying her very hardest to give him space and patience, but unfortunately for her, he had nothing left to give in return. He had nothing left at all.

Annabeth took a draught of her wine. “I was wondering,” she asked, cautious, “have you had any odd dreams recently?”

Percy glanced up from the table.

She did not look at him, but swirled her drink around in her glass, her brow furrowed. “No,” he said. “Not recently.”

It had been several weeks since he had dreamed at all. After his last one, he had preferred to keep it that way.

She nodded, lips pursed. “I only ask because I--well, I have.”

“You know as well as I that our dreams are stranger than most,” he said, turning back to his half-eaten food. “I would not dwell on it too deeply.”

“But it was not just a dream, I am sure. I am confident that I had a vision.” Setting her glass down, her tone turned pointed, urgent. “I had been transported to the Acropolis--not as we had seen it, but in its prime, every temple perfectly restored, the pride of Athens, and there I saw my mother. We even spoke for a time.”

Against his better judgement, he looked back up at her. Some details were too similar to write off entirely.

“She spoke of many things, but at the end, she told me that, if I were to ever seek her out again, then I could find her in the city of--”

“The city of old soldiers,” Percy murmured.

Taken aback, she blinked, her words momentarily lost. “Yes,” she said. “Precisely. How did you know?”

Percy closed his eyes against her shock. He did not like to think about that night, nor his frightening dream. “Because my father told me much the same.”

“Lord Poseidon spoke to you?” Annabeth gaped, a faint tinge of indignation coloring her features. “Why did you not tell me?”

Percy swallowed once, but he decided that he had one thing to hide from his wife, and one thing only. It need not be this one. “Because all I did was weep as I begged him not to leave me,” Percy said, flatly, “and that was not an experience I wished to relive.”

So much for all his heroics. Inside, it seemed he was still the same child he had always been, full of a deep, desperate longing for a distant father.

“I have never heard of this place before, this city,” he said, eager to shift her thoughts from her piss-poor husband. “Have you?”

Annabeth pursed her lips, not at all fooled by his tactics, but she relented anyway. “Sadly not,” she replied, slumping in her seat. “Old soldiers can be found in every city in the world; to find one particular city… it seems almost impossible.”

“Perhaps the gods meant it to be impossible.” It was not an idea he wished to entertain, but he felt that it had to be said. “Perhaps they wish to remain unfound.”

Despondent, she laid her head on her hand, indelicate, unladylike. “Much as I am loath to admit it,” she said, “you may be correct. If that is the case, and the gods have made themselves impossible to find, then…”  

Then, nothing. She trailed off, out of words, out of ideas, out of hope.

That, more than anything else, had proven just how far they had fallen. The Annabeth whom he had dragged from Constantinople would never have said anything of the sort, would never have given up on a quest so easily. But they were drained now, sad and broken in ways they did not realize they could be.

Silence fell between them, thick, heavy, a suffocating fog.

Then, a thought occurred to him.

“During the last crusade,” he began, slowly, knowing that this was a sore topic for her, but also giving himself time to piece together his logic, “the Latins stole several treasures of the city for themselves, yes? Some statues, gold treasures, and the like?”

She grunted her assent.

“Where did they take them?”

So exhausted, Annabeth did not even scowl as she spoke. “Your precious Venetians carried them off to their home, in Enetoi.”

Thoughts whirled inside of his head, a typhoon of barely-heard words and half-cocked theories. “My father, and Alejandro, they--they said that the gods always accompanied their believers,” said Percy. “If the spoils of Constantinople are in Venice, then perhaps that is where the people fled to after the siege--”

“And if the people are there,” said Annabeth, sitting up, fire in her eyes, “then perhaps the gods are as well.”

“Exactly,” he breathed.

They stared at each other, the same idea springing to life before their very eyes.

It was not much of a theory. There was no way to confirm it, halfway around the world, and the journey South would doubtless be just as harrowing as the journey North--if not more so.

But it was something, at the very least. Solid and tangible, something to which he could cling with both hands.

And it made his next steps so much easier.

“By your leave, then,” he said, standing from his seat, “I should like to return to the middle sea, and to seek my fortune in Venice.”

As though she had been struck, she flinched back, eyes wide. “What?”

“You and your family have been most kind and hospitable, but you know as well as I that I do not belong. I cannot learn this slippery northern tongue of yours, nor can I support you financially. But more than this, wherever it is that I end up in this world, a larger part of me will always feel the call towards the lands of our ancestors.” Of course, his most compelling reasons to leave, he could not share. If she truly wished to be his wife, then he would forget the gods entirely, and would live out the rest of his days here in Svealand, amongst the Aesir--yet he knew that she did not want that life for herself. He had allowed her to play that part on their wedding night, even when she clearly had not been of her right mind, and for that alone, the only proper thing to do would be to exile himself from this land, from her smile, from all memory of her for dishonoring her so, and the twisted pleasure he took in the act.

Wordlessly, she gaped up at him, her mouth opening and closing as she tried to form sentences. “But--I--”

“But I want you to know, I have not regretted a single moment of the adventures we shared.” He bowed to her, in the fashion of the court of Constantinople, avoiding her gaze so he could not tempt himself any further to stay. “It was an honor, my lady, to accompany you home.”

He turned, and began out of the dining hall.

From behind, he heard her stand as well.

“I understand you had limited examples of good husbands growing up, Perseus,” she nearly hissed, the use of his full name an unexpected knife in his chest. “But allow me to be blunt: abandoning your wife a few months after marriage is not generally considered desirable in a husband, even if you warn her beforehand.”

He stopped and turned, frowning at her, too stunned to be angry. “Abandon you? You and I both know you will thrive without a forced partner. You are just like my mother in this way; she, too, had to marry a man for the air of respectability, but she only truly blossomed after she was free of him.”

“You--” She thrust her hands down on the table, a sharp, angry sound. “Then I shall come with you!”

“It took us the better part of four months to bring you here,” Percy said, sternly. “Four months and gods only know how many miles. I have no desire to tear you away from your family again, not when you are clearly so happy here.”

She gazed at him, grey eyes full of an unreadable emotion. “And when you are not,” she quietly confirmed.

What was the use of being dishonest when he was sure his dissatisfaction was written so plainly on his face? “No. No, I am not happy here.”

For a brief, brief, moment, she looked as though she had been stabbed in the back, a terrible, tortured concoction of shock, pain, and disbelief. Percy had only ever seen that look on her face once before, in a dream; he had once borne magical witness as Lukas had forced her to carry the dome of the sky in his stead through the use of trickery. To have such a look directed now at him nearly shattered his resolve. It certainly broke his heart.

Clenching her fists, grinding her teeth, something clearly warred inside of her as she struggled to keep her words in her mouth. No doubt she was crafting an insulting tirade worthy of the greatest poets, something suitably cutting aimed at his manhood or his courage, or lack thereof.

But squaring her jaw, she relaxed her hands, and swallowed her anger. “That you think so lowly of yourself, Percy, it pains me in ways I cannot describe.” Coming to some sort of decision, she squared her shoulders as well, drawing herself up to meet his gaze. “As your friend, I must protest at such slander of your character.”

He laughed, a little hollow. “As your friend, I thank you.” If only she knew just how deep the rot inside of him went.

“And as your wife,” she went on, “I will not allow you leave without me.”

He sighed, unwilling to have this argument again. “Annabeth--”

“No,” she interrupted. “I know all too well what you have given up by coming here. I cannot make amends for your misery the last few months, but I can move forward with you, wherever it is that we go.”

“What of your father?” he asked. “And your brothers? What of Magnus and Alejandro?”

“I love my family, dearly,” she said, “and I am so grateful that I have been able to spend this time with them. I never imagined I would be able to have this chance, and I thank you for making it so--yet I, too, am a Hellena. Do you not think that I also long for the warmer climes and familiar coasts of Sigeion and Constantinople? Do you not think that I also wish to see our friends again, to see my mother again?” Emboldened, she stepped towards him, rounding her edge of the table to stand before him. “As you once did for me, let me now return the favor. I shall accompany you to Venice, and there we will begin our search for the soul of Olympus.��

Percy was… he was speechless. He was aware he looked like a fool, his mouth hanging open, blinking stupidly.

As though she had only now just realized the boldness of her claim, she faltered somewhat, heat rushing to her face. “And I must again repeat, phykios, that abandoned women do not usually fare well in polite society. I would prefer to stay with you, if… if you would have me.”

He could scarcely believe what he was hearing. How could she wish to stay with him, after all that he had done to her? But his weak heart could not resist her siren call; to return home with Annabeth at his side was nothing short of a dream.

“To Venice, then?” he asked, quiet, full of hope.

“To Venice,” she agreed. “And there, I pray, may we find what we seek.”

***

They set out from Birka on a cold, foggy morning.

In the weeks that had passed, Annabeth had successfully sold her inheritance to her cousin in exchange for monetary value. When Percy saw how much her lands had been worth, his eyes nearly popped out of his head. She had somewhat understated their value to him at first, claiming it was no more than a few measly acres, when, in fact, she had been in possession of two huge tracts of land, exchanged for more money than Percy had imagined could be possible.

Usually, he did not mind the matter and circumstances of his birth, his lowly station, but he allowed himself, just this once, to be passively jealous of the aristocracy, even as he, essentially, entered that class with the value of his wife’s inheritance. The whole thing made his head hurt, just a little.

In any case, Fredrik had arranged for a boatman to see them off once more to Stadsholmen, where they would board a much nicer ship than the one they had stolen which would take them South, to a city called Danzig. From there, they would travel in a westerly direction, so that they circumvented the religious struggles which had broken out in that area. Annabeth, grudgingly, even admitted that Percy’s history with the Legion might even prove useful for navigation, scowling so preciously that Percy’s heart felt three times lighter.

Fredrik had come to see them off, along with Alejandro and Magnus. A far, far cry from the first days of their previous journey, Fredrik had loaded them down with food and other supplies, fine, warm clothes, and of course, their new fortune, in both coins and official documents. There was one other new addition as well, gifted to them by Magnus and his spouse. “It was a traditional wedding gift among the Norsemen,” Alejandro promised them. “She will bring you luck.”

“She” turned out to be a small, white kitten, with large blue eyes and grey ears. She had taken one look at Percy, sniffed his hand, then immediately made herself at home in the folds of his winter cloak, purring softly.

Oh, even he could not resist the lure of a small cat. He kissed its head, scratching it behind the ears. Annabeth smiled at him, full of an emotion which he could not name, but could only describe as being soft, somehow, full of affection that just transcended the boundaries of simple friendship.

And then all at once, their things had been loaded onto the little boat, and they were ready to begin their journey. First, Stadsholmen; then, the South and the ancient lands.

He could not deny that the very thought of Italy, of its warm summers and green seas, made him feel more alive than he had in months.

“Percy,” Annabeth said, “would you permit me to linger a moment longer?”

“Of course.” He had noted her furtive glances towards her father, and assumed that she wished to give him a proper farewell. “I shall await you on the boat.”

So that he would not be left alone with a boatman who did not speak his language, Alejandro volunteered to walk him to the dock, allowing Fredrik, Magnus, and Annabeth to have their solemn goodbyes. “Despite your sour attitude, please know that we shall all miss you terribly,” he said, his mismatched eyes dancing. “Your arrival was, by far, the single most entertaining thing that has happened to this little village in years.”

“Does this include your own misadventures with Loki as he attempted to bring about Ragnarok?”

“Includes and exceeds, my friend.” Perhaps with a little impropriety, Alejandro kissed him on both cheeks, embracing him as a friend and brother. “Do watch out for my cousin, won’t you?”

“She will watch out for me, of that you can be certain.”

As he went to speak with the boatman, Percy cast his gaze to Annabeth and her father, further from the shore. They spoke very quickly, hushed words in Swedish traveling on the breeze towards him, syllables he could neither parse nor comprehend. He observed as Fredrik brought his hands to his mouth, an expression of shock and wonder, then embraced his daughter, tucking her head into his shoulder. He watched as Annabeth allowed herself to melt into his embrace, standing on her toes to reach him.

That she had willingly chosen to give all this up for him… it made him feel as though he could do anything, take on any quest. She had but to ask him.

“You are very far gone for your lady, aren’t you?” he heard Alejandro ask from behind him.

Percy nodded, for that was the beginning and end of it all, that he loved her so desperately, that he was content to let it go unreturned, as long as she deigned to keep him by her side. To deny it would be a bald-faced lie, and one easily overturned.

He chuckled. “She is fortunate to have you, then.”

“On the contrary,” said Percy. “I am fortunate to have her.” After all, this amazing woman was willing to leave her family and journey with him into some great unknown. How many men could claim such an honor?

Finally, her father brought Annabeth to shore, visibly holding back his tears. “Shall we, then?” asked his wife, shoulders squared and eyes straight ahead.

Percy held out his hand, and she took it, using it for balance as she stepped onto the craft. “We shall.”

A final word to his employer in Swedish, then the boatman pushed off from the dock. “Farewell!” called Alejandro, waving from the shore. “Safe travels!”

It was not long before they were swallowed up by the morning fog, the house on the hill disappearing into the mist, like a dream come first light.

Beside him, Annabeth yawned. “I apologize,” she said. “I had not slept well last night. Would you mind terribly if I took a brief rest?”

“Not at all. Here,” said Percy, setting the cat down on a parcel of Annabeth’s clothes. “You may use me as your pillow, if you wish.”

Grateful, she rested her head on his shoulder, nearly cuddling into his side just as enthusiastically as the cat had. “If you please, wake me when we arrive in Stadsholmen.”

“Of course, for who else shall translate for me?”

She huffed a laugh through her nose, once, sharp and short. Then, trapped between the bark of the boat and the weight of her body, Percy was content to simply bask in the feeling of her shoulder against his chest, her arms cradling her stomach for warmth, even after he wrapped his cloak around her.

[littlewhitemice-blog]

The Voyage of the Thursday Princess

Up to three hundred years ago Europe was a happening place. Culture. Literature. Knowledge. Soaring cathedrals. Kingdoms bristling with warriors and weapons. But then something happened. Like a candle being snuffed out. The llamapox hit, along with polio, chagas fever, and the mould. Within a few years 98% of the population had died. The forests reclaimed the farms, the villages, even the cities. Skeletons were left scattered over the earth.

About the same time dozens of new foodstuffs appeared. Hot peppers. Chocolate. Corn. Potatoes. And potent medicines, rumoured to have come from Atlantis. Coincidence? Who could tell? Everyone was dead, and civilization had evaporated.

Africa wasn't hit as hard. It expanded to fill the vacuum. Within two hundred years all of Europe was split into colonies of Morocco, Ethiopia, and the Bantu Nation. Wales was now a wholly owned property of the Western European Trading Association. A company archaeologist who had been digging in Portugal found documents which suggested that Atlantis was real, it had been the source of hot peppers, and it had also been the source of the mould. The records of Atlantis were sketchy and fantasmic. Something about golden cities, living lights, and visions. Which brings us to the present day: I, David, a lowly Welsh slave, shoveling coal aboard an iron trading ship of the WETA flying the Bantu flag, setting off across the Atlantic to rediscover Atlantis.

Atlantis was a mythical evil we'd been taught since childhood. The laws against venturing West were still rigorously enforced. We set sail from Oko aboard the Thursday Princess with little fanfare. The cover story was that we were headed to Ireland. But where we should have hugged the coast of Africa and turned north, we took down the sails, fired up the boilers, and we continued due west. The iron ships had evolved naturally from the making and the defense from cannons. My iron boiler was a recent novelty from my own country. Messy, temperamental, often fatally explosive. But, combined with a screw, with the power to cross unheard of distances quickly. Our ship doctor had another forbidden preparation: a stash of malaria mosquitoes, tsetse flies, guinea worms, plague rats, smallpox blankets, and all the other nasties the company had been able to gather covertly on short notice.

The Atlantic knocked us about with its usual violence, but we plowed straight through it. What we didn't know, exactly, was how far Atlantis WAS. We knew the earth was round. About 25,000 miles in circumference. And we could account for about 10,000 miles of that. We had enough coal to drive us three months at 10 knots. If we were lucky, we could get there and back no trouble. Unlucky, we could just get there. Our crew was heavy on skilled slaves; our cargo heavy on war supplies and cannons.

To our great surprise, we made land after only three weeks. How could we be this close without there already being active trade routes? We hoisted sails and turned off the boilers. The land was low, sandy, with palm trees. To the south the land stretched east, so we'd actually sailed further than we needed to. We sent a landing party in, but they found no inhabitants. Campfires, paths, yes. Inhabitants, no. No wildlife larger than a squirrel, either. On the beach there was a pole with a board with squares of squiggles, and a cartoon of a campfire with a blue slash through it. The landing party planted the Bantu flag, claiming Atlantis in the name of the WEPA. The doctor let loose some of his nasties. They gathered some of the local plants. Then returned to the ship in hopes of finding a town. We followed the land southeast.

At dusk we saw more signs of habitation. Some huts, docks, boats and rafts. But no people. Suddenly, a thin glowing beam came from the shore, twisting slightly in the wind. It cut through our mast, which fell burning to the deck. People covered head to toe in white suits appeared from hiding, mounted rafts, and started paddling towards us. Our captain, a big black bald headed fellow, was yelling to the crew to fire the cannons. As soon as the gunports opened though, the beam appeared again, along with cries and awful noises from the cannon crew. It smelled like steak. A cannon let loose aimlessly, punching a hole in the dock. They closed the gunports, but the beam cut through the iron siding like paper. There was an explosion belowdecks. The captain issued new orders: retreat! We found, though, that our ship had been anchored. Crewmen started dropping like flies. I felt a prick, saw a dart sticking out of my arm, then everything went dark.

When I came to, I was tied up in a stone cell with a thick wooden door on iron hinges. A black-haired swarthy fellow with a wide mouth was squatting on a stool next to me, dressed in a white tunic and skirt with a rope around his waist. "You're being held as an accomplice to attempted murder," he said, in passable Bantu. "I expect it to be as an accomplice to actual murder shortly. You are NOT going back home, ever. Or at least until we've conquered you Aztecs. Now, do you have any questions? We've got all the time in the world."

I asked what Aztecs were. He said it was a general term for senselessly violent, but backwards, people.

After talking awhile they untied me and let me go. I was in a city like none I'd ever seen. Streets of yellow brick. Main thoroughfares with steps right in the middle of them. Houses crafted from living trees. Occasionally, a giant sloth, bigger than a house, that they'd bred for hauling. And their fruit! Their food! Indescribably good, and varied. And some food made you happy, or relaxed, or energetic, or sweaty, or have strange dreams. Whatever you wanted.

Pretty soon I had a smiling girl, Akna, hanging on my elbow, too. They even gave me apprentices to learn how to build and operate boilers. Good ones, too. Apparently, gears and engines had never occurred to them! Even though they had wheels and complicated manual devices. They'd always used manual power. I was able to give them a bunch of metal making tips too, since boilers are finicky that way. They'd never taken ships seriously either. Or carts. Or pulleys.

They had apparently tamed lightning, for that death ray we'd seen (it was lightning and metal shavings), and to make machines that could reason and remember, and to talk at great distances. Just the other day one of my apprentices brought in a lightning-driven engine they'd just put together. They were simultaneously proud, and apologetic they hadn't done it ages ago. This lightning craft is beyond me.

And they'd tamed life. They'd been expecting the doctor's nasties and could actually cure most of them. But what is more, they were able to breed new things almost at will. They were going on about cells and atoms, with pictures drawn by lightning, but so far I haven't followed. When the Portuguese first visited Atlantis, the visitors had seen fungus on rags that had been bred to glow bright enough to read for hours when the rag was soaked in sugar water. That was three hundred years ago. It would be child's play for them now.

It's been several years, and true to their word, they never let me go back. I don't know what happened to the rest of the crew. But why WOULD I go back? Back there, I was a cog in their machine. Here, they tell me to tell them stories and eat their roasted sloth. And I've got my Akna.

[finita--la--commedia]

Watching your videos on repeat, i can see why you love so much Atlantic ocean. Its energy is hypnotic and relaxing. What else do you love about it?Is it the place where you grew up? Do you have a recommendation for people who would want to visit the atlantic coast?

What else do you love about it?

Its loneliness: shoreless and bottomless.It corresponds with mine. I am not lonely on the outside, but – inside, has always been. There are only two beings I trust in my life: my Beloved and the ocean. No one else.After I die, I want (and will be, according to my last will) to be cremated and my ashes to be scattered in the ocean, but on its other side: 3 miles from the Moroccan shore. The ocean heals my Soul …I completely shut myself away from people for good, the worst misanthropic state I have ever experienced: the photographs and the videos I take are from the place where I live with my kids: North Florida. Behind is my house. I  chose this place, because there are no people around for a couple of miles on one side and on the other one – even more than just a couple of miles; never will be, because the place is surrounded by the National park, except for that spot where the house is and some additional lots of land I own next to. People don’t visit the National park: it is wild, densely forested with plenty of signs not to enter it. However, I do hhhhhh  Besides, there is a marsh, but far, on the distance.  It gets pretty creepy, but pleasantly creepy, when walking on the beach alone, at night … I would have posted more photographs and videos of the ocean: I take a lot of them every single morning and in the evening, but they are too personal and private for me: I take them for my Beloved, which makes them literally, sacred, and because of that, I have difficulties with sharing them publicly. Is it the place where you grew up?No, it is not … I grew up in the house on the beach of the Baltic sea, in a very small town. I have 2 old photographs of the exactly place, - a spot, – where I lived and taken around the time when I was a child, walking on that exactly beach to the very end of the curve and back … but, more often, standing on top of the hill or cliff and watching my Mom walking, all alone, all by herself .... because it was a solitary place with no people around: one of the most heartbreaking memories of my childhood: she was a very lonely person.On top of that hill, not far, was my parents’ house, among pine trees.

 When I was a child, I seriously wanted to become a sea captain, just like my Father was … I read books, visited ships he worked on and studied all around there: what and how everything works … I also traveled with him to Europe on the tanker he worked on: I posted those photographs here in the past, including of the tanker itself. 

But my parents had other plans for me. Besides, women-sea-captains was something unheard of in my country at that time. Do you have a recommendation for people who would want to visit the atlantic coast?

It is magnificent in hurricanes and in Winter here, in North Florida …. It is when I love the ocean the most … Too hot and humid in Summer, even at night: it is not pleasant … unless you are absolutely in Love with it. I don’t like the ocean anywhere in the South part of Florida: too many people who are the way too artificially cheerful and happy.Thank you for your heartfelt message and the questions. I rarely receive questions I enjoy answering and without feeling being obligated.

[thegrandimago]

Humans have long believed that planting trees, any kind of tree, anywhere, is good, something Mother Nature cries out for, something that might even solve our climate crisis. Tree-planting initiatives proliferate: the Bonn Challenge, Trees for the Future, Trees Forever, the 10 Billion Tree Tsunami, Plant a Billion Trees, 8 Billion Trees, the Trillion Tree Campaign, the One Trillion Trees Initiative, to mention just a few.

The passion for planting trees comes partly from the fact that, in some places, they sequester carbon. This has been broadly interpreted to mean that festooning the Earth with trees will solve the problem of climate change, which is why tree-planting programs are so popular with carbon polluters seeking to avoid cleanup costs. President Donald Trump, for example, instantly embraced the One Trillion Tree Initiative launched in January by the World Economic Forum, pledged U.S. participation, and then gushed about it in his State of the Union address: “To protect the environment, days ago, I announced that the United States will join the One Trillion Tree Initiative, an ambitious effort to bring together government and the private sector to plant new trees in America and around the world.”

Planting trees can be beneficial, especially in countries where predatory logging and other land abuse has destroyed soil stability and deprived people of shade, clean water, fish, and fruit. But such initiatives are the exception. Mass plantings are apt to do more harm than good. And it’s nearly impossible to distinguish decent projects from bad ones.

First there is the problem of duplicity, not unusual among tree-planting outfits. Consider Plant for the Planet, the organization behind the Trillion Tree Campaign. In March 2019, the German newspaper Die Zeit revealed that the group’s website was rife with untruths. For example, one person—a “Valf F.” from France—was reported to have single-handedly planted 682 million trees.

The other, larger problem is the ecological havoc tree planters can wreak if they are not careful. Few divulge what species they plant. Fewer still commit to planting only native species. Those who do commit are apt to plant monocultures, which are nearly worthless to wildlife and vulnerable to disease, insects, and wind. Forests are complex machines with millions of meshing parts. You can’t plant a forest; you can only plant a plantation.

Trees planted in wrong places, particularly places that are naturally treeless, do more harm than good and trash native ecosystems. Prairies, for example, provide important habitat for all manner of wildlife. But ever since European settlement, Americans have been destroying them with trees. When J. Sterling Morton moved to Nebraska from Michigan in 1854, he decided that Mother Nature had gotten it all wrong. In due course he called forth “a grand army of husbandmen … to battle against the timberless prairies,” and on April 10, 1872, established the first Arbor Day. Twenty-four hours later, Nebraskan prairies had been degraded by roughly 1 million planted trees.

Tree planting, especially on Arbor Day, became a national obsession. In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Arbor Day, the Nebraska-based Arbor Day Foundation was formed. It hasn’t deviated far from Morton’s mindset. Join and you can receive 10 free Colorado blue spruce seedlings with instructions on how to plant them. This would be fine if you live in the central or southern Rockies. But everywhere else, these trees are aliens.

Illustrating the extent of our current tree-planting craze is the recent marketing of biodegradable coffee cups impregnated with tree seeds. Not only do they encourage littering, but they guarantee that wrong trees will be planted in wrong places.

But such slapdash planting is an American tradition. In 1876, possibly inspired by Arbor Day, a man named Ellwood Cooper sought to improve his 2,000-acre, mostly treeless ranch near Santa Barbara, California, with 50,000 eucalyptus seedlings. They shot up 40 feet in just three years, an unheard-of growth rate for which they became known as “miracle trees.” Eucalyptus trees are not native to California.

Shortly thereafter, the University of California and the state Department of Forestry distributed free eucs for everyone to plant. Prairies, chaparral, and cutover forestland were jammed full of these aliens. One hundred years after the first Arbor Day, 271,800 acres of eucalyptus had been planted in the U.S., 197,700 of them in California.

When I inserted my arm into euc leaf and bark litter in Bolinas, California, I couldn’t touch the bottom. That’s because the microbes and insects that eat it are in Australia, not California. Native plant communities can’t survive in these plantations because eucs kill competition with their own herbicide, creating what botanists call “eucalyptus desolation.” Eucs evolved with fire and prosper from it. Their tops don’t just burn; they explode. Living near them is like living beside a gasoline refinery staffed by chain smokers.

But eucs remain popular in California. They’re still being planted. And agencies seeking to protect the public and recover native ecosystems by razing eucs inevitably face the fury of eucalyptus lovers who have, for example, accused them of being “plant Nazis.”

According to a mantra heard for more than three decades, trees are good, even if they disrupt native ecosystems, because they can serve as carbon sinks. In 1988, the then–113-year-old American Forestry Association (now American Forests) initiated its Global ReLeaf campaign under the shibboleth“Plant a tree, cool the globe.” Too bad it’s not that simple. A study led by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory concludes that any carbon sequestration benefit from trees planted much north of Florida is more than offset because solar heat absorbed and retained by the trees makes the climate warmer.

The notion that any significant percent of the carbon humanity spews can be sucked up by planted trees is a pipe dream. But it got rocket boosters in July, when Zurich’s Crowther Lab published a paper, in Science, proclaiming that planting a trillion trees could store “25 percent of the current atmospheric carbon pool.” That assertion is ridiculous, because planting a trillion trees, one-third of all trees currently on earth, is impossible. Even a start would require the destruction of grasslands (prairies, rangelands, and savannas) that reflect rather than absorb solar heat and that, with current climate conditions, are better carbon sinks than natural forests, let alone plantations. Also, unlike trees, grasslands store most of their carbon underground, so it’s not released when they burn.

The Crowther paper horrified climate scientists and ecologists, 46 of whom wrote a rebuttal, explaining that planting trees in the wrong places would exacerbate global warming, create fire hazards, and devastate wildlife. They rebuked the authors for “suggesting grasslands and savannas as potential sites for restoration using trees” and for overestimating by a factor of 5 “potential for new trees to capture carbon.”

Tree plantations are already destroying natural areas that are far more efficient at storing carbon—wetlands, for example. When organic detritus is trapped underwater it can’t release carbon because there’s no oxygen for decomposition. Carbon sequestration efficiency of coastal wetlands (marshes, mangroves and seagrasses) actually increases with global warming because, as sea levels rise, more and more storage space for detritus becomes available.

Ill-conceived tree plantings can dewater wetlands. Consider the yet-to-be-launched initiative to plant 2.4 billion trees in India’s Cauvery River basin, which is the brainchild of the Isha Foundation, based in Coimbatore, India. Leonardo DiCaprio, whose foundation is a major backer, received a letter in September from 95 of India’s environmental and public interest groups that cited litigation against the plan. It read in part: “Biodiversity, forests, grasslands and the massive deltaic region that this river nurtures would be devastated. … It appears to be a programme that presents, rather simplistically, that the river can be saved by planting trees on banks of her streams, rivulets, tributaries and the floodplains … a method that promotes a monoculturist paradigm of landscape restoration which people of India have rejected long ago.” The Isha Foundation dismissed the letter as an attempt “to gain publicity.”

Similarly, in September Ireland committed to planting 440 million trees as part of its Climate Action Plan. Many of them will be commercially valuable Sitka spruce from North America’s Pacific Northwest. When they’re harvested, sequestered carbon will spew back into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, these aliens will be drying up wetlands, increasing global warming by absorbing and retaining solar heat, and, as the Irish Wildlife Trust warns, speeding extirpation of fish and wildlife (ongoing because of previous alien-tree plantings).

The notion that tree planting is an elixir for what ails the earth is as popular with polluters as it is with nations, a fact that spawned the “carbon offset industry.” Polluters hire third parties—often unseen, uninterviewed, and in other countries—to plant any kind of trees, anywhere. For instance, in November, EasyJet announced that it will spend $33 million for tree planting and other carbon-reduction schemes, supposedly rendering itself the first airline to offset all its CO2 pollution. In February Delta Air Lines pledged to zero out its carbon emissions by spending $1 billion over the next decade. While it was vague on how this will be accomplished, tree planting is reportedly part of the strategy.

Carbon offsetting has been likened to “indulgences,” the forgiveness notes hawked by the pre-Reformation Catholic Church—go and sin no more unless, of course, you pay us off again for future sins. Also, hired tree planters frequently charge for trees that would be planted anyway or pocket the money and plant nothing.

According to Kevin Anderson, professor of energy and climate change at the U.K.’s University of Manchester, the entire carbon offset industry is a “scam.” In 2019, after two decades of carbon offsetting, CO2 levels peaked at the highest levels in recorded history.

Carbon offsetting might work if polluters paid parties to protect existing forests and maybe also restore wetlands and grasslands by cutting planted and invading trees. On 400,000 acres in Montana, the American Prairie Reserve recovers native prairie by razing alien Russian olive and Chinese locust trees and reseeding bare, abandoned cropland with a native prairie mix.

The same restoration is done by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at national wildlife refuges such as Bowdoin and Medicine Lake, both in Montana. “I have old photos showing settlers out on the prairie, and there’s not a single tree in the background,” says Neil Shook, who manages these two refuges. “Now the same places are littered with trees. By cutting trees we’re seeing increases in prairie vegetation and grassland songbirds. But people are still planting Russian olives. Right outside our boundaries you can see what will happen if we don’t cut. That private land is just full of trees.”

Thanks to aggressive tree removal by the USFWS at Union Slough National Wildlife Refuge in Iowa, prairie-dependent plants, birds, and mammals are surging back. For years, tree lovers have railed at Union Slough managers, accusing them of such malfeasance as “arboricide.” But as the refuge presses on the noise fades.

Reform seems to take two steps back and three forward. “We’re pushing hard for San Francisco to plant native trees that will bring wildlife into the city and link it with our parks,” remarks Jacob Sigg of the California Native Plant Society. “But the old-boy network plants non-natives and is deaf to our arguments. Planting any trees anywhere sends chills down my spine. I do see progress, but then I hear some prominent person talking about planting a ‘trillion trees.’ ”

Sigg brightened when I asked about Angel Island. It had been blighted by eucalyptus desolation when I’d seen it. Now, he reported, virtually all the eucs have been cut and chipped, and native grasslands and scrub oaks have recovered. The California Department of Parks and Recreation had not been deaf to the society’s arguments. In the face of savage bullying from groups like POET (Preserve Our Eucalyptus Trees), it stood tall.

I think the great landscape photographer Ansel Adams put it best when he helped run tree-planting Boy Scouts off the prairie in what’s now the Golden Gate National Recreation Area: “I cannot think of a more tasteless undertaking than to plant trees in a naturally treeless area, and to impose an interpretation of natural beauty on a great landscape that is charged with beauty and wonder, and the excellence of eternity.” Treeless landscapes are not only natural, in many cases—they’re better for the Earth, too. 

[thewatchau]

The Fae Bands of Fasithe

Note: These summaries are not meant to be all-encompassing; many details I am personally aware of have been left out because they simply aren’t that important. Since the main focus of this AU will always be Sean and his egos, all summaries of foreign nations will be far less detailed than the lore I’ve put out for Duilintinn. Take these posts as snapshots of what a person living in another country would know about a foreign land. If you want to make Watchers who originate from these kingdoms or are just curious in general, feel free to send in an ask or two (or more) with any questions you have!

Okay, so this country is a bit different than the others.

As you can probably tell by the title, Fasithe isn’t even a “country” by mortal standards at all, but a colony of Fae Folk who have decided to make their way as permanent or semi-permanent residents of the Mortal Realm. Such decisions are not unheard of- the Ocean Man of Loch Domhainn is another example- but Fasithe is different in a way that is both fascinating and mildly disturbing.

Fasithe may be a Fae colony, but the vast majority of its population consists of humans who have pledged themselves to the Fae that founded it. Fae worship isn’t uncommon, but when people from all over the continent start disappearing into the forest/mountains and tales of a cult begin to spread... it’s a whole ‘nother ball game.

Despite the rumors, the Fae being who runs this so-called “cult” is very amiable. Referring to himself as Nate, this member of the fae folk has made himself known to other nations, expressing a desire to coexist peacefully alongside of them. By his own account, Nate had always been fascinated by humans and their customs, especially around the art of music and singing, and decided to create a place where he could take part in this mortal tradition alongside of them. Of course, being Fae, Nate’s singing has a bit of an... effect... on people- the old tales would probably consider him a siren- and he rapidly gained a following of mortals who were passionate about the music he created alongside them. 

However, despite the creative intentions of Nate himself, a dark influence began to grow on the sidelines. Two other members of the Fae were jealous of the influence Nate had in the mortal realm and decided to steal his followers for themselves. One called himself Natemare, in mockery of Nate himself, and desired a group of mortals to torture and toy with for his own entertainment. The other was known as Phantom, and simply wanted followers, slaves, worshipers... you get the idea. These two have formed a symbiotic relationship to prey on Nate’s followers and get the power they desire.

Little is known about how this scheme works, as few have returned to tell the tale, and those who do die shortly afterwards. However, we do know the basics:

Phantom promises his followers the power to have anything and everything they desire. This is the true cult of Fasithe. These people will follow him everywhere, convinced that someday, if they are loyal enough, he will give them what they seek. As a member of the Fae, such promises hold extreme moral weight, and indeed, Phantom follows through with his promise... 

...by eventually trapping his followers in a weird, intermediate dimension between the Fae Realm and the Mortal Realm that no one really understands. Our best guess is that these dimensions are somewhat like Fae Gardens, but somehow closer to the Fae Realm than the Mortal Realm. Mortals can’t die within this dimension, but time, space, and basically all of reality is absolutely screwed in there. This dimension is so inundated with magic that the people trapped within have powers far beyond what is possible in the Mortal Realm. In this way, Phantom does keep his promise, and gets a cult full of loyal followers to boot.

Meanwhile, Natemare uses this dimension as his personal plaything, toying with the souls inside and turning their greatest desires into a slow descent into madness. He plants ideas of power into the heads of some of his victims, causing them to use their powers to harass the others trapped with them. Apparently, this megalomania manifests itself in a massive murder maze, which these souls control to make the lives of their companions a living hell. Others, Natemare kites around with ideas of hope, freedom, power, only to laugh as it leads them into another trap. According to the few who have escaped, it’s impossible from within to discern his influence at work. To most of the people in this dimension, this insanity is simply normal. 

This partnership works brilliantly for these two Fae. Natemare gets a plaything to toy with within the dimension, while Phantom gets a cult following outside of it.

Thankfully, another member of the Fae, going by the name Paultin, has joined Nate in an effort to stop Phantom and Natemare’s schemes. As a member of the Fae, he can pass back and forth between these dimensions with ease, heroically attempting to aid or rescue the mortals caught within Phantom’s trap. Sometimes he brings other Fae Folk with him to help! However, anyone who escapes from Phantom’s cult, either before or after they’re trapped, will die soon afterwards under mysterious circumstances. After all, Fae folk are particularly nitpicky about keeping promises and agreements, and the death penalty would probably be considered an appropriate punishment for breaking one.

And then sometimes, Natemare decides to go after Paultin himself...

Of course, there’s next to nothing any of the other kingdoms can do about this situation. Fasithe is located deep within the unexplored reaches of the Western Forest, and if that wasn’t enough, they’re semi-nomadic, traveling from place to place within the trees. It’d be nearly impossible to track them down, and definitely impossible to do anything about the cult if we did. What are we gonna do? Stab the beings of pure magic and hope they go away permanently like mortals do when their fleshy soul-container breaks too much? 

Plus, Phantom and Natemare only prey on Nate’s followers, so the entire conflict is fundamentally internal, and therefore, not our problem. Especially when something that is trying to prey upon the people beyond the forest has been threatening Duilintinn for the past two decades...

Bard’s Note: This idea was prompted by a silly little ooc rp that @theshapeshifter100, @shamrockace, and @autumnleafauthor started messing around in a month or so ago on discord. I gave them a chat designated for their shenanigans and muted it, not gonna lie. I’m a bad admin. 

Anyway, eventually they asked me if they could make it a sort of canon thing, we tossed around ideas for a while, and this is eventually what became of it. I meant to post this when I posted the other countries, but the formatting had to change due to the completely different nature of this “country,” so I ended up procrastinating for a while. A LONG while. Oops.  

Finally, I’ve gotten around to writing this out. For a true understanding of the chaos that is this maze cult thing, I highly recommend you check out the discord and pop into the “Three Murderteers” chat here. Yes, that’s the name. They asked me to change it to that and I said yes. 

As for the lore that’s actually gonna have implications for Duilintinn here... keep an eye on the concept of those dimensions... I have a feeling they’re going to be important at some point... ;)

[paladin-andric]

Great Strides: Geralthin

Welcome to “Great Strides”! This is a little something I came up with a short while ago and recently decided to undertake. In this, we will take a look at the way nations in Deaco have transformed over time, politically, culturally, religiously and militarily. First up is the beating heart of the continent: The Kingdom of Geralthin, the metropolitan state of prosperity and the home to the human race! Everything’s under the cut.

Earliest Records/Pre-Imperium

"Where tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers therefore are the founders of human civilization."

Humanity was dormant for most of their early years. Relegated to small tribes scattered around the wilds, they lived somewhat mobile, hunter-gatherer lives, though settling was not unheard of. After the discovery of farming, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle quickly died and civilization sprung up. A population boom as a result of agricultural pursuits led to the first economic systems, cities and production of goods and services. This led to the foundation of record keeping, an alphabet, and a legal code, which in turn led to a centralization of power for those who held the most resources...humanity had just laid the foundations for their illustrious future.

The Empire

"True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written, in writing what deserves to be read."

Wars between cities led to a grand master of most known human civilization. This man, Lucian, named himself Emperor of the Deacan Empire, known to historians as the Human Empire. The ultimate meaning behind the empire was the complete mastery of the entire known world, hence their claim to be “Deacan”, as they saw themselves as the heart of Deaco itself. Rapid expansion in technology, military and administration transformed the tribes and city-states of humanity into a highly cultured, advanced society. Art, literature and philosophy burst onto the scene, and soon humanity was living a rich, happy life.

That was not enough. They had the finest warriors and largest army in all the world...and so they laid their claim to their namesake. They would truly become the Deacan Empire by subjugating the rest of Deaco.

The pona were a joke. The koutu were pushovers. The savage berserkers of the dacuni were a true challenge, but the Empire prevailed. After several centuries of expansion and almost unending warfare, the Deacan Empire was in complete control of the known world...aside from the Abinsil, though they were close friends and trading partners of the Empire, and off the mainland on their own sub-continent. The Empire decided they could rule their own little petty kingdom, it wasn’t on the mainland anyway.

At the same time during all of these developments, the Order of God was formed. A new monotheistic faith took the Empire by storm, and soon the Old Gods were all but forgotten under the new faith. A religion that stressed honor, devotion, sacrifice, self-mastery and unity among the faithful spread far and wide. It came to a halt at the non-human frontiers...all except the koutu. They eagerly embraced the new faith, though not unscathed. Several concessions to the old ways and gods left the religion different from the way it entered. The koutu did not discard their old gods, instead weaving them into the new faith as demigods, and champions of the one true God who they served. This syncretic melding of faith left the koutu with those new values of selflessness and discipline, but allowed them to retain their old culture and stories...though altered with the hindsight that the gods weren’t really gods anymore. The fact that those who accepted the new human God could perform miracles helped to cement their new belief.

The Empire lacked tolerance in many things. It didn’t treat non-humans equally, the wolfmen rampantly oppressed as they were seen as barbarians and troublemakers, the pona pushed around and forcefully taken to be doctors for the emperor, though the koutu were treated with some degree of kindness, as their overly friendly and outgoing natures helped to endear humanity to them.

This state led to unrest, which would soon spiral out of control...

The Fall

“And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains.”

It was a wondrous age of peace and prosperity that followed the complete unification of Deaco, but it was not to last.

The first signs of trouble were the unrest in the dacuni tribes. Their stubbornness was incredible, and they absolutely refused all attempts at integration. They rejected faith, culture, government, language and mere presence alike.

At the same time, calls for koutu independence were being called for by the koutu...and humans. Apparently, many priests, high and low in the church hierarchy, from both koutu and human orders had received visions that God himself wished for the koutu to be free. Even the emperor had no support for a forced continuation of their status as an imperial province, so the koutu were let go from the empire. This has became a famous legend in the Koutu Kingdom, that the great heroine Sila laid down her weapons and vowed to serve God in exchange for her peoples’ freedom.

Smelling blood in the air, the wolfmen redoubled their efforts to break free, beginning an all-out war of rebellion. The pona too began to resist human presence in their lands, and soon the Empire was submerged in a state of civil war across all their territories.

Then, the dragons attacked.

They had been watching the development of humanity with some bemused interest, and now that they were rich and prosperous, now seemed the perfect time to stop observing and start conquering.

The humans did not yet possess the ability to wield magic or enchant their armaments, and so their weapons would bounce harmlessly off the dragons’ unbreakable scales.

They stood no chance.

There were zero recorded instances of dragons being slain during the “war”. Soon enough, the empire had collapsed entirely, their foreign provinces retaken by the non-humans, and their heartlands conquered. The Deacan Empire was no more.

The remnants of the imperial army evacuated as many cities as they could guiding the civilians to relative safety. Any independent humans were enclaves hiding out in the forests and hills of the deep wilds. The rest of humanity that wasn’t destroyed during the draconic invasion were now at the mercy of the dragons.

Under Dragonlaw/The Dark Ages

"The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest."

The free humans hid. It was all they could do to keep their freedoms and lives. Life was hard, and lacked the wealth, liberties and luxuries the Empire provided.

The subjugated humans had their lives in the hands of draconic tyrants. Each dragon would claim a free city as their own, and ruled it independently. As a result, the most widespread legal system during this age...was actually the republican system. This was only due to the fact that cities were “free” and thus were ruled by a mayor, who in turn served whichever dragon took the city.

Treatment varied wildly. Each dragon ruled in absolute independence, and so they made their own law.

Some exterminated the cities. Some made humans little more than slaves. Most simply taxed them into poverty, amassing their horde off the backs of human laborers.

Some few were benevolent. They claimed a city and then allowed them to govern themselves, merely there to keep away other dragons that would subject them to a far worse fate. Gira was one such example of this.

This disunited state of affairs caused human culture to slowly drift apart. North, South, East and West began to take on their own customs and their language evolved so that some speech and expressions were like a whole different languange to someone on the other side of Geralthin. Soon enough, they ways of the Imperial Humans were but a distant memory.

After many generations under the heels of the dragons, a lone figure emerged to challenge them: Lord Godfrey. This obscure lord of a city began a series of wars against other human cities with the backing of the dragons, who he lied to through a lengthy series of webweavings that led the dragons to believe they were plotting against one another. As a result, the dragons fought and killed one another while Godfrey amassed power and tested new military theories.

With the discovery of the art of magic, now was the time. Spears, arrows and ballistae were magically enchanted, allowing them to piece the scales of dragons. By the time they realized what was happening, the dragons were already too disunited and weak to crush the uprising.

A decade of war against the dragons and invading armies of non-humans looking to snag a few cities from the dying dragons later, and Geralthin was at last free. Godfrey crowned himself king of the new Kingdom of Geralthin, and the rest, as they say, was history.

This led to feudal law and centralization. The hundreds of different constitutions and legal systems of cities and towns were scrapped for a set of royal laws that would apply to all. The sovereign of Geralthin, the king or queen, ruled all. The nobility under him worked to administrate their slices of land for him, and the nobles below them oversaw small baronies and cities. Soon, the Kingdom was a Feudal Monarchy in both name and deed. There was little restriction or oversight, for the royals and nobles were expected to act in good faith. For the most part, they did.

Administrative Overhaul/The Early Kingdom

"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy."

Over the reign of the first few kings and queens, the royal family worked to refine their administration and improve its capabilities. Gira offered advice from the legal system of the city she ruled over during the dark ages, and while the legal system of a city did not work in a kingdom-wide scale, it did help.

Godfrey drew from old city laws when drafting his own set of laws, so to allow the cities and towns to retain some freedoms and familiar rules to make the transition to a kingdom easier.

Crime and justice were penned into existence. The punishments of the old Empire, such as burning traitors alive, were banned. The free for all, anything goes way of the dark age were swept aside. Executions were reserved for the most dire offensives, and designed to be swift. Hanging, decapitation and poisoning became the standard go-to for those that would commit dark deeds such as murder.

Slavery was officially banned, though it wasn’t truly used by anyone but the dragons since the collapse of the Empire. Thieves, thugs and con-men were jailed or fined, the amount of time or money needed depending on the severity of the time. Small crimes such as fights and stealing of low costing goods like candy could be waved by the victim if they so chose. Public indecency, intoxication or disturbance of the peace allowed perpetrators to spend some time performing community service, such as street-sweeping, muck-cleaning, and road-paving. Such sentencing was viewed as favorable, and didn’t last for long. Repeat offenders would begin to receive harsher sentencing as judges grew tired of having to deal with them.

Trade and diplomacy came back into being as the kingdom recovered from its divided state and crippling war. Bureaus of commerce and international relations were founded to make such things matters of state rather than on-the-fly proceedings. All in all, humanity became closer to one another, more informed about the land they lived, and unified in power and purpose.

Finally, Godfrey’s son, Rufus, amended the succession laws. The standard succession meathod was Primogeniture, meaning the eldest inherits the throne, but Rufus introduced a law that allowed the king or queen to choose any of their children as the heir, for any reason. He hoped this meant that future monarchs would have some degree of responsibility, as drunkards, fools and those without Geralthin in mind would be passed over for better heirs.

Magic’s Introduction

"The day when two army corps can annihilate each other in one second, all civilized nations, it is to be hoped, will recoil from war and discharge their troops."

Humanity first learned the art of magic during the War of Liberation, but inklings were there beforehand. From the miracles of saints and those possessing indescribable powers, magic had always been in the background, waiting for humanity to learn and master it.

That time came during the lead up to the war.

Godfrey bribed several “allied” dragons a fortune for them to divulge their secrets, but even then they were tight-lipped. As arrogance and blind to humanity’s potential as they were, even they knew humans learning such power would turn out very, very badly for them later down the line.

They were correct, but that didn’t matter. The greedier of the dragons relented and taught humans some of what they knew. Once human magicians knew the basics, how to harness one’s own energy and warp it into magical power, all those secrets stopped mattering.

Humans mastered themselves, and journeyed into the heart of experimentation to invent spells themselves. This blind experimenting of course led to several accidents, mistakes and tragedies, but it was their only chance.

Once they learned how to control necrotic energy, it was over. The sorcerers blasted dragons out of the sky, dooming them to death as the necrosis ate away whatever survived the blast. This in turn, led to the kobolds’ death warding ritual, the precursor to modern restorative magic.

Once the kingdom came into being, the experimenting changed. Now that the dragons were no longer a threat, and stability was blanketing the land, sorcerers began to study magic that would undo the potential damage such terrifying power held. Newly invented spells were heavily defensively oriented, such as dispelling other magics or creating wards that protected against hostile sorcerers.

Since magic takes such a great time to master, the introduction of magicians merely shook things up instead of uprooting the ways or war entirely. They were far too small in number to replace soldiers with, so the sword, spear and bow remained the primary way of combat, and armies were still nearly all infantry and cavalry, though a couple magicians could give an army the edge in battle.

Divine Magic

"The night is far spent; the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light."

The magic of God is far different than the magic of man. It’s always been there, but unable to be harnessed through normal means. As the sorcerers battled the dragons, however, a few priests and soldiers began to think. Those “great works”, those “miracles” of the saints of old...were they tangible? Could they be replicated?

As it turned out, the answer was yes.

Once humans learned how to channel their energy and weave it into magic, they found that when their thoughts and desires turned to the divine...that the process remained unchanged. If one knew what to do and how to do it, they could use magic in the way the saints of old did, and show all those on Deaco the might of God.

There was one small caveat to this line of magic, however...it was tied directly to the Lord, and thus, faith.

Thoughts, desires and deeds must remain pure and true to channel such holy powers. The man or woman using the power of God must not only be unflinching in their conviction of the defense of goodness and holiness, but they must truly BELIEVE. Forsake the tenants of the faith or lose the desire to use such power for good, and you will suddenly find yourself unable to channel your power to these ends.

As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.

Early Centralization and Looking Forward

"A multitude of rulers is not a good thing, let there be one ruler, one king."

The Kings and Queens of Geralthin fell into a steady legal battle with their vassals.

While the dukes, duchesses, counts, barons and lords were at first loyal to the king, this obedience and unity was born of mankind’s struggle with dragons. The nobles of the realm unquestioningly followed Godfrey, as he has thrown off the draconic yoke and founded the kingdom.

As soon as he died, things slowly began to change.

The nobles became increasingly petty and demanding of the monarch with each new generation, having grown complacent with their power.

Now, the monarch would struggle to draft new laws with their vassals refusing to back such rulings. It was then that they realized just how little power a king or queen held without politicking in the courts or the loyalty of their vassals.

For generations, the kings and queens battled with the aristocracy, inch by inch weakening them. Every generation of rulers, at least one or two laws would come into fruition that lessened the political power of the nobility in some way.

Monarchs of Geralthin were taught how important it was to be a good ruler. Since childhood, they were told by their parents, tutors and Gira herself that a true monarch serves the people, that they do their duty so that their lands could live in peace and prosperity for future generations.

While not eliminated, the nobility had lost most of their political power by the end of the middle ages, though they retained their possessions. Even their military power began to wane as the first professional armies came into being, trained by and loyal to the kingdom rather than their lieges. While still relying on the feudal levy system for now, the army had a small core of elite soldiers that could always be relied on.

While centralization and chastening of noble privileges continued, time marched on. As Geralthin left the early middle ages, technology improved, magic flourished, and the realm grew wealthy.

The military changed greatly over time, as fully-plated cavalry, heavily armored pikemen and crossbowmen overtook light cavalry, spearmen militias and peasant bowmen. Catapults gave way to trebuchets, and the military in general became better disciplined, trained, experienced and professional.

As for magic, more spells began to be invented, and old ones were improved. The art of magic became more and more refined, as academies for magicians and temples for clerics and priest gave newcomers a thorough drilling on how to properly use magic. It slowly became easier and cheaper to learn, and as a result became more widespread.

Architecture evolved, medicine improved, and quality of life improved for all, from the royal family themselves, to the most destitute of commoners.

As laws against serfdom put an end to “peasants” as an entity, there is now only paid laborers and mercenaries. Farmers became their own men and women, not beholden to laws binding them physically and economically to a noble. City dwellers worked in labor and service industries of their own volition, and society grew increasingly optimistic.

As time marches on, these things will keep improving. More prosperity, more inventions, more magic and more new technology and laws to protect the people from tyrants and robber-barons.

The future is looking bright.

And that’s all for now! There’s the whole renaissance to modern day thing, but this is everything that leads up to Blackheart.

Tag list: @thereisnothingwrongwithbeingmad, @lady-redshield-writes, @paper-shield-and-wooden-sword, @sheralynnramsey, @tawnywrites, @writer-on-time, @oceanwriter, @zwergis-spilledink, @fluffpiggy, @elliewritesfantasy, @homesteadhorner,  @laurenwastestimewriting, @elaynab-writing, @the-ichor-of-ruination, @candy687, @fierywords, @shewrites-sometimes

[spuekyblue-blog]

The Beckoning of Obgerrah

The first story I’ve written in my current setting.  It tells the tale of the monstrous reptile-people who live in the southwest nation of Etria, known as Obgerrah.  I hope you like reading it as much as I loved writing it.  Enjoy!

     No sunlight shone into the chamber, save for a single ray. Plunging down from a crude hole in the ceiling, it illuminated the surface of an ancient, blood-stained altar.  From the shadows all around the room, cold, reptilian eyes watched the surface of the pedestal and the small basket filled with bloodied organs which sat upon it.  Hearts, the onlookers knew.  Those of their own kind.

     The hepaoku priestess descended from her podium and began laying torches all around the circumference of the altar with her long, scaly fingers, magically lighting them ablaze as she went.  Her sonorous chant drifted through the temple: praises to Sarneiros, the god of knowledge, who had so graciously brought these brave souls back home from their final battle so that their legacy could be reborn even after death.

     While the common folk were captivated by the celestial cleric standing before them, Sakires’ eyes were fixated on one of six young warriors kneeling before the ritual, her head in a low bow before the procession and her tail curled into a spiral as a sign of reverence.  She and the others were donning heavy, ceremonial armor in anticipation of the gruesome rite. They had waited their entire lives for this moment: the day they became more than mere children.  Throughout their youths, they had displayed extraordinary strength, speed, and perception as hunters.  Now, they would finally be granted the most revered title in Obgerrah: Arytissi warrior.

     Gradually, the priestess’s chants grew louder, the anticipation in the room rising with her voice.  The makakiri gatherers ferociously stamped their feet against the earth, sending tremors throughout the temple.  Her hands tipped the basket over, spilling its contents all over the ground in front of the warriors, and in an instant, they lunged toward the hearts.  Reaching out with their long claws, they tore them to pieces and devoured what remained on the floor.

     The young warrior who Sakires had been eyeing finally stood up, letting loose a bellow of victory, soon followed by the others.  Blood drenched her black scales, and her eyes gleamed with purpose.  Although yesterday, many had fallen in the last conflict, Sakires and all of the makakiri knew that they were not lost forever.  Their courage and sacrifice would live on through these young fighters, and after their deaths, it would be passed on to the next, through the feasting of their hearts at the foot of the sacred altar.  Sakires was pleased; Ktalar would make a fine warrior, perhaps more so than himself one day.  On top of her ruthless nature, Sakires sensed something else extraordinary in her every time she fought: a passion for battle and thirst for justice unlike any student he had ever trained.

                                                        ~~~

     From the corner of the chamber stood another warrior.  She remembered the day she participated in this ritual, the day she became one of the Arytissi.  On that day she was much like these young ones: eager, determined, full of zeal.  What had changed her?  Why did it seem that she was the only one who stopped to question the ideals of the great hepaoku, who called themselves demigods and prophets?  And how many great warriors, like the ones being devoured here, had died defending a cause they didn’t know why they supported?  Etachil would not be like them.  She couldn’t die serving mad seers and a so-called god of knowledge who never revealed anything in his archives to his own people, let alone his face.  And yet she could not bring herself to leave her home of Obgerrah, the forest nation where the reptilian makakiri dwelled.  It was not unheard of for the makakiri to leave their homeland to pursue other ambitions; their honor would be stripped away, and most likely they would not be welcomed back with open arms.  But these things meant little to Etachil.  

     No, there was something else holding her back.  Etachil wasn’t afraid of Obgerrah.  She was enraged.  It wasn’t relief from this lifestyle she sought, but retaliation against a religion that had turned her and countless other noble warriors into slaves.

     And for what?  The goal of the Arytissi was clear: defend the world from its darkest secrets and artifacts, hidden away in the underground archives of Irthos Troth for millennia.  As a youth, Etachil, like all Arytissi in training, was taught by the hepaoku that if anyone were to let loose the terrible magic in the archives, it would spell disaster for not only the forests of Obgerrah, but for the entire world.

     This all made sense to Etachil, and indeed she had lived by these principles for many years.  In more recent times, however, she had been considering the Arytissi’s position in this task.  The makakiri were forbidden to enter the archives they dedicated their lives to protecting, lest they find what resides there desirable and use it for selfish purposes.  But what was the alternative?  Were the Arytissi meant to be no more than mindless pawns for Sarneiros?  What god of knowledge keeps his chosen people in the dark forever?  

     At this point, several other makakiri had withdrawn from the celebration to carry on with their daily activities.  Etachil wasn’t ready to leave yet.  She glanced at the parade of scaled creatures funneling out of the gaps in the temple’s walls, picking out faces she knew.  

     She watched Sakires, her old mentor, walking alongside Ktalar, one of the new recruits.  Although Sakires was very old, his body had only become more powerful since his youthful days.  His scales however, which were once black as pitch, had faded into an unpleasant green as the years passed, and the rich brown of his eyes had begun to fade into a dull grey.

     There was once a time where Sakires favored Etachil, but as he discovered her heretical values, he came to look upon her with contempt.  The two of them had seldom spoken to each other over the last few years, mostly because Etachil tended to avoid his presence whenever possible.

     In a few minutes, the temple was empty aside from the priestess and herself.  Etachil had no interest in hunting with the other warriors, although she doubted anyone would invite her anyhow.  Her beliefs were no secret anymore; at this point, she was accustomed to being ostracized by her fellow warriors.  

     The priestess hadn’t noticed her shifting uncomfortably in the corner of the temple yet.  The senses of the hepaoku were not as sharp as those of a makakiri.  Contrarily, Etachil heard every word the priestess uttered under her breath as she packed away her holy items and pots of blood and oil.  Even after the conclusion of the ritual, she continued to pray to her god, and for the success of the young warriors.

     In contrast to the enormous makakiri warriors, the hepaoku were slender, although they stood at roughly the same height.  Their scales were soft and green, like the leaves of the jungle trees at the beginning of summer.  They were born pupilless, but with the symbol of Sarneiros branded upon their eyes, marking them as his children and oracles.

     Etachil’s gaze pierced into the back of the cleric’s head.  Since the hepaoku spent most of their lives underground, their presence was uncommon in times of peace.  This was only the ninth time Etachil had seen one in her seventeen years.  And yet she was expected to interpret everything they said as divine truth.  But now, Etachil was getting ideas for how to uncover the reality of her world.  She felt a tug on her senses coming from the tunnels: ever so subtle, but irresistibly strong.  Today, she would retrieve what had been lost in the archives.

     The priestess, as she finished gathering her things and began to proceed deeper into the dark corridors of the temple, contemplated the events that had occurred these past few days.  How generous Sarneiros was to have granted Irthos Troth such mighty and valiant guardians!  The makakiri weren’t by any means magically or technologically advanced, but their keen senses, their fury in battle, and their ability to kill without remorse were enough to quell the ambitions of the deadliest sorcerer.

     Unable to perceive her stalker in the darkness, the hepaoku effortlessly navigated the familiar maze of twisting halls beneath the temple.  She had spent all three centuries of her life in the tunnels of Irthos Troth, visiting the surface for a few days every four years or so to preach to the makakiri and the other folk who dwelled in Obgerrah’s harsh jungles.  If she had known she was being followed, she would not have been so careless.  The law of Sarneiros only granted the hepaoku the right to enter Irthos Troth, along with a few select Arytissi veterans who he had hand picked to guard the entrances.

     Etachil’s mind was bubbling with excitement and fear now.  Never had she dared to set foot in Irthos Troth, lest she get lost in the dark, treacherous caverns, never to return home.  But this immaculate guide in front of her opened up a world of possibilities.  Yes, she despised the hepaoku, but if she could use this one to enter the interior of the cave, and then get past the rest of them undetected, she could confirm or disprove her suspicions about Irthos Troth.  If she was wrong, she could continue her life as an Arytissi, free of the burdens of ignorance.  But if she was right, and she suspected she was, everything would change.

     The sounds of the forest overhead disappeared as Etachil pursued the priestess.  She took note of every turn she took, knowing she would have to use her own sense of navigation to exit the caverns once she had the knowledge she desired.  

     Torchlight began to fill the caverns with a somber glow, and she could now see in full detail the elaborate carvings decorating the stone walls.  Never before had she looked upon such masterful artwork; the makakiri had little regard for aesthetics or expression.  She saw thousands of faces gazing at her from the bas-reliefs on either side of her: makakiri, hepaoku, and other creatures she had never seen, ones that lacked scales but stood on two legs, held unfamiliar weapons, and conjured flames from their hands.

     Her attention must have slipped as she looked upon the beautiful masonry surrounding her.  When Etachil finally turned towards her unsuspecting guide, she realized she had been seen.  The priestess gasped in surprise as she discovered the black-scaled warrior tracing her path, blades in hand and her maw hanging wide open.  They saw each other for a moment, and Etachil, as startled as her guide, instinctively sprung forward.

     Before she knew what she was doing, Etachil’s bone dagger had dug itself deep into the priestess’s gut.  The hepaoku’s frightened ramblings came to a sudden pause as she looked down to see white ichor pouring out of her wound.  The creature tasted death in the back of her throat, and slumped to the ground, motionless.  

     Etachil darted back, instantly realizing the magnitude of what she had done.  She could not deny that she took satisfaction in seeing the cleric lying on the ground, life fading from her eyes, but if her fellow warriors found out about this… The murder of a hepaoku was an unforgivable crime.  And yet here Etachil stood, standing over the lifeless corpse with none to bear witness to the killing.  

     She must have stood there motionless for over a minute thinking about what to do next before spotting a towering silhouette emerge from the opposite end of the corridor.  No doubt one of the makakiri who guarded the uppermost portions of Irthos Troth.  If they found Etachil, it was over; the Arytissi didn’t take executions lightly.  She could be stoned to death, confined until she died of thirst, pierced by the venom of a blade viper and left to die in the forest, or worse.  

     But she hadn’t been noticed yet.  The priestess had barely made a sound when she died; perhaps she could slink back into the shadows and escape accusation.  But Arytissi were skilled trackers and were blessed with acute senses.  Or, if he didn’t find her, then he would bring more warriors to investigate the area, inevitably spelling her doom.

     Etachil was small for a makakiri, standing just under six feet, but she held the advantage of surprise.  Before the warrior approached, she leapt behind a stalagmite and wiped the pearly ichor from her blade.  As soon as he came forward, she would lunge from her hiding place and sink it into his throat.  A single, clean blow, and he would be dead; Etachil would be safe.  But the closer he came, the more her hands shook.  The morality of the deed didn’t bother her remotely; makakiri were born to kill without remorse, not to mention she had already committed a crime that would see her executed.  It was the sheer size of the savage creature that stunned her with fear.  He stood at nearly eight feet in height, and his colossal, heavily-muscled arms gripped an enormous wooden club with extreme ease.  Etachil worried that she wouldn’t be able to get past such a wide range to swing her comparatively tiny weapon at his vital areas.

     She would have to use her more slender form to her advantage.  This one was a brute, and his heavy club would have a hard time keeping up with her nimble blades.  He had already reacted to seeing the priest’s body and was now searching the area for any evidence of the killer.  Etachil waited for the perfect moment to lash out, but it never came.  They made eye contact.  He let out a gargling howl to signal more Arytissi to the area.  She had waited too long.

     Etachil took the opportunity to dart behind him, putting her in a more advantageous position, but he was quicker than she thought.  He swung his club diagonally at her, missing, but only inches away from crushing her skull.  But Etachil had fought opponents larger than this one before and knew their disadvantages.  The momentum of the club carried his arms to the other wall of the corridor, his weapon colliding against the stone walls with a colossal thud.  Before he could regain his balance, Etachil was on him, slashing into his throat with unbridled fury.  But unlike the priest, he didn’t die quietly; his death throes were violent and frenzied, and his shouts rang throughout the caverns.  Hardly the clean kill she had been hoping for.

     By now, several Arytissi must have heard the commotion and would be here momentarily.  To run back the way she had come would be a fool’s errand; the Arytissi would see her, and she was far too exhausted from the battle to take one warrior, let alone an entire patrol unit.  She had dug herself into a ditch, and the only way to go was down, deeper into the caverns, toward whatever strange secrets Sarneiros kept so thoroughly hidden.  If fate had planned it so, perhaps she could find something to save her within the archives of Irthos Troth.

                                                           ~~~

     Hours had passed since the ritual had concluded.  The rest of the ceremony had been brief; the priestess gave her blessings to the graduating students, and they were congratulated by their friends and mentors.  Now, as was customary for such ceremonies, the newest Arytissi warriors, and a few others, prepared to embark on a grand hunt through the jungles of Obgerrah.

     Ktalar had doffed her heavy, bloodstained ceremonial attire, and was now equipping her lightweight combat armor.  The Arytissi covered themselves minimally on such hunts.  This made their movements faster, quieter, and more graceful, and spared them from the intense heat of Obgerrah’s jungles.  Arytissi armor was made of wood, bones, hide, and whatever metal the scaled folk could salvage from the caverns.  Although the specific pieces of armor they wore was based upon preference, they commonly covered parts of their shoulders, forearms, legs, and chests.  Some warriors also donned animal skulls as helmets, not for protection, but to display their ferocity to their fellow hunters, or the rare sentient enemy they came across.

     The signature feature of Arytissi armor was the spines they decorated it with, usually made of bone or bronze, or sometimes iron.  The spikes were most prevalent on vital areas such as the chest, and were effective for grappling.

     The weapons the Arytissi wielded were also based upon preference.  Ktalar acquired a bow and a leather quiver, as well as a crude spear: a large branch with a sharpened gharm fang tied to the end.  She fancied attacking from a distance, preferring to optimize stealth rather than brute force.  Finally, she pocketed a small pouch of light yellow liquid.  Her instincts told her she would need it today.

                                                           ~~~

     The further Etachil proceeded into the depths of the tunnel, the more she felt it.  Something calling out to her, promising retribution against her enemies.  Cold, damp, and dark, it resonated with something within, writhing in pain as it was burnt by the flames of discontent: the essence of her hatred and anger.  

     Truly, the events that had taken place today were not the result of chance.  Fate had brought her down here for a reason.  She was to meet the source of this malign energy, and it would save her from the agony she felt living alongside the monstrous Arytissi.  It would defend her from the dissatisfied gaze of Sakires.  The biting words of the hepaoku.  The inescapable presence of Sarneiros, the avaricious god who hoards limitless power and knowledge to keep it from a world he deems too weak to wield it.  The darkness of Obgerrah would fall into ruin, and a new era of truth would rise from the void.  For the first time in years, Etachil had a purpose.

     She had become so lost in thought that she forgot about her surroundings.  She dove into the maze of lightless caverns under Obgerrah, and as if guided by divine instinct, took all of the correct turns toward her unknowable destination.  Etachil no longer needed eyes to see.  The vile one guided her every step, its influence pulling her into the depths, like a carnivorous plant luring insects to its hungry maw with its sweet aroma.

     Her eyes caught a glimpse of light.  Not light as she knew it; not sunlight or the light of a flame, but a repulsive, black light that imbued the tunnels with malice.  The air tore at her lungs, making every breath an effort, but she continued on in a corpse-like trance.  Ghastly images of sinister gods were carved on the walls all around her, and the scent of death became stronger with every step she took.  She took no notice of these things.  Her entire world was centered on the ancient black casket in front of her.  

     Without thinking, she removed the lid on the container to reveal a small object wrapped in linen and caked with dried, black blood.  Etachil’s claws reached down for the artifact.  It was cold to the touch.  As she felt her senses coming back to her, she could feel it subtly pulsating in the palms of her hands.  The vibration was accompanied by a deep growl, barely audible to the ears of even a makakiri, but resounding through Etachil’s mind.  The determination she had felt dissipated as the seeds of horror and repugnance sprouted in her heart.  This never should have happened.  She never should have gone deeper into the caverns.  She would have felt far more at ease being tortured to death by the Arytissi right now.

     Etachil wanted to leave.  She wanted to dash out of this repulsive cavern as quickly as she had come.  Sakires, the hepaoku, the Arytissi, who made her into an outcast… she had tolerated them for years and could keep doing so for many more.  But this, whatever vile thing she held in her claws right now, would kill her if nothing else did.  Despite this, she couldn’t bring herself to drop the thing into the casket and leave.  It was now like a part of her consciousness, and although it lay limp in her grasp, it clutched onto her fear and frustration and wouldn’t let go, try as she might to shake it off.

     She couldn’t bear to stay here any longer.  Etachil used every ounce of her willpower to force herself outside of the strange chamber and began running back through the winding tunnels the way she came.  The thing was a parasite, gnawing through her mind and sapping her willpower.  It would feast on Etachil’s psyche until she was nothing, and it would finally have the power to plague the rest of the world with its disease.  The scaled warrior could try to flee, but she was already lost the moment she laid her hands on its old wrappings.

     Through the dark tunnels Etachil stumbled, her mind a whirlwind of terror and regret.  After several long, desperate hours of helplessly clawing against the stone walls in search of the way back home, she navigated to the surface without running into any of her kin, but did so clutching the vile one’s host in her arms.

                                                           ~~~

     Ktalar lay motionless on the ground, concealed by the thick jungle foliage, hardly breathing.  Any other creature would dismiss her for a boulder sitting behind a tangle of vines, but her sharp eyes would have sensed the presence of the tiniest rodent passing by.  She couldn’t afford to keep track of how long she had been waiting, lest her concentration slipped.  It could have been minutes or hours; she paid no attention.  Nor did she notice how hungry she was, or the thorns she was kneeling on, digging into her scales.  She forgot herself.  All she knew was her surroundings, her senses completely entwined in every movement that occurred here.  Such was the acuity of the Arytissi.

     The hunting trip had gone well thus far.  Ktalar and her peers had encountered a Gharm, an enormous scaled beast with devastating strength and uncanny fortitude.  These creatures, although they lacked the cunning of the makakiri, were considered to be their greatest foes; they were gluttonous things, and had a particular taste for the flesh of the makakiri.  The battle was short though, and it ended with the new warriors sitting triumphantly upon its bloody body.  Such a kill would be celebrated for days.

     Not long after, however, a messenger had come back from the village bearing news that a hepaoku and an Arytissi warrior had been found dead in Irthos Troth.  They deduced that a fellow Arytissi had betrayed them to seek the cursed treasures that lay inside the underground chambers.

     Ktalar and the rest of her patrol had promptly spread themselves within a mile’s radius of Irthos Troth’s entrance.  In time, the traitor would have to emerge from the caverns, and if they were skilled enough to get in, these warriors would have to be attentive to make sure they didn’t get out.

     Ever so slowly and quietly, Ktalar drew an arrow from her quiver and soaked its tip into the pouch of yellow liquid on her belt: the venom of a blade viper, one of the most treacherous and deadly creatures in Obgerrah.  Once her arrow hit its target and the poison entered the traitor’s bloodstream, it would only be a matter of time before they collapsed from the pain.  Ktalar’s ammunition was loaded into her weapon and ready to fire at the flick of her thumb.  Adrenaline pumped all throughout her body.

     Some time later, she heard the first sign of her prey.  A rustle in the branches overhead, and the falling of leaves.  The pressure on her bowstring increased as her eyes scanned the understory above her head, searching for the indicative black scales of a makakiri.  

     The moment she saw movement, the pressure was released; her arrow soared through the air and dug itself into flesh.  Her target’s gasp of pain was almost inaudible through the branches, but Ktalar heard it crystal clear.  Indeed, it was the voice of a makakiri.  After sitting motionless for so long, Ktalar sprung to her full height and drew her spear.  Her target was wounded.  Ktalar no longer had need for stealth.

                                                          ~~~

     Just as she was beginning to believe she could escape, Etachil’s thigh erupted with a deep, cold pain.  Her balance was thrown off, and she nearly tumbled through the branches below her.  The sensation was unmistakable.  She had felt it in her youth, while hunting with Sakires.  

     Back then, her foot had been caught on a dead branch, and she had tumbled into a shrub.  The despicable creature had sprung out at her before she knew what was happening, its fangs digging into her scales and injecting its cruel venom into her veins.  The blade viper, the same creature whose poison the Arytissi applied to their arrows to make their sting even more lethal.  If the initial impact didn’t kill the target, then the venom would, or at least slow it down long enough for the hunters to land the decisive blow.

     Etachil cursed and peered through the branches below her to see a young Arytissi warrior standing with her grisly weapon in hand, pointing its tip toward her.  She didn’t recognize her at first; for her face was concealed by a bone helm.  Knowing very well that these could be her final moments, Etachil desperately tried to climb upward through the branches of the forest, but the venom was already rapidly spreading through her body.  She thought about the item she found in the archives.  She prayed that it would free her from this agony, so that she might escape death, even for a few more days.  It was in vain, of course.  Etachil had already fulfilled her purpose, and the vile one had goals far more complex than the scaled folk could begin to fathom.

     Ktalar was already in hot pursuit.  She was as skilled at climbing as Etachil, if not superior.  The layers of branches did nothing to slow her down.  A vehement battle cry burst from her throat, stirred by her desire to draw blood today.  As Ktalar drew closer, Etachil could now see the eyes of her killer.  She wore the same expression she had earlier that day at the ceremony: ravenous bloodlust, and determination to feed her pride.  Etachil was to be killed by Sakires’ favorite pet.  

     Etachil knew her life was over, but in her final effort, she drew a shortsword from its sheath and plunged it into Ktalar’s chest with all of her weight.  The bronze spines on Ktalar’s armour impaled Etachil’s wrist, but she could no longer feel any pain.  The vile one had already made her into an empty husk, unable to feel anything but anger and fear.

                                                            ~~~

     As the thief dropped from the branches and drove her blade into her flesh, Ktalar realized she had let her attention slip in her impatience.  Etachil carried her weight onto her body, nearly snapping the branches beneath her.  Ktalar struggled to push her off, grabbed her prey by the tail, and threw her onto the forest floor below.  Etachil tumbled through layers upon layers of branches, and felt several of her ribs snap as she hit the forest floor with a deep thud.  Her scales were soaked in blood now, and she felt her breath weakening as her body began to fail her.  She couldn’t find the motivation to try to get up, much less put up a fight.

     Blocking her wound with her forearm, Ktalar climbed down from the forest’s branches.  She reached the bottom and spun her spear at the traitor’s throat.  It was one of Sakires’ former students, one that had fallen out of his favor many years ago.  

     “Etachil, “ she spat.  “By your actions you bring shame to your allies, your god, and your mentor.  What have you to say in your defense?”  

     Etachil did what she could to draw breath into her lungs and replied, “Nothing”. 

     Silence filled the air between the two warriors.  

     Ktalar began again, “Do you have anything to say to your fellow warriors?”

     Again, she replied, “No, nothing at all”. 

     “What about to Sakires?  To the hepaoku?  To Sarneiros?”  

     Etachil shook her head.  As she lay in a puddle of her own blood on the muddy rainforest soil, she felt the poison destroying her insides, her spirit fading from her body.  

     “I have nothing to say to them.  But to you young Ktalar, I have one request.  After my death, cut out my heart so that I may live on in the next generation of warriors.”  

     Ktalar cocked her head and responded, “You believe you have the right to pass your spirit along after what you have done?”  

     Etachil’s gaze shifted to the clump of bloody linen lying under a shrub inches away from her face.  

     Her words slurred by exhaustion, she shook her head and muttered, “I have no right to ask this of you, but it is my dying wish that I become an Arytissi warrior once again.”  

     She wanted to warn Ktalar about the vile one, but couldn’t find the words before she passed.

                                                          ~~~

     A telltale howl rang through the hunting grounds of the Arytissi.  The eyes of several warriors, hidden in the jungle’s foliage, turned to see Ktalar, wounded, but triumphant.  

     “I have killed the traitor, “ she roared.  “You may reveal yourselves.”  

     One by one, the warriors emerged from their hiding spots and approached Ktalar, congratulating her for her flawless victory.  None of them, least of all Sakires, were surprised nor troubled to hear that Etachil had been the traitor in question, nor that Ktalar had been skilled enough to find her and strike her down with a single poisoned arrow.

     That evening, Ktalar and the rest of the hunting party set up camp in the wilderness, feasting on the flesh of the Gharm they had killed, raw and bloody of course.  Although Ktalar made sure to act with pride, she could not help but be restless from her encounter with Etachil.  Sakires had raised Ktalar under the notion that anyone who stole from Irthos Troth was vile and beyond forgiveness, and so the sincerity of Etachil’s words had caught her off guard.  She tried as best as she could to push these thoughts aside, at least for today.  Sakires passed her the largest leg of the fallen beast, crowning her as the honored participant of today’s hunt.  She accepted it with gratitude.  

     But as she lay down to sleep that night, her head was filled with questions.  Were Etachil’s words sincere?  If so, what had she seen in Irthos Troth that had humbled her?  And above all, what was Ktalar going to do with the makakiri heart concealed in her quiver?

[dustedmagazine]

Dust, Volume 5, Number 7

Cy Dune’s Seth Olinsky

It’s summer time finally, and who wants to be bothered with 3000-word essays on the obscure but worthy? Not us, we want shorter reviews for longer days. We’ve got cannonballs to do off lake piers, carbonized meat to ingest, cold brews to drink. So that we can get back to all that, we deliver a robust Dust with the usual mix of garage rockers, Chicago improv’ers, acoustic finger-pickers, up and comers and lately revived-ers.  We hope you enjoy it, sitting out there on your deck or fire escape or stoop...and don’t forget the sun screen.  Contributors this time include Andrew Forell, Ben Remsen, Justin Cober-Lake, Jennifer Kelly, Isaac Olson, Bill Meyer and Jonathan Shaw.    

Martin Brandlmayr — Vive Les Fantômes (Thrill Jockey)

Austrian drummer/composer Martin Brandlmayr’s award winning radio opera Vive Les Fantômes (Long live the Ghosts) combines spoken word and jazz samples with experimental electronics and percussion to create a dialogue across time and genres between Brandlmayr and some of his influences including Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Jacques Derrida and Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Snatches of live music - a trumpet tuning up, a piano run – emerge between Brandlmayr’s understated free drumming, subtle electronics and the occasional bracing burst of noise. Monk talks sound, Miles issues instructions, and Derrida answers the telephone to speak with an unheard interlocutor. Over an engaging 53 minutes samples repeat in various juxtapositions to create relationships and emphasize their mutability. The spectral voices of long gone cultural giants speak of human frailty and the strength of the creative act. Vive Les Fantômes poignantly addresses memory and mortality. The piece closes on Derrida speaking for the first time in English “OK, I’ll be very glad to meet you. Goodbye.” Et Fin.

Andrew Forell

Burial — Claustro/State Forest (Hyperdub) 

Claustro / State Forest by Burial

William Bevan AKA Burial changed the face of electronica with the release of his eponymous debut album in 2006. His take on dubstep, jungle and ambient continues to influence producers, and his releases are highly anticipated. This first release since 2017 distills the elements that have enthralled and intrigued since the debut. A-side “Claustro” returns to Burial’s roots in jungle and rave. Vinyl crackle coats a four-to-the-floor shuffle and a vocal sample repeats in glorious swells of billowing, cloud-like sounds. It’s exhilarating albeit tinged with Burial’s signature yearning melancholy before it drops, dissolves into twinkling stars “Are you ready?” repeats and then “This song goes out to that boy.” before it kicks back in with an almost cheesy refrain “I got my eye on you, tonight.” which in turn fades back to crackle. “State Forest” is a completely different beast. A rich ambient narrative rich in atmospherics, found sounds and keening waves of synths creeping through a desolate landscape of shadow and dread. The funereal pace unfolds with miniscule details — broken twigs underfoot, drips of rain, quiet exhalations — then sudden silence. Burial places the listener in this environment, observant if not omnipotent or omnipresent, like the narrator of a classic Antinovel. Yet “State Forest” is not alienating or discursive. It shows rather than explains — a direct experience like a Beckett tale. It is his most effective piece of music since “Come Down to Us” and its obliqueness is the key to its power.  

Andrew Forell

Cy Dune — Desert (Lightning)

Akron/Family blended so many influences during their ten-year run that they avoided easy classification. With the collaborative nature of the group and its members switching instruments, it was hard to know what came from who, or whether the whole thing was just a bit of folky synergy. Then the band split up, and the years passed. Dana Janssen created Dana Buoy, an unexpected electropop duo more suited for clubs than for Akron/Family's wildernesses. Seth Olinsky, after a couple quick release years ago, emerges now as Cy Dune, with a sound much more in line with the Akron/Family aesthetic.

On Desert, Olinksy's songwriting and guitar playing provide the center of the album, but only to set up the weirdness that surrounds them. The bluesy stomp of “When You Pass Me” puts Cy Dune in the roots tradition, but the jazz influences remain strong enough that it's no surprise that bassist William Parker shows up. “Desert 2” offers chamber oddity, more a sketch than a song, but then “Desert 3” steps into the garage for some rock. Across this short album, Olinsky crams in a five-year hiatus's worth of ideas. The freak-folk of “It Is the Is” closes with some dissonance, a hint of a jazz, and a happy reminder that Cy Dune's desert archives are only beginning to open up.

Justin Cober-Lake

  Angharad Davies / Rie Nakajima / Alice Purton — Dethick (Another Timbre)

What is a score? Sometimes it is a series of staffs marked on lined paper. Sometimes it is a set of images, which may be followed according to varying degrees of specificity. Sometimes it mandates a piece of music down to the smallest detail, sometimes it offers suggestions, and sometimes it gets ignored. It’s common enough for improvisers to select partners based on their musical personalities rather than the instruments they play, so one might say that the selection is a compositional act. In this situation violinist Angharad Davies, cellist Alice Purton and sound artist Rie Nakajima (she plays kinetic devices and found objects) chose to play together for a couple days in a small church in Dethick, England. The choice to play together, the instruments they brought, the chapel’s accouterments and acoustics — that’s the score. The CD’s ten pieces sound like artifacts of a search for possibilities. How close to the language of chamber music, the shared vernacular of the two string players should they hew? How do things sound when you shake them? What does this organ sound like? What will these stone walls and stained glass windows do to the sounds? And what will one player do in the face of each other’s actions? Decisions in the face of puzzlement; that’s how these three women played this score.

Bill Meyer

 Dehd — Water

Water by DEHD

Dehd’s Water is spare and sharp, with ambling jangles of prickly guitar, a thud of bass, a shattering clank of snare on the upbeats. The Chicagoan trio — that’s Jason Balla (of Ne-Hi and Earring), Emily Kempf (of Vail and ex- of Lala Lala) and Eric McGrady — situate their songs within the tradition of scrubbed bare garage clangor, albeit with a rockabilly-ish twang sometimes flaring in the guitar lines. The one lavish, elaborate element is vocals, which twine and descant and swirl around each other, though never with undue precision. “Wild,” which leads off the disc, conjoins their various cracked and yearning voices in complicated points and counterparts, sometimes in lush, romantic sustained notes, others in percussive, time-keeping chants. “Lucky” starts in single-voiced sincerity and erupts into massive, girl-group sha-la-la-las (though some of them sung by men). Balla and Kempf recorded these songs while breaking up as a couple; they currently tour them as exes, which must lend the tunes a bit of extra ragged edge. Perhaps that’s why songs like “On My Side” are so fetching, sung with shredded hurt and blistered melody, but reaching for sweetness and finding it.

Jennifer Kelly

 DJ Lag and Okzharp — Steamrooms EP (Hyperdub)

Steam Rooms EP by DJ Lag and OKZharp

Durban-based South African Gqom producer DJ Lag teams with London’s Okzharp on the raw, percussion-heavy EP Steamrooms, their first collaboration for Hyperdub. The word Gqom, an onomatopoeia based on the Zulu word for ricochet, is said to mimic the sound of hitting a drum. Steamrooms contains none of the joyful lightness one expects from South African house. This is strictly a woozy, dangerous, disorientating amalgamation of heavy militaristic drums, Zulu chants and stabbing synths tempered somewhat by Okzharp’s grimy London influence. The effect is late-night sweaty club as the drugs are wearing off ad euphoria slips into something sinister and unhinged, but it’s undeniably exciting. I can’t go on; I must go on. Steamrooms’ four tracks exhort you to move till you drop. “Nyusa” encapsulates the atmosphere, shrouded in hiss, a funky unadorned synth riff clangs over an exhausted chant from a breathless dancer and drums thud beneath. The end of the night if not the world.

Andrew Forell

  Fetid — Steeping Corporeal Mess (20 Buck Spin)

Steeping Corporeal Mess by Fetid

This new record from Seattle death metal band Fetid may be the essential corrective to our national imaginary’s notion of that city as a monolithic site of liberal social policy, coffee “drinks” with lots of soy and greenwashed, vaguely cosmopolitan modes of cultural production. How many of us remember that Sir Mix-a-Lot, he of boundless enthusiasm for humanity’s anterior, is a Seattle native? Fetid share his interest in the undersides of bodies, and of things. There’s a decidedly intestinal — if not rectal — vibe to the unpleasant cover art for Steeping Corporeal Mess, and songs like “Dripping Subtepidity” and “Reeking Within” indicate a willingness to palpate beneath the Pacific Northwest’s famously moist terrain, to squish and squelch away in its rot and lukewarm organic goo. For a certain kind of listener, this may be the most fun you’ll have with a record this spring. For sure it’ll make you remember why David Lynch chose Washington state for Twin Peaks: who can forget the scene when Agent Cooper slides his long tweezers under Laura Palmer’s fingernail, to pull out a letter “R”? Or how long he has to dig around under there for it?

 Jonathan Shaw

 The French Tips — It's the Tips (Self Released)

It's the Tips by The French Tips

First: if The French Tips come to town, go. They recently toured with fellow Boiseans Built to Spill and blew them off the stage. As for the self-titled, self-released souvenir I took home: it’s got three great songs, (the first three, conveniently) five that are never worse than good, no duds and a lot of potential. It’s an excellent EP padded into honorable debut. The French Tips’ sound is indebted to, among others, Sleater-Kinney and Savages, but their guileless commitment to community, manifested in onstage instrument switches, shared vocal duties, their embrace of disco beats and a fat, confident, bottom end warms up their post-punk sonics considerably. The disco influence is as much spiritual as it is rhythmic: despite their righteous skronk und drang, despite oceanic guitar and bass which rage and release, surge and ebb, flash and hide, this is dance music, music to help you exorcise the bullshit. The French Tips is a bit green, but should they wish to pursue it, this is a band that deserves a record deal. Thesis statement: “Me and my witches about to burn it down”. I hope they do.

Isaac Olson  

 Friendship — Undercurrent (Southern Lord)

Undercurrent by Friendship

In this period of endless sub-sub-genres and hybrid forms in heavy music, it’s refreshing to hear a band with a sound that’s so straightforward. Friendship play hardcore: fast, vicious, intense songs that establish a riff and stick with it. Song titles say a lot: “Punishment,” “Lack,” “Garbage,” “Wrecker.” And so on. They’re succinct. There’s usually a breakdown section. There’s a bunch of d-beat songs. If you average the track lengths, you get almost exactly two minutes. It’s all really loud. They probably play really loud when you see them live. They can probably clear the room pretty quickly. It’s sort of fun that these guys call their band “Friendship.” It’s a good record to play when the neighbors put on Fox News. It’s a good way to say, “I don’t want to be your friend.”

Jonathan Shaw

Froth — Duress (Wichita)

Duress by Froth

It’s been a million years, it seems, since we were captivated by the “Yanni/Laurel” debate, a single murmured phrase that sounded like different things to different people. It was like that baked late-night meandering discussion about whether what I see as red is the same as yours come to life, and it vanished into the ravenous maw of internet culture. Except that Froth, an L.A. band currently on its fourth album, made a song about it, “Laurel,” full of clashing guitars and slow unspooling anarchy and whispery narratives. It could be the softest heavy rocker ever or the loudest twee fuzzed bedroom pop, depending on how you hear it. There’s a constant buzz at the bottom of all Froth’s songs, broken more often than not, by a reach for radiant melody. Froth makes an altogether engaging racket that borrows sleepily from Teenaged Fanclubs, in a fuzz-needled daze from MBV. “77,” the second single throws off the anorak for a denatured krautish groove, while “John Peel Slowly,” an instrumental, sketches a dream-landscape with loose-stringed bass, piano and space noises. Make your own sense of it, though. What you hear is largely up to you.

Jennifer Kelly

 Burton Greene / Damon Smith / Ra Kalam Bob Moses — Life’s Intense Mystery CD (Astral Spirits)

Life's Intense Mystery by Greene / Smith / Moses

If you can translate words into vectors, the name of this album tells you a lot about the forces at work. While pianist Burton Greene and drummer Ra Kalam Bob Moses were born over a decade apart, both were touched by the 1960s’ cosmic spirit. And when you put Patty Waters’ preferred pianist on the same stage with Weasel Walter’s most enduring bassist, intensity is on the agenda. But if you had to boil this music down to one image, it would be the symbol for yin and yang. Opposing forces often complement each other. When the pianist mugs a bit on “Kid Play,” the bass goes with the ferocity of a bull that just figured out that the fight is rigged; and when Moses and Smith dance light and lithe on “Perc-Waves,” Greene deploys some more percussion that asserts an unbudging center of gravity. And if you want to ignore all the metaphors, you can just let yourself fall into the force of this music’s mercurial flow.

Bill Meyer

 Invasive Species — Adapter (Baggage Claim)

Adapter by Invasive Species

You know the story; the drummer takes his solo, and the audience heads out for a beer or a piss. Invasive Species’ LP suggests that the problem isn’t drum music, it’s just that you’ve been listening to the wrong drummers and maybe there aren’t enough of them. Kevin Corcoran and Jon Bafus have been playing together for nine years, performing mostly within the city limits of Sacramento, California. Separately, their affiliations range encompass prog bands, Asian fusion ambient music and improvised exchanges with members of the ROVA Saxophone Quartet. Together, they play music that is concerned less with genre than with the possibilities of two augmented drum kits. Grooves collide and mesh, textures interweave and pull tight, meters multiply and never do these combinations seem designed to show off either musician’s prodigious chops. Rather, they show what a marvelous brain massage intuitively organized beats can provide.

Bill Meyer

  Tyler Keen / Jacob Wick — S-T (Silt Editions)

 Tyler Keen and Jacob Wick may employ different means, but their sounds make sense embedded on either side of a short strip of tape. Both men make noise that gets more complicated the closer you listen to it, and neither particularly needs volume to get noisy. Keen starts out with a blast, but once that subsides unintelligible walkie-talkie chatter, sputtering static, and the sounds of a cassette being snapped into a player pass before your ears. This is restless stuff, paced for the days when you haven’t been able to refill your Adderall RX and can’t be bothered to wait. Wick plays trumpet, probably muted by things they don’t tell you about in jazz school and definitely filtered through the sounds of room and non-invisible recording gear. Fueled by circular breathing that sustains a rarely broken stream of air, Wick’s horn rasps and hisses. Imagine that the sounds of a moth made of steel wool masticating its way through a warehouse full of old army blankets have been transmitted down a gutter and thence onto tape, and you just might imagine the sounds of Wick’s side of this cassette.

This is the second release by Silt Editions, a label with no web footprint aside from an email address (silteditions@gmail.com). At press time, there were still a few copies in various distributors’ stocks. Happy hunting.

Bill Meyer

  Rob Noyes — “You Are Tired” / “Nightmare Study” (Market Square Records)

You Are Tired b/w Nightmare Study by Rob Noyes

There’s no one way to do things, but the 45 rpm single seems tailor-made for playing late at night. “Just one more,” you tell yourself, fishing old records from the shelf and sitting companionably alongside the memories they conjure out of the commingling of sound, mind and the sensate experience of dust transferring from the sleeve to your fingers. “Well, maybe another one.” Rob Noyes is on to your game, and the tune on A-side of the Massachusetts-based 12-string guitar player’s latest record sees through your self-delusion and tells you like it really is. The chiming melody is as ingratiating as a late-night tug on the arm from a loved one. “Aren’t you going to come to bed?” But you’re on a roll, so you flip the record, expecting to hear another cantering tune. That’s when Noyes pulls you down the rabbit hole and into a state of consciousness that the sleep-deprived know only too well. Noyes has mastered a technique that makes him sound like a tape playing backwards even though he’s actually strumming in real time. It’s a neat trick, but it serves a function beyond showing Noyes’ imagination and technical acumen. By plunging the listener into a state of blurry disorientation, it confronts them with the next-day consequences of playing records late into the night.

Bill Meyer

  Pelican — Nighttime Stories (Southern Lord)

Nighttime Stories by Pelican

Pelican’s sixth full-length starts in a pensive mode, an acoustic guitar ushering in “WST.” The guitar belonged to guitarist Dallas Thomas’ lately deceased father, and it sets a somber tone. Death haunts these bludgeoning, moody grooves, giving Nighttime Stories a heaviness that can’t be ascribed purely to guitar tone. Later, in the crushing stomp of “Cold Hope,” Pelican grinds relentlessly, the drums scattershot volleys of explosive angst. “Arteries of Blacktop” is likewise weighted and slow, a massive bass churn slugging it out with viscous sheets of amplified guitar sheen. Yet there’s a great deal of epic, serene gorgeousness, too — in the minor key strumming of “Full Moon, Black Water,” the mathy, knotty acrobatic riffs of “Abyssal Plain,” the slow building drone of “It Stared at Me.” The album title commemorates a friend of the band, Jody Minnoch, who died unexpectedly of heart problems in 2014; he’d meant to use the phrase for a Tusk album, but passed before he could do so. The title track glowers with volcanic life force. Hip deep in mourning and existential query, it celebrates a muscular, triumphant still-here-ness.

Jennifer Kelly

 Spiral Wave Nomads — Spiral Wave Nomads (Feeding Tube / Twin Lakes)

Spiral Wave Nomads by Spiral Wave Nomads

Spiral Wave Nomads is a two man, two state band. Eric Hardiman (guitars, bass, sitar) lives in upstate New York, and drummer Michael Kiefer lives in Connecticut. This means that distances must be traveled if the two of them are to meet face to face, which is how substantial parts of this LP of cosmic instrumentals was made. And what better thing to do as you cross the verdant hills of the Northeastern USA than jam some tunes? Drifting alone to these ascending guitar lines and undulating percussive surges, it’s easy to imagine one or the other Nomad rounding some valley road and flashing on Popol Vuh’s Aguirre. “Was that a fly fisherman standing in the river, or did I see some conquistador on a raft, hollering at the monkeys?” Drift and drive a little longer and they might marvel at the play of striating light across the clouds and associating to some past pleasantly dreamy experiences involving a CD player loaded with Neu and Jimi Hendrix. All of which is a fanciful way to say that these guys sound like they have done their space rock homework, and they put their knowledge to good use on this LP. So don’t throw away the download code; you might want to program your own rural adventure with these tones.

Bill Meyer 

 Chad Taylor — Myths and Morals (Eyes & Ears)

Myths and Morals by Chad Taylor

One day at the end of last summer, Chad Taylor showed what it takes to be an MVP. Over the course of one long, humid Sunday afternoon on a semi-shaded stage at the Chicago Jazz Festival, he played three consecutive sets with three different bands. He sustained the set-length dynamics of Jaime Branch’s Fly or Die, swung muscularly with the Jason Stein Quartet, and managed the mercurial flow of the Eric Revis Quartet. He might have soaked through a shirt, but he never dropped a beat, nor did he ever seem less than tuned in to the particular requirements of those three quite different ensembles.

Myths and Morals most closely corresponds to another of Taylor’s projects, the Chicago Underground Duo. While his equipment is restricted to drum kit and mbira (thumb piano), his compositional imagination is wide open. These pieces may tarry for a moment on some texture or pattern, but for the most part they are studies in constant development. Precision and restraint yield surprise and mystery; the music is so involving and complete that it’s easy to forget that you’re listening to solo percussion.

Bill Meyer

 Chris Welcome and His Orchestra — Beyond All Things (Gauci Music) 

Beyond All Things by Chris Welcome & His Orchestra

A free jazz octet might sound like caviar soup: too much of an indulgent thing. Chris Welcome makes it work here, harnessing the noisy tendencies of this roomful of younger New York players with some light-touch compositional structure and a willingness to swing. In under half an hour, we go from a free-time fanfare highlighting the gestural playing of trumpeter Jaimie Branch and tenorist Sam Weinberg through to a medium-firm groove laid down by bassist Shayna Dulberger and drummer Mike Pride, over which cornetist Kirk Knuffke blows with a coolness so confident that it sounds like the swing feel of the composition was summoned by his playing, not the other way around. Minutes later, that groove gets harder and altoist Anthony Ware delivers a fiery solo while the rest of the horns chatter in the background like they’re doing avant-garde Dixieland (an approach perhaps being alluded to by the appellation “and His Orchestra”). Welcome himself mostly hides behind the sonic bushes, his heavily effected guitar and synthesizer offering eerie interjections and a short woozy solo halfway through the piece. He’s a virtuoso guitarist, but here he gets to be a virtuoso organizer, savvy enough to know the amount of organization called for.

Ben Remsen

[gaelshorne]

World Building Part 2

I’ve been all over the place with this. Normally, you’d start with your gods, and the creation myth. I did not. The countries, and people were my first concern. While the gods are real and meddlesome, I decided to focus  on what defines them, instead of the converse. But, I digress... First, I tackled the geography. People have to have some place to live. That is a big defining characteristic for them. On this continent, I have five countries. Each country has its own feel, geography with gradient areas between, and so on.  As a note, there is a major mountain range that runs the length of the continent. I also have only been able to focus on the western side of this range. In my head there’s kind of a “Fog of War” going on in the east. The main threat is supposed to be coming from there, so it kind of makes sense. That and it’s not my focus right now. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

In the north, we have the country of Eshax. It’s a generally cold place. In western Eshax the “Fields of Plenty” support the populous. These fields lie fallow in the winter months, but provide enough food for the entire year. As you move further east, hill and mountain country take over. Near the tip of the continent is a massive mountain dwarfed only by the Grand Mountain in Aplinea. It is called the “Cap of the World”, and from it springs the River Gallivant.  The people of Eshax are hardy, they have little choice. They tend towards the tall side of human, with lighter coloration. Think fictional vikings. Their capitol city is Fjornskald, named after their greatest hero, and founder. It lies on the western coast, and is a major sea trade hub.

Let’s follow the Gallivant River, shall we? As it meanders through the continent, it passes a now divided nation. In centuries past, the once proud nation of Amapanae was a power house, but internal struggles led to its fall. In its place are two distinct nations. Agrea to the west, and Aplinea to the east.  Agrea is a large grass plain. The humans that live there focus mainly on farming, and animal husbandry. It’s the “bread basket” for the continent. The people tend to be tallish, and a bit bowlegged from spending so much time on horseback. Their coloration tends to be darker, with black hair being common, and their skin seems to be eternally tanned. Orcs reside in the Argea plains as well. There they live a nomadic life. Similar to ancient Mongols, but with less warring, not much less, but less. In recent centuries, they seem to have cooled down, and are seeing the benefit of trade over raiding. This has made the human’s grudgingly respect them, and the knowledge they bring to the table. In the western part of Agrea, there is the Great Marsh of Galthanesh, named after a mythical dragon. There reside the lizardmen. In recent centuries, they have been making strides to join their fellow intelligent species. Some whisper it’s due to a lack of food, others say it’s due to a mysterious figure the lizardmen refer to as “the Shining Prophet.”  Aplinea is a hilly, and mountainous area. The Grand Mountain, or Old Ghira’s Peak, as it’s known to the dwarves, dominates the skyline. After the split with Agrea, the humans went into the mountains, and started to form a society there. They were somewhat more insular than the new Agreans, but they still drew the attention of the dwarves. Instead of going to war with the interloping humans, they  were directed to take mercy upon them. The Grand Priestess Thenno Sterngaze received a vision from their god, Ghira, to protect the humans. The dwarves marched down to the human’s budding town, but instead of razing it, as was feared, they assisted in building it. The humans of Aplinea tend toward the middle of human height, and run the full range of hair colors. They are a bit stockier than most humans, and their skin tends toward the lighter coloration. The dwarves of Aplinea are similar to regular fantasy dwarves, except in society. While the standard dwarf tropes apply to males, the ones for females are a bit different. When you want a fighting force that can break sieges, and ravage their enemies, you want a male dwarf army. If you want to survive a siege, or need a defensive force, you want female dwarves. A minor change, but it makes them a bit more mine. ;) 

The river flows ever southward... Vestary is next on our journey. It is the most “normal” of the fantasy country tropes. It has just about every geographical feature, and comprises a large portion of the continent. To the west are the fields that provide the food for the country, to the east, the mines and quarries in the hills and mountains. To the south are the twin forests of Eryneth, and Erynel. They’re split by the River Gallivant, known as Duinor to the elves.  The elves are a mysterious bunch here. No one knows how long they live. They just seem to show up one day with wanting to experience as much as they can. They’re around for about twenty years, and then they vanish. A similarly named elf may show up a century or so later, but is i the same one or a family member? No human knows... The half-elves have this wanderlust in spades. They can’t seem to stay in the same place for more than two years before wandering off. They are seen in a more positive light than most transients. Hal-elves usually bring news, goods, or both when they arrive. They always seem to have a story to tell, and always have interesting goods for sale. The humans of Vestary are your standard everyday humans. They run the gamut of coloration, and body styles. They do have one thing in common... rumor mongering... They are notorious for putting their nose in everyone’s business. A common saying in other lands is, “You talk more than a Vestrian house wife...” As you can see, to others it’s not a compliment, to Vesrtian? Yep... Vestrians tend toward adventuring and trade. Their capitol city is Rosemont. A walled city on a hill that overlooks a particularly wide stretch of the Gallivant. This gives them access to the river and all of its traffic. Tariffs and taxes are fair, and the people and merchants prosper. 

As the river completes its journey to the Shining Sea, we pass through the exotic country of Eplesh. Eplesh is a study in contrasts. On one hand, it’s a fertaile, and civilized land, on the other, it’s a dangerous desert that has known to swallow entire caravans. The banks of the Gallivant bring life to this arid region. There are also strips of fertility along the coasts. They work their way north from the Yawning Delta and hug the west and east coasts. The fertile areas are filled with fruit trees, palms, and other tropical, and subtropical plants. The humans tend toward the more swarthy hues, and darker. Hair colors are also dark, with the rare light brown hair thrown in. The other major race here are the hobgoblins. They are seen as the best mercenaries money can buy, and they do their best to keep this thought going. It’s usually lucrative for them, and for their clients. It’s not unheard of to have opposing hobgoblin armies actually be friends, and still fight like enemies. They know they’re bred for war, and fight and die as such. I don’t have much on the humans at this time. I know I want two distinct divisions. Like desert dwellers, and the more “civilized” be either like the ancient Egyptians, or even the ancient Indians... Hmm... I need more research...

Well, that’s all for this session. In the next, I hope to answer my own questions on the civilizations of Eplesh, and I’ll tackle the whole gods and creation myth. Until next time!

[xtruss]

The US Capitol is seen past US flags on the National Mall in Washington, DC, on March 14, 2022. - Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky will deliver a virtual address to Congress on March 16, 2022, as lawmakers rachet up pressure on the White House to take a tougher line over Russia’s invasion. (Photo by Stefani Reynolds / AFP)

Our Culture of Violence Comes From The White House!

Folks! Remember that the foundation of the United States of America was laid on the blood of the Native Americans. Therefore “The Violence and the Killing” is in the “Blood of the United States of America.”

— Ted Rall | Sputnik International | June 01, 2022

Reactions to Mass Shootings Follow a Predictable Pattern.

Liberal politicians call for gun control, and they have a point. Countries with gun control have less gun violence. The old assault weapons ban did some good. You have to pass a test to get licensed to drive a car or, in most states, to operate a boat—surely the same could be required of those who want to possess firearms.

Conservative politicians call attention to America’s worsening epidemic of mental illness. They have a point too. Most mass shooters have untreated psychiatric disorders; most are suicidal.

But Neither Side Addresses America’s Culture of Violence. Why Would They? They Both Feed Into It.

The ethical norms of society become broadly accepted after they are defined and propagated by the acts and public statements of political and religious leaders, news and entertainment media, and celebrities.

If morale goes from the top-down, so do morals. If you doubt this is true, look at nations with low rates of violent crime like Switzerland, Denmark and Japan. Compared to our political discourse, which is often glib, macho and coarse, theirs is thoughtful, polite and reserved. Day-to-day interactions between citizens is less aggressive; their drivers are the safest and least likely to succumb to road rage.

American political leaders, on the other hand, revel in cognitive dissonance, flashing a knowing wink at cameras as they call for peace in between indulging their swaggering inner cowboy: starting and prolonging wars, ordering assassinations and issuing one threat after another. Is it any wonder that a young man made impressionable by mental illness and desensitized by over-the-top violence on film and interactive bloodletting in immersive video games might draw the message that opening fire on a classroom full of schoolchildren is an acceptable way to express his frustration and rage?

“There’s no place for violence,” Joe Biden said during the 2020 election campaign. But he wasn’t talking about state violence—he was condemning the destruction of property by Black Lives Matter demonstrators who were trying to stop police brutality.

Truth is, there are plenty of places where rhetorical violence is acceptable in America—beginning at the White House podium. Even when reacting to last week’s massacre of 19 children and their two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, Biden bottom-shelved grief and sorrow in favor of frustration, irritation and blame:

“I am sick and tired of it. We have to act. And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage…What in God’s name do you need an assault weapon for except to kill someone? Deer aren’t running through the forest with Kevlar vests on, for God’s sake. It’s just sick. And the gun manufacturers have spent two decades aggressively marketing assault weapons which make them the most and largest profit.” (Emphases mine.)

Where American politicians really revel in violent rhetoric at a fever-pitch level unheard just anywhere else on the planet, however, is where it’s easiest to other-ize their victims: foreign affairs.

“This strike was not the last,” Biden said after ordering an assassination drone to launch missiles into a house in Kabul in August 2021, deploying the butch verbiage of an action movie. “We will continue to hunt down any person involved in that heinous attack [by ISIS-K at the Kabul airport] and make them pay.” (Actually, the drone strike killed 10 innocent civilians, mostly children.) Imagine a European prime minister talking like that!

On the campaign trail for Obama in 2012, then-Vice President Biden repeatedly bragged that his administration had carried out the extrajudicial assassination of Osama bin Laden and had ordered the Al Qaeda chief murdered after he was captured alive. “You want to know whether we're better off?” Biden asked a cheering crowd of 3,500 in Detroit. “I've got a little bumper sticker for you: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.” Charming.

For Americans, violence is the go-to solution to many foreign crises even when there are better alternatives. Bin Laden, for example, could have been put on trial, with 9/11 treated as a law-enforcement issue. It would have elevated us, provided answers to the victims’ families and diminished the prestige of the terrorists.

Following the bombastic, high-strung George W. Bush, Barack Obama cultivated an image of calm deliberation: “No Drama Obama,” his staff called him. Still, that didn’t stop him from tastelessly normalizing political murder. The president pointed to the Jonas Brothers during the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner and joked: “Sasha and Malia are huge fans, but boys, don't get any ideas,” Obama said as reporters guffawed. “Two words for you: Predator drones. You will never see it coming.” The thousands of innocent people blown up by Obama’s drones, none by legal means, must have found his depravity hilarious.

Political leaders of other countries have started wars. Some have murdered rivals. But most have enough grace and attention to decorum to recognize that such acts are unpleasant—necessary, perhaps, in order to achieve their objective, but nothing to boast about. They deny involvement or refuse comment or invent cover stories to justify their crimes, as Hitler did when he claimed that his 1939 invasion of Poland was an act of self-defense. Only Americans respond to an adversary’s sticky end with an unseemly spiking of the football.

War Criminal Witch Hillary Clinton, who served as secretary of state under Obama, also contributed to America’s uniquely cavalier attitude toward violence. While watching a video of Libyan jihadis murdering dictator Moammar Gaddafi by sodomizing him with a bayonet, she famously cackled: “We came, we saw, he died." She then laughed heartily.

Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces occupying Iraq in late 2003. Never one for keeping his thumb off the scale, War Criminal President George W. Bush called for the dictator—a former U.S. ally—to be executed: “I think he ought to receive the ultimate penalty...for what he has done to his people. He is a torturer, a murderer, and they had rape rooms, and this is a disgusting tyrant who deserves justice, the ultimate justice.” Self-awareness note: Guantánamo and other U.S. “black sites” set up by War Criminal Bush for kidnapped Muslims also featured torture, murder and rape.

Americans don’t just like violence. Extrajudicial, illegal violence is in our DNA. We glorify Washington’s crossing of the Delaware on Christmas because he won and chuckle at his willingness to violate the customs of how war was fought at the time. American revolutionaries who ambushed the British using guerilla tactics weren’t cheaters, they were clever. Lincoln is considered great because he fought the Civil War over his refusal to accept the Confederacy’s legal decision to secede. Few Americans gave much thought to War Criminal George H.W. Bush’s decision to invade Panama, a sovereign nation, and prosecute its president in the U.S. like a common criminal, even though he was probably innocent—but it was insane.

Is there a direct line between statements by presidents and Salvador Ramos, the 18-year-old Uvalde shooter? No. But direct orders are not how cultural norms permeate a society. When a behavior is normalized, by definition it becomes so commonplace and acceptable that it hardly occurs to anyone that there’s anything wrong with it. Violence in America is like the old Palmolive commercial: we’re soaking in it. So we don’t notice it. Political leaders who normalize violence (especially extrajudicial violence) as acceptable, entertaining and amusing shouldn’t be surprised when impressionable young men follow their example and resort to violence themselves.

[tokutenshi]

Lineage - part 1 -

for @alistairappreciationweek day 2:  King of Ferelden

She had promised to stay by his side, and for those first few months, that’s exactly what Kaedence had done and they were happy. When rumors started coming in that Morrigan was sighted – possibly with child – Alistair understood her need to look into it. When the Grey Wardens were finally establishing a proper presence in Ferelden and were ready for their commander to take the reigns both over the group and the alring itself, Alistair understood their need for her. They had discussed it before she left, weighing the pros and cons before ultimately deciding it would be better for Kaedence to lead instead of an Orlesian they knew nothing about commanding a military force and making political decisions in the still recovering country.

Over all, it hadn't taken long for Kaedence to find and speak with Morrigan and Amaranthine hadn't been far from Denerim – their parting, though difficult for both of them and far too soon into the 'newly wed phase' for either to be happy, was doable. They wrote letters nearly every day and the time apart made their reunions all the sweeter and finally, finally, things started to calm down for the royal couple.

Kaedence was immensely helpful with the day-to-day tediousness of ruling that Alistair had never been groomed for, using both her own upbringing as a teyrn's daughter and the skills she'd honed being arlessa in Amaranthine. Eamon was always close by to offer suggestions or assistance during the awkward transition from nobody to king, but for any instance that his wife and sort-of-uncle disagreed, Alistair sided with the woman who had saved his life more times than he could count. That is to say that she'd done it a lot, not that he couldn't count very high.

Years passed and though they were happy and in love, gossip began to move through the court that it was all an act, some ploy by the Grey Wardens to quietly take over the nation. Kaedence brushed off the accusations at first, but as more people chimed in with 'evidence' to support the claim, she couldn't help but feel affected by it.

If they are truly as in love as they pretend to be, then why do they have no children? Alistair had told her after that fateful Landsmeet where they'd taken down the Mac Tirs that the taint in their blood made it difficult for one warden to have a child and two wardens conceiving was just unheard of – perhaps even impossible. At the time, Kaedence didn't care. All she wanted was the rightful person watching over her homeland and to be at his side while he did it and that was the end of that. Until it wasn't. Kaedence saw every healer and apothecary she could find, hoping there was something mundane wrong with her that they could correct, but each time she returned with no answers and more burdens.

The researching she'd been doing in her down time on trying to find a cure for the taint increased to the point of obsession. Where as before the queen would send vague inquiries to renowned healers and alchemists, claiming it was for treating her recovering country from Blight Sickness, she now sent vassals to personally inspect even the faintest glimmer of hope for a cure. She wrote to Enchanter Fiona, a former Grey Warden who had been miraculously cured of the taint and left the order, but never got any responses.

Her dedication was simultaneously concerning and heartwarming, as Alistair knew she was doing it for the both of them. Without the taint, they could have more time together – an actual life – and they could have children of their own – a full life. As much as he wanted those things too, he'd much rather have his wife in the present with him. Kaedence began to suffer nightmares but wouldn't speak of them and all Alistair could do was cradle his wife as she mumbled her failures as a woman and cried in her sleep. He tried to convince her it would be alright, tried to appeal to her reasonable side that if there was a cure out there, then it would have been found at some point over the centuries. He tried to make her smile and laugh, but Kaedence seemed to have lost the ability to do either some time ago.

It was a pleasant surprise then when Kaedence joined Alistair for the mid-day meal with a radiant expression on her face. She stayed by his side through meetings and audiences, displaying a level of open affection that brought her to the very brink of improper and made the king blush or stutter more than once. When night fell and the couple retired for the evening, neither hesitated before falling into each others embrace and falling into bed. They made love like their first time – needy and desperate – then slowed to gentle kisses and explorative caresses, mapping one another out all over again. There was no sense of urgency, no pressing matters of state, no rumors or ridicule or Maker-forsaken ridiculous notions of inadequacy for either of them. They were, in each others eyes, perfect.

–

“The bannorn has been slow to recover from the Blight and much of the once fertile farmland is still poisoned by the darkspawn's, though long absent, presence.”

Alistair slouched forward in his throne, chin resting in his hand as he listened to what felt like the fiftieth issue that day.

“While the harvest yield has been on a slight incline, with the return of many Fereldan citizens and new ones being born each season, we will soon be unable to provide for their needs.”

That was a familiar sounding problem by now. As the country recovered and tried to get back on its feet, those who had fled to avoid the darkspawn were coming back home and finding it wasn't exactly as they remembered it. Of course it wasn't – there had been a blasted blight AND the beginnings of a civil war. They should all feel lucky the nation hadn't imploded on itself long ago.

“Ferelden is already at its limit of what it can import from the Free Marches,” Eamon added quietly at the king's side, just in case he couldn't recall the budgeting meeting from the week before.

“And so you see, my lord, White River simply must extend its boundaries eastward into the Brecilian Forest.”

At that, Alistair finally lifted his eyes to meet the ambassador's. “That forest is ancient and angry. Tending farmsteads there would be difficult, not to mention the inherit dangers of clearing the trees. There are some pretty feisty beings living there.”

The representative dipped his head respectfully. “Yes, Your Majesty, the Dalish, of course.”

“Actually, I was talking about the walking trees.”

A nervous laugh escaped the minor noble, but he tried his best to mask it. “It would seem Bann Reginalda's request for military support from the crown is all the more vital, my lord.”

Alistair sighed heavily and leaned back in his throne, dropping his hand to plop flat against the armrest. “Right, because what Ferelden really needs to help it recover is a military strike against the Dalish so we can kick them out of one of the last places they hold precious. That's a brilliant idea.”

His tired sarcasm did not go unnoticed by Eamon and the advisor tempered his expression and response to keep from publicly chastising the ruler. “The Brecilian Forest is in Ferelden, your majesty. The Dalish rarely camp on the outskirts, so is there any true harm in farming underutilized land belonging to our nation?”

The king shot a mild glare at the older politician before rising from his seat with another sigh. “Send a few diplomats to meet with the Dalish clan and have them explain our situation.”

“Would not an armed regiment be far more successful?”

“In starting a fight? Oh, definitely.” Alistair frowned heavily, looking directly at Eamon as he addressed the room. “We can at least be smart enough to attempt negotiations before we start hitting things, can't we?” He followed his rhetorical question with silence, letting everyone know his decision had been made. “That will be all for today.”

The room quickly emptied, but Alistair held Eamon in place with his gaze. When they were finally alone, he let out a tired groan and leaned away, breaking eye contact and the tension between them. “Did you really have to criticize me in front of everyone like that?”

“I wasn't criticizing, I was advising,” Eamon responded with a slight, sympathetic smile. Despite the years of ruling now under his belt, the king was still unused to the long days. “Frankly, I'm rather impressed you decided to go the diplomatic route.”

Alistair chuckled and scratched at his chin. “Yes, well, it only takes getting your butt kicked by a plant once to make you take nature just a bit more seriously.”

“I dare say you are finally maturing,” Eamon continued cautiously, “perhaps taking future generations of Fereldan's into account?”

“Well wouldn't that make your job easi-” Alistair stopped abruptly, catching on to what was really being said. He switched from lighthearted to deadly serious in a flash. “No.”

“Alistair.”

“Eamon, no. We are not talking about this again.” The king began moving towards the hall to the living quarters, anger keeping his back straight and shoulders squared.

“According to your own words, you will not be ruling into old age.” Eamon followed close behind, keeping his voice low to prevent the shadows from hearing. “You need an heir.”

“Sure, fine. You want the job?”

The older man reached out and grabbed Alistair's arm, forcing him to stop. “This is serious. The heir must be of Calenhad's blood – your blood. Even a named successor could be challenged and Ferelden would find itself on the brink of civil war once again in a matter of decades.”

“What you are suggesting wouldn't even work, Eamon!” Alistair turned to face the man, tearing his arm free. “Grey Wardens can't have children – the taint prevents it.”

“Which may have only been the case because you are both inflicted! There are methods and remedies you have tried already that may yet be effective with a different partner.” Eamon looked around once again to ensure they were truly alone. “If you were to take a concubine-”

The fist was flying before either man registered it, Alistair only able to stop his punch mere inches from the wrinkled face. He retracted his hand and uncurled his fingers, using a level of self-control that, on any other day, Eamon would have been impressed by. Alistair took several calming breaths before speaking, irritated by and tired of having the same idea thrown at him again and again. “If an heir is really so important, shouldn't it be a true heir? When Kaedence comes back with the cure, we will try again.”

Eamon shook his head and sighed soundlessly. “It has been many years since your wife left your side with nothing but a note on your pillow. She writes you letters, but tells you nothing of progress because her search is hopeless.”

“When Kaedence comes back-”

“She is not coming back!” Eamon snapped, louder than he intended. The older man tried to soften his expression and convey the importance of his words. “Alistair, you must produce an heir.”

The quiet of the hall was deafening, the king's expression difficult to read as he traced the grout lines in the cobbled floor with his eyes. Without looking up, he turned around and continued his lonely walk to his cold bed chambers. “When my wife is once again at my side, we will try again.”