Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Free Thought: In Erratis Veritas

Free Thought, versificative style.

(come sit with me)
beneath this
poison-apple tree
in the shade and hidden
from the inquisitive
rays of the sun

this is music, this dance
of ours
this surprising uprising of energy

these are dreams
these half thoughts
and half words
half spoken half sung
dreams are all about
doing things by halves
except when they're not
xeno's oneironautical paradox;
it's not over until we wake up.
we are not merely figments of our own imaginations
with our secret smiles
and smiling lies
inquisitive perfection
bright as the sun
(i promise)

we
descend
so
beautifully
but the pain is in
the ascension;
once we fall, we'll never
have another chance to fly

I'm relearning my nouns
rediscovering the verb:
to do
to be
to float unheavy,
weightless
to fall

we must stand, first, before we can
walk
run
fly
we must plant our feet in the earth
and once the earth is ours
it will dance with us

History repeats, in the sound
of music echoing through a car
on roads that wist a particular
destination:
no place, at all.
The songs are the same, if the voices are different
they are
no less precious for all their relative newness

there is truth in the typos
if you can see it
in erratis veritas
only properly declined
politely rejected or
downwardly inclined?
the words are the faultlines
and if we're not careful
they'll trip us all
(how do we say "I love you"
in words that do not hurt?)
or are the words sacrosanct
in their flaws
with divine
providence granted
to catch us in their claws?
if so, I'll let myself
be caught
better to be torn apart by words
than drowned to death in silence

or so I tell myself
as I sit quietly
and wait for my turn to dream

Saturday, September 09, 2006

Song Call- The Postal Service, "The District"

Smeared black ink
your palms are sweaty
And I'm barely listening
to last demands
I'm staring at the asphalt wondering
what's buried underneath
Where I am
Where I am

I'll wear my badge
a vinyl sticker with big block letters
adherent to my chest
That tells your new friends
I am a visitor here
I am not permanent
And the only thing keeping me dry is
Where I am
Where I am
Where I am

You seem so out of context
in this gaudy apartment complex
A stranger with your door key
explaining that I am just visiting
And I am finally seeing
Why I was the one worth leaving
Why I was the one worth leaving

D.C. sleeps alone tonight

Where I am
Where I am
Where I am

You seem so so out of context
in this gaudy apartment complex
A stranger with your door key
explaining that I am just visiting
And I am finally seing
Why I was the one worth leaving
Why I was the one worth leaving

Where I am
Where I am
Where I am

The district sleeps alone tonight
after the bars turn out their lights
And send the autos swerving
into the loneliest evening
And I am finally seeing
Why I was the one worth leaving
Why I was the one worth leaving
Why I was the one worth leaving
Why I was the one worth leaving
- The Postal Service, "The District"

This is a Stella song, and a Bren song too, a little bit, and Sharecht probably wants her fair share of anything having to do with the city.

...Yeah. So. Shaivhen is divided into six districts- Redmark, Candlemark, Eastmark, Southmark, Temple, and Harbor. Candlemark is the northernmost district, Redmark is in the center, Harbor and the Akvarian Ocean are to the west, and Temple sort of sits around and to the west of Redmark like a weirdly shaped tumor. East and Southmark are, obviously, to the east and south.

Candlemark is sometimes called the Old City, because the oldest stretches of the catacombs exist beneath it. The original palace and royal family were located there, but they were destroyed in the early Third Era. Sections of the palace walls- it was originally a fort- still stand, and the area marked off by these crumbling bits of ruin is called Suicide City. It's located at the very center of the district, and at some point, Parliament filled in the missing bits of walls to make a penitentiary compound of sorts.

If Candlemark is a vicious, inoperable tumor on the face of the city, Suicide City is a necrotizing, gangrenous blot on Candlemark. It's not a nice place.

Sharecht is a mongrel bird-type Malestri, something like a cross between a heron and a shrike. Her animal form is a heron, but she has the instincts of a shrike. She's a rather vicious and deranged serial killer. A very young Harbard, with the help of the Assassins' Guild, captured her and put her in Candlemark some ten or fifteen years before the start of the story. Everyone wanted her dead, but the Shrive intervened.

Dekar is going to make the mistake of thinking he can control her; Sharecht is going to make the mistake of thinking she can control Foxbird (thus allowing me to write creepy, predatory, and homoerotic bondage scenes that reference the rape scene in Man of La Mancha). And Harbard is going to be convinced he made the mistake of letting her live- which, considering that she leads an army of criminals into the rest of the city on Dekar's order at some point, is a fairly accurate assessment.

She has a great deal of influence in Candlemark; she's been the reigning queen of Suicide City for years, and rumor has it she knows her way around the Old City catacombs, and can travel through them with impunity. The Old City catacombs are home to a number of undead covens- but they also house the remains of the Al Rothcar Library and Siegfried Al Rothcar's tomb. (Ziggy was the last surviving member of the royal family. He went on to become an Avatar of The White Lady and was one of the heroes of the Third Era. He was also a huge dork, but that's another story entirely.) Sharecht knows the ruins fairly well, and the covens don't mess with her- she always has an escort of Shrive rats when she goes underground, and the rats are twice as nasty as the cats.

Sharecht is crazy, but she's also fiercely devoted to the concept of the city; she is, essentially, exactly the sort of creature the other Malestri wanted to create when they sent their children to Shaivhen, Tarmish, and Akvaia. Aside from the crazy part. She sees herself as Aya DeLavrey's counterpart; the only reason she agrees to work with Dekar is for the chance to attain power in the respectable areas of the city. She has ambitions- it's just that up until Dekar comes along, her only ways of furthering these ambitions have involved sharp objects and internal organs and the removal of the latter with the former. Dekar offers her legitimacy and, more than anything else, that's something she wants.

But, again, she's crazy. Totally batshit and antisocial. And she's a bird, so she really, really likes shiny things. Foxbird, to her, is amazingly shiny.

(Malestri can crossbreed between species; the resultant offspring will only have one animal form- usually the mother's. This still often leads to children feeling dissociated from their animal forms; it was for this reason only mongrels were sent into the cities. The other Malestri hoped that this dissociation would make them more comfortable in their human forms, allowing them to move more freely in the cities.)

She's somewhere in her mid to late thirties- she's actually the oldest displaced Malestri experiment in Shaivhen. She's got curly blonde hair and yellow eyes in human form; she stands nearly six feet tall and has double jointed knees and elbows. In animal form, she's a great blue heron, and stands about three feet tall with a seven foot wingspan. Her beak is very, very sharp.

Silverlock, of course, adores her and wants to keep her as a pet- he's always wanted his own pet psychopath to play with. Blaine gets along with her fairly well; they occasionally commiserate over the difficulties of swallowing things whole. He can't spend too much time around her, though; herons eat snakes. Foxbird, of course, thinks Sharecht is a crazy bitch, and wishes she could meet a Malestri whose primary goal didn't involve getting into her pants. Harbard is conflicted; Sharecht is the closest thing to an alpha female he's ever encountered, but she's also a crazy serial killer.

She's a wild card, I suppose, but she ends up helping Blaine and Co when Dekar takes the tower.

Eventually, when they're all much older (and possibly after Foxbird makes it clear that she's not sleeping with either of them, because, ahahaha, Foxbird/The Lieutenant, OTP 4eva), Foxbird, Harbard, and Sharecht go off in search of their families. What they find up in the northern forests that border on Ikatia is another story entirely.

...I really ought to come up with a name for the lieutenant. But that's all anyone ever calls him, including Foxbird. Possibly Blaine uses his real name, but that's just because Blaine likes feeling smugly superior about being a better person than those around him. (He's such a delicious hypocrite and a horrible priest and I love him so. I also really need to get on that "Snakes on a Blaine!" picture that's been in my head for a while recently.)

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Cold Light, part 2: DC sleeps alone tonight

Cold Light, Part 2: You seem so out of context

This whole section of the universe is getting more and more fragile as time goes on; I'm not sure where it's going to end up, anymore. It's curious.

Bren and Stella, rooftops, and the moon; this happens in the evening after part 1, concurrently with part 3. (Also, it's vague and confusing and ought to be rewritten again, but I don't care anymore.)
-------------------------------------

Footsteps crunched across the gravel behind her; Stella turned slightly in their direction. "Hello, Brenon."

She could hear him grin as he took a seat beside her on the roof ledge. "Hey there, Stella-bella. Stargazing?"

"Mm. It's a nice night for it, don't you think?" She could feel the stars hanging low in the sky; the whole world seemed closer, here.

"A little overcast, actually. But you can see the moon through the clouds."

"I can always see the moon, Brenon."

"Fair enough." He shifted slightly, and kicked his feet against the side of the building. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine. I was fine before, actually, but you think I'm crazy, don't you?"

"I think we're all crazy." She still couldn't tell if his sincerity was honest or merely an affectation. "But Walker thinks you're the closest to sane out of all of us, and I trust his judgement. Even if he is a little biased."

She could feel his leer, and blushed in spite of herself. "This city is so much louder than the capital, so much brighter. So full of life- real life, not the half life of the warm ones. There's so much more to see and feel- sometimes I get a little lost in it. And sometimes things like that creature take me by surprise."

Gently, "It was a cat, Stella."

"Is that what it looked like? Curious." She shook her head. "I'm afraid of the dark, Brenon. Did you know that?"

He tensed. "Stella-"

"You are, too. I know. I know so much more than you give me credit for, Brenon. And do you know why I am afraid of the dark?"

"I know why I am." Sometimes, he was so young, it made her ache.

"So do I." She took off her glasses, and tilted her face towards the moon. "Nothing is as it seems. What you see as a cat, I see as the embodiment of everything I fear." She laughed. "I'll get used to it. When he comes back, I'm sure he'll be bringing that thing back with him. And, speaking of- how are you feeling, Brenon?"

"I'm fine. You can call me Bren, you know."

"I could. And you could try to not avoid the subject."

"But you won't, so neither will I."

"I suppose you're right; I don't think I will." She wiped off the lenses of her glasses and replaced them.

"Because that's what Theron calls me?"

She was silent for a moment. Mihonil would have used the shortened form of his name, as well, but Stella had never properly met the other woman. It didn't count. "If I said yes, you would hate me for it. Just a little, but you would hate me all the same." Her fingers bunched the wildly patterned material of her skirt. "He knows you better than I ever will. I do not think I have the right."

Bren kicked at the side of the building again, surly. "You mean he loves me better than you do. That's hardly your fault, and I'm more inclined to hate him for that. But I'm not that selfish, and I have other reasons to hate him."

"And yet you worry."

"Of course I worry!" He swung his feet over the edge of the roof, standing suddenly. The crunch of the gravel beneath his shoes was unnaturally loud. "Someone has to. That's my job, no matter who I am- I look out for him. And now I can't because he won't let me- and it doesn't matter how angry I am, this is what I do." He exhaled hard through his nose, and added softly, "I don't really hate him, you know that. I just have plenty of reason to."

"There are other people to protect, now. It doesn't have to be him," she said quietly, to her skirt.

His hand on her shoulder made her jump. "Get up. Come on. I want to dance with you."

"What?" But he was already pulling her to her feet.

"I'm tired of doing it metaphorically." He caught her hands and lead her away from the edge of the roof.

Suddenly, she couldn't see at all, and her feet stumbled. He caught her before she fell.

"Look, Stella- or, don't, whatever, you know what I mean. What's between the two of us has nothing to do with Walker or Theron. I promise. But I can't leave him until he lets me go."

"He won't. You know that."

"He will. I know him as well as he knows me." One of his hands slid to the small of her back. "Are you going to dance with me or not?"

"I don't know how to dance," she snapped. This close, she could hear the absence of his heartbeat, as thunderous and terrifying as the absence of her own.

"Sure you do. Only this time, I lead, and you follow."

"We don't have any music."

"You're just not listening hard enough."

For a single, discrete moment, she could see him clearly in her mind- he was tall, with a solidness that spoke of trees and earth and deep roots, a solidness incongruous with his wind ruffled strawberry blond hair and freckles. His smile was like the sun.

She doubted any of them really knew him at all.

Her feet fell into the steps of the dance easily- something in six-eight time, to compliment the song of city. Circles and circles, like the moon. Familiar territory.

"Do you-" she swallowed. "Do you want me to remember him for you? I could, a little."

His silence all the answer she needed. She closed her eyes and leaned a little closer.

"I think of you when it rains," she said in Theron's voice. "And it makes me wish I'd been kinder. But every summer makes me think of fire, and fire makes me think of you, too. And then I wish you'd stayed dead."

Their dance stuttered to a halt when Stella realized the only footsteps she could hear were her own. Walker's hand was cool on the back of her neck.

"That was unfair." His tone was neutral; he'd never learned to be judgemental. "He didn't need to hear that."

"I don't choose the memories." She lied, and huddled into his embrace. "You can apologize for me, later."

"You can apologize yourself, when the Voyance returns." Brenon was the only one who used his name; Walker would never dare.

She sighed, and led him to the edge of the roof. "Alright. I will. Now come look at the city with me. It's probably too cloudy for you to see the stars."

He touched her face. "I can always see the stars, Stella."

"Good." She leaned against him, and trembled with laughter. For a moment, she could almost see him in her mind- but then the memory was gone, leaving a shadow silhouette behind. After all this time, the Walker still had no face of his own- not one she could see. "Tell me what they look like?"

He put his arm around her and whispered words of light into her hair, until the moon set and the sun touched the bottom of the horizon.

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

Gawd, Stella and Walker are weird. And Stella is creepily too much like Bren; I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this. Fortunately, Walker is nothing like either of them. Or unfortunately. (This is no love polygon! This is a four dimensional love tesseract!)

*headwall* I think this is going to have two more parts- the trial and the aftermath. Maybe three, if I want to write the opening of the tower. I don't know that I do; it's a little like writing the end of the world, and I'm not sure I can do that to this universe. And I don't know what the Fifth Era will bring, or what its mechanics will be like, so I think I'll avoid that for as long as possible.

I should go back to writing Blaine and Silverlock things, except they're going through an angsty phase. *sigh*