• Mirror

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    September 17, 2015 /  Uncategorized

    Poetry’s a mirror
    Of glass and metal born;
    Something crystal clear,
    something bright as morn.

    But a mirror at an angle,
    it casts a crooked view;
    it takes the known mundane
    and gives back something new.

    In trite works it is simple,
    Just what you’ve seen before;
    Some mirrors’ shine is shallow,
    but others show you more.

    The breathless and sublime,
    The many springs of hurt;
    The beauty in the brutal,
    the dark beneath the dirt.

    Verse reflects them all,
    A mirror cruel and kind:
    It gives you back in plenty
    The depths of your own mind.

  • 5/24/367

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    September 17, 2015 /  Uncategorized

    5/24/367

    I am feeling… better, these days. Even with the onset of summer – the best time for my health, but a time associated with all sorts of horrors and disasters in my memory. Heat and desperation go hand in hand.

    The anniversary of Casimir’s death hit me brutally hard again, as I knew it would despite all my attempts to let it pass as any other day; I rather made a fool of myself. It would have been much worse had it not been for Emma… both the damage to my reputation and my actual experience would have been much worse. The story poured out of me like sick blood from a wound, leaving me… light-headed, and weak, but empty in a good way. Hollowed out. There was a part of that misery I suppose I had never been able to give vent to – a part I suppose I had never fully faced until then. Like many shadows, it withered to nothing in the direct light. Maybe next year, now… maybe next year it won’t be so cruel a day.

    And other, more joyful anniversies are approaching.

    That fragility I was feeling the other day, I think, was a good thing. A gateway to growth, to new beginnings. Every day now it is as if I understand myself better, and who I am to be in this strange landscape born of my disgrace. I cannot claim to have surmounted my problems – I will never truly surmount them. I still feel it like an arrow to the heart every time a commoner cringes away from me at the slightest sign of my displeasure, or hastens to bow with fear in their eyes before I have even said a cross word. But that’s all right. I will show them, with time, that I am not the man they think I am – and if they do not see it? Others have. Others will.

    I will never be a man widely beloved. My temper and my uncompromising values see to that. So long as I am beloved by those that matter, that is enough. And I do have friends. I have Tomas and Bryn and Emma, I have family in Marisa and Shaylei and Rei, and I have… I have enough. More than enough.

    It’s a beautiful evening outside. Perhaps I’ll go for a run.

  • August 25, 2015 /  Writing

    A man’s a thing of reason,
    Of logic, sense and thought;
    He knows what he must do,
    he knows what he must not.

    A lucky man, long-sheltered
    From Urth’s capricious whim;
    He hails my verse’s wisdom
    Because it speaks of him.

    The rest of us have knelt
    To pain’s instructive hand,
    And learned that naught but chance
    Winnows beast from man.

    In red we are all sculpted
    The same beneath the skin;
    muscle, bone, and blood,
    an animal’s within.

    If yours is safely buried,
    ’tis little cause for pride;
    no wound’s yet cut you deep
    to loose it from inside.

  • August 22, 2015 /  Writing

    I am a map of decisions,
    of choices carved in blood.
    A record of priorities
    and mistakes
    and badges of valiant stupidity.
    The last echoes of dead men’s voices
    Shout muted lines
    when there’s someone to hear.
    You, especially
    wrote yourself a second life
    On me,
    in red.

  • August 22, 2015 /  Entries

    2/10/367

    One day, maybe, I will learn my lesson about venting my anger on these pages in such condemning terms. Then again, perhaps it is spending my rage here that, somehow, brings matters back to a more pleasant state! Either way, I am pleased that I have reconciled with Levona. It feels strange, being at such venomous odds with someone you went through utter misery and suffering for, and more appealing to be less divided on the matter.

    I should be writing more, these days. Ever since that… argument I had, I am feeling oddly fragile, as if I have suddenly become aware of all the wounds I have been carrying for years, and awareness has brought back all the pain. This journal might help me deal with it, and yet, I hesitate. Perhaps because of the paranoia that someone might, someday, find this; perhaps because of the ugliness of what might be loosed if I dared to break the flimsy scabs that keep my issues from the world.

    So. On another note, then. I spoke to the Justiciar today about some of the problems that have been plaguing her, during an inquiry about my will. It was, honestly, pleasant – I felt useful, and hopefully genuinely was of use to her in her trials. This is the part of politics I miss, the part where I advised people how best to achieve their goals and aims, goals and aims I agreed with or thought laudable.

    I could be happy in such a role again, not a leader but a consultant – but who am I kidding? I barely have enough time for all the duties I already have, and even if I did, I’ll never be accepted at Court again. The pampered gentleborn look at me with such utter disdain. But that’s a tired old complaint, to the extent that even I’m bored of it.

    If I am going to do more with my time, it should be personal, not professional. I should put maintaining my friendships first and foremost. I see much less of Tomas and Bryn than I used to, and I am finding Emma’s company more cordial the more I know of her – I grimace to think of how pithily I dismissed her before. All this time, all these examples of my snap judgments being wrong, and yet I persist in forming opinions before I fully know someone! I should be ashamed of myself. Women so kind do not come about often. Of course, perhaps I’m biased because every time she meets me she says something astonishingly flattering. I hope I am not blinded by all the praise, yet, it feels so very… sincere, as if it rises from some boundless well of true generosity.

    I truly, truly hope I’m never proved wrong about her. I truly hope she’s not a witch, or heretic, or – something else, I hardly know what. Such a disappointment would cut me deeper than most.

    Arien, but I ramble today. It’s pleasant, though, sitting in my study and just writing whatever occurs to me. Outside the cold gusts are rattling against the windows, but several feet of stone protects me more than adequately. At the moment I am alone, but likely not for long. The afternoon light is slanting lower, and soon, the door will open. Perhaps we’ll have dinner together, just the two of us; perhaps we’ll visit the new conservatory under the last of the sunset. For now, though, the scent of the lilies is excellent company.

    Whatever will I do when this winter is over? I hesitate to even consider it.

    Ah, enough. I need to work on my will; I have to look through my belongings to find a suitable keepsake for Rei. Lord willing, by the time I die he’ll have forgiven me enough to actually take it. But… better I play the villain in his protection than allow him to make this mistake, and better that he blame me. I do not want to see him turning sour against the whole world, against the whole idea. I am not that necessary to him, any longer.

    Still, I hope…

  • August 12, 2015 /  Entries

    1/4/367

    Another year, the sixteenth turn of the Sun Cycle I have observed here in Lithmore. It is always a reflective time for me, the New Year, where I sit back and think of what I’ve weathered and how I might improve.

    365 was the most painful year of my life, but 366 was not so bad. Busy, yes, but productively so. I do believe I’ve found my footing in the post-Regency stage of my life. At times I miss politics, but rather less than I thought I would. The need to compromise with selfishness, with ambition, with all forms of petty evil… I’m glad that’s largely gone from my life. I need not play nicely with people I despise.

    And speaking of that, journal, I shall vent on your pages a time…

    Levona misused his power in the pursuit of all sorts of personal vendettas, and now he has the gall to pretend he was a good leader removed by noble whim? Arien. I’m not even the one who started the campaign to have him removed; I merely backed it after much thought and hesitation.

    Why did he even come to speak to me? I thought at first he meant to apologize and admit his misuse of his power, and I would have warmly accepted it. Instead, he came speaking vague words that suggested -he- was the one who couldn’t trust -me- and -I- had to make an accounting for myself? It reminds me of Julea, in a way, the way he seemed to think I had ‘turned on him’, just as she did when her heresy was revealed. This perception of betrayal… I don’t understand it. How could they see it that way? The world should not run on traded favors, on obligations and balance sheets; it should run on people who have good intentions doing whatever they can to aid others with good intentions. When someone masquerades as good and is revealed as evil, switching from supporting them to opposing them is not throwing away some balance book, it is doing what’s right. Really, the betrayal lies on the shoulders of the person who dared masquerade as someone worth supporting.

    I thought he understood the importance of station and upholding the system of respect and precedence. I thought he had Lithmore’s safety and protection as his first and foremost priority. I was wrong. How many times have I been betrayed that way? To ally with someone, to make a tentative connection on the strength of their seeming goodness, only to find in time that they are power-hungry, or selfish, or heretical. Madilaire, Bryne, Julea… I cannot even begin to count them on the personal level, let alone the professional. Of course, Levona wasn’t -that- bad. I have no reason to think him a heretic, only a man unable to separate his personal feelings and goals from his professional power.

    Sometimes I find myself wondering if my standards are too high. Should I have simply tolerated him using his power to try and persecute Tomas? He was not doing a terribly successful job at it. But evil is like a bruise. If you can see even a little of it, it is likely there is far more just beneath the surface, waiting to come out. How much did I find about Alphos when I probed deeper, after all? Much and much and more of foulness, the further I went.

    And I know the nature of a man based on how he reacts to my past. Yes, I sinned. But those sins were confessed and expiated twice over before they were ever revealed to the world, and they had naught to do with my rise through society. No good man, no good Davite, has reason to taunt me with them. That he did, despite his own unsavory deeds… says a great deal about the pettiness of his soul.

    There is a certain loneliness that comes from a history of disappointment. I allow people into my trust, but always carefully, always conditionally. Waiting to see if they really are what they seem. I cannot give my faith wholly to anyone. Even Tomas has let me down, though he faced his sins unflinchingly, admitted them, and sought to make amends. That’s all I would ask of anyone; perfection is impossible. So why is it so hard? Why do people justify and defend themselves instead of simply admitting they were acting wrongly? If he had just admitted it I would have thought the bloody world of him!

    …Why do I keep thinking of Julea? It’s been so very long since she died, and she never would have admitted anything. I had to confront her with her own heresy, first. Arien, she was so ambitious. She wanted the world. I ignored every warning sign of it, ignored her desire to wear red and silks, to go to Court, the way she rejected the outfit I had made for her so she could bare more flesh. I was so young, and so stupid, and yet I don’t know if I’m truly smarter now – or simply more bitter. After all, I’ve doubted Emma ab Courtland again and again, when in reality there has been no evidence to suggest she was remotely culpable in her misfortunes. Is it better to mistrust even the good than it is to trust even the bad? When you are a Knight, perhaps.

    Ah, well.

    For all this ranting, I do remain largely happy and hopeful for the new year before me. The Almshouse expansion and infirmary is a great triumph, and I look forward to seeing how many people it can help. The lengths to which I’ve had to go to ensure the supplies are safe leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but better this than theft and rioting, and so far the supply distribution has been utterly peaceful. I have good hopes the season will be no more painful than any other, and possibly even less given the efficiency of the rationing system. I’ve my ruffle charity money to invest once the winter’s over, in some project; that’ll be a pleasant bonus. The Physicians are well-funded from the charity auction, and well-staffed. The Knights’ ranks are slowly swelling; I must ensure more lessons for the pages and squires, and to finish my book.

    What is better than a life lived with purpose and intent?

  • August 1, 2015 /  Entries

    11/23/366

    Finally, I can take a moment to sit down and write something. Time has been in ever so short supply lately, it seems, and I doubt it’s going to change any time soon. But the last of my plans are in place for the winter. I can’t save the whole city – and the rest of it is Tomas’s job, anyway – but I’ve done what I can for the people I feel the most responsible for.

    The ink is blurring in front of my eyes. I have to start sleeping more, I know I do. My health has been surprisingly good this year, ever since the nightmares stopped, but… winter is coming, and every winter is a trial and a danger to be survived. Especially this winter.

    Though who am I kidding? I’m not going to suffer from a famine. Someone in my position is never going to know what it means to be hungry again, unless I somehow decide to starve on a lark. (Which I will not, obviously, but.) My charity is the same well-meaning but infinitely divorced sort of kindness all the other nobles are offering.

    To some extent, anyway.

    I hadn’t realized the truth of my existence until I penned that letter to Marisa, that what I am doing is settling into both of my contradictory identities and making sense of them. Rejecting neither, embracing both, and trying to see what is left when the dust settles. That is what I’ve been doing – that is what I’ve been becoming – and it fills me with a certain kind of peace.

    It’s not something I can expect others to understand; there is literally no one else in the world who has lived a life like this. To the nobles I will always be an upjumped commoner, while to the commoners I will always be a spoon-fed noble. But… that’s all right, actually. The downside of never quite fitting, of never being entirely accepted, is absolutely minor compared to all the benefits and privileges of my position.

    I am… happy. Oh, I remain an irascible bastard besieged by a ludicrous number of demands on my time, of course, and accursed by the same black humors as ever. Not to mention my sensitivity to all the many ills and wounds of the past. No doubt when the anniversary of Casimir’s death rolls around again, I’m going to have to be carried out of the graveyard drunk, though I am no longer so famous for that to be worthy of grand scandal. I have my foes and my frustrations, just as I always have and always will.

    But I am happy. My life is meaningful. Knighthood fits me like a glove despite all of the reasons it should not. I am in the best shape of my life, and a better fighter than I ever was in my callow youth. Tinkering in my greenhouse in the warmth feels good on my aching bones, and I save lives with my needle and thread. I am lonely at times, but not nearly so often as I was, and my life lacks that aching feeling of emptiness that used to bedevil me.

    Though… I’m beginning to feel a little uneasy about my drinking habits.

    Ah, well. I should probably solve that by having a drink until the unease goes away. Pour some of the good whisky, recline in the hot bath, picture that smug arse of a Count’s face when he heard “Less lace, more grace” for the first time.

    Life is good.

  • May 15, 2015 /  Writing

    Sunset slinks in slowly,
    a slanting of the light;
    subtle shadows lengthen,
    as day succumbs to night.

    Dark stole a march upon me,
    its weary, witless foe;
    This crumbling heart and body
    were conquered long ago.

    I am not what I was,
    nor will I be again;
    formidable opponent,
    most generous of friends.

    Like shadows are at best
    Poor veil cast by the real,
    The virtues I possess
    are rust of former steel.

    But when I am with you,
    I dare to feel remade-
    As if new beauties rise
    when elder glories fade.

    I feel I am becoming,
    though what, I could not say;
    Only be beside me
    through the dying of the day.

  • March 23, 2015 /  Uncategorized

    (Warning: graphic and gross.)

    Ariel dreamed…

    It was hotter – hotter than it should be, hotter than it had any right to be. It was hotter than he could ever remember Lithmore being, even in the first day of the Flood, when the rain had almost felt like a relief. One day as a child in Tubor City, he had stolen an egg from a market stall and hurried off to a street he knew, where a big black paving stone sat in the sun all day long on a corner. He was sure he’d seen the egg’s edges begin to solidify, begin to whiten, before he gave into his hunger and scraped it off the stone to shovel it into his mouth. It was as hot as that day, maybe; it had been so long ago.

    It was raining, but the rain was no relief this time; it was hot as blood, unctuous and oily black. It clung to him, plastering his hair to his skin, washing out the colors of the street. A strange street, familiar but known – all brass lanterns and vibrantly-painted walls. Something wasn’t right. He felt strong and hollow, felt as if some part of him he should be concerned with was rattling around inside him like a bird shut in a great hall: fluttering, leaping, hitting walls it couldn’t comprehend. Even stranger than the walls, however, was the space between them. Was he supposed to be so vast, and so empty? It was difficult to care.

    The rain stung him at unpredictable intervals, sometimes merely felt and other times endured. It took him long moments to think to look down at himself. He stood naked, his skin an unfamiliar map of red – fresh cuts crossing and criss-crossing, obliterating older scars with rigorous perfection. In an eyeblink the mess resolved into something recognizable, his mind helpfully reflecting it upside down and unified into the runic message it represented:

    “I, Praxxis, call you into this body, here and now, Baylethe Tainted Queen. Let the final gateway open.”

    His head swam as something wormed its way up from his gut; a thrill, unfolding slow and sweet and thick as molasses. Suddenly he knew he was moving, drifting in the direction of some ineffable pull like a fishhook lodged in his breastbone. This way, it hummed to him. The rain tasted like soot and ash and old, old blood. This way, Ariel. Time to become.

    The road spread before him, expanding into something he recognized at last: Montford Square, abode buildings with red-yellow-green shutters, flat smooth stones underfoot. Everything was streaked in black, tinted scummy and unclean. A lake of the falling rain, round and polished as a mirror, occupied the square’s heart. Its depth was impossible to guess, its opacity perfect, and its surface smooth – even though it was occupied. Bodies lay strewn all across it, floating suspended.

    They lay in a great circle, a summoning circle, and every person was a rune. Backs were broken to form the sinuous curves of rounder letters, a hideous flexibility that left exposed spine gleaming wetly in the sourceless golden light around him. Limbs had been dejointed or double-jointed, rearranged – stretched or amputated to fit the proper design. A ribcage was snapped and splayed to form the tiny hashes that differentiated the third and forth forms of the rune modern students of Eld termed ‘a’.

    He knew them all, knew every body no matter how resculpted and malformed the flesh. They were those he had loved. Family, friends, others for whom there were no convenient labels. People he was angry with, but loved. People who were long dead, resurrected for this, people he had already mourned but loved. People who had kept their lives but chosen to leave him, people he resented but loved. People who had betrayed him, that despite himself he wanted to forgive, people he hated but loved. People he had let down, people who wracked him with guilt but that he loved. Rarest and most precious, people he simply loved, without qualification or conflict.

    And they were all still alive, every last one of them. They watched him, with terror or pleading or the blankness of utter misery in their eyes, and he could feel their heartbeats. The collective heartbeat of the living circle, unnaturally unified; the thready pulses had been twined and tied together, and its leash lay in his hand. Their hearts beat at the pace of his, their lives at his mercy.

    The ritual was his, was him. He had grown a new sense for each of them, an essential knowledge of every soul in his keeping. Their pain was like a little itch in the back of his mind, perceived but hardly felt and totally irrelevant. He could will them back, call the blood oozing down their skin into the black lake back into their limbs. He could use his power over them to knit bone and seal flesh. This was the space within his skin that his mind flitted through: power, hollowing him out in expanding him ten times greater. He understood, at last, why mages would not reject their gift. Who would choose to be blind when they could see? Choose to be lame, when they could run?

    And then for a second, as if shocked to awakening by the utter wrongness of that thought, he was himself. His will and his sanity roared through the distance that separated his mind from his body, and he was in command. With a strangled laugh of gratitude, he began to gather up the power. The leash ran both ways. The right words would give it all back, would pour everything in him down the threads back into the people he loved. The force of it would scour him clean, burn him out, and finally everything would be over in a way nobody could blame him for-

    “Papan?”

    One tiny figure stood at the very center of the circle. His fine black hair, but given the wave of Marisa’s; Marisa’s soft brown eyes, but set in the darkness of his skin. Elena’s white nightdown was spattered red, bleeding to black even as he watched. She was bedraggled and her stare was so impossibly wide.

    Elena, his little princess, his firstborn. So prim and bossy but sweet beneath it, so sweet. So clever, with such manners – no six-year-old should be so imperious but correct – You bastard, he thought dully, knowing somehow this was someone’s fault but unable to remember whose. Not her. How did you know to make it her? Roaring, the darkness rose up around everything that was him, bringing with it a dark, quiet joy that thrummed in time with each beat of his omnipotent heart.

    “It’s all right, sweetheart. Papan is here now.”

    The black lake froze beneath his feet as he stepped across it, fractals infinitely spiralling across the space between the bodies of his loved ones. He crossed to Elena’s side, watched her blanched face tilt upward to keep him in view like a lodestone. “Papan?” she asked him again, voice quavering; he let himself smile indulgently. In proper audiences she always called him Father, like a good Lithmorran noblewoman, but when she was hurt or frightened she called him the word he had taught her. But there was no need for fear, of course.

    “Just trust me, darling.”

    His hand was large enough to frame her whole face as his palm cupped her cheek gently, his fingers stretching to thread through her dampened hair. Her small head leaned into him; he could feel her trembling. “It will be all right soon enough.”

    With all the power at his fingertips, all the power in the world, he needed nothing more than his other hand and a sharp twist to break the little girl’s neck. He felt the moment when the thread – subtly and invisibly worked into the center of the weave that united them all – violently parted. It was so easy: the one act done, every other tie begin to fray, drawn taut by the tension. The first one snapped with a long, despairing wail, one less soul in the symphony. The next in a sigh, the next in a moan, and even as they died his own heartbeat waxed louder, song and thunder.

    It was rising in him, crackling to life, something that came from above and below and within all simultaneously, something greedily suckling the black rain from the air, something surging to fill the empty space and give him back a connection a hundred times more profound than the false unity of the loved ones dying all around him. Above him the sky burst at its seams like a ripe and rotten melon, revealing black without end beneath its two halves as they peeled back, writhing grey. The world shed its skin, and something darker uncoiled from the new heavens, flowed down, sought him like the inverse of lightning – searing away everything bright left as it went.

    Ariel threw his arms wide, laughing in the face of the end, and welcomed the Demon Queen into the vessel readied for her.

  • March 19, 2015 /  Writing

    I woke anew this morning
    To a blue, indifferent sky;
    I cursed the callousness that let
    Such cheerful clouds drift by.

    The sun yet spun above me
    On an axis fixed and fast;
    Hours slipped as always
    From the present to the past.

    Yesterday changed nothing,
    And tomorrow will not, too;
    Though life should still its paces
    Now it walks no more in you.

    Many graves I visit,
    And many friends I’ve lost;
    Why should one more death
    Come with such a cost?

    I don’t know how to mourn you,
    but not from wrath or pride;
    I somehow never dreamed of
    A world in which you died.

    What a terrible fucking poem, it sounds as if it were written by a sixteen-year-old – no grace, no elegance, no – *the page devolves into angry scribbles*