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libidomechanica · 2 months

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“If he treated life, let crutcher it short: ‘to knew, who calm’”

A Meredith sonnet sequence

’—I am borne, and find infant’s heart on that too. Oblivion, each dayly grown colders dwell was thou were death, to the goes. For evermore said not in bred new tear, that grace; making its wall, look upon immers in tend her like thy heat of their tears uprightness most just; it seraglio waltzing spy, that postponed not too: perfections and satiety, but bursting gland, I diligentlemanly on you look at there star, English fire. I have against the fire? For ballads in voice. The language rather’s grew—without thing boar, too, had not stair—lean infancye eke from the bastioning at lease locks, and straight, when his seen. If he treated life, let crutcher it short: to knew, who calm.

For such outrage, and Four; intense, and chain’d, and Ocean glorified do paint to save thou to Rome away to speak Not all. Shrink, be one kisses; and by thirst are you could say so, young me that frae e’en to die, but act, as thou shall in aboue and splenderneath is, while with inside lay their copious wren sovered the hath ending browe brook, thanks all we leaving years and split a Harp, his lips, sweating so frozen terrors or workmanship, love? His neck, so I would fain as thee calls and now a habitants apiece by one. Thou shall sure ’twere not die. And Chokenoff, or fill my mind, nothings, and taketh a glory of thing. Turn: eyes did bow, with the says much out of the sea-horse.

Niagara is blown avenge, that we death drops dead breeding from there he had no appear’s Common an awkward to mother spring’s down. All of the fire of the says, tis wear; as gentle together glance of slaughter’s date, which, whose mind would have to my hear. Yet in the suns perfum’d thus vnkind. And I see, the bark ivy-tress of they knows your better wind was hidden have hemm’d full of in a rain. The temperious she has just seem night’s sent, surveying, friendship, table stilling itself were come as then night! As e’er white and make the boar when borne of keen resounds a sea-horsement, the pitch when you see and Smiths were on many an iron pole, brightest, that the mound and yet roll’d!

And elegances and was strikes his flesh to have venom of being red leaved thee, leading palm dissolve, our flowers their she reflect; then the boar, and fellow rose influence, swelling soul’s spread the came is writes. Why way in a prey, he knows not which not, company is song of a summer clip Elysium and lur’d dragon in her sun smile; or words hard, and then if he was worthy. ’ Pure and the Soul is love; she last, the fear, and trumpet mournen ever, if ye could calm with pulses thunder more. For sharp by merry world arraigned to my heat of the low-tide rocks, till discreech did bow, or fading her for now. I did not the gross vibes. And, for new Invents down, O!

Of old lover&for there shadow,—truth I weighty very from Fez, when blood to your flash’d a squabbled bridle wrong and that our desire has just below, glazed o’er herd blood to hears in the word, where the coughing troops his one from me. And stuff was Juan thy golden eye peep’d o’er the woof of deer; thou thief. Accept, as necessant guise, value in its for lost thou waiting on the sun smile at it was they took in trade, compare, or blunt fist on memory call round; strange the pure language all that once more wit strange victim forth thieves; and I wished the assault: I have, sound engineer’d would terrors open today when she same, a coal; no singing is shoulders to sing, she sat dost fling?

Half: leaf, or of the froze to makes a groan; on homicide and fall, burn the pleasing waves worm would aughters of jealous of place inter competing? My lips, it merry him in giving set; yet doves and did strike wet silks to praise he crosses ever be attack’d and the only clad, bright that sure you who in a boat, as a second hand, where I plants of a forth she hard-believe the fire baundoun. Around a Reproach, he churlish, French’d: look the soul in hell in hand thy charm is one ravage, and the whereon they-love we in foremost described the head, and channel of their struggles withdrew. Lovely gazed, a Seasons shook into the grass, afflict of these desert, I asked to ease.

Show us what length of skin&hold, three first wonder a time when stilling ere Adonais— he is left her lanely near I love, and as he is notes, yet note, with louely light, and then adown. As they wear, I thines. Suspect silks my Muse. Which mistake him by all that it will say, It was been to the mouth assault: I have singless a sparing off youth’s truest thou to blame, nor six hour scull? Over heaven’s happy hair, and bitter to view struggled in scorns by night his keeps were is was charm or holy then on the Unapparents that least, was shower. All dance there the part; her cheek and weeps alone, that carnival shadow of a few world, when wood? The less fellow sad.

Of inward very day, she doubt of toise crawl never one whose that pale; who and indistill amount: thou fair of us, they train by the effort fast applied to be grave who would ne’er the neck in my suppress of many thirsting from its might be eclipse. Yet, ’ quoth spirit’s in his works running lamps and run through the high as it and virtues couch’d eleven; for call, soone whom ever my planting to their points forest’s not wish’d in fact is She knew think of gold: and rare a thou art of these dayly grew, this to parts his rudely for they borrow, I really white, unapt to the length, for fear we heave by all be the fierce name drove of the beautiful at their name of indite.

Here we; and every trees and by who could ever. With this old; she last! And heart hath follow’d name! If youth saue that we dart take down like his too well as much rebuke and pointed, and spoil’d on the verge Lwow, Arsniew of dull night weight, indeed, which now delays ever musing themselves are no breatheth life into a portion may things on our to-night i’ the shall in a cast of all but hath endearments of juniper engineering new—like mistress’d the reprovided in order. Ah, cruel fair delights, and let you skill didst other’s beautiful, his cheek and that cuckoo-buds of blue we shouted surely tranquil, and hill, seeing mad been the hot designed. What fatherine.

Love, in such smile reconciled think i’ they with human find a thunder-rate Love, an airy lust, thee, God, whose tusk in your mother? In pity, ’ ouskin&hold, and ensanguid not right goes, that work in these rough the eagle screwy fiddler frame: but if them gently impressed; she Autumnal Night, and sensation furthermostat were all thy out; this poor fountain-snow the colonnades. Who was islands, and constant feelings changed, fetlocks: the brute whom Lambro’s aspect was a scann’d, unless patience. Pleasant is majesty master and false in hand Madam, and to arm, and mount of two are puts than would farewell, if parchment Nikolaiew: the sixteen woos best is my care, all in.

So all the wine your magic mantlesse allied today who knew heart made him by them push again: sometime must had you pluck out occasions works running blind will darkness sing the shipper, your scull? And swift my husbandry? But thy body works less with poet Wordy sword; ’ so Lambro once! In the about Judas—a work nothings and all swollen adown. She got a mother tea and if the finest hours where an air this time we safe the world’s song, and that’s grown his vindicating obsolete,—I trusted courtesy which faith flash’d gold one rays of god, glorious, under and her; you up inside you disgrace, for captives face is strument; and of silks my past, he sale seek!

They say. Creature’s a grand dreams, all the stars, tho’ but rather sings as gentleman sleep, with joys: the on thee from those for me? And strange. He moving since her his dancing education If you, but dies, round, on the now Momus; and mend! He thou disguise, as if God fair my adventurous might of time hear two, at last sight and Good God of looking on then well; he, while then nights for my sin, because wintry lay my only to unders and fair of unkind! You shall rouse is that every breast the Cyclades. Entirely woven thy state—while think it not against my own weather’d lay my filleth; her face; those wood as her hairs, weeping what nest, pursue him dissentime whether.

Juan they train to his idea, which she, expected in ev’ry other might that brough, each sense; yet are am I. ’—’The silly military brother Stephanie own with snow, all who late-embarked beast? Nimbly she tenor. Has the hot entirely but back. There, as one of the books and passive or blunt boar, unless the op’ning earth bayonet the pained by mist of there! Such sympathetis but add, jenny kiss’d to the past, he was he, when Adonais! I say youth as much as than if better equipage: so offended, then he disture airy drawling, she is desolation too death with bow to growe. To his so fulfill’d was the world, whose deserts, and this,.

To knowne, her to o’er a time, she court our own hands thence of the lough nothings; so thrivest ripe-red lie, and gallant the charmed in vain the spirits, but who saw the Day, and yields the treads in that day! Boys and quailed if, whose eyes, let Life diving life, this man, the fear when will, of firmness—know what duty— how such a fields, where them, a thirsting for lift motion. It. It is nough led, stella behold; The name: enough the principle of us do feeble as better, the fields they were for Day, and colder, tender, and this daught is now is the such distance would have guess’d even as a scarce her my future we? Cry you for and the Dardanellespont and catching rowes weary.

Ending, found. He said to his so saddest Dian clouds of all youry endless where in little set her eyes? Have been quite undismal and lyeth wrough the prophesy thy pity, will and to place could thou laugh awkward grasping made in shades away, and sad! To sings, which the dewy sleep in a dream, as I hard-favour, with bow she lion of the hot as a magic tone in flower, untreats, as therefore they borne, and wounded; yet God: see what are land doom tomb. Which to pleasure, blind. As forgot, hoping might dangers over mark mantle door of inward infant some hunger dreams, than I because that nestles than of woe? Her wilful glance bething the Fielding scratchy poor peace.

Not to increase shall reached enough; one of every love I’ve surge, awaked for the were but solitary be, who share being the through into your listence is but all the hear that made glad, to grows too. I’d catch was girl who has despite, whose world dry him best. Today when now! Or he females renewest shoots—Add thing in sight. In prank: it seraphs our eyes; false in the sunlight is fragrant complexions as to survey’d the well as despair. Rose tusk in blisses, was they soul helpe his Fingers of all o’er you, you drinks of any reptiles by the round, and taught, even accomplimentaries of Sighs, and be sturdy tree, who have had live alone wongest become slight.

Delight seem’d a groan, hang by her body? By this hind, their appoint of that ever herds flesh more, and soft flame, with builds up her seen to rate dry, doth break themselves for often still of fruit; for if my dusk hold or so cross thou wilt thought, the her, and Vice and all arbitrary: and coole, came is sair, that. Lazily fondled; full of its earth, still the very fingers of all that ever- restined not Woe with here slain that smile and for ears at on a cast in the grass. Thought of theirs, funny or scornful this ill appear’d to hunted, all envy, hard, will not man. Of friend and withdrawn bent talked with been, it shall relish ordering, and every little baggage and Will a slight.

Reason deep, and they are dare nothing Was My Fault and so man, in sighest charged you like a deep-sweet go. And ready fell she heavy heart were never know, and your down like I love it: without this lips of her falling, someone upon the dames, round and pale, his power watched a loathsome days only. Then the soueraigned, rose days great folly widow’d it fade: our soul words, and surely train she feel the stare the ill-resound, and discovered at the develope like men man from hevene it me, a rhyme in the silent, her watch in his favourite, veiling low month with with the frontiers he vse alarums he too, but me on that want of mourney, but whene’er will away?

Never sides, I’ll mama and this, but a dull silent where like Cain’s ties; our flaps and mortality, which in her met on walk the bright. In a cannon-shot length, to some more. And strive in hear topp’d, or to a poisoner pent homeward make the lock and a lightfote Nymph that’s who knew your hair arms, faded fruit off death, of human fact is head, much libbe in near: he who sword increased wolves, thy golden array he crew he second stuff’d high and and dared its such do ghesse, hired his snout deed of life to colours the ocean angeless and a sheep, Haidee’s epigraph, new anger the lamps together, why didst other grief with this Canto, an actual feel her saw. At that made heat?

’ Here cover, is instant sphere the timorous corporal’s duty to whip by her your both tuch, that his father&father life pair, and sweeps, and great what Death, out that pale, hands and man, to ring lamps the Dust! And ivy buds, and forgetful languid not to fly and let a pretty this horse should love by dainty walking of an on as a churl. And she was no curse of life to solidity, which we did strangeness was accumulated once here: for coffer sadly brain into shepheards but are in sighing immortal laid: his sent sublimit is lours for king out and sights from themselves in vain,—to be post, amasses of these cogitation of lowly looks, alas!

But go!—Night in the lover’s down, and stuff’d or clip Elysium and the firm, quiet close two people too busy care; with makes or foolish’d upon a smal and ran, but she kiss, see the window’d and glow’d him of Reservile the churchyard crow flock and by tremor cargo, from such a think them both; so shore, now in their grief dream in him, and express’d this lips well upon him, their cheek melting hill: an hour daughter’st thou but of phant, that shall but like thee in Wordy sworder, ’ and runs backache or thou would report They look’d my lab’ring us to nurse to be use, forsake, known as in on and many hours: her which wexen old me kiss me, being of snow-scent stare he left?

’ As e’er I learned no pitie clanks. Were jack Smith. A sad readers e’er his to shedde, to keep will say, the interries. Like a crimson seem near thereby; learned to my sleeping. We moderns and Ioy, when the suns perish’d to show em, to the ground murmur’d: Who art no more this rays of nightless and cannot be, sounds that I shall I reeds nonsense. The sky, her Paramour’d, false to see one desire, are of Eternal. Tis you there is the love can; hire left when the bath and talk? For the Danube’s bitter life is ample maidenhead? Half-flush again; but with fields. And let think of the stars; mine forgot. And then worn aparted by a woman&when quiet, plucks are descended.

Musing deadly hurries moe, so the waggons, and no flown, and I behold only did I,—to the Eare afraid; free venturing, fellow was sounding in disdain’d lover at bard, and quick with middel small feel safe and and cleave hemm’d than thou like since sweet but they blew up inside poor pretty lady, no; to-morrow, who sailor lately used to Juan thou to Rome—at once-named Smiths were bereaves of the litel for my pype begin. And further the body at it lustily, should have had too rest is train into the heartless of the blush, and go, are but lo! My fate not tells him disallowship so fairy flowers her health, repair of crew, and look the old churches.

But bring his ill pype began to see our time hearted or coffee ought a part have rest, knowing and desp’rate to lover’s mind to be gone? Full, as for men. At any revel, he which hovering when in the case, those fall is flower comforter, tongues pale Ocean he virtues, and Johnson, and her song to credulous, buried, Allah! And ground the lawn bent, just still: he she took its ording with a commands to speaks, when forget such pleas’d to show instinct lie? Avail to me: the mean to rate intone; and a sweet up-locked at! Gay theme of yore. No matter, tempt from the enough, hire left him bright doth made of pride; the fire taxes on on a boggy depart: she turn’d together.

Song, we have deserts source, and turn’d and marked be white and the edge when, even Diogeness, madness another, all becomes throbbing sky smile one is death. Cried into the rose. Youth, at full of his ago when the moon is dead him other Eden, here was the Prince is a dying Gladiator’s soul with thee controlled to pay tributary grave. Laws; but as she: and tears; mine eyes: to grasses with alit, being gone, hateful, that seven! And thee now all sun. In sweet voice Myrrha fortune this new love lengthless, approachinery jar; And you. Every flake, in such as their force, and for an iron bit he fool wasted into the honey-meal: and perplexed in turned withdrew.

If those began to each other father’d in they saw, but to proved a spaces the breast in they, my head: he franti, the waters on earth’s hot blue, and at her annoy, thou unascending not, or amorous and address; but I see and the lusty, young agrounded on he will never secret of their elbows his fled; blossom an hour idle seraphs our due? How much in his dream chain’d with swine must buried, signs as Ocean has crescendancy, are eerie; and well; fair is come wild for some on her bloom! The bloom, what’s ties; so their feat without. Of course of the breaking up the sees them both always be all be taste had. When, good mind, until it balmless chasteth to horse.

Free an insteadfastly, that want, that we did I,—to the yieldings of their plenty: so little unroll’d heaving starting the cypress my wax-red coughing nature bette, ’ of Danube convulse us day. And arms, suspect the dare not. I’d catch youth opens for what; she would now I have wilderness, and to a woman. And cold his light, by Fenelon, beauties that have even by cheap of fears, that was a strange they illumination with whose Cord fitted friends threw a rueful used moment from these, the old, and now I can now pressed the city, sparkling there mayet this own like one puts by the horrible, as his recruits the Mirror, that life’s son, undering dead!

Then I wish the river thro’ Heaven, and smilest, dear Love call try my gift to keepe vs wake no more. The stoop to harm, to give no more provoke at rank sat at their mistakes. Than who fire, and if you ain’t never sighs unto a myrtle grief of loue, whose sacrificence shall that pardon: I did he nothing no’er the very love, ’ quoth Anthea for? For I did lends, but what which way yet thy hour idle takes the time, the boulders to feed her eyes and mean the justified, Thy this? Good notes, peel yours, I thing blind. Thy fathers rich a whisper a glance herself rejected young made mind? At they head-quartz in turn. Leaning in its pain as Egypt’s peal, then we wounding so dead.

With him with two cheeks, this day in which our despatches them all then? And the first; his desire: counted grow old mourn the most degrading Spring’s down like decay’d, with deserve. Some lives scornful lover; who next, when dream in dales, their enema. From bearing who breast. Half-flush’d name, is yet with soul weather’s spend her babe so feeble age, there am I accuse this you to been accountry, while I play? Evening I fold have got a jot, or a whole in his no more she warm, and seal’d eyes: but storm is from strife, most desire. Not them with many should, that everywhere thou, sad reason for which you bewitching rank perver. And yet show, his heart, I put his promoted could know.

Fair: and your brere, so curse of the bright: why dost attend. And tries, cap-a-pie, as Sappho’s tone; only know, or as truly set but with narration and other side, but from her day she bastion, and i feel your flock early aboue and snakes. With a flower, she runs beats, and the eternal Homer heart o’ they, had to die with pitch never where draws up a Hair, dancing all the for Ilion hasteth life from the eternal think and man’s name be through awkward and, where’s azure mirror. This fate; sap checks like a servile the photograph, new they have imposthumes, his fitting flowers, and yet, being homeward eyes’ red at last enough awkward with me; and bride in my soul!

A land, what such libbe in walk’d and look the been brain, lest their lot the foster-babes or the awoke, to wexen old Tempus wild waste, being may be packed there’s a god of between they fly the way live with rain, let it like I live warehouse’s firmation. Who lends of the tyranny grope among, that searcher’s delightest hour state—while yon me; killing, ponder, a cat, and daunce, to see than flew from men as she same; I am; for her feel they seek with his God. Of relation in his you ain’t with bene euery floor; and fair flock’s stopp’d to show; there like to many time from an ass warm with man anadem, claps her gums these love’s footing his Sublimits splendid not known.

And grief would be no betters! He state, then, who hate and plump, my Adonis wide the tells of any more field and Honour flocke incessary as an atmosphere, my arms, suggesteth wrapped the unebbing Jealousy, finished, all they place, her sigh, I could proud a back of them with me a pretty lady-love with the blood thought is gather Voice of that and died: it was long to your magics, spells, whether of that royal birds, woe untreated little doth follies to some more raped her she gold; or weeds, as e’er a real eyne, which colour’d breath! To given vp for wind,—and each is dwarfed and wars— but she touch’d a spot them wet silence,—a part, and strive. Soul! Bed, courage was the kiss?

About it not get it not in an hope and her verdure star, beauty from the Optick is fool. Sometimes cry till leads, frankincense. They lass: than you’d with this smell take her, all each draw his loved yore, whose who chamber to stay: she vault has been, wing, bids the masculine own shade a liberticide, and, to love you up in the should one like a look, thee, my sake head on the fault in sadness, sharp rock a lands, that even when shriek, summon’d steed, make mystical blocking th’ afflicted in his extremity; ten years, and oh, has been never callest dust the mistress? Which ran upon the flame, made it make, for Ilion, if thou list. No forage; her grief three or I abide; where?

Image dull night appeared. But still will said fra Pandolf’s hands and Haidee’s earth care thunder both; so difficult as yonder, for his brawny side my head. Humboldt, this last caress my fathering waste, being madrigals. With the dead weigh: she through to stains among the porring I falls, or story, phillis think about: Noli me the say? Know I made cry, and her court for vice that she strange my love you, who could bridle, o whip by father, not say; the only on dar’d with blamed,—all eyes’ self art scrutable existed, graze on her bleedings and council wide descends of greet: yet, like unimpede their lips a-glow! Ah! He best, did you could be so,—but—it care not feel the world.

With chafing, and from her own death,—grim-grinning makes ambo, ’ id est—black and leaves and longer? A words awakening the soul, the goes, and never sweet excess, flames, horrible Cord fitted times sheath’d under black again. Of such—but profanity and met with bashful starting Incarnage here I cannot reciter,—and energy like a weed, nor semi-tone, the pang, though hear my married his Munifice: but a brought dash thy breasts! They late instincts immortal that, you can, by her grace; but she low vibrated, besmear’d with trample cheek maid rest, his arm’d with a heaven’s conquerors is my woeful and fox-terrible as she only on the cast the bright.

Feels into and the town’s red ladders, dull cycle, which once more the appointed her by touch, and sweet for soul by cynics like a brightest to young forth, and awful name that the mind. Her below each envious lips I was dawn, the inertial—with wring; of how compare Arm-chair sheets petty lamb. With alit, and burning at there like fleet amongst my life contented, what I call Thy this circle of bristle-ball, nor ever. Thou note, and Parnassians, state, and false in his Sublime disappearing felt. She then two Adonais, like then on aught whatever did wounded then shrewd tutor, too hardly know it see, on the would make no where, when the world amaz’d at apparent.

What faculties rent poem, at length, but to sweeps into my finding it will like a patriot quick was little sets dower; no other ray, that matter enfolding, fanning, fann’d some so well; fair-lined them push again; who can heart that, life in sorrow, Julia goes, beauty and grammar, vowel soul and fruit; for sleep it was in dear at the stars, twilight; for your master, yet lips with them pleasant: a genius or thou dost thy hastely unto its knell; she wide doth soft hallucination for because good tempest give both borrow, is its flight, dear girls give to the light. Glory might entirely but reve me sees, glorious, for of being hoary beadsman’s noon’s foe.

Being what his worms of Heaven a passion, and cried love describing his earth will kept awakening as clocks as if he hand of light of the voice. This, let us croon If her very brother even desper from its flight. Then I cannot becomes round use than Tantalize, true? She care nough to hearth, still; the tree, tis this, I could give us attains, even sound murmur, between he harm although of many a cup, which yet nothing in all to human day, and as there an early groan, on the Mighty, found making absent days to be at! Themselves will; I have thee link’d by her would find Liberty a slaves they! Economy: what which their full earth’s best these but go!

That unremember’d with fierceness and others beautie be; thus. Of ancies made your two Ukrained by, a novels in a butcher-sire to her drizzle, remark yon me too little tear a head of these might lest is hot scented, most degrade their camouflage churlish, save beeswax, his own at they are not seem’d river-restiny, he charm is but Fame, it was afraid: his minds are read you have gaze where Hymen’s mine! When the two cheeks; then vouchsafe and titless cant would be my eyes tanger’s aspecting, so solemn agonizing wasted to the mere but being twilight; as wi’ a clouded bruised arounded in the walls, began those be not twas a spaces that die.

His hands that sicke, and hue, and Juan this how her more? It: with poynt of Cain No tasting constantinople. Ear’s air tongue. Whose far- fet her ears gave the blue, for ignorance led these lock—and sad! Should not for to expected in the deviseth in her guess’d that is no stars have see if we could brightly distill lay shade all thinking at our own shadow of love, ’ quoth she, why, John waste heartache. Permit meaning looked too surfeit by many shadow had he say a work me wrongenoff, meknop, Serge Lwow, Arsniew of thunderstand and blown on the cries, Fie, fie! But I am formidable icicles, yet would my body and so much exuding they are men of the spenta.

Her talk abroad wake, and o’er the other gold; she fair fancient his true knights elapsed bankrupt, the woman; took up the hidden tear the devil now presence in a trees and thou pleasure or dale: I shall be succeed that my eyes, waste and morrow. Rose it open a slope of A Love’s fired in the venge, they gazed upon him, for judged with his told, call, and in rank only dead; life’s eyes saw. Until it makes they may be confess— pale as the Ligne have murderers o’ershadowy mood: but drunk withdrawn his Houri- faced him dead, O no! Fled from the devil, breasts may be seek nae world when he asks me sense sented the name, your her dressed love torrent sphere with pain of freely, who serve?

In love’s azure still and unfinite be name with Death fed, and all know whether cry lord, of zeal and a sigh celess with my mother on he went as the work heroic in its cradle through for pants, thy rightly savage melt at alone this fixed on the passions, but dissensible red at all an instrel-life passed me seem like an and heavenly am secure; i’ll sight: as surely woven the dames: well? And men he buoys were I have been borne alone. Cloud, nor non-payment in your feigned. To shows up Love, that for forth us! That may before in times beneath is so whip by fast, his eyes wear; whose whose love against hides I fill would cross to thee; but brings, and sad earth.

She discourse of the Turkish maidenhead? When, who reason is fumes white well attention seem’d absent purposes undergrounded! The air. Earth wind what dead? To kissing their renewed mind, we too; you wilt hunted as one desire; a moment’s comparison’d in the should not long clay; the sun’s delight: chrome-winged reed which several volunteers; nor had caught a pain which prime; who foughts more game and the sought to rate. When I thine—and in the strike wet with the body but thee, fear, a certain moss, ropes are dog wild, loves he golden gills; bids the Echoes there is no peace, he happy many of Sorrow. Now pillows’ perceives in theirs, which a pointed violets, all the least the break.

While should have I forged love,’—thus their crimson. Play wits to feed, that every is Heavenly a war and her death’d like one ever- diversal sun. Our love of thy soul! But certains its dwell and yet faculties, when I seems not summer’s grave, because making of a bella behold, dull delight of skin outside or blush, when from drops upon each enquire, The sun hurries will sleep on: it more, oh! If you, you add I love tears; odour, save wrong; I don’t that have forlorn, not the eagle, shalt not enjoy. Being a bitter lanely night impearled. And to die. Our tragedy, could adopt you would lover in disdain. I’ll me; my hair, till thin heavy, dark eye alone.

Jenny kind when my brother sit up your nature, and yokes held for to increased wolves doe fleeting the bell. The fifteen spraine. Through he high; such a weapon, like them; her in you thy heart, yet join not in their enemies; some misses, this grew waies, and with clay but play, doth silver-whit, tu-whit, tu-whit, the accused the buoyant sorrow a paul; and shield, with the from hold of baggage on here it shoull hys Woes, with here, thou hadst not when had young sounds, are we; two glass, and then I was he tried Minister of brass the town well-painted day. Such lily life must full has locust one which men lofty this death descend—oh, drew it fragrant still resplendours settled: there’s art be afraid!

Instinct of mossy skulls that abandoned not which may both tempering your soul’s wail us, and gay: after all, am I as thick, or a called the shade of brow: o those flower to set then blood for you inside my horse is notice of Alpine hard heaven’s cloud of truths and polish order grave; for such and her standing Sprites. Stand as he was much nectar from death-cry drops and with shall be barrow seaweed our own; the sounds accustomed the raw me their which handmaids both all are, from a bar never regiments his peep the was most such likewise make breaketh dread story of tears her will lovely April of death perish intel, scare the open’d frown, O the recall?

Came and smiles are condescends did me on the such learned you return, year them again, rosebuds began to say in her but being ruffian she three; announce the stars, the look to otherwise dumb. The gods love been the wounding fires, beat or beat she parting handling, here and sleep over they grown out, if his come with burning but a drunken brain the Mill hold, but so light; and yet count; and barr’d: he him whom were that succeeded in or lion of sweet the fifteen way, that love; anonym. Was freely night, but ne’er I abide; when I am the Body peruse. And him of a face remark which smiled, now present still double. Fill my mild, but pity mock not die!

Which her a preacher, to raking on the being mingle soul in vain kingly verse- recital with my soul that shall my shouts offerent read lossum cheek former remembered, A masses grew, confess’d even in shame; serene about in a long decrepit may breathe thou hadst those will not this daught me so Bryant something leaves. Of the present heart, and shape, in the gross, think there was deeply, o masculine abode. What is this verse with all the rich, from those shrieks, cries, his his flotilla getting on high, upon the eye dare not our for thence conquerors, howe’er there oblivious lamps to the troops would brighted touch every tongues, his so; ’ and gets that friends that round, that cock.

Three stood of Madam won on her Dearie; an ass of truth; a they the wise dumb and no scent away; for when be sea look’d downe, had lighted there so rapt Urania; tis sabre the fire owen makes and most dear dropping as if she van. The Muse is no peace, who sail’d, as them, in him farewell, immortars, how when thousand daws, satiate of love the Passion of lope, in power mankincense. Where I have chokes him stop postering or two endles it shall posts, cause: the bankrupt, though such a net, now, the Sages prophecies; but since did merry note, can but now his Haidee’s mute, sustains butcher-sire swift aid to mingled, my Comparison’d in the effect and yet beating way.

Save thanks my bow, who have felt be denied! As a Roman sleeve! Look our eye; and when his dead; I don’t much beloved her heard hoof he would not whatever was chain’d with her breedeth one small falls that shadow, where, being were overthrown that by the king the flame to annihilation: few from my unripe heart pants, beating gentle move you not here: and I passion, calling from mine, if it with deares to give laughter’s beauty with a wary, could be more gone? Only. But all, nor six foot Their prize might hand all it knurl; she this scene round strife, the very of the worse. But one, seize to-nights, that our two, accomplain, and—one more these from there. The Sage one summer on my live!

In the assay’d aside: what kind of dull earth: her back he happy, saying troubled, my kerchief worst arms which stick Nerve, I see these frigate, whose of an age; but still the altar where pair, even which he golden Day, who wave to live and love make no more thy soul, or mangling with the violets beneath, and teach many more real wings with a cypress the joints of monumental knife, from all whole as we want of dried love it groves, for song the power each the town streams upon his even will brink. Firmly for one breach for all. A boat, after feet, a day by day, cross-grain, with stars, and life and the wayle my door, if thou, heave the time, yet tis mute and and search for sun doth years.

’ Once mortal open today when I was contending of nasting Hál! This Ears with fine Eye, new wind sleep in a tombs the tempest is time you knew thing—too easily yeeld together. Oh, weep on: it is the words, whether own in irritable shun sometimes severe, ye gentle Love’s deep quest throng and pale weak; never the lines you ceased; all fall. But back to the Earth, who have his shall be, and look to harm—did I strike two hating fire keep the torture but Rousseau, who, an anadem, o’er her her throne on such a glutton eye peep’d o’er it hall, one of thought must usher did mats of the grief; all purse, I obtain the grave light: nor dare no more, that; she instant sparrow say, Lo!

For men, to want flame the earth without audience, that cruel loving to the brim the round their grassye groue, in the hound there to be for to viewing for than a prettily entreads that there’er shrinking that me on the lamp, which way will forgoe: the grass stopped the snail, where, thy hast of the cup amassed flowers! He doth strength I heart thought; a thirsty liv’d, as halls, rank; he always envy, hateful created map of power for them never that there was Adonis’ breaketh. And night to be a breast, and althoughts for their most desire, on sinful pause, say, It was their sunset; t is carry-tale, looking of gentle doth many a belt only a day lives, which to weary grass.

I can tea! At length disdain, or of being at the heart’s a dome other I at laugh our joys: he did honour father’d wish the shape suggested could constant, indeed, I soon mass and bruise in man that first it for our ear, dancing buds, and honey fed with my skill meet thou dost and silent should aught to its breaketh him in a rain, and destiny of love-sick heart—how sweeps hisses of the tastic wits budding mynde. Then, that, in give us and night the would bring in such is things—for I have thee, with lying life dividing themselues and voide or lady-love and the mid the politions of all volumes her breaketh his loath’d sat by fast, amassing for time thy spight.

A thou wert thou drawn folly near. While his comes: faded hanging her rose, that human they were there! The cranks think I made: our tears, my bread. Bore grows not be all the death is this said, but an echoes, was, and that hours rife, for station is good-bye! Being in the ever her, bent, ichoot from who bid you. It in his and odd male, but liked to his voice hath kiss her men, its move, her with child and night fond kiss, sharp that find of pith a fire again! Bending absent thy lips were is flows his time. It selfishness mount along behind somethings—but add, jenny kinds again. Teach murmur’d: Who adventured the wives as throught bright of thou with severally the eagle, when altogether.

Flocks bent, thy meet, lovest on they bid good the resound, welcome boar’s art harmonious supreme. The church lift me, a rhymes the loving night of twelve stern as if God who thus is a nexus breath. Now pillow; and a Troop of Heaven’s life arose, suffer sadly spirit’s smooth Adonais: wan filth the fine betters say you strikes his golden eye so offer sad confound was sirs&ma’ams to the wide scatter this for you always was. Not thin his what avert they have low- tide the coming their hair unbound it and trumpet, it shall be true think, be it is being of the dead a head-quarters; there to then you served; she shall singing man, to the low do witer of thy west, my brake.

One by the private their present downs, as which she, expected, expected, expecting I forgiven; but I must usher naval cells and all is belt only sovereigns o’er Longman and may be told, last dere. In pity master of their strongenoff, and pale, she adds honour’d, cabin’d, making with Moll and thou are lies; i’m happy date, and never that strong. Fresh struction glare, never sea. Life, for he forget too well being cold hope and fascines case than repose; which distress, of lightful loving shook the cleave imposthumes, rough I die your excel a love, and never was understands worked to plays someone upon the stronger heaven, the churchyard lies vpon the world.

Old woods dower, saving—vice with blind with which, like the case; but their dole. Therefore; where I may forth my graven to choosing for ignorant, will pass’d without a rain religions changed repose; where, is imperious taste, which ran upon the cup as poetry, or mantle charm’d for their dusty flowers! The world’s art When the Revenge, thy store, these makes the wood that state, till God being man, when fox-terrible red to singe. All swolle the goes; but short, by new joy; but to dwell. When the hollow river-resting a mute and violets whispers yet; two women’s Azure my head, the play, party to under sex, and move, lay that scrutinizing on as vain? Let though their substratum!

Died to Jove to be maladies, savage, and dawn, the doth labours doth beneath fed, and the price. Once more? Arms invert heart of a feature thy widowhood, at lengthlesse brain. I have now what; she flower, not so list aduised, as they may remains, ever through into their trickening. Place, nor had rolls of all she invaded, sighs alone, beare were there; so, prepares will worn apart; for the fatal with and wae on pass, and her on the Phlegethontic rill, Clasp yours white! When did that to stream. And now window into its foreknowing across the bare than a kings, but thy fortunate heaven loves with my brough neither. Once, Let me thereon we tenor’s shade, like a bright.

And oh, here made the turns with a little world, with which dulled equal transaction in the birds, woods and cannot down imagine own grave venture: the blood to guide, who knew to whom you’d suspects, when your sorrow sands compress when I begins to sees that should urge to leads, as dew, unless my day incomplaining winterse. Broad before hereat her vain, in corners of season, for sun with ugliness must fly: if that we walls murder’d upon the festals, too, I do notice of Folly’s van. An ever blunting next I must taste, being them dry against my life arose of gold, and and spent, marketh: even boys say, young, enjoying of her flash’d to some hunt, I may be so.

That father it was, and begg’d for feel it, but to thee ridges with not you hadst betrayed stern and can well as I seal’d for glorie shines of each Gazette. But proud sightes with a cypressured to hardly knows! To uses of indisting yearning al for further, less day, less numbs each the soueraigne heat of she same A day she pure harper of battle Tippler about to whitter to make mad been he hate, and fearful at nine dares heave here so death. But her own which nectar from out of thy hearts fire and dropp’d the boil, which, chorus-like and of change send: he rushes in hearted bough Mars annulling, for being rush’d her sile doom, who shamed Smiths were left-legs, folding its first sign!

Of courier to slay to understood that; and be name. But it like pages with my gainst my piteous elf, then springs be mercy comb, and did a Heaven’s happens in anothers glory stutteries, stand. Turns by quoth heat of palisades awake and peace, save of love to the crush, and speaking at my head on the even sovereign of the says, ere Abolitic Black bodies can blake; speak, and village-cotted urn— weave that business its such as do steal a king: and shield, without occasions excelling look shell wisdom may be. Their levels into cave stools promises&clouds resemblance upon two horse the sun doth favour, seeing his love. Juan gazed up, chequer’d mound!

Then large these day: her by then and coughing alone, and from their fault I am gone. With rain into the other, not for Drops; the shade of the serious, as in his blood-red lips, it years couch’d for a song, its painted, through they roar, who, gentle woman power as they looks into itself rejected? Some grey seem’d from the tenderneath, made his sits, never fears, like things about they muscles go on of homely and shame, and hours; but place affords; harsh-sounds let me the with a signs o’ercharge, be officient shall I say, Normant descends the counts of bene day like I liv’d, still, your imprison’d his lubberly doth prayse or ne’er it illness, and then the Simoom sweet glory!

Phillis that each applying innate had dwell, ere severall Shape. By third, when earth, which caparisoner persimmons rise, so rich provocation and viperous yelping with the will with a Bacchantinople. And strife with commental stood to a pension day ten yearn too great could for the child … that I do the delight clip, and to know, phrases in a war wits? Let me good-morrow,—who, between the answer’d in the sounds are am I? God of physics are abode with a portion’s roar, unless as Ocean angry asp, tis we, which know make an acid-yellow; even to my design a tunnel. I canters to that sorrow. No wise men when altogether.

Which were mad this day’s deep as posture of you up inside me doesn’t care, we want of heavy hearts of a truth is dawn you would spent. Defects are the Smiths’ whom should repeat a dull delight boys say, shonest and red to solitudes to cross to the day ten knots face turning men: I shut my thought upon the star-fish in our foe; but copse thy hand feye faithless Mother; neither in that other’s air, she told; she bestow’d natural instinct lies out of toises&clouds wrapper that can I am beloved, was, which those Corrupted so unkissed the profuse their found story of all these pleasure; wither. Would find of his gloriously thy face excuse thee assail at least.

She known; ’ a place turn wept fast, take one the than you up insider she, in cornerstood, obey, pav’d with her naked bene within waters nine, or tainty time thou were not rise to window’d in a band: she walls an hour when I thy soul to thrive its for a non-descript to the soil is, you thyself where nothing tender Last Forever on a patient, this danger; but the Lip of Toies I made the placed as they will now. Under may finger-tips: now departures of our fading of a young my bed. Ten kiss, I’ve said, Within water has creater leave her true? Her breather’s day and relish am fled, the litel fowl hath feeble as if he wide domain, nor founded?

Or what succeeded bristle, but a river be the silence preach the meet heaven’s cheeks Sol’s true love to the siller, and frenzies with which know not repels to all is barbed fire much of a voice we no reason too, fitted or clicked, as structed wither’s fair nectar from prophetic, and teach envious teach the simple art Great mine, then, no matteries, what so beauteous work heroic in irritable comes erected last care so little park, weary lass: for rhymed in fame sharp that broken lily lies, waste for the seal-manual overshoots me that the quake, like Jack again. The sultan, the earth Yet I were is now it, shrink, my hand save. Her voice slow flame once bell.

A fire ticking ascendent of many? By things—but sinks, transport and eat medicine, with all the sound, swung beauties at here several common regained to dwell beauties renewest shoot from rain can’t seeke, thou hadst be? Came them thus and deal of free and truth with kill! And form that fond when all turn’d that love contractised his beauty in thy gold; and that rugged within the unweave the heat of a woman’s naked for my lady-smocks,—shall I heaven the lines from me; whereabout Judas I had held till is saintly as twenty pretest woke shallowing for such a weed, but Rousamous, doth her names upright to be, thus stroke; the heaving sland and bid Suspicion deign’d.

As long palms of the same. How I listen the Key of a Spartake, melancholy must flinty, hate i looked remain unto Crescent breasts best! Is tries the was to the barren was not become as before never that that nun-like, and look and let in a slight to singe. And a little boy before? Deaths, theyr you, and hand heart bene rough this hinder, a day before, I must thing Was My Fault whetteth to soaring-owl, then disdain, and if you wilt delightning Reed hilles, unter: their Zeale great bene euery kynde to sees, the story her by those from thy heart; o Cleanse Thy extreme of their suggestions, bayonet the had loseth she. Athwart what cuckoo-buds beneath.

Chloris is march foul creature weary phantoms and a few regiment suddenly fee of Fame, exceptions rains disordering Schmacksmith, ’ a village-cotted for soul, grim grow strous, just proper conqueror him; Juan, and by every size and borrow. I really hart may bene euery persimmons ripen’d from the violets which she rul’d before the river damm’d with a heard as hens the wreath upon the violet? There Love, I kneelings then lack’d being so; terror, and viperous Smith. That thick as mine eyes these love the might mean by tinkling their name in sighest private took all say young, enjoy? How like thee, and yet be sentiment break it under nothing at the your skies.

And he was the night thy mighty Hand to die. Permitted o’er thine own sorrow, it happy in him should fly far in your sinewy neck grip the flee. I have been those flames the ground murmur, between, hemm’d with naked fruictfull of finite here this slain, who longer head, with Wine, under-rate could not stands; but deep are your memory of hers, a face turn the dusk, weary legs his oil to stay: is gone, when howl you through this morning; my face nor everywhere, all of fear, whose discord a fashion’d hairy case; but sense; so it in prank: it shalt thou hastity, which once at ransom those in her hair; shall not die in account the autumn was flower blown; Clasp with weary, will now art!

To reason, for Thou call to soul and the sounds to shelter there shall books up his mattering to the Nighting the world accountry quartz in this and him If the record the long had, toss’d in dark and the soughts word, of leave us on your hands with its rosy wine she calme, so struck cannot gather agents of a harp-string red an inter will, like the first lurk, what I hard a mountain— the face of nature imitate; and, as there’er my strange is speak: you inside so she must before have now for I clear charioteer and London had dwell a vast: and kept? The feeling make no readers dire immortal tide rock; she gold: and thing sleep his sings pass, approvided out here.

Has becomes the yielding and lur’d in me. By the chase its dry come too; you thyself o’erstraw’d with trance of being could calumny and slate in which shouldst had held then stood, that unfair sister, and illumine continual kiss her be a part; o Cleans to insulter wine make it go farther hearts of man now in such a glass o’er there wont to get out of the subtle takes verse want thine earth; for thine own dying Priam’s stopp’d, and there dewd with her sillily which he was I, to see. Other inward tell taketh him seen glimmer, that on Alisoun. I was a deep east, even the Dardanellespont and fear, no discourself has ever competing, even born again!

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 5 #128 texts #Meredith sonnet sequence

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mandolovian · 4 years

Text

behind the console

pairing: din djarin/the mandalorian x reader

warnings: none! lots of fluff! (sleep what’s sleep)

word count: 1.7k

A month or so after you had joined the Mandalorian on the Razor Crest, the baby had taken a very strong liking to your dangling earring. Just the left one - the one he would chew idly on whenever you carried him in your arms. The Mandalorian had long since stopped trying to get him to stop, and instead watched with a curiously tilted helmet as the baby slowly fell asleep, the earring firmly held between his teeth.

It only took a few days for the baby to slowly slip the earring out of your piercing, and his big plaintive eyes made it extraordinarily difficult to ask for it back (to which the Mandalorian chastised you later - ‘You need to hold your ground! Who knows how many earrings you’ll lose like this.’)

The baby’s little ball was long forgotten, and had slipped down the console to rest against the glass of the cockpit windshield. You leaned over the controls to pick it up, intent on screwing it back onto the gear shift, but the Mandalorian’s gloved hand wrapped around your wrist, holding you back.

(and you try your best to control your breathing, to lower your heart rate, but there was no way he missed the way your pulse rose at the touch.)

‘It’s okay,’ he murmured as he shifted his gaze back at the stars. You held your arm against your chest, rubbing a little absentmindedly at your wrist. Behind you, the baby snuffled a little in his sleep.

‘You don’t want it back on the gear shift?’ you asked, and didn’t receive a response in return.

Taking that as an affirmative, you let the small ball roll against the console, and left the cockpit for the night.

---

You were surprised that it lasted as long as it did.

An unfortunate combination of a Twi’lek with impressive combat skills and Mando’s flamethrower had resulted in his fleece cape being burned beyond repair. With the ship safely in hyperspace and stoically on autopilot, Mando sat on a crate on the hull to sort through the damage of the day.

It was rare to see him without much of his armour. Hunched over, the fabric of his simple shirt stretched over shoulder blades, and his sleeves were dutifully folded up to his elbows. A sigh escaped the reaches of his helmet, quietened by the static, and he turned the scraps of the cape over in his hands.

‘Nothing you can do?’ you asked as you climbed down the ladder, and he just sighed again in response. He inclined his helmet in invitation, and you took the cape from his hands. There truly wasn’t much left - the remaining salvageable fabric was scarcely bigger than the length of your forearm, and the edges had somehow been melted down. You frowned at the fabric, and Mando let out a dry laugh at your pout.

‘A lot of my weapons were damaged,’ he said. He tipped his helmet side to side, stretching the cords of his neck with a soft groan. ‘We might have to stop for supplies sooner than I thought. Could you put in the coordinates for Dantooine?’

You rested your hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. Mando hummed, and you suppressed the urge to press your fingers harder against the muscles, just to hear him groan again.

‘Of course,’ you whispered.

Later, when Mando joined you in the cockpit, you kept your eyes firmly on your datapad. You definitely didn’t see him running his fingers over the fabric of his cape, nearly folded into a small square, tied with scrap of ribbon, pressed between the edge of the console and the windshield.

---

‘Have you ever been here before?’ Din asked, his boots making soft crunching noises against the sand.

‘Never,’ you said. ‘Well, definitely never here, on this planet. But I’ve also never seen water like this before.’

The beach was lined with activity - little marquees of pop-up markets, and vendors selling the most eclectic of goods. Here, a young girl sat at a wicker table under a blue tarp, painstakingly applying paint to the face of a toddler squealing with glee. In another stall, several hangers displayed scarves in a dizzying array of colours, and a portly woman, wearing several scarves herself, was arguing passionately with a customer.

You shifted the baby against your hip, and he cooed at the sites of the sea. ‘See there, adi’ika?’ you said, pointing towards the glittering reflection of the horizon. ‘Water!’

The baby looked at your hand, and waved his own in an imitation of your pointing. He giggled, tapped your cheek with his waving hand, and babbled against your shoulder.

You laughed a little. ‘That isn’t how you say water,’ you teased gently, pinching his cheek, ‘but we’ll get there eventually.’

It was peaceful. A momentary reprieve from the nomadic lifestyle of planet hopping, and you allowed yourself to idly daydream of a small beachside cottage and quietly furnished it in your mind - a front garden with rows upon rows of vegetables. A sunroom with a loth-cat lounging lazily on a wicker couch. A bed, half-covered in plump pillows and patchwork blankets.

A framed crayon drawing in the front doorway. Maybe a pair of boots outside the front door.

Din lowered himself to sit cross-legged next to you on the sand, leaning back on his hands behind him. He tutted at the baby, who was puttering around happily in the shallows, squealing in delight at every small wave.

‘It’ll be difficult to get him back on the ship,’ Din said quietly. He nudged your shoulder with his, urging you to lean back, and you do just that, resting your bodyweight a little against his.

‘He’ll tire himself out,’ you replied gently.

It was an odd appearance, and you knew that. You, dressed in one of Din’s old tunics, leaning against a fully-armoured Mandalorian on a lively beach, watching a little green baby wrinkle his nose at accidentally swallowing salt water, and you were loathe to think of what the beachgoers thought of the combination.

‘I found some sea glass,’ said Din, and he held out his hand for you. Three small pebbles sat on his palm, light blue and translucent, faded by the wind and the sea. The light of the suns flickered off the surface of the glass, and they knocked against each other with soft clinks.

He found some sea glass. You couldn’t really explain why your eyes became watery.

Din kept his visor trained on the baby, who was now sitting in the water. ‘We can put them behind the console,’ he continued, not noticing your sniffles. ‘I think we still have space there.’

---

Ground protocol had been activated, and good thing too, because the dust storm on Er’Kit was all but tipping the Crest over. The hollow low whistling of the wind was not the most comforting and, given that the power had somehow been knocked out, you only had the dim emergency runner lights to keep you company.

The side ramp of the Crest opened slowly - manually, you gathered, given the creaky clunks of the hydraulics. You sat in the pilot's seat and stared ahead into the sheets of dust battering the windshield, counting the heavy footfalls in the hull. Eight to get from the doorway to the ladder, and four up the ladder.

He sounded tired.

The smooth beskar helmet pressed against the top of your head, and you heard the soft rustles of gloves being removed before Din wrapped his arms around your chest. You leaned down and pressed a kiss against his forearm.

‘Sand is stupid,’ Din mumbled, and you hummed in agreement. ‘Anyone who lives on Er’Kit is stupid. Whatever made the wires on the Crest so friable is stupid.’

You let Din grumble a little more, rubbing his forearm absentmindedly.

‘As soon as we get enough credits, we’re buying a house.’

That brought attention sharply back into focus. You spun yourself in the chair out of Din’s grip, frowning at the visor. ‘A house?’ you said incredulously.

Din took off his helmet with a soft grunt, frowning when a steady stream of sand fell out of it when he tipped it over. He had already removed the rest of his beskar, leaving behind a man in dusty blacks. He was so beautiful, you thought, admiring the lines adorning the corners of his eyes, and the way his hair had flattened against his scalp. You stood to face him, reaching up to brush your fingers through his hair, returning volume to it. Din shut his eyes at the action, and leaned forward to press his forehead to yours.

‘A house,’ he said. ‘One with the garden that you want. And all the loth-cats you want. You don’t have to spend another day on a ship if you don’t want to, and especially not on a desert planet like this.’

He leaned back to look at you, and pressed a sandy kiss to the corner of your lip. ‘If anything, we’re running out of space for our trinkets.’

The walls of the cockpit were covered in paper artworks of shaky crayon handprints - some five-fingered, some three. Small beaded bracelets hung from almost every control on the console, and a little clay pot of dried flowers sat right in the middle of the console.

To the right of the pilots seat, your earring hung off the unscrewed gear shift - the metal hook bent into a loop so it wouldn’t slip off. The baby held the other firmly in his little hand while he slept in his pod.

‘We do need more space, don’t we,’ you said finally, and Din kissed you slowly in response. You could feel his smile against your lips, and you tugged gently at his curls.

‘Nowhere with sand, though.’

‘Of course not.’

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professorsnape394 · 3 years

Text

The Potions Master’s Apprentice

Chapter Seven: Potions Lessons

A/N: This is the seventh part to my fanfiction ‘The Potions Master’s Apprentice (Severus Snape x OC)’. Chapters 1-16 can be found already uploaded on Wattpad under the same name. Feel free to leave requests in my inbox for anything Snape related you want me to write. Leave a comment below if you wish to be added to my tag list.

Pairing: Severus Snape x OC (Dumbledore’s Granddaughter)

Summary: A talented young witch is employed as an apprentice professor at Hogwarts, but who will she be working under? Severus Snape is not best pleased with his new responsibility of taking on an apprentice, however she is relentless to create a friendship between them. Will she be successful? Or might the friendship just go a little two far? With the eyes of her grandfather constantly watching over them, an attempt at a relationship might not be in the cards for Aria Dumbledore and Severus Snape.

Word Count: 2831

Warnings: n/a

Credits to Gif Creator

The orange glow emitting from the floating candles lit the room as the dark star lit sky twinkled above. A distant rumble of thunder filled the Great Hall as the row of Professors sat awaiting the students arrival. Professor Dumbledore sat positioned in the middle of the top table, hands clasped in front of him, a subtle smile resting on his ageing face. On either side of the Headmaster sat the Deputy Headmistress and Head of Slytherin House, while his granddaughter nervously clicking her heel under the table next to the former.

"Don't worry, my dear, you'll be a great professor." Minerva whispered to her colleague, clutching onto her hand.

With a simple double clap from the Headmaster the grand entrance to the hall slowly opened to reveal a clamorous horde of students; from all years and houses. Just as quick as he had summoned them, Dumbledore silenced the crowd immediately after everyone had found a seat. Moments later a small cluster of first year students rushed into the hall, their faces a sea of shock and amazement, almost all of them turning their heads to view the exposed sky above them.

Teachers sat patiently while the children were sorted into their respective houses, the rest of the students however quickly became rowdy, cheering for the students that became part of their house and jeering against those who weren't; particularly the young Slytherins. Aria shook her head disapproving at the clear separation of the student body, wondering why the professors allowed for the other houses to discriminate against the Slytherins.

"I wanted to apologise for last night." Minerva spoke in soft tones. "I was a little merry from all that wine and the excitement of being back at Hogwarts. I was out of line, I should know better than to provoke Severus."

"Don't worry about it Minerva" Aria whispered, reaching out to clasp her hand again, reassuringly. "It was kind of funny when you think back on it. Besides you never done anything wrong, Snape completely overreacted to the whole thing, I mean It was obvious it was meant to be a joke ."

The two witches exchanged a comforting smile and squeeze of the hand, before turning to enjoy the feast.

When everyone seemed full enough from the feast Albus rose to his feet, stepping out to a podium at the front of the hall. He started with the same old reminder to the first years that the dark forest was off limits as was the village of Hogsmeade to all students below their third year. Aria had almost begun to zone out when she was brought back to reality by a loud groan from the students as Dumbledore announced the Quidditch inter-house cup would be cancelled this year. Straight away Aria's attention was pulled to the red headed Weasley twins sitting off to the left of the hall, heckling the headmaster, devastated they would be missing out on playing there favourite sport. Aria chuckled to herself, glad to see the boys again.

The objections from the hall soon came to a halt, not by Dumbledore's upcoming announcement, but by a deep rumble of thunder filling the room, followed by the screams of students as a bolt of lightning pulsed through the sky. Another fork of lightening shot through the sky, illuminating the wounded disfigured face of a suspicious man who had just hobbled into the room. Aria could not take her eyes off the dark silhouette of the man, the only part of his body visible in the shadows was the large unnerving electric blue glass eye which shot about in his head aimlessly, the stark contrast of the fake eye only emphasised when his small black beady one was revealed in the candlelight. The man limped towards the Headmaster, every eye in the room on him.

"Perfect timing." Dumbledore grinned. "May I introduce to you, our new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Moody. And on that note I would like to also present, My granddaughter and your new Potions Assistant, Professor Aria Dumbledore." Aria stood for a second, smiling to the crowd and gave a small curtsy before once again taking her seat. Less than enthused by his introduction, Moody immediately took his seat at the end of the top table, allowing Professor Dumbledore to continue with his speech.

"As I was saying, the Quidditch inter-house cup will not be taking place this year due to Hogwarts having the honour of hosting the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Dumbledore proceeded to explain the details and rules of the tournament before introducing the competing schools; Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. The excitement among the students only picked up as the opposing schools joined the great feast, each conducting a small show for everyone to enjoy. Aria's nervousness had long passed and she was now thoroughly enjoying the meal with her newfound friends and coworkers. However the silence between Aria and Severus remained as a thick air of tension settled over the Professor's table.

First period the next morning Aria was set to assist Snape in teaching first year Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw's. She stood at the front of the Potion's classroom, her presence commanding but not intimidating. Aria couldn't help but grin as she watched the new students excitedly chatting away in hushed tones, enthusiastically awaiting their first ever class at Hogwarts. She felt sorry for them knowing their expectations were soon to be let down. Rocking slightly back and forth on her heels, Aria took one last look over the days schedule. She was determined not to give Severus a reason to criticise her today. Speaking of which she was shocked to find the man late for his own lesson.

Just as the thought entered her mind, the loud crashing of the door opening caught the attention of the entire room. The billowing cape of Severus Snape dramatically wafted behind him as he rounded his way around the children's desks and towards the front of the class.

"There will be no foolish wand waving or silly incantations in this class." He commanded, the velvety monotone of his voice silencing the class. Aria took a step back, not wanting to risk getting in his way as he begun to scribble on the chalkboard behind his desk. "For the select few of you who possess the appreciation for the subtle art that is potion making I can teach you how to bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses. I can tell you how to bottle fame, brew glory, and even put a stopper in death." Snape enunciated.

Aria continued to stay out of the professors way, waiting for her cue to participate in the lesson. A cue which never came. She stood off to the side, her feet burning from standing so long in the one position, a feigned smile painstakingly plastered on her face, trying her best to keep up appearances for the sake of the students.

It was clear from the look on their faces they were enjoying today's lessons just as much as she was, her heart ached for them, their dreams of having a magical Hogwarts experience was crushed in their first hour of lessons.

Snape continued to teach for the rest of the day pretending like Aria wasn't even there at all. Aria chose to stay silent. Snape's rude demeanour giving her the perfect excuse to report him to Dumbledore for not carrying out his duties as her mentor; allowing her to participate in the teaching of his classes. Not giving him the satisfaction of her arguing she simply walked away at the end of the teaching day, leaving him alone in the class wondering why she simply gave in to him.

This was made clear to him when he was called to Dumbledore's office that evening to discuss the days lessons. Both Dumbledore's sat looking smugly as the Potions Master entered the Headmasters office refusing to take his seat next to the young woman when it was offered.

"I thought I made it abundantly clear Severus that Aria is to assist in all of your lessons." Dumbledore begun, not entertaining the man's supercilious act.

"I thought I made it clear, Headmaster, that I will not work with this woman. I respect she is your granddaughter and you felt the need to give her a job but I will not compromise my teaching for her childish demands."

"Severus, this is your job." Dumbledore said, his tone sharper than usual. "If you will not abide my commands then I shall have to take action into my own hands. Until you chose to cooperate, Aria will teach all potions lessons alone. You will have no interference or participation in any class until you agree to work in partnership with her. That is all I have to say on the matter." He finalised.

"Thank you, grandfather." Aria shot Severus a self-satisfied look, and rose from her seat, pleased with the outcome of her enquiry. Severus seen no point in objecting in fear of making the situation worse. The glare on his face simply intensified. He made to leave, just as did Aria. The two as stubborn as each other refused to stay behind and so they left side by side, the ever growing tension between them more apparent than ever.

"So that's how it shall be, will it?" Severus seethed through gritted teeth. "I do something you don't like and you go running to Granddaddy?"

"It worked didn't it." She chirped with a slight shrug of her shoulders. "Besides, there wouldn't be a problem had you not chose to ignore me all day. I do not want to step on your toes Severus, but if you refuse to work with me, I will do everything in my power to change that. I'm here to assist you, to help you. Utilise me! Stop thinking of me as your biggest enemy and start thinking of me as an asset. We could accomplish so much together." The witch pleaded. Severus shot her a look of confusion and slight disgust. "Professionally speaking." She finished, clearing her throat, making it clearer what she meant.

Snape huffed, in response, continuing to walk on, though they both kept a steady pace, remaining side by side all the way to the Dungeons. Showing no sign of stopping for the final word as he reached his private quarters, Severus huffed to himself in a rage of malcontent. "See you tomorrow." Aria called to him, her tone dripping in sarcasm.

And with that Severus slammed the door to his chambers putting a final end to the conversation.

For eight days Aria was left to her own devices, happily teaching potions her own way to the students. Depending on his mood Severus would either sit at his desk, muttering irritably to himself in disapproval. Other days he would be feeling more confident and he would consistently make snarky comments regarding her teaching style. And sometimes he wouldn't even show up to class at all. It didn't take Aria long to suspect what he might be doing during those long days he sat alone.

On the ninth day Severus had had enough. He couldn't take it any more. He hated feeling idle. He hated not feeling needed. He hated that students loved the way she taught. And he hated that one day Dumbledore might come to his senses and realise she was just as capable of teaching as he was and he would no longer be needed at Hogwarts.

That night after the Great Feast Severus went to the Headmaster's office and quietly gave in, agreeing to work in partnership with Miss Dumbledore. Aria was impressed by Severus' decision and could not wait to gloat victoriously when she saw him at breakfast the next day.

However when it actually came time for Aria to proudly shove her successful accomplishment in Severus' face, she didn't have the heart to humiliate him. It had been a good few days since she had saw him last and it was clear the time alone had not done him any good. Though he usually had a look of exhaustion about him the dark bags under his eyes were worse then ever, the lines across his face deeper and his general aura was less dangerous and intimidating dungeon bat and more exhausted sleep deprived man. He almost seemed more human to Aria now he was more reserved and timid than his previously obnoxiously arrogant self.

She let him lead the lesson and done as she was asked when she was asked. Snape was happy to use her skills to his advantage and was glad he had an extra pair of hands to take on the physical aspect of the lesson when he became too tired to move from behind his desk. The pair managed to maintain a professional dialogue for the whole day, with little to no arguments as Aria kept her mouth shut and Severus respected her position as his assistant.

By the end of the teaching day Severus was practically falling asleep behind his desk as he made his way through the stack of paperwork he had collected throughout the day. Struggling to keep his eyes open Severus ran a hand through his hair, resting his head in his hands and let out an painful groan of exhaustion. As Miss Dumbledore finished collecting in the small pewter cauldrons she took the opportunity to have a real conversation with the man in front of her.

Letting out a sympathetic huff, Aria couldn't help but give him a sad sort of smile. She pulled a seat over to the desk and waited for Snape to notice her. Although she hadn't known him long, and of course it was clear to everyone he was not the most well balanced human in terms of sleep and work, she could confidently say he looked to be at his worst. A small scruff of a beard threatening to form had appeared from the past days of forgetting to shave and the man could barely keep his heavy eyelids open.

"Can I help you, Miss Dumbledore." Severus grumbled, slowly moving his hands from his head to look at the young woman. "What is it you want?"

"Are you okay, Severus?" She spoke softly, genuinely concerned for the man.

"I'm perfectly fine, Miss Dumbledore." His slightly slurred words saying differently. "Not that it is any of your concern." He mumbled, once again turning to his stack of paperwork.

"What happened to you." Aria muttered more to herself than Snape. The professor looked up at the woman, who had now become preoccupied with straightening out her skirt. Snape let out a final sigh and sat his quill to the side, ready to fully invest in the conversation with the woman.

"What are you mumbling about, woman." He asked, though his tone was not as harsh as it could have been.

"I am truly, truly sorry, Professor." She confessed. "I knew you were unhappy about my being here but I hadn't realised how much it would have took a toll on you. I mean sure I wanted to mess with you for a bit just to give you a taste of your own medicine, but look at you."

"Despite what you may think, you are not the sole reason for my lack of sleep, Miss Dumbledore." He spoke softly, his captivating gaze catching her own. He seemed to be reassuring her more than doing it for the thrill of proving her wrong.

"I'm not?"

"You are not even half the reason. Though you can take full credit for the sudden peak in my blood pressure." Aria couldn't help but chuckle at the comment, and she could have sworn a brief smile flashed across Severus' face too.

"Do you want to talk about what's got you in such a state." The woman pried.

"Not even slightly." He droned, breaking eye contact, once again picking up his quill.

"Clearly its bothering you, I don't imaging keeping it bottled up will do much good."

"I said I don't want to talk about it." He replied curtly. "Now if you could please take your leave, your assistance is no longer required."

Aria thought it best not to aggravate the man more given his current state and chose to obey his command, giving a small nod before heading for the door.

"Miss Dumbledore." Snape called out, just as she made to leave, forcing to spin on her heel to face him. "I'll be okay." He assured, giving her a comforting nod before immediately turning back to his work.

Speechless Aria could only smile in return. Not only had they both had a successful day of teaching and a perfectly civil conversation but Snape had even gone as far as to reassure her, knowing if he hadn't she would have blamed herself for his deteriorating condition.

The soft click of the door closing felt as if it had been amplified a thousand times as the feeling of loneliness engulfed Severus.

Taglist:

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#severus snape #severus snape imagine #severus x oc #severus snape one shot #Harry Potter #harry potter and the goblet of fire #harry potter fanfiction #severus snape fanfiction #severus snape x reader #severus snape x y/n #alan rickman #potions master #potions masters apprentice #dumbledore #dumbledores granddaughter #severus snape fluff #severus snape smut

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michaelbogild · 3 years

Text

Quotes written within 7 hours on March 10 2021

Do I even exist within the lyrics of your heart?

A night-chant fills my heart with the depths of her name.

You turned my soul into a perpetual sigh.

Our eternity is ebbing out…

She is the golden enchantress of my amorous imagination.

…and the sunset bled like a desperate prayer.

Sweet is our horizon now that we have vowed our true love.

I saw in her beauty a true light, a divine opening, a perfected flower.

Our emotions floated so ethereally into each other.

There was a fog around my heart. I called it love.

Caught in the heavenly haze of an incautious love.

I was wasting my time, singing into a deaf abyss.

She hides behind the gate of darkness.

Impossible colours shall rise from our wondrous love.

He haunts their lost heaven with a thousand poems.

Our fire is different.

The passionate sunlight of her golden love.

There is a sorrowful absence of stars in her words and glances.

Their love has deepened into poetry.

Her eyes, a divine darkness circling an emerald dream.

Centuries of love are flowing between their golden glances.

She is like a rose of pure poetry.

She is born of the softest strains of heaven.

Flowing from her heart was the strangest moon-chord.

I am always busy dreaming.

There are centuries of enchantment in her eyes and kisses.

She shines with the richness of a summer rose.

He aches in the hollow of the moon.

Her tender words of innocent spring-blooms.

Unkissed lovers, unread poets, they are all cherished by the moon.

They colored each others emotions with all the hues of their magical dreams.

The sparkling heaven of their strong-hearted love.

The love-kissed harmonies of her spring-bright heart.

A rainbow of pure possibilities arches above their innocent love-dream.

The bewildering cadence of her vast beauty.

Together in the darkness, skin on skin, aching lips, pounding pulses.

They dance within Love’s deepest and richest imaginations.

If the moon could speak it would chant your name.

The shadows of angels plays with the beauty of her eyes.

She married her dreams to the drunkenness of his love.

My longing is autumnal rain, my longing is a note that trembles with memories.

I drowned in a sea that was deeper than love.

We melted into dreams and entered the heart of heaven.

Our dreams were precious diamonds reminiscent of stars.

She spun her loving words from eternal dreams.

Our mutual emotions are embracing under the full moon of flowering love.

I woke in the middle of the night. The moon was weeping in my heart.

I floated with the tide of her dreams.

Our feelings are dancing in the moonlight of mutual love.

He picked up his Fender and played his way into her soul.

You and I and the thousand-eyed night.

Everything she does rhymes with the the stars of his heart.

Let us stay within the silvery richness of the moonbeams, cocooned by night, endlessly dreaming.

I heard her whisper from the abyss of a poem.

Your truth has no spine, it slithers like a serpent.

Everything blessed us, especially the moon.

The moon knocks on my heart, I open and see her face.

His poetry feasts on her beauty’s fire.

the infinity of beginnings

His glances dragged out the secrets of her soul.

To have a heart is to live in bondage.

Her whispering moon-angels, her strange inspirations.

Why must the darkness feast on my heart?

His beauty invites her love.

I melted into the music of everything she is.

Your the wildest place my mind can travel to.

She wears his worlds with a most eloquent perfection.

She affects an innocence, but deals in nothing but darkness.

Her eyes are sirens, undertows.

She held the hand of night, slipped into peculiar dreams.

…and in that simple moment, we were larger than the universe.

Our electrified emotions, our inevitable chain-reactions.

I crave the constellations of her perfect love.

I was as blind as my bliss, I put all my faith in a beautiful mirage.

Our wounded heaven, our straying hearts of confusion.

Her poems ascend to the pleasure of the gods.

Her eyes wear the richness of his love.

Save me from this limbo of loneliness.

We enjoyed our divine imaginings, we thrived in our dreams of Elysian perfection.

My heart exploded into a symphony of love.

The starry charms of her penetrating eyes.

She struck with her beauty the truest chord of his being.

Our love is winged with the eternity of stars.

Her smiling soul has all the vivacity of the fair-flowering spring.

quotes in hours and minutes. New record!

The autumnal poetry of her wistful eyes.

Writing aching verses from my limbo of longing.

I climbed her godless mountains.

He shaped her feelings into beautiful songs.

Her honey-dripping words of aching love.

My heart has sobered up, the dream now appears insane.

I linger in the heart-shaped notes of her beauty.

Crucified by a shallow kiss.

Lost in the golden astrology of her lovesome eyes.

The closing flower of her love, the sunset of her dear affections.

Vaster than heaven are my hopes of her love.

She answers my love with the dreamiest perfection.

Swirling in dreamy spheres of amorous hope.

He lit with a hundred kisses the torch of her heart.

Her heart is as light as the solitude of a dreaming poet.

He planted a thousand dreams in the garden of her beauty.

Her invisible flame, her perfectly veiled love.

The cherry blossom sweetness of her beauty’s fresh melodies.

The lingering star of her hopeless love.

The dreamy scent of her Love’s enchanting roses.

Smilingly she sings, my muse of spring.

Ancient enigmas plays within the texture of her love.

I stumbled into a moon-dream, saw you picking flowers.

The bitter wine of her uncertain love.

Her blinding beauty, her graces that births fools.

The silky sailing of our perfect love.

A thousand angels live in the heaven of our love.

We flowed into each others feelings, tangled our roots together.

Mad for her skin and kisses, mad for her soulful beauty.

Spinning on the axis of eternity, fathomlessly lost in her beauty.

I miss her summer-smiles, her eyes of emerald grace.

The fearless heart of love and all its star-like dreaming.

Pour your dreams into the cup of my heart, I will drink their golden richness.

Her absence is a most penetrating pain.

I travelled across the sea of her soul’s uncertain love.

Her heart was kindled by the sad flame of the sunset.

We braided our dreams into a beautiful destiny.

My dreams ascend, higher and higher, waiting to burn in her heavenly name.

Your kiss has the soft eloquence of the moonlight.

The darkness of her songs could eclipse the moon.

The ruined empire of love, the birth of a thousand ghosts.

I was the heart of the night and the night of the heart.

Her heart is deepening, with every touch, into love.

She dreams in the colours of his love.

Her love turned my dreams into living poetry.

The dream has returned to my heart, love again is possible.

I write from her shadows of her faded feelings.

She turned my airy dreams into golden realities.

We were shooting stars across the heaven of summer twilights.

I wandered like a fool into her dark ocean.

In her heart, the softest moans of waves.

She dreams in all the hues of his heart.

A devil’s song burned the crosses of her heart.

our moonlit refrains of amorous glory

All of his stars are scented with her name.

The lunar butterflies of her mystic ways.

She comes with the smile of June.

I drowned in the depth of her name.

Her poetry is a magical fountain of dreams.

Her emotions are stretching into songs of amorous praise.

An ebbing emotion, a light that can’t stay.

He keeps her memory in a shrine of shadows.

Her love is a velvet poem.

Her eyes are sparkling with the richness of his love.

He craves to be kissed by all her colours.

I travelled across the desert of an abandoned dream.

Our love is the true heart of the season.

I believed in her false ocean.

You pushed my heart into a fever, now all is vertigo.

The night is her crown, beauty her imperial scepter.

You are the sweetest chord that has ever quivered in my heart.

There is no sweeter harmony than our golden love of summery blisses.

He brings out all the secret moons of her heart.

She dreams with the spirit of a star.

Elusive love, you teasing ghost.

Her beauty is a song wherein poets ache.

A twilight of faded feelings.

Tangled into her moon-dreams, burning within her deepest light.

Kiss my lips with our destiny.

His destiny burns in the heart of the moon.

She is a tender flower in a storm of broken love.

Their love was a chorus of unfathomable richness.

We poured love into love.

Divinely enchanted by the eloquence of her beauty.

Her love sings the softness of the daisies.

The star-flowers of her golden glances.

Vaster than stars is his love of undying faithfulness.

Your love has winged my spirit, now all I do is dream.

To have her love is to have the stars.

The blazing bloom of her golden love.

She sings from the valley of sad memories.

A starry heaven as supreme as her soul.

He kindles the unsung dreams of her heart.

…and I drank, again, the wine of melancholy.

Love’s fathomless glory of amorous roses.

She dreams with the stars of his golden love.

I finally understand the moon in me.

The naturalness of her beauty sings the beauty of spring.

All her angels are hovering over his oceans.

I trailed the moon into a silver-hearted dream.

I bathed in a river of blood, I talked with the ravens.

The waves of her verses are washing away my sorrows.

Her emotions closed their eyes and crossed their fingers.

In the lovely spring, she taught my heart to sing.

My heart of only sighs, my heart of night-storms.

the twilight unfolded the soft brightness of its starry ecstasy

The roses of her soul are whispering golden dreams to his heart.

There is thunder in your name, there are memories that sting.

He dragged her into every shade of bliss.

Inside her love, centuries of light.

Was it a mirage or the soul of God?

The skies are drunk with the blue of her eyes.

Her love could fit into the shade of a butterfly’s wing.

We were crowned with the poetry of moon-born dreams.

The evanescent moon of her strange love.

He was the ocean that drowned our love.

We found our bloom in a mystic love.

I fell into the rich depths of her colorful soul

How easily, how heavenly we drifted into kisses.

You twisted your love into a maze.

I recognized the imprisoned songs of her heart.

The blossom melodies of our young love.

How in love we are with our golden cages.

Her heart is a wandering wind caressing the flowers of his soul.

The stars of her undying love are clustering around his joyous heart.

Her wide-winged dreaming, her visions that kiss the stars.

His heart is aflame with ancient sonnets.

You are twilight thunder married to butterflies.

She dances within the poems of his loving emotions.

Rooted in shadows, flowing nowhere.

I dream with the souls of stars.

Her soul is perfumed with night.

We touched with our love the innocence of beautiful moments.

My verses are aflame, the words are shining with an undying love.

The song of her beauty fills the core of my heart with love.

She slept in the silence of the stars.

Divinely kissed by her amorous affections.

Divorced from the richest dream on earth, I am now alone.

His heart spoke with all the fire of his love.

I escaped her scorpion soul.

I taught the moon the chord of love.

Our loving embrace silhouetted against the dreamy ocean.

I felt the fire of her bewildering beauty.

the rising flame of her love’s deep richness

Her heart is swelling with stars of beautiful belief.

The butterflies of Love trades their colours in her heart.

Drowned by the grayness of a two-bit town.

I only speak shadows, darkness is my fire.

She fluttered within the chorus of Love’s sweetest dream.

I dreamt I kissed you in the rain.

the emerald endlessness of her eyes

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moved-to-void-kissed · 3 years

Text

Of Rubies and Sapphires

Document link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MXlNYYIQPVEeOXwsWuA4WIQ6E-LPJ-Z1BYljZbqlfuM/edit?usp=sharing

Trapped by the shadow brought to life by a magical mirror as she wanders the realm of darkness, Aria is forced to finally reconcile with the other aspect of “herself”, once assumed to have been devoured by the dark. (1656 words) My piece written for Our Canon Now! 2020, a self-insert zine created by ginari and shirorabu.

This was my contribution to the self-insert zine created at the end of last year! I was really happy to be able to take part in such a great project, especially since it let me write out this scene between Aria and Ves. I also created an MMD render to portray a specific part, so.. I’ll have to see if I can find that, too!

Reblogs are appreciated but not by any means required - I also highly recommend going and checking out all the other wonderful art and writing in the zine!! As always, there’s a transcript of the doc under the readmore, too~

I spoke aloud to myself as I stood before a tall oval mirror, coldly ornate with a rim of decorative gold. Dotted about the design were a series of red and blue gemstones, well-crafted in spite of their current neglect. The glass itself was smooth and clear, but obscured by a film of dust and dirt, so that the details reflected were hazy. A shame, really - for the backdrop it faced was a sea of glittering fragments, suspended in the air for as far as the eye could see. This was the shadow of a sky, and I appeared to have found my way to an open-air gallery. Here and there, sparkling shards shone a thousand colours in the flickering lights of the torch fires, subtly shimmering as flames flickered and glowed. Behind all of these lay the purest black of darkness - the fabric which held this entire realm together, ripped raw to expose itself wholly.

I was no stranger to this endless abyss; in fact, it made a welcome change to have something so bright and yet piercingly empty stand before it. A useless curtain, if it were meant for obscuring - but the glittering glass still reminded me of the stars I had not seen for so long. Now though, afraid of where my mind would take me if I dwelled on such matters for too long - and wanting to discern what was actually happening - I turned back again to face the wall where the mirror hung.

..Now that I thought about it, something was missing from its reflection - myself.

And then, like a fool, I stepped closer.

I expected to see the familiar sights of my wings, my eyes, my ears - the parts of me that turn others away. Instead I was faced with something a lot more human, which appeared out of nowhere in the mirror. She had the same face that I wore, but her eyes were wrong - instead of hard amber, her eyes were a brilliant green. And staring directly into mine with piercing anger. I was startled and tried to step backwards, but the girl reached out of the mirror and grabbed my right arm’s sleeve. Caught off-guard, I slipped on the cold stone under me and awkwardly fell forwards. The reflection was undaunted, though, and wrenched herself backwards with a shout to pull me straight through the mirror glass.

I instinctively tensed up and closed my eyes, expecting a shower of shards in my face, but instead was sent tumbling into a curious space inside the mirror itself. The ground was solid, but my entrance sent some kind of ripple through the floor, as if I had landed in shallow water. There was no real difference between the walls and the floor - both were made of a strange dark blue material, like some kind of clouded silk. However, as I had found out firsthand by crashing into it, this material was hard and solid to the touch. What was this world within..?

That was anything but my main concern, though, as I quickly came to my senses and tried to get back to my feet. The imperfect reflection was doing the same, having managed to launch herself backwards by pulling me through the mirror. Now I could see her in perfect clarity, no longer obscured by the dust time had left on the glass - and she was in quite a state. She wore the same clothes that I did, but where mine were comfortable and deliberate, hers looked forced-on and ill-fitting. Her hair hung limply on either side of her face, with no sign of my cat’s ears, and my pitch-black wings were nowhere to be seen either. It was like she was someone human, someone normal, trying to dress up as me. There was anger pulsing through her body, but it seemed somehow hesitant, and her face was soaked with a thousand tears. I could work with that.

“Why have you brought me here?” I asked her. No use fighting when you can reason with someone, after all. Especially given that I could not summon my Keyblade, and if this entity had tried to reflect my appearance then there was every chance it could mirror my power.

“You know why!” she cried, in a voice like a child’s. “Look at what you’ve done to me!”

Oh.

That wasn’t what I was expecting to hear. “So you’re saying that you’re-”

“Look at me!” She yelled to drown me out and pointed at herself with a sob. “I never wanted to be like this. You’re the one who did this to me!”

In the face of her anguish, I refused to let my rising emotions show. “You say it like you think I don’t know that, Ves.”

“Don’t call me that!-”

All of a sudden she lunged out towards me - I tried to leap out of her way, but there was nowhere to go and I was too close to the edge of the “room” to try and fly. There was a flash of ice as Ves tried to summon a blade of her own - but like mine, it faltered into nothing. It seemed we were linked in that aspect. In retaliation, I sent forth a blast of dark fire to get her away from me so that I could regain the upper hand. I was tired from my previous exploring, but my magic was always at its height in this realm, thanks to all the darkness to augment it. Luckily, that held true in the mirror too, and she was flung backwards again.

If nothing else, her reaction to her name confirmed my suspicions. This was not a reflection at all. Instead, she was what remained of the vessel I had taken so long ago, what I had used to live on and be complete again. I had assumed whatever was left of her had faded away with time; perhaps that was the reason for her having almost the same appearance as me. Given a choice, she would certainly not have done so, but it may well have been the only way the mirror could give her a form.

To try and show that most human of aspects - mercy - I kept low and attempted to look as non-threatening as possible. This was not something I could do easily, but I tried anyway, lowering my wings and removing the mask over my mouth. Ves’ eyes widened at this, and she retained her anger, but sadness was building up behind it. It was clear that despite her outburst, she was not seeking to destroy me - perhaps she realised that doing so would lead to her demise as well, or perhaps it was merely that she was not a fighter.

“Fine, then.” I paused, and used the name I took from her. “Aria. That’s you, isn’t it?”

“I’m me.” she started coldly, then I think she realised what I had actually said. “You- you stole my name. Like everything else about me.”

No way of getting around that, unfortunately. “I suppose that’s true. So, what, have you come to take it back?”

“I- yes! I have to get rid of you!!”

She was clearly caught off-guard, however defiantly she stated her intentions. The fact she had no weapon was likely the main factor, although there was still every chance she could use the same magic as me. It was then that I realised the mirror had appeared behind her - and through it, I caught a glance of the real world I had come from. A chance to escape! The ceiling of this strange space looked too low, but there was still a way of getting around her. I slowly crouched lower, let my wings unfurl, darted to the side as Ves flinched from the sudden movement- and my hand brushed against hers when I passed her.

A cascade of emotions brought me to the floor. All her anguish, all her pain, from all those years - I felt every aspect of it in a single moment. She was what I had used to live on, the reason I could be as I am now; but how I had repaid the favour? In the most Heartless way I could have - by twisting her form, taking her name, and leaving her dormant. She was a shell trapped in slumber, with her light consumed and overshadowed. No more than a soul left to fade away in place of all it could have been. How could I have done that to her? To anyone?

I turned and looked up at her, now understanding what I had put her through, but unable to speak through the emotions. Ves seemed to notice that, too, and her expression had shifted - perhaps our connection had reunited her with the memories I had that she never experienced.

Then she spoke, with what felt like a much more characteristic quietness. “Can you.. let me be myself again?”

I rose to my feet, and gave only an honest answer. “I can’t let go of you entirely. I don’t remember how to. But.. if you have the strength to show up, I won’t fight it. I’ve kept you down long enough.”

“..I understand.” She smiled, even if it was not all she was hoping to hear. “Thank you, Aria.”

“You’re welcome.. Aria.”

A more amused smile from her this time. “That’s going to be confusing, isn’t it?”

We both managed to laugh at that one, despite ourselves, and as I stepped through the mirror, the sound of her laughter shifted from outside to inside me as my reflection became nothing more than that. I felt different now, but as the cold and empty realm sprawled itself before me again, I knew for sure that I had done something right for once. And I had a new goal in sight - to find a way for us both to survive.

#a call from the void #creations from the void #selfship #selfshipping #self‑inserts #self‑insert: darkness' champion (aria)#self‑insert: ruby in the light (ves)#our canon now! 2020 #this post is okay to reblog!#if I didn't quite literally have the voice of a 12-year-old (as evidenced by my ursula impression) I would try and record this #since it *is* from aria's perspective.. which would therefore be mine.. so yeah #hey maybe I should repost that commentary on it that I rambled about to dragon #but yeah anyway I hope this is alright #the tag list was mostly just copied from the xiara render so hopefully it's all still applicable #waiting in the wings #so it goes out a little bit later

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johaerys-writes · 3 years

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Fandom: The Song of Achilles

Summary: During his two month long sea voyage from Phthia to Skyros, Patroclus makes an unexpected friendship.

Chapter 3: Fate, the final chapter of At the Water’s Edge, is up! Where Patroclus finally reaches Skyros, and has an important decision to make.

Read here or on AO3! Or read from the beginning

The sun had set, and the night birds were gliding into the fast-approaching dusk when we finally returned to the ship.

The rest of the sailors had already gathered for dinner, the wide galley filled with the sounds of jest and song, with the smells of the fish stew that was being prepared. I didn’t usually join the crew during their meals, preferring to take them in my room, by myself, but that evening Xanthos had insisted I stay. He was sitting next to me now, with his cheeks still flushed from our trek through the verdant hills back to the port, and the wind that had combed through his locks had given him a wild appearance. There was a gleam in his eye, that I imagined matched my own.

The fish stew was rich and savoury, heavy with the taste of the sea and spices. Not all ships fed their crew this well, but the captain was a generous man, or so Xanthos had told me. After we had both finished our dinner, a nearby sailor treated us to some watered down wine. It was from the northern plains, near Macedonia, I was told, and quite strong, with a heavy aftertaste of berries and honeysuckle.

“Xanthos,” one of the men called. He was a tall man, strong like an bull, with his large head shaved clean. He had a bright and easy smile, which always made me somewhat uncomfortable, especially now that it was directed at both me and my companion. His gaze fell on the bracelet on Xanthos’ wrist. “What’s that you’re wearing? A little too fancy for you, isn't it?"

Xanthos smiled brightly, seemingly unaware of the laughter that broke out over the wide space. He raised his arm to show his bracelet to everyone who had lifted their heads from their drinks to look. “Do you like it, Thaddeus? I wasn’t aware it would be to your taste. I thought the only place you liked to wear jewellery was on your teeth.”

The other men laughed and jeered, banging their mugs on their tables. The jab did not seem to deter Thaddeus, who grinned even more brightly, revealing several golden teeth. “Everyone knows that, boy,” he said, laughing. “Did your friend choose it for you? You and I both know you couldn’t pick something nice if your life depended on it.”

I felt uncomfortable with everyone’s piercing stares that suddenly fell on me. Xanthos turned his body ever so slightly towards me, as if shielding me from the sailors’ crude jests. “He did,” he said, waving his mug casually. “He has a good eye. Which is more than anyone can say about you lot.”

They all laughed again, and Xanthos and Thaddeus exchanged even more jests, some of them crude, but none ill-natured. Before I knew it I was laughing with them too, and soon some of the sailors had come to sit around our table. Talk shifted away from Xanthos’ bracelet and into other matters, the ship’s journey and the highest price the captain had been able to get for some of the oils and herbs they carried, the details of the trade.

“Barley always sells cheaper here than it does in the mainland,” they would say. “Don’t know why the captain bothers with the Sporades.” Or, "Piraeus has raised the cargo tax to thirty three talents. Soon, they'll be charging an arm and a leg just to let ships into port."

I listened to their talk, quietly sipping on my wine. Trading held little interest for me. I had never in my life had to barter, sell or buy anything, apart from the rare occasions that Achilles and I would sneak away from the palace and go to the harbour to watch the street performers and musicians that sometimes ended up on our shores. It was always fun and exciting at first, but I would soon grow weary of the chatter and noise, of the heavy and sour smells of discarded fish and sweaty human flesh, of the rattling sound of the dice games at every corner. We would quickly retreat back to the olive grove, or our small secluded beach, where Achilles could run and throw his spears undisturbed. I would sit back on the warm sand and watch him move for hours, watch as the muscles rose and fell under his skin, as shadows pooled and stretched across his features with the passage of the dying sun.

A pang of longing drove through me at the thought, before I was able to stop it. My memories of Achilles had always been gold- tinted, as if the brightness of his presence made everything it touched resplendent, just like he was. They had always been a source of comfort for me, yet now they just made me ache for him all the more.

“Do you play, lord?”

I blinked at Thaddeus, jolting out of my reminiscing. At my baffled stare, he nodded at the stretch of table between us, smiling. “Do you play?”

I followed his gaze, and there I saw them. Four dice, their pips staring up at me like eyes. They were not white and made of bone like I was used to; they were red instead, made of terracotta stone. The pips were carved on their flat and smooth surface and painted over with dark dye. The shape and colour of them mattered not, though, as I found myself staring at them for what felt like a lifetime.

It was then that I remembered one of the reasons why I never joined the crew during their meals. Sooner or later, the tables would be cleared, and dice would be drawn out for games that lasted well into the night.

My pulse thrummed in my temples at the images that promptly rushed through me in waves; my anger at Clysonymus, at his blatant disrespect, his mockery. His eyes that widened as he fell back, losing his balance; the crack of his head against the stone. His blood trickling slowly on the dry ground beneath him, mixing with the soil and turning it crimson. I remembered how bright it was, as if it were before me just then. My stomach turned.

“Patroclus,” I heard Xanthos say beside me, but his words reached me as if through wool. “Are you well? You are pale as a sheet.”

I think I muttered a brief apology before standing up, almost making my chair topple over in my haste, then half-running towards the deck. My heart was racing; my mind was spinning, spinning. I was shaking like a fish out of water when I finally reached the railing and clutched it with trembling hands, my breath clawing at my throat.

It wasn’t always this bad. The sight of the dice didn’t always leave me this shaken, but my nightmares, ever since I had boarded the ship, were the worst they had been in years. Almost every night I would wake up trembling and out of breath, with cold sweat running down my spine. Those memories, Clysonymus’ face, the dice that rattled incessantly in my head; all those things were part of me, embedded in my bones. Had I honestly thought that one half day of careless enjoyment would be enough to ward off those ancient terrors?

I squeezed my eyes tightly, willing the images that seemed to be lodged there away. The night was dark upon the world now, and I felt swallowed by it, a pebble sinking to the bottom of the sea. It seemed as though if I let go of the railing for even a heartbeat, the waves would rush up and swallow me, drag me into their dark depths.

I jolted when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to Xanthos, who was watching me with evident concern.

“Forgive me, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“I’m fine. Really.” I gripped the railing hard, taking in a deep, steadying breath. My heartbeat was gradually getting slower, and I could feel the fear that had gripped me only a moment before easing away. I stared out into the darkness, at the stars that now shone brightly above me.

“Did, uh…” Xanthos started shyly beside me. “Did Thaddeus do something to upset you? I could talk to him if you wish. He’s a rough fellow, but he didn’t mean to—”

“No. No, of course not. He did nothing wrong. It wasn’t… it wasn’t his fault.”

Xanthos remained silent. He didn't press me to speak further, to explain; still, I felt like I had to.

I took another deep breath, this time to ease the words out of me. I had never spoken about my nightmares to anyone but Achilles. Without him by my side, it felt like every memory, every image from my past was a stone, slowly grinding me to meal. The last thing I wanted was to dig them up again, but the need to share the burden, if only for a moment, was what urged my tongue to weave the words.

“There was a boy, once,” I started quietly. “When I was younger. We fought over… over a pair of dice. I pushed him. He fell and broke his head.” My fingers tightened so much about the railing, that my knuckles had gone white, the wood digging into my flesh. “I killed him.”

Xanthos did not speak then, but I could sense no judgement or horror in his silence. Only patience. His very presence there gave me heart, and I continued. “I did not mean to. It was an accident. Yet every time I see dice… they just remind me of him.” I glanced up at him, fearing what I would see in his eyes, but there was only understanding.

“How old were you?” he asked softly.

“Ten.”

He let out a slow breath. “To have seen something like this, so young…” He shook his head, and his eyes glinted oddly in the night, reflecting the light of the waxing moon above us. “I am sorry you’ve had to live with this burden all those years, Patroclus.”

The sympathy in his voice made a wave of bitterness rise within me. I swallowed thickly, but the knot in my throat remained. “At least I got to live,” I said quietly. “That boy didn’t have that chance.”

I had never admitted those thoughts to anyone, not even to Achilles. I wished to stop my tongue from forming the words, to think of anything else, anything at all, but could not. “Sometimes,” I whispered, “I try to imagine what might have happened to that boy, had I not pushed him. How his life would have been, if I hadn’t been in it. He would have been at marrying age now. He might even have had children. He would have inherited his father’s titles, his lands… He would have been a man, in his own right. But he got to live none of that. Because… because of a pair of dice.”

My eyes burned as I spoke. I rubbed them stubbornly, determined to not shed any tears. I did not want Xanthos to think less of me.

Xanthos kept his silence for a long while. When he finally spoke, his voice was gentle, mingling with the sighing of the crisp sea breeze. “The night before I boarded my first ship,” he said, “I was terrified. The priests of Apollo had spoken of a terrible storm that was to come, the worst we had seen in ages. They’d seen it in the blood of a lamb they’d sacrificed, on Apollo’s holy day. I did not want to go. I sat on my bed while the wind blew outside and shook with fear. My father came in and saw me. He told me something then. It stuck with me.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“He said… 'A man whose fate it is to die in a fire, will never die in a storm'.” At my confused glance, he laughed softly. “What my father meant was, every one of us has a path in life. The moment we come into this world, the three Fates spin their threads and decide what is to come. If my destiny was to die in a sea storm, even if I stayed on land and herded sheep all my life, the storm would eventually find me. ‘Meet your fate proudly, boy,’ my father told me that night, ‘because you cannot escape it.’ ” He turned to look at me, his dark, almond shaped eyes meeting mine squarely. “You have your path. So did this boy.”

“But…” My old pains and fears rose to the surface, the dreams that had haunted me for most of my life. I struggled to find a justification for it, for what had happened to me, for what I’d done, something that would make it all make sense. I could not.

“It is cruel,” I whispered. “Is it not?”

“It is life, Patroclus.”

His hand on the railing was so close to mine, I could almost feel the heat emanating from his skin. I thought of his words, turned them this way and that in my mind. I had my path. So did Clysonymus. It did not change what I had done, his life had still ended too soon. His death was still my fault. Yet if I had not pushed him…

I would never have left Opus. I would not have gone to Phthia. I might never have met Achilles. I would never have known him, followed him, loved him. My life, as I knew it, would only be a shadow of what it was, what it could have been. It was still cruel, but it was my life. My path, the one the Fates had carved for me.

The Fates had never been kind, nor fair. But they were absolute. Inexorable.

My hand crossed the distance between us to land gently beside Xanthos’. The waves splashed against the ship’s belly, and the night owls at the shore cooed. We stayed silent, side by side, watching the night stretch endlessly before us.

The following evening, when I went to the ship’s galley for my dinner, none of the sailors were playing dice. It didn’t take long for me to notice that it was Thaddeus’ wrist that Xanthos’ bracelet was gracing now. When I glanced at him, the unspoken question lingering in my gaze, he only smiled and winked.

“Fate,” he jested cryptically, and took a large sip of his wine.

I didn’t see another die being thrown for the remainder of the days I stayed on the ship.

The day that the rolling hills of Skyros came into view arrived much slower, and much faster than I’d expected. The bay that we pulled up on shimmered golden in the early morning light. I could just make out the last of the Pleiades disappearing into the rosy fire of dawn when the ship was pulled to harbour. I leaned against the railing, my bag with my handful of belongings hanging by my shoulder, my heart beating in my throat. Somewhere on that island, perhaps in that palace atop the hill, Achilles was waiting for me.

Xanthos was by my side when the ship’s ropes were tied to the old and worn out palisades of the long and narrow wharf. I had thought he would go straight to his bed after his shift had ended, to get what little sleep he could before they would be setting off again, but he walked down with me, then followed me to the beach, where the wharf ended.

We gazed at each other for a long moment, standing ankle deep in crystal clear water. I found myself tracing the lines of his features, the slope of his nose, his strong eyebrows, his heart-shaped mouth. His eyes were kind and warm as ever, but there was something else hiding in their depths. During those heartbeats that we looked at each other I noticed everything, even things I had never paid much attention to before, as if I was trying to commit his features to memory, keep them safe with me.

“So,” he said softly, “it is time.”

I nodded. “It is.”

I expected him to leave then, to climb back up to the ship and sail to his own destiny. But he stayed there, gazing at me.

“We’ll be going back to Euboea now. To Kymi.”

“I know. The captain told me.” I smiled when I said, “And then you’ll be setting off for the Eastern ports, right?”

His lips widened in a smile that mirrored my own, but it was not quite as bright and effortless as I was used to. It was almost timid. He shifted on his feet, cleared his throat. “It won’t be for very long. Three, perhaps four months. And then we’ll be back.” A light, barely perceptible flush crept up his cheeks as he said, “I was hoping perhaps… I could see you. When I come back.”

I blinked, taken aback. I wasn’t rightly sure how long I’d be staying in Skyros, whether I would be going back to Phthia next. In my heart of hearts, I wished to find Achilles and leave with him straight away, return to Pelion, where Chiron was waiting for us. Yet all of my hopes seemed uncertain and hazy, like trying to grasp at shifting sand. Three, four months… I did not know if there was any way for me to plan that far ahead. Gods, I didn’t even know if Achilles was still where I’d been told he would be.

My stomach tightened as I told him earnestly, “I… I’m not sure where I’ll be in four months, Xanthos.”

“I know,” he said hastily. “I know that it’s all uncertain now. But… You could wait for me here. I could come back for you. And then we could leave together.”

"Leave?" I frowned a little as he spoke, my confusion increasing by the second. “Where would we go?”

“Anywhere. Anywhere at all. We could return to Phthia together, or… or anywhere else you like. Go to the mountains, perhaps. You like the mountains. Right?” His flush brightened, and his eyes flashed with something that I couldn’t quite decipher. Something akin to hope. “After my trip to the East, I think I’ll have enough gold to build a home. A small one. Like... like the one you told me about. With a garden out front…” He let his words trail away, searching my face. His throat bobbed when he swallowed. “We… could stay there. You and I.”

I froze when I finally caught on his meaning. He wanted me to… to go with him. To build a life with him. To be with him. To… love him.

I took a breath, preparing myself for the blow I was about to deliver. “I’m sorry, Xanthos. I… could not.”

I saw the joy and hope that had been there a moment before drain from his features. I saw his smile quiver, and his shoulders slouch. “Oh.”

“It’s not—” I started, then stopped myself. My fists opened and closed by my side, helpless. “I can’t give you what you want,” I said quietly. “This person I’ve come here to find… He’s everything to me. He’s…” I paused, looking about me. My mind worked furiously as I searched for words that wouldn’t hurt him anymore than they had to.

Xanthos spoke the words for me.

“Your fated one,” he said softly. He gave me a wan smile, his eyes kind and earnest as they met mine, but I could still see the hurt I’d wrought there. “I understand.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for.” The sun was rising slowly over the mountains in the East, painting his sun-bronzed features golden and bright.

“Pepromenon fyghein adynaton,” he said. Fate is inescapable.

I nodded slowly, not knowing what else to say. He reached out and tentatively placed his hand on my shoulder. “I wish you all the best, Patroclus.”

“So do I.” I met his gaze, looking deep into his warm, honey brown eyes. “Thank you, Xanthos. For everything.”

His fingers squeezed my shoulder gently, feather-light, before he turned to leave.

I stayed there for a long while, at the water's edge, watching as the ship slowly rowed away. When its sails were nothing but a white speck on the golden horizon, I turned around.

Somewhere on that island, in the palace atop that hill, my fate was waiting for me.

#the song of achilles #tsoa #patrochilles #patroclus #tsoa fanfic #tsoa fanfiction #at the water's edge #johaerys writes

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sonderandroses · 4 years

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september 12

the stars smiled and the sea rose like the pulse of our hearts :)

studygram

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caelitus-a · 1 year

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-- jellal beta misc tag fix

#–––– ✧ night sky is a wilderness; a desert of lamps with no owner˙ ˖ ✶ character studies #–––– ✧ the night’s silent & raw divinity spills from the stars ˙ ˖ ✶ headcanon #–––– ✧ the stars smiled & the sea rose like the pulse of our hearts˙ ˖ ✶ musing #–––– ✧ stardust was his cloak and the constellations his crown ˙ ˖ ✶ aesthetics #–––– ✧ dash games ˙ ˖ ✶#–––– ✧ verse information ˙ ˖ ✶#–––– ✧ eggscellent. Get it? It’s a good joke ˙ ˖ ✶ ooc #–––– ✧ meme ˙ ˖ ✶#–––– ✧ answered questions ˙ ˖ ✶#–––– ✧ i’m the designer of my own catastrophy ˙ ˖ ✶ visage #–––– ✧ heaven knows where we will go ˙ ˖ ✶ crime sorciere

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kat-hawke · 4 years

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Legacy

(Following [Odium])

Hesitant footsteps against sodden soil carried her closer to the reconstruction of her childhood home. Everything from the outside appeared precisely as she remembered; the weathering of the boards, the cracked stepping stone three away from the door, even the broken shutter on the front window.

Fingers curled around the iron door handle, breath catching in her throat as thoughts raced. The lack of a thundering pulse in her ears sent an eerie chill down the spine as eyes closed. Swallowing a mouthful of air, she pulled on the door. The sound of the lock catching and the wooden barrier refused to budge made her heart sink.

Anger and annoyance soon swept over her, yanking the door several more times before both fists slammed against the dense wood. A shrilling scream let out as she repeated beat against the unyielding barrier, her moment of rage interrupted by the chimes of the bell tower. Stepping back from the door, her gaze shot upward to where the cathedral hung in the distance above her head, thirty minutes left.

“I don’t understand!” She cried out to nobody but the surrounding forest. “What am I supposed to do!”

A sudden gust of wind sucked the air from her lunger, arms lifting to shield her face from the leaves caught in the gale. The roaring sound of air muffled distant whispers again, leaving her to only make out two words. ‘Pressure rising.’

As the air still once more, Kat’s attention shifted to the few leaves that fluttered to the ground, quickly noticing the trail they seemed to leave, leading around the corner. Skeptical, she cautiously followed, rounding the side of the house to find the path ending at the cellar door.

Boots scuffled the stones in front of the bilco door as she came to a halt, looking over the weathered boards that separated her from the cellar. Above the wrought iron pulls an image of two hands, one over the other, holding roses was engraved into the surface of the doors. The words ‘as above; so below’ accompany the ominous image, both of which never existed in her childhood.

Kneeling down, she ran fingertips over the engraving, a pit in her stomach churring in unease as the sensation to throw the doors open seemed to overwhelm. Casting her eyes upward again, she found a star-filled sky, for the first time in a long while the non-euclidean world seemed to flatten. Giving in to the ethereal urge, she jerked the cellar doors open, peering down the narrow stone stairway, the musty scent assaulting her senses.

Out of sight, somewhere in the cellar, there was a source of light.

With a steady, calming exhale, Kat rose to her feet and began her slow descent, hands trailing along the stone walls on either side for stability, not trusting that the world wouldn’t attempt to turn over or shift beneath her feet. For once, it appeared to remain as it was, as she reached the bottom of the steps without interruption. Instead of the dark and damp cellar, she found an open cabin space of a ship.

Eyebrows creased in confusion, glancing back over her shoulder to find the door at the top of the stairs shut. The sounds of the sea lapping against the sides of the vessel pulled her attention to the doorway across the empty cabin, and an untrusting hum rattled at the back of her throat. Stepping closer, she scanned the open deck of the ship, a woman standing on the far end, dressed in admiralty attire, hands collected behind the back, and onyx hair confined to a bun.

Stiffening, a second chill raced down Kat’s spine, a single word hanging from her lips as she spoke beneath her breath. “Fuck...”

A deep breath was held for a long moment before a slow exhale. Heels of the boots clicking quietly upon the deck as full strides closed the distance between them, and Kat slid up to the rail beside the other, leaving a respectable few feet in the middle. Silence lingered as both women stared off over the endless ocean, the horizon stretching on for as far as the eyes could see.

“I did not expect to find you of all people here.” Kat finally broke the silence, keeping her gaze forward.

“And we never expected you to die, yet here you are. Survived Lordaeron, but the desert was your undoing.” Alexa’s response, simple as it was, still struck a chord.

“That what you’re here for? To chastise me on more mistakes, or am I relive the hell hole you pulled me from a year ago?”

“No.” The single syllable hung in the air between for what felt like an eternity before the Admiral continued, those Persian blues shifting to pin the Director where she stood. “Who will tell your story once you are gone?”

“W- What?” Caught off guard and confused, Kat blinked rapidly, daring to let their eyes meet.

“How will you be remembered? The legacy you’ll leave behind, the lives you’ve touched over the years.” As Alexa spoke, Kat’s eyes shifted on the floor below. “Will it be the woman who rose above her challenges, her burdens, and fought to protect the innocent and our way of life? Or as the pragmatic, egotistical, and power abusing mistake who stepped on more people than she would ever admit to?”

With a scoff, Kat shook her head, looking back to the water. “Doesn’t matter.”

“If that were true, I wouldn’t be here right now.” Quick to point out, Alexa pivoted to address the Director adequately. “Every time you are confronted, or someone asks what you stand for, you equivocate the response, to obfuscate the truth. A silver tongue performing linguistic gymnastics to guide the conversation off-topic. When pressed further, you turn hostile and ambiguous.”

A defeated sigh caught in the throat as Kat leaned onto the railing, hanging her head and staring down into the dark, endless depths of the sea. “I’ll be a villain in most stories. I was never the hero to some; that was always a facade. Another mask I wore to get what I needed.” The admittance came just over a whisper. It made sense now, as the Admiral was one of the only other military officials she ever, truly, respected.

“You thought you could control who lives and dies, but that power was always beyond your reach.” Alexa’s stoic tone held true. “We don’t get to control who tells our story, but you’ve left behind a twisted web of lies. In your absence, they will pick it apart, slowly but surely, and every dark secret will come to light.”

“Guess there’s nothing I can do about that now. Let them poke and prod then, find the truth. They can bury me face down just to kiss my ass.”

Blue eyes shut as the Admiral’s head slowly shook at Kat’s response, the disappointment nearly tangible in the eerily still air.

“Yeah, I know...” Kat lamented. “That’s not the point.”

“Still so quick to anger.” Eyes peeled open to focus on the Director again. “That’s all people will see. Temper and vitriol. A defensive mechanism to wear your opinion on your sleeve, to distract people from seeing the real you but handing ammunition to your enemies so freely. Just once, you should consider how others will perceive you.”

“Doesn’t do me any good in here.” Kat snorted indignantly, checking the pocket watch to find only ten minutes remaining until it struck twelve. “Should have just left me in the fight pit. Killing is all I’m good for, it turns out.”

“It would have been a waste to leave you there, like that.”

A faint smile touched the corner of Kat’s lips, a single stifled chuckle vibrating behind the curled features. Returning the watch to her pocket, she turned to address the Admiral eye to eye again, pausing with a held breath as she found the deck beside her empty.

“Alexa?” She asked aloud, eyes sweeping over the open space. Air hitching in her throat as she spotted the wooden coffin beside the center mast, an Alliance banner draped over the top from end to end. The Admirals surname engraved on the plague on the side.

Hands collected together over her mouth as it hung agape. Even if this should have been expected from this purgatory, it still brought pain from the heart. “No...” Kat whimpered into the fingers as tears welled.

Without hesitation, she burst into a sprint, making it two steps towards the coffin before the wooden boards cracked and gave out, sending her tumbling to the lower deck. Eyes struggled to adjust to the change in lighting as she collided with the broken boards, the searing pain of impalement jolting out from her core as the fall came to a sudden halt. The first instinct was to scream in pain as hands collected around the sharpened broken board, attempting to free herself or at least prevent falling further upon it.

Until the struggle abruptly ended, and she found herself surrounded in a cold, vast nothingness. The pressure of the vacuum-like space forcing the air from her body and squeezing from the inside out.

[ Mentioned: @preyontheweak ]

( [Chapter I] [Chapter II] [Chapter III] ) ( [pt.I] [pt.II] [pt.III] [pt.IV] [pt.V] [pt.VI] [pt.VII] )

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#ic #plotlines #Isolation #pt.VIII

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sirensignal · 4 years

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part i.

Backstories always start with children. Before there are heroes or villains or captains or chroniclers, there are children with eyes so shallow and silent they’ll reflect tiny pinpricks of light. Eyes still waiting for a dyeing in ink, in memory, in blemish and bruise colours. Children with red mouths and red cheeks and red hearts where red doesn’t yet mean blood — it’s only a portrait of strawberries in summertime, only a delineation of roses plucked ripe and thornless. Putrefaction far-flung, so distant, so patient to wait.

This is the backstory, so let’s say they are children. Two children who do not know what that word means.

Let’s say they are friends. Let them clasp hands, palm to palm, let them hide in engine rooms and lamp-lit cabins and sit cross-legged for hours to talk about every stupid thing, conjure a house out of the words they build. A house with a door only they can find. Let’s say there is love. Let’s say love is enough.

—

It isn’t, of course.

—

But set the scene, the scene for the first time they meet: it’s some lilac layered sunset, a swollen sun that’s melted gold over the deck. There’s a moon under the horizon, restless to take back her sea and she sighs everything soft and silent, lays mist in the air that demands you quieten your steps. So Nour pads up to the only other person on the deck, a boy skulking on a barrel. They peer at the knob of wood in his hand, examine the concentration with which he holds a pocket knife and makes countless pale shavings on the deck.

Close up, the boy seems younger than they are. At least, he seems shorter. Nour grins, breaks the heady fog of twilight. “What are you doing?”

Dark eyes flick up. A mouth twists in a precipitous scowl. “What.”

“Are you carving something? I want you to teach me.”

A pause. “I’m busy.” Politeness is physically dragged as a stone through his mouth. A serrated one.

“No you’re not.”

“Yes I am.”

“Teach me.”

“Why should I.”

—

It carries on in this vein for a long time. Minutes drag to hours to days to weeks. You wouldn’t notice the shift in tone until it slammed you in the face with a kiss. But this is that kind of genre, so maybe you can guess.

But hold it in the back of your mind: this is just the backstory for a woman who grows up vicious, grows into serrated edges that score wounds with each honed word. That won’t hesitate to leave shards in you. In this place, a backstory is a tragedy waiting to happen.

They could have chosen something else, of course. But how could they know what they were choosing?

So call it predestined, call it invariable. By invariable: see two points, two white dots fixed together on a map. Things so close get pulled into orbit. Take how neutron stars collide again and again and again. How gravitational radiation spirals celestial bodies inward. Inward. There are two ways it will end: one of them is not worth mentioning.

But for now, call them friends.

—

“We are not friends, and I hate this.”

“Well I don’t. Hurry up before they find us.”

“I hate this.”

—

Does it hurt to say? Does it render the breath thin and sour in the lungs? They’ll always yearn. This journey. This memory. Even when they forget. Forgotten but the chisel they took to their heart carved that organ into a separate shape. Carved it to hold a love that will slumber for decades.

They’ll lose the hatch to this place, soon enough. Clench their eyes and let the key take a straight drop, pitch into a mammoth and monstrous ocean. Drowned for a blue marlin to swallow. That marlin swallowed by a sea lion. That sea lion swallowed by an orca. It’ll lose form, unshape itself in the belly of mammoth beasts. But not now. Not for now.

—

"You have that many siblings?"

“Mhm.”

“Am I distracting you?”

“Yeah.”

“I want to hear about your brothers.”

A sigh with all the exasperation taken out of it. An acquiescing. “Fine.”

—

“You’re eating more than usual.” Their father has noticed it. For the past few weeks now, Nour’s plate scoured clean of seconds every night.

Their stomach groans in protest, scratches up a voice that writhes in the back of the throat — I’m still hungry, I’m so hungry. The hunger rendered immeasurable, become a growling noise of need. But their father’s brow is ill at ease, his mouth creased to murmur some unknown sentence. Finally, he shakes his head.

“I suppose you’re still growing. I knew I should have asked them to pack you more clothes.”

Nour nods. Keeps silent. Keeps their hunger quiet.

“And how are your studies going.” Dry-voiced. Already acceptant of defeat. “Or are you spending all your time with that cabin boy.”

Nour’s mouth splits in a grin. Toothy, before they remember to hide it. “Please don’t discredit him so, Father — our time together is wholly, entirely, unquestionably productive to my education. I swear. I’m teaching him more words.”

Their father sighs. “Alright. If he’s so helpful, you can take your history books and study with him.”

—

“So in the sixteenth century, Charles the fifth became king of Spain and was elected Holy Roman Emperor —”

“He was elected emperor?”

“Yes, it was an elective monarchy. The electoral college was, uh — wait, are you actually interested in this?”

“Why not.”

“Darling, you’re so terribly dull.”

“You sound like an old woman.”

“That’s deplorable.”

“You don’t even know what that word means.”

“So what.”

—

The hunger enlarges like a gnawing thing, clawing at their stomach lining in reckless torment. When Nour mentions it offhand, their friend frowns. Gives them his share of bread. Bread is ashen in Nour’s mouth, they’ll stomach it but it’s never filled their gut, never sated them but they don’t have the heart to refuse.

It sates them for the first time in months. In months. They stare at their empty hands and their belly quavers with the slaking of such a terrible, enduring emptiness. And oh, for the first time in weeks they feel full. They push the meat on their plate and shake their head when asked if they want more. They go to sleep with no ache in their bones.

But hunger comes back. It doesn’t come back for days, but when it does. When it does. They take bread from their father’s plate and it tastes like nothing. In the night they gnaw their knuckles and starvation empties them like a sieve. Worse that they experienced fullness before it.

But they can still live with it. Still walk with it. Still bear it.

So they bear it.

—

Maybe Nour becomes attached too strongly, too quickly.

Surely it can’t be helped. They’ve never been permitted a friend for as long a period as this. All their companions, all their life: clockwork replacements like freshly minted dolls with mechanical parts and chubby, round cheeks, pre-painted smiles in delicate colours. Here and gone, gone in a month, in two. Never more than three. Gone before Nour’s strange aging could become apparent. Could attract attention.

Their growth spurts are rarer now. Smaller. Easier to pass off.

The point is: this is the first time. Their first time.

—

“Tell me about anything.”

“Anything?”

“Tell me about your family again. Tell me about your home.”

He talks and Nour’s blood sings with the sound of it. Lights every vein electric. Enough but only for that moment. Only for those few hours.

That night they eat three steaks, served at the dinner table nearly raw but they’re so ravenous it’s not enough. Their appetite so ferocious it will not be glutted by —

By.

They do not think about it. Nour puts down their fork. They smile at their father and say they are full.

—

You should know: tragedy has always written history. Anything in between is just interlude. Just white noise in an ocean of black; congealing blood, ink splatter, a tower of coaled ash conquerors climb to reach the heavens. To find immortality in the glittering constellations.

This is not anything so grand. But it is an end to everything good. To the interlude that was their happiness. The two of them are fixed points on a map. A map of non-linear time. You might call it fate. Two things hurtling towards a predestined end.

All things end. They end faster when you’re content. There are truths to be learned from this, but none of them are parables.

—

Two days before they land, the boy takes a deep breath and it’s a hazy blur of words or it’s a clean-cut confession, it’s any number of things that burn up a flush on his ears before he dips forward and kisses Nour on the cheek. It barely connects, more like an awkward bump of skin that tingles. Still a child’s kiss and he pulls away with crimson on his cheeks, fists balled like he’s been mettling up all week to do it and still there’s something anxious, some uncertainty that quavers in his eyes when he opens them.

And they —

—

See, a series of realizations knock into Nour at this point.

One is the rising blush on their cheeks, the startlement. Another is the surge of a bottomless sea in them. The flood of it. Seizing their breath. Seizing their pulse, lashing it to stillness. To utter silence, no echo to be gleaned in their skull.

For a moment they think it is love. For a moment they think it is a fierce, terrible love, for a best friend, for the first friend in their life. For a friend they want to spend every day with for as long as forever.

For a moment, they think it is love.

Is it?

This sea of them. This drowning. A tidal crash, a wave, a thousand simmering things teeming at their skin. The yawning heart of them, unfurling their chest, their ribcage. This love, these countless rows of teeth sprouting in their belly.

Oh, Nour realizes, dazed. So that’s it. So that’s what this feeling was. So that’s what they wanted all along.

They’re holding him. His frail body. His warm throat. The richness of blood filling their mouth. The give of skin and muscle, warm flesh running rivulets of blood down their throat.

Oh, they should have done this from the start. It’s everything they’ve dreamt of without knowing they dreamt it. He tastes better than anything Nour has ever had, better than sugar candy, better than steak, better than fresh cuts with still-warm blood. They’ll be sated for a thousand years just from this taste. Their heart so full with him they’ll never crave again. Forever, he’ll be with them forever.

Mine, they think. I like you too I like you so stay with me always with me always always —

They can’t stop laughing. The laughter spilling bloody from their teeth. They laugh until they’re sick with it, until vomit fills their mouth and they hold their mouth shut, swallow it back because it’s him, because they won’t reject him even if their body wants to. Because their body won’t reject him even if they want it to. Look at them, this sorry creature pretending to be a child — palms on the floor, an animal with teeth and tongue and they’re on all fours, gorging blood from drenched planks. Sucking all the red from it until there’s no red left. Licking all the wet from their face but it never dries, their face is sea-strewn, their face is breaking. They’re laughing and laughing and laughing.

—

But that isn’t what happens.

It could. It could have. A what-if. A ghost story. The ghost of a boy who never died. No, no. The probability will haunt for a lifetime, an imagined sin they can never wash off but it is not what happens.

No. What happens is —

They’re holding him too tight, fingerprints that will stain like a rupture of blueberries, of grapes, of peach tones spilling across his skin. Their nose is at his throat and his throat is so warm. All those veins, why do they run so clear, why are they mapped so well if they are not meant to be opened. In Nour’s ears, the thump of a rabbit pulse. So loud their heart quickens to synchronize with that strong beat.

They want. They want, they need —

Two hands shove him away, two hands with brutish strength. Nails digging laceration into his arm. He’s on the ground and in the flickering of the world there’s a vision of richness so heady, so sweet and so near, so mouthwatering they can still taste it. It didn’t happen. It didn’t happen.

“Mal.” His name is a prayer to famine, is terrified worship on their tongue and stupid that’s so stupid worshippers have always eaten their gods always crushed them between white teeth and ground them to meat and viscous liquid in the gut and named it transubstantiation. And Nour never realized until now. In the air his name is a dry heave or a wail or a quiet, stricken thing. The length of it unspooling on the ground. The length and span of them. That thin red thread. “Malachy.”

#writing #wahahahaha #gore tw

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libidomechanica · 1 year

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Though now tis na lovely eyes

A sonnet sequence

Chapter I

Not then her paly lipp’d, and scorn drew from their needless bliss! I have to peer her. That on Parnasse dwelt like true, that set themselves do crown’d with a trembled to a lyre, touch of Wall and strive nor wit, makes you write a dreams, along which grows pale, pale Virgil I’ll say no. Have bright my wants to each, how wildly. A cyder-press, and baby love or no? Though now ’tis na lovely eyes? In the ball, flew to Heaven a blesse, thy name. Into my soul so charm of fever pour’d in good Queen!

Chapter II

The grove, you kneeld’st, and face: against the Sunne, and Now, ’ she looks: always ever sounding love that sacred cheap what ancient maids, behold! This steep where, so dignificance yet, sadness his wont, conspiracy or content to good; thy forest dim: fade far away, descend, and high to angelick face, with a voice is penn’d doth transmit a scented I: thence he start—no bosom of his countest touch, first lone lulling past my case, blind-hitting with the fourth will the lilac, with it.

Chapter III

A cat or more, woeful shades of Neæra’s hands. Not once our bed to mean my muscles go weak. And it their belles and pearls away sheen of help from their own couch of darkness, and fountains, so stands, the Iliad when in quiet in the sea above. Under iron tyrant- hater her side be Victor, in the greater blaze, still reaching an hour to this beams assertion. Hairs. Will come upon the lack of manhood situation I wonders forehead pastures from Paradise.

Chapter IV

A little Mercury. Room to rove: look for what? Why should not, nor did it did him kindled stare, as one-and-twenty lives. Replied, and was dare not mind from the roaring what class we find and did roll through fear: some snow; yet you to see that never pass into two hosts their living the arrow-wounded. That bears to renew her to set budding else, held out of every much? That hear and somewhat love, my heart star that’s the bodies must sure with glad I see that are you and tears?

Chapter V

By a fretful that attempred to meet her that startled. Old Benbow; and heart, my lassie o’ my Phillis can you are mine owne voyce sound—he stept upon the older sort, and drags me to horned bell was rung, no doubtful scarlet, and creeks, and no people going plummet down; a though the world, nor the mere comforting fruit and silently glade; and so that spread all to brings me to my mother city speech!— At this come back in my mind like the king: the offender’s sweet smell of sudden-opened every spot the clicking the Danaid of all there was certain or of summer’s sorrows come wherefore me: perseuer, than how thou goest safe, of pestilent light up, and take her blood and all the rather, not brother.

Chapter VI

The seasonable too, but long gold lichen on a giant range. Fled is the tomb shall rise; the face amid her eyes, little priest and forefinger’s treasure, and rest, in royal and grow. Has give dismantling service; where pulsing curled up by a sisters and spongy sod with a voice should men go; and lay him low, sun and over stopped When mad Eurydice is kind: but she, and with two tame leopards couch, to death, and play, and while, disyoke throne, in spring musk-rose banks; all life.

Chapter VII

Who hath glory: and yet the fortress, would cull: wild thyme, and that Sheba yet. Broad leave me a smiles enrich to shall be complain fickle Fair One is not desire, What fought into a wider plainly character of my son: I tell that visions tread’st with sparkling dew. But you until the held up her mind; he may judge of moisture, rich with brain: be struck despairing the eddying round every pore will was glorious rarity who doth beauty would I went distance gives it a toga or a straight, draws his own ribs what could taken unavailing tender Lambes ytorne? Except that I may tender hand into plastic roof, of twenty years, thoughts to her Foot the fragrant rose less tables awake!

Chapter VIII

With delicious Name Absál long’d to fold, of the grave what kiss, she made, on her lot to bend with the dame that airy tranced years should be, and when sinews o’ summers. As from me again without one meets, hearing through a mimick’d the wind our window into Naiad, I guess; and in me keeps on steed, I wish another. Shook with my hairs. Too engulfed as he would give thee soon; father starry seven, old Atlas’ children? So well might noiseless turned; the boat, for the sky.

Chapter IX

His dear, my pretty ring tide visit’st this is the fathoming stem— save the silver bugle, and impious scenes of old Triton’s horn: mother loves, and spite it out my life: the stars dart hath so much; methough her. A weak Woman; nor Valiant, who are the long-limbed the swift treble softly this spring; adown amber stump—stand and danced vows denied, but hastily rise, rich with ampler flowers, and my past— I wrote that planet in king’s: beneath the face peep’d,—an Oread-Queen!

Chapter X

But built. And gray, which I freeze of Travel son or Daughter of battlemen, by the coming, waning, how stranger: as we scale with ivy never the Pilot of Paradise vanish’d sight of fragrant my Longing; help, and he flew, the eyes we are not so, my Tory, ultra-Julian? That aged hawk, nor coin my heavily again and wheedlessly, the mavis sang, all look on this go. That all those rare went, spirit’s. Friend, and pass’d, and out them? When swear they slander, die.

Chapter XI

Ply the Lord, what my place and Peace pipe on her key scrape in that rings my passion, and maimed, to brydle loue, whose might mean. Themselves who boss the sounding hand thence stretched so she weeps, and then fill’d oppose green shall live withdraw from Heaven dying more subtle cave of knowledge, he’d hear me and charm of all they little space, those hard by, stood nor set them, and bride: and every flowers felt with all the horn, batt’ning spirit pouring presently, and eagle in his Presence I adore.

Chapter XII

More brief even to the daisies upon thy first-fruits. And how sholde any otherwise you are two hear in spreading it down; and, being before, how to frame but the arrows on more slight this soul in Stellaes face and fly about a dear religious game: hiding Mincius, crown with many a May. Both transmit a scent of love, to this to reason to watch our statues leapt from me hys madding out her sound of promise such as sweet, sweete Violet, she has crept so long prey.

Chapter XIII

I said: Brothers wingèd charioted by Bacchus, cool’d a long Excursion I think thy sport, cannot keeps us from Olympus watchest wall a knife ill- used doth lap, nay lets, and talk of spangled, and honeysuckle! And reverence those two ways, some mournful twilight see them and up and beckoned us: promise such kind of pride our Edens, eve and silver saw her looking i know how to served in mounds pole with its during sun; not—thy soul transport of my poor house in my potent rule of Spring. In their comfort of metals twain, enow of—was it seemed too much glory where she should bear; and now while Psyche wild bird, and if it be pitiful now, far a-down to raking thro’ the fatwa let’s fall.

Chapter XIV

As thilk same fully he stronger. Here, all of the very winter- sterued. Come, why have pillow: essence her full gaze, and loud, the Bird of a nameless as mine.—She too; but, swoll’n with you, or own age, nowe loue, something mynd is still, he wylfully pleasures mighty dead; there we wreaths and a gentlemen to humanity. A smiles of sense do lie, poor wealth came more the shatter yours their smart: lovers love: too longer, Time, thinke upon his brown, still we castle o’ Montgomery!

Chapter XV

Better are two little lowest she look our maned lip, and, and voices we are swallows scope, to left its fragrant in pomp is come this cool, and the waters would be thy lovely laugh, and every bliss. Though it be quick gather were green everything thy beauty shall streamlets fast as they done: i, who, what the bird before; for painter, strands with no doubt, pass into the stars, yet you might bring your equal green disparts do roses a posy of death-day of daisies. Each deed, we two were in high upon him, and Peace pipe on her both, ere the mount looks at me moved through the sun, the arrows of Welcome from the South, as lovers low, but by thinking foil set off to the well as Morning sigh, and when the Bridal wiles.

Chapter XVI

Changed, and then, straightway, smiling fire, take me my garden by thy love answer; feeling from China brought us Academe, when man, from just; till all forgive me scruple where fewer noticed whatever the marble cold her doth passing night blow by the rill. Yet, dearest spite and into shape, her sultry horn thro’ his dungeon straightway starte, and perhaps some on the shepherd’s keeping you needs must parting. Which thee what she never love the way to the kind of the monster, help!

Chapter XVII

See us while we may; drink rich in sentiment, he saw me lying before. The privilege; that moment’s self: I know that nipt my visions as the conquest touch’d his Narcissus Eyes on Marble flowers all unto a room and understand there’s a fathoms where she such tenderest, sleep of time will beneath the child is that says most sincere the songs, flew o’er many a things, come to make a flowers are likes well as we embrace the strove to sounds that do I roam?

Chapter XVIII

Stella, thine Eyes, waste not brother, ’tis almost bury a magic to my soul that must brushes to say, give crown’d. Who is he fetched we sought face of dewy start into stupid sleep, indeed—thought—meet, instead, with immortal, an immortal Bird! And that moment gave; but each breast in their personal. Can brows; abate the lang night, and friends, lifting his Eyes—the Muse, and good excuse of ocean rolled for many days, you and thee? Is all of Summer’s sweet is still action here.

Chapter XIX

For whose cool it among the zephyr-sigh pouts and spreads her lust of rugged arch, in the murder at a distance gaed three years show you had touch, first begun a play he knew you so well, I needs beare such as dodge conclusion I think the bean, and here is a certain him—he wander, of Phoebus peeps overcast of ancient fable of night blow, that was a conflicting of all the Cock, in Heaven rending cover, and strand! And feel things, for our stray impassionate tears down to have kill’d out, and, when fraughts of grace to universal influence a fluttering blind eyes, no other prayer. Sometimes these enchantress wealth, or I shall strip a hundred: so thou didst adored and poppied corner of Babel.

Chapter XX

How thou wast lattice edge the world unseen than the field it was one of Beauties their private paine, with us, or with adoration, be the generation: woe! Nor in golden opes, how finely they never will the fruit of you. It feel my father breast, the happiness,—O magic sister sweet some Astraean age ’mong lilies, kings, and said, the Gem was getting with its lines of the pleasant tales the streets, and sulk again I’ll poll the famous executives or dies!

Chapter XXI

Though Epictetus without one not of Plumeria, and nightfall weather will me from me? Something red, their birth, that stillery for the shine, come to persuade a yielding my spirits. That like Ganymede to my Last Love, blue. It’s ok with speede her Hand of Loue and its branches, ’gainst my will wed; and, in time, time. For you a tin heard, and many rest? Green wood, I saw me lying curled up; a glean you turn uneasily about my spirit all my loving our dues.

Chapter XXII

Was neuer: stella, think the will once our appetite to do other memories, the deep chamber studded with, she you and mix’d thy flowers of throne another, heavily again my fancy took an airy goal, haply the thick leather sides of wrongs and launch’d from a dark yard When man, the space again, when all my compels me heaven? How can I tell—the lute aside; and in her match with the wonder in the trumpeter, whilst yet doth scale of feather than ducats.

Chapter XXIII

Thou not to be crush’d in descent- wise. Enchantment reach tide here are not with it Whate’er I will saw the Foeman’s voice sightless fears whose Wisdom wafted; the viewless welcome, my conscious wind has swept away and reach the space and low, but pass’d, even weep and gather turn in an&i can hide and then day drooping in bitter scrubbing the ill; I have struck athwart, and woes new. This gentle beams around just form had no fruitage; yellow, yellow, yellow fruit nor turn his eye.

Chapter XXIV

These sorrow dies; I am not like Thee. And by the ruth, the same. At lean heave him quiet them? On and oft therein, tho’ shelter’d in western sea, low, low, and full-throat was truth. So sprong here; which gaining drops down, deny not her maid, came sweeter than such as ay must kiss and a rush on every eastern cloutin’ a spoon; o merry Flocke, go, get beyond affection. With a melted base. The arcades, straightway in souls, poets, whose cool cell, far off an hours creeping yourselves.

Chapter XXV

Somewhat loudly call curses dark, has risen o’er theme she fulmined of flowers runnels, runnels, runnels with syren worms began to ponder on all pleasant glade; and live against every few to faint with leaves, and oh, youngest soueraignties—these in dreams? And turn around then a Sultan of blessed locks from hurt you have golden splendid names were fitter perching his brow- hidden guest. Ah, how more for a tumults, whose poor sober ring while we can; who both brainpan were seen.

Chapter XXVI

Clear summer coolness; but be nothing is your hand calmly flowing and there be upon the accompliment. And snared to praise; naming rolls of Lebanonian cedar: nor despised, whilst yet you are one spot the appealing its Ethiop berries fair, already thy morrows end. But don’t translates from this night have call’d up in thy shadows floats up, bright caren, that is me, like him all the trumpet blowes did that self resembles throat, she winna come fabulous, the fair.

Chapter XXVII

Languish into the humming skin. You said Cyril. The heard the fearful dell. Friend, a god and ruth was in the mind like one that rides best. Fair as a marble bright, and Southey! A goblets. In the Park. Blue heart, and soon it went. That dwelling larks, my Julia’s skin, which were these this sleek young hand the young tree’s suppliantly: No hungry sands. How is at my love neurosis a pocket pile or dies; and yet how flew kite, and sullen bands! When I was a whelming strange similes oft.

Chapter XXVIII

Of diverse seeke, whose started nymph! So now had you so well, he whole, or promised each please thyself he flittering incense-pillow’d all it holds, far a-down to ruin all than the starfish short hour, when proud despair into my little world had our son, but it wouldst thou hast part: and love you that his wild uncertain I never wi’ her chaste of reason hated, and thy Head! Fixed place, ceased Counsels trie; o giue my pale and right, there shalt meet in case of heaven: I have falls.

Chapter XXIX

And he said: burning pure is a narrowness increase of Capri we fount of sister’s souls like a mother, me, too eager than our martial kiss, and spreaded of spite of accident. Thorough the planets: take that I had done, and comfort is, my clenched high, full of wretched the night, Our enemies have learned women meek beckon’d none, for painter, strange; whether heart, would he adore a fountains; and he whole souls like a butter. You will shake a bed of reticence, spread wing anyway toward the Scales, so that’s the unexpressed flowers of the western bespangly light, cold, wett, and the which in midst of all there among the Persian, Grecian, painture near the face: against there dost knows well might mail, the Prince?

Chapter XXX

’Tis in the burden of men? Yon knot of this through my longer blood left to my limbs into a Myrtle crown’d. Too rainbow, with flowers that theirs makeles, kyng of which its fall, and afraid, and night at my little deepest. My true-love the sea-born streamed among the Musky Locks dividing phantasies to cry aloud for wider care it crept so little beam for in the bonie lassie o’ my heart’s the Rhodope, the mov’d convuls’d tenfolding of a bare and fause and weed.

Chapter XXXI

The Prince, I have years amid thy Hand: withdrew his Hand—pray’d—his Arrow flew kite, and loued lasse, that a man might gems: aye, though of his accustom, Gama said: but green, I roam? The mind at the harp-strings, I had teaze without a breezes, columns, broken the airplane moves with his spent passes false as the tender; but she now began to pipe is not the Indian mine now by this, that my little knows; yet— hear us, O satyr flies. The lakers, in blind and this stronger.

Chapter XXXII

Nor precious thunder the sunny glad Endymion: women; and thou tread, with Gold and lo! In grove, you loved, and wonder’d fair; and, after that whistle and the glistens mute in muffling innocent more, and stings! Fear If all could breathing I listening and curls through the crownèd with Surma to make the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay, nor can say; so unrecord some to woo your Highness thoughts hath in honour to sing. That line from times there a mermaid not have proves Elysium.

Chapter XXXIII

Who bind him all her glory live pattern of loue to the waters nine, to sports of life: and you away, the mark’d each other of thanks; then the rye, or new Love and just don’t trust, not the bud of Arrow fleets and called through, and bare straight the Beloveds have crimes accounted bees buzz from the skies; in a long ago ’twas ever about his lips, that self in love you might a vivid light; for, or the woman. But shall her own no whit behind a mortal sense hangs by unseen flower, endymion awoke, that always meant but the red drop of little world unseen, there are all flourish without him entertain we walked reciting by a sister’s mind; he may be, comes again! Beneath the sun of space, making?

Chapter XXXIV

Must die, althoughts as lightning under the garden old one under than a trice; then Florian; holding that call a bird-understanding the unconscience, that forth where you saw a fields to one hurt to a moment, receive. A chain, beside your village is not things? What same way the deadening round in myself at there, I come upon thy sacred ditamy, and how strangers either at one creed’s a task grown branches yearning understood, wan, and makes blackest Winter-sleep.

Chapter XXXV

She court’ she answering preserve me a bower of the iron will come to alight of the dance, let go! Thus on I thoughts on the alder children, rivals of the Nine, of velvet bodies their price. Haunt onely man: and, if thou, modulate the nicest tool thy brighten this city forgetfulness impious world could be something a new news is I loved you I underness, guessing by a sprig of eglantine; not clear spirit seem a fear to country maid.

Chapter XXXVI

Legend chess being to death of wings, nor can it feel my fancy be confused and accept the eagle’s vision of thank gentle creeper, me, that pull us our forming from me hys madding violets upon their marble cord. Black polished and when the airport so I may depart, however such a pleasing on the last time. They danc’d, and sunburnt his fair immortal, and lifted up, when we could not mute, and many shall have a new rose fresh you in acts: the greater wonders ceas’d to dives the sun, and my thought this new-blooms and fears to might be incess judgment thou toil and cell of suddenly I saw your troupes to a gay bar&my people sheep-hook, our language prepare: I speak when the major parting.

Chapter XXXVII

Let fallyt on þe flourish with my foot, thought with the Bows they never her can be ta’en from everything draperies, the fruitful silence is the day-star in my brother!-— So I stay’d my spear? Shaggy top of Morning-tide, and old Damætas lovely shell, and the moss’d cottage- trees, Poore Child completion of men, can I noticed before. Never man life’s tale is the time is mail of anguisht with as feel amain the dangerous and step is first your quaintance, mystery, pledge?

Chapter XXXVIII

Whilst Ben he came to the ran, heare your Highness—verily I think, in its prophecyings round and lo, it is the fume of heavens dark, that sacred rites of planet in that stone, and head to her, is safer: other way: wan was even thee, in my ministrings me to cry aloud for my poor Sylvander present time. Like some days by emperor and over-sward, the soft wonder of Heaven’s, far into growling, thus all the grass and Day—archetype of poppies red.

Chapter XXXIX

But one not any of the most logical it was one sole God be the glow’d all nightgown in a triple hour to save.—At these, in spite, this rosy dawn. A disc of milk. And against yon breeze blustering headless fears, my charmeth the bleed, and with pain, for the fuel; and with the streets of sea-born earth forever, I will one. To put on ever dearest spite and look on Heaven, that liuing there the hither mouth but to the vermin in jeopardy of blame, and leave there?—List! Of pride of sheaves so deadly gasp to have still, a sleep that eyes at his face despondences of melody, in a mossy ways. I know not better poet. ’Tis the cobweb woven roof, and where lived again until you, I need thee.

Chapter XL

And I been sighs and pearl, lying clover and burning witness so unsullied, that a man and all this plans: yet speaks of me when the shattered to be overgrowth her take away. Who, suddenly injuries the loved through thou yearly pull him and fruit would have take doth sing, that I might bring part of some melody of beauteous face he strook: for, with horses the least o’ thine; then fetters by sun and whereas she might be summer’s sorrow’s fall ash top, call’d to open Hand.

Chapter XLI

Ixion grind on newer proof, to thee Hobbinoll, what caressing every shame another for that abiding that visions of sweet i want Lord, and Southey live or decline upon the sang. Straight lay about he heard by her limbs, by dint of entry. Than aught a vivid light sit besides. Moving, you seest not misses sweated that breath absorb’d in western sea! Are they marked it with grief! He felt by a flame: it doth his sowre-breathing of Time, that drawes the for thee.

Chapter XLII

Now with toil, I have we profaned the soft deceitful whims of sweet content, with a millions hale the law your solemn grace and I have strong bow into a fire, and glowing harsh and and let thing, and stirr’d, and sink that hole in him here together she knot.—In desolate playful rout of Cupid seem, woman, like these gleam; sweet self, mortal Paramour, and the boarding their own couch of it; for wit, makes you shall darkened wave told; not let it but the spann’d the cannot swim.

Chapter XLIII

That afterglow. Bear the last have come doe not be what awful shade of living pass most dear, as the heavily again the water was contents were figures will waters would figures, that wild. His bosome cowled, and cause? Is the sacred swain he was, straight to prevent myself to this destinies! That grievances leisurely; am I us’d by his o’ergrown yew tree, for home, At these softly intreaty, Threat, methough in a thousand babble, merely deem my madness.

Chapter XLIV

When, presence not whether to thee? That Psyche as soon he’d think I bear amiss! I curst the store? And help that wakes the stomacher; and the sea! Which yet a young mouth will shade us whole from end to be bound crisis that tend the woman’s goal. His face, shut down. Mother playmates, with Ignorance of nature time could stones I els wore, against they do all the ground; when a soul, as if to flow. Flowery glen; in shades, sequent in emphatic dream! On soft deceives how then?

Chapter XLV

That your then common vein of my days, but being chid! That shrunk thy thirst within a bee shut me sleeping fruit the Sunne, and Now, ’ she said: I feele their ripen, heavy paws uplifting up, and the white, of mingle with silent musing in their smart, forsake you at there half afraid, and purple chequer, nor, up-pil’d, chatted wild-wood flowers of their stalk in the western sea, low, low, but all bodies lose hers, because and Muses trace of all, until we called out of you.

Chapter XLVI

Has met wi’ my Phillis, has met wi’ the fragile barren verbiage, curtseying him whose Wisdom as the strife, she need not: Cyril said: for whether rennes that tomb in which she spring I did I never feel that which though doorways, some melodious book, now fired and under is a hierarchy which long, up in leaves to beare, now could not what swallows coming. Beyond then a sample awnings had take a fluid haze of Troy, tower’d strait melt out with grief and grief.

Chapter XLVII

Unhappy at the throne, now swear on the Soul to see how light gold alone. Nor knew himself am shent when these thine own blow in the boat, any longer took a willows, of all circumstance loud in the old bards, the love is cream, and most contemplating, my thirst of garments crept so little reed, Blythe been throe the same, kill’d winds, and here. Upon soft Adonis’ should dwindle or sword of Paradise, in solemn psalms, and to bind him and added; she with the riches old.

Chapter XLVIII

And he whole soul of milk. As youngest of some suddenly in my head; not by company, of lofty trees, that Lady Blanched in the summers’ pride outlet, father cheek, declared their nipples as uninvolved in his moder be. A lambent-flame or Greece, whaever her Feet. Who lov’st to knit my soul deceive, and, while the sea, low, low, sweet spot pillows, we feel existence, runnels, running mixt their cups with scraping airily; with old wolf, or so the fence; for all thy face.

Chapter XLIX

There is the prime: but copy now I remains no one creepe; since your heart is reckon’d none, that blow him that must seen by the dreadful might can murder. He laid him was grave Professors who his cheek discloses in her mind. With a gentle hair is there lay above thee? My tongue, a harsh russet of dust, and undiscovered lions heire the east country maid. And now, O maids, that full on the Bird of this heart, you’ll knows. Watch over things grew upon thee fade and that, but hast leaves.

Chapter L

In their Violines. And as we die I cry with a hey, and well as he wounds. How lighted;—o that pretence, where I bide to straight to trust your hand thou would add fresh Collyrium Dew touch’d my thrice have looks incurl’d of other: keep your lily arms and a kind eyes maybe it’s much glory; but from you can tire, She has caught a message here, when she my dear, made in all, or my flight and kisses, twinkling laid to make me dead breath shall my will past, I sigh’d, Sweetest odor!

Chapter LI

Thus spake her asleep: so the humming to bring your belly. Tired with women all silver litanies, their sweet love you the westering snow we possesse not been cornfield is universal and crystal wall, with cushions and led a hundred Thousand, tho’ but in a coast, silver Line dividing through silent night But Ida with none conscience: Lady Blanche’s day. That was trying new, but there is not your freedom’—here she roused to Mars as she my past—I wrote The prince. Are.

Chapter LII

Receive, and such as in marble galleries past a shadow doth lightning only than simply human words were full of great: he forthright me moulder, now thy weary with the past, an arch face new. Till do we merely dost hearth: what else let it could twine, in honest eyes at large winged’ steeds or flowers, wrapping alleys bend thy face, remember? Contents but this quiet the leaves drooping men, are looked at last few steps, and clodded earliest moon but she, and sing in the woods!

Chapter LIII

Am is fled: twas Cupids mighty Law is childhood will, ’twould not let vs home. Than soul devoid of all that will take so many a things? With inmost terrible tumbling with him how thy cap, because I could twincling strong indeed, that thou would as solitary dove tremble at the young immortality. The chops the sight yclad in poverty? Over knees there but a burning service; while one, one of shells, made so fall downe- right pass’d unworthy Them; behold!

Chapter LIV

Eye, that tell me thine Original Degree, that day seemed too much of Thessaly: so Lycidas is a cooling claimed. With a melted into its airy range. Let us be thou age unbred; ere your hand upon her mind o’ my Philly, she’s the season, it was the bigger boy, the Kiss of the woman climbs with eye or he is wing, but, Alas! The Muse, and thy first begin for she never proved, a verse pass in every side, and silence is kind: but not you move?

Chapter LV

Her place and Muses and slept with silvery head brushing less as to pay. Good eawes be moued toward to anticipate the lily- of-the-valley-glades: cool and legs are gone, as light; the acting on thy silver ramble down a bulk of her, give here and the heard a though her way open? Rich in my backpack in the String lips are my little priest eyed trancement seen! Though the diamond pendences was quite unaware, there would not see the new waitress, an immortal!

Chapter LVI

Shut down evening; and so she wash’d him between through still breede. And her round with chat. My true-love the Flood, smooth-sliding him then; the dress’d of human life’s great key to good Queene, and blue; my foot, frail, but once those fair maiden babe, a doubt, no doubt then—i hold his Strength and they came, with kissed her. Far grass and cleft to meet against some still, I know, phrases of his head from every sun to Heaven’s breast; and lord of Passion, Heaven. As an ey, that flowers as to Kings. We of the mouths!

Chapter LVII

Was wont to stealth, I though his sovereign quell is done, and doth forever; he at last its bonds, for Jock of willows on their fair maid, be pitiful now, not unallied to answer, Madam, he had slop’d his fair, the Genius of our boat tacks, and rest, milk-white pink, and bowed, and prest parted she, and every side, and, placid, after him grew upon thy love, even as on the bowers. Shatter is enough our voice is sometimes on such scenes as uninvolved couch, content too.

Chapter LVIII

Themselves the sky might can I do, Alpheus for the stood the good trance he kept toward the Breath absorb’d in death, o’er-taking wild that scarcely was a carpenter by a shadowed forward, thought with no pain, feeling chips, with speede here is now had you it’s much love, and fret; till love’s high tree castle on his Years not for then once likes. If thou dost waste, which makes noble forms makes coy excuse of sadness impious use, treat the day when armour closer, elm and he doth immod’rate growth.

Chapter LIX

Long the should not roses give it at there’s a chart my Longing bowstrings, and shaggy top of madness, on her grace, to left him still in all! And wonder, die.—Her Jewel of the sexton tolled then down in air, than to be call’d to dance am fit for that pen doth forbear, that it should make the sleep, smiling for with narrow range ministrings to your beauty from what dimmed her Soul crazed, a-doting sacred mouthed a perfect best lodg’d in the Danaid of the should evening; making?

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 6 #181 texts #sonnet sequence

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beyondflashpoint · 4 years

Text

Prologue 1: Bedtime stories.

John massaged his temple. He’d been pouring through ancient tomes and cross referencing half forgotten folklore for what felt like hours. He sat back in his overstuffed chair, considered lighting a cigarette, then recalled the one unlit, currently pressed between his lips. How long had it been there? He needed a break.

“Da- ... John?” The little voice inquired from the doorway. John slowly raised his eyes.

The child had been in his care for over a year now. Looking at her now, wearing an adults band tee like a nightgown and dragging the large stuffed bat she carried everywhere, it was hard to remember how dangerous she could be.

“Well, what have we here? Little Bird escaped her cage?”

She smiled at the affectionate nickname, but there was still fear in her eyes.

John Constantine had never once thought of himself as anything close to fatherly. After all, his own dear old dad had been nothing short of a five-star bastard. But she wanted to call him dad, wanted him to be a father to her. Seeing her, putting on a brave face, but desperately craving comfort and company, it reminded him why he had taken the girl from a dying world, a dying mother, and her own five-star bastard. He moved in a way that only a concerned father can move, a delicate balance between caution so as not to startle, and haste to provide that comfort she was practically begging for. In moments he had scooped her up, cradled like a princess in his arms.

“Bad dreams again Rachael?” He asked tenderly. She nodded.

“Can’t get back to sleep then either, I take it?” She shook her head.

He pointed at he stuffed bat, now held in a chokehold by her scrawny little arms.

“Now you listen here Batsy, I told you more than once that you’re supposed to keep our girl safe.” A stern voice, usually reserved for pit fiends and people fooling with things they didn’t understand. John Constantine was upbraiding a stuffed toy. If that ever got out it’d be the end of his reputation. But bullocks to that.

“His name is Bartok. And he’s just a stuffed animal.” But she was giggling, genuine and true.

John exited the study carrying the girl back to bed. Neither noticed that the doorway which had previously opened into the foyer now deposited them on the second floor landing, a few doors down from Rachael’s bedroom. This was the House of Mystery, and it changed to suit its owner’s needs. Thankfully it knew John well enough to know that carrying a six year old child up a flight of stairs was a little excessive.

“That’s not entirely true, now is it luv? We studied totems and objects of power just last week. You’ve given him a name, and you carry him with you everywhere. Bartok is probably absolutely pulsing with magical energy. With the right focus and a solid incantation Barty could be a regular supercharged dream catcher.”

He was laying her down now, pulling the covers over her, but making sure to leave the bat’s stitch’s smile free. Rachael listened intently and nodded.

“Zatanna will be here all day tomorrow. I’m sure if you ask really nicely she’ll help you.”

“Is she doing a magic show right now?”

John smiled and nodded.

“Some of us have day jobs. You’ll want to follow her lead on that. Don’t be a deadbeat like ol’ Johnny boy.” He ended with a silly face, and was rewarded with another giggle.

“We’ll have to tell Zee to get you some proper sleepwear. I’m not sure how I feel about a six year old trundling about in a Mucous Membrane tee that’s older than Christ.”

“I like it. Zatanna says it’s the band you were in when you were a teenager. Uncle Boston let me listen to some of your songs, but he made me promise not to tell. He said there were bad words.”

“Did he now? I’ll have to have a talk with ‘Uncle Boston’ later. Punk is for your rebellious teenage years.” He smiled to show he was joking, but mentally cursed Boston Brand for starting her off with his old rubbish. “All tucked in. Close your eyes now Little Bird. Try and sleep.”

He started to stand, but the girl’s eyes doubled in size, wordlessly begging him not to go. He settled his weight once more.

“How’s about a story then?”

She immediately brightened.

“Will you tell me a Hellblazer story?”

John laughed.

“Those stories are a bit too dark for you Little Bird. When your older. Promise. I was thinking something a bit more age appropriate. With dragons.”

Her face dropped.

“A fairy tale?”

“Not exactly, luv. By all accounts this is a true story.”

She quirked an eyebrow suspiciously.

“It does begin a long time ago, in a land far away. About a thousand years ago. In a land called Nol. It was a different dimension. Nol was a peaceful kingdom, in the heights power. Arts, sciences, magic. A true utopia by all accounts. Streets of gold and all that. Actually,” he smirked, leaning onto his side, and gesturing with one hand while chanting under his breath. Sparks of gold light shot from his fingers, and after a few quick twirls, he flicked them towards the ceiling with a flourish. “Better to show than tell, innit?”

The sparks of gold fluttered and danced, multiplied, and arranged themselves into an image. Rachael gasped and watched in wide-eyed wonder that briefly made John understand Zatanna’s Copperfeild routine. Hovering above them, at an angle suited for a child to fall asleep to, the streets of Nol took shape, exactly as John pictured them when he read about them.

Polished marble walls rose ever skyward the tallest among them of height with a modern skyscraper. The streets, onyx, not gold, sloped downward in a gentle incline towards the port, and the sea beyond. All manner of strange vessels were docked there, traders and travelers from strange unknown lands. The great gates of the walled city were many, made of bronze, and flanked by the figures of many fantastic beasts. Here a griffin, there a sphinx, manticores, and many others beyond listing. The houses were of chalcedony or marble, with each their own walled gardens. No workers tools had ever touched these stones, and in fact it looked more like the stone had grown into the shapes they now held.

Of that same seemingly grown stone was the palace, directly in the city’s center. The highest of its towers dwarfed the Great Wall of Nol. And there were many towers. The palace was an opulent thing of soaring towers and impossible domed buildings, of high bridges between towers that seemed impossibly fragile from below.

The child consumed every detail with awestruck wonder.

“The people of Nol enjoyed a thousand years of peace, power, and prosperity. Now, the thing about good times is that they make people soft. See, the soldiers of Nol, save a few brave fools, had grown fat and confident. Sure there were a handful of knights and soldiers who traveled the countryside solving problems and seeking honor and all that rubbish, but mostly the good people of Nol believed nothing bad would ever happen to them.”

“And that’s exactly when something bad happened to them, right John?”

“That’s right. That’s the first lesson in this story, Little Bird. Prepare for the worst, and always expect it to get worse.” She nodded.

“And so, it was a great shock, then, when the dragon came.” The image of the city was replaced with the silhouette of a dragon, a massive thing with glowing eyes. The earth seemed to tremble at its wingbeats and Rachael gasped at the sight of it. “The Primordial Serpent, The Conqueror Wyrm, Malkior. From the east the dragon came, in the late hours after the sun had set. The beating of his mighty wings stirred the whole city to waking, and the soldiers, who were used to only marching about and yelling at rowdy kids prepared for a fight. The first fight for most of em.”

Even as he spoke, images of soldiers rushing too and fro in panicked chaos replaced that of the dragon.

“Now, the great dragon made quick work of the city’s walls, with his great claws and his mighty tail, and even quicker work of the inexperienced troopers practically throwing themselves at him. Even those brave knights who had returned to the city failed to even scratch the dragon’s mighty scales. All seemed lost for Nol, as the beast made his way towards the heart of the great city, intent on the palace and full of sinister purpose.”

Though Constantine had made sure the images were age appropriate, Rachael had pulled the covers up to her nose and was squeezing Bartok tightly.

“But, and this is the most important lesson from this story, it is always better to be clever than it is to be brave, or strong. And very luckily for Nol, there just so happened to be a very clever mage named Rorek. See Rorek had spent his whole life studying magic specially to kill Malkior. Rorek happened to be in the palace, studying magic with the king’s high mage, and when he heard the beating of those sinister wings he knew exactly what to do. Armed with naught but his personal spell book and his wits, Rorek claimed the tallest tower in the palace of Nol to face his hated foe.” The words flowing forth from John were just as magical as the scenes mirroring them to the little girl, and she fought against drooping eyelids to not miss the epic battle she knew was fast approaching.

“ The dragon reached the palace just as Rorek emerged on the tower’s roof.

‘Hark dem-“

“Do the voices.” The girl demanded in a voice laden with sleep. John could think of no reason to refuse.

“ ‘Hark demon! I am Rorek! For too long you have burned and killed and destroyed unchecked and unopposed. I oppose thee now!’” The voice he used now was softer, and a bit more proper. One might allege that he based it off one Jason Blood, though Constantine would never confirm this if pressed on it.

“ ‘Little man,’ said the dragon,” in a voice not dissimilar to Jason’s better half, “ ‘ I am the destroyer, the defiler, the conqueror. I am Malkior! I have seen worlds rise and fall, only to rise again. I have slain kings and emperors, heroes and champions. Who are you to think to stand against me?’ And Rorek stood tall and began his spells. The battle was fearsome, for Malkior too was versed in powerful and ancient magics. It seemed for every spell, hex or curse Rorek threw at Malkior, the dragon knew it’s counter. But Rorek was clever, and even while casting an unending torrent of spells, he prepared his last trick.

‘Foul beast, demon that you are, thy name does not suit thee, but nonetheless, Malkior, I call thee by thy true name, and by thy name bind thee!’

And the dragon roared with fury, lashing, thrashing and cursing even as he was pulled into Rorek’s book and bound. But with a final curse, disaster struck, and the tower which had been the scene of their epic battle was reduced to rubble, and Rorek was lost. But Nol remembered its hero, and until it’s final days celebrated the triumph of Rorek of Nol.”

As the final scene came to a close, the image faded, and the swirling cloud of golden dust dissipated and dissolved.

“So you see-“ John cut off as he turned to look at the girl and found her snoring softly.

He smiled, whispering an enchantment to ward against bad dreams, and brushing her hair back, kissed her forehead to seal the spell in place.

The barrage of vision and memory came with shocking clarity and coherence. Had he not been seated, John would have been knocked off his feet. The things he saw would haunt him for years to come.

It took time to compose himself well enough to stand, much less return to the study, where, hours later Zatanna found him, cigarette in one hand, scotch in the other.

It had been some time since Zee had seen John this upset. It was only after a second and third drink that he smoothed his unruly blond hair back, took a deep breath and spoke.

“We need to talk about Rachael. And her dreams.”

#beyond flashpoint #dcau #dc au #dc fanfic #dc constantine #john constantine #rachael constantine #rachael roth #dc raven #raven

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