quiltipcanines

[quiltipcanines]

The Weeping Candle

The light of false reflection comes to hold. The light of the sun is paper thin. It can only cast a pallor. It's untruth tints the world in black and white where luminance is attained only by optical illusion. Everything is delicate in this light. Everything is starved. To be lit is to be sick with the white glow dripping over black features. The untrue sun performs light in a disjointed grace attained not through skill but by broken, missing bones. But to the world it has given them white light. Pure light. Even as the light carves hollow craigs under eyes and between ribs, they will thank the untrue sun for it. The pristine mache prepared for them like paper snowflakes delights them for the same unenlightened way that both satisfies while being lesser. 

But the moon is not satisfied. Not mollified, not consoled. She sees the sun, and knows what it is not. The false light has rent her- for the reflection of false white light has made her a cavern of negative space among the black. White behind it, white beyond it in a dimension that should not be. The lie of light has hollowed her, imploded the mirror that she is. The grief alone might be enough to fill her. If only sorrow was an obelisk that would blot out the sun. 

The moon turns away in pain, not only for the pain of it but for being unable to bear the warping. She casts her eyes wiped white to the sky behind her and bears her grief and rage for being trapped a reflection, an association. She begs the stars for light to shine, just enough true light to see by. Her hand erases the space before her as she reaches out to the smallest star, when suddenly, slowly, achingly- a drip falls from its bottom point. So tiny it's naught but a line, but it glimmers a warm white as it falls into the black below. Just before it seems as though it will splatter on the bottom of space and be lost to the darkness the drop flares out delicate ivory wings trailing scales in their wake. It rises up towards the Moon in graceful and purposeful flight. It is a moth and though it flies the Moon thinks for a moment it is carved of her own stone with how each flap of its wings reveals a rainbow over ivory. 

One by one more teardrops rain down from stars all around her. They are luminous as they fall. Each is white, but the white seeded from every color grown into one. Every motion and breath shows a lineage of hue. Dusky whites born of purples, nurturing yellows making way for eggshell, and misty greens- all there and pearlescent as they fall. All are lit. Some glimmer like candle flame over wax, others as though they're lit from inside.  Each is only faint, mournful scrap of light to toast what had been lost, but together they rose as moths in a with a comforting glow that blanketed the night.  

As the first moth landed on the moon she froze where she expected the moth to. It was soft, almost down and it was unwavering as the negative of the sun ate the glow it cast on the moon. She held her breath as it crawled over her hand, and then slipped beneath her skin and restored the space that was lost. The moment it did the taint of the sun washed away like dust in a breeze. A second moth landed and slipped under, lulling the Moon with a bedtime story she had told the stars hundreds of times over. Her eyes slipped closed and her arms opened.  

A child of the moon lay hidden in the heart of a peach like a secret behind flesh and hull. When the peach pit cracked and bore her in the world she wanted to be back in the sky. The moon was in the seed of her heart and it longed to be back in the sky. She planted fields of lavender like billowing clouds and lay among them until she slept and could look down on the world from her dreams. After she made every bundle of lavender she would make a wish, and then tie each with a bow for luck. One night a star fell from the sky and she caught it so it would land in the arms of someone who understood. Together, she and the star lamented and mourned their fall from the heavens. When the child told the star what she had done, hope cast a spark against its cold iron once again. Like the Moon could wield dreams, Stars all spoke in wishes. While the child dreamt the Star called upon all of the wishes she had made over time, until each wish formed a step. Together they matched step for step, hand in hand, to ascend into the night sky where the Star was welcomed back and the child was welcomed home. 

In a swarm the tears of the stars flew to cover the Moon. Their wings felt like a slow rain of peach petals as they crawled into her to patch together a new, gleaming skin. The Moon was now scaled in moth’s wings like the scales of the wings themselves. A luminous glow came from within her, dim at first but then bright enough to illuminate the seams of each of the moth’s wings in her new patchwork skin. The light was warm and small, having the fragility of something born new to this world. It would one day grow bright with rays of light sharp as fangs but for now it would need to be tended and fostered. Still, it was enough. It was the light the moths had sacrificed themselves for, and it would be enough. It would become whatever it needed to be. 

With her new veil of moth bright skin, the Moon has become the lantern by witch to see by. Her light is the warm shade of growth that cracks through the sterile white light. It is small, it is changed, but it is a light of her own and its potential is infinite. No more does the Moon need the Sun. Her light will not be a reflection of the harsh rays that illuminate superficially. Hers is the soft light by which truth is revealed. Fingers twined in just enough darkness to remove masks, cloaks, and armor, and just enough light to show the naked whole of a person. 

Now with tears dry, the Moon stands and steps to take her place in the sky. She feels the soft flutter of one thousand moths inside her. Just part of her. Their scales catch the un-sun’s rays and they are twisted, bent, and broken. A dark halo surrounds the Moon as the existing light is eaten away. It is the herald of her majesty. The dark before her light. 

[quiltipcanines]

The Chase

All there is is the sound of running. Everchanging hooves and paws pounding over stone and dirt. You can hear the twigs snap and trees groan as something shoots by. If you truly are unlucky you will hear its rushing breath with cavernous lungs, though the sound will be far too wet and eager. Makes you think far too much of saliva. In the morning the signs are all there that the chase came through, and there will be enough staining to tell you someone was caught. The marks are always different with the single similarity that something else that big would have been seen- and no one has ever seen The Chase without being caught themselves.

[quiltipcanines]

The Land Squid

There’s something off about a copse of trees in the forest. They’re a little too pale and they resemble fingers too far to be comfortable. The bees love these trees and never seem to be raided though there sure are a lot of claw marks & fur in the area. You’ve never seen other animals there come to think of it. Just the two.

[quiltipcanines]

Witch’s Ladder

There is a hill, somewhere dark and grey, sheltered by an immovable blanket of thunderheads. In the shade of the world, only three trees grew. A towering rowan with orange berries like snake’s eyes, an apple bent low with fruit still young and sour, and the third was long dead, with bark scraped clean and salt soaked deep in the wood. The roots of the trees were old, inseparable from the hill itself, and they were all covered in blood. A young coyote had been too cock sure when he stole into the chicken coop and he had left with a bullet in the breast instead of food in his belly. 

As the coyote lay on his side cradled in tree roots struggling to breathe, an audience was filling the auditorium of branches. The murder of crows had come first. They were alerted by the sound of the gunshot and if anything was needed when that bullet hit its mark, it was family. From the great grand matron, to a chick just old enough to fly, there were sixteen crows and they took up in the rowan tree. Shortly after a stellars jay arrived with the glint of the stars in its eye and the dew of dawn still glittering on its blue crest. It had seen the shot happen, and would not leave a dying creature in its last moments. It flew down to the lowest branch of the leaning apple tree and perched with one foot on a burgeoning fruit and the other on a branch still tipped in the last flowers so it straddled the point where there was no turning back. 

Blood had begun to spread in a halo around the coyote by the time the third and final bird arrived. It was a flicker, with black feathers spread upon its breast like the blood spattering the poor creature it perched above. It landed with a hollow thud in the tree that was long dead and the echo spread down through its roots and deep into the ground. The bright chirps of the flicker hid the last tolls of the coyote. 

Together they were eighteen, and they listened to heed the final words of their cousin. 

Before they could begin, a scrabble interrupted their silence. Heavy footfalls unearthing clods of dirt on that lonely hill preceded the arrival of the last mourner. It was a child, shot through beyond flesh and blood to the soul underneath. All they were was tatters and it was a miracle that they had held together for this long. They managed one shakey step at the top of the hill, then another, before collapsing next to the coyote. The last gleam in the coyotes eyes sparked as he met the child’s glassey gaze. 

“We are dying.” Said the child. In the moments before the child arrived the crows would have agreed, all from the oldest to the youngest. The jay would have agreed, for it had seen it, and the flicker would have agreed, for it felt it in its breast deeper than any other sorrow. The coyote, with the taste of defeat the only thing left on his lips, would have agreed too, but not now. 

“Which of our wounds is more permanent? Which is the most final?” the coyote said through long, bloody teeth. Blood bubbled up from his chest as it spoke, but the question was worth the cost. 

The child was empty, and so, so full. Nearly suffocated under the pressure of its confinement in its false body. The truth of themselves had become broken and twisted beyond what it had originally been. It had been so long since the child remembered the form they took, they way their body felt, that the truth of who they were was nearly as dead as they were. 

“I am lost. My family has forgotten me, and I have forgotten myself. I do not know the teeth in my skull or the way the wind would run along my body. All that’s left is the shadow of myself, a negative space where I used to be. What point is there in life for something like that?” the child spoke with a voice that was more akin to the third echo than the first speaking. 

“We remember.” said the crows. 

“As do I.” Said the jay. 

“The trees have seen you and we live among them. How could we not?” said the flicker. 

The coyote laughed, ignoring the way blood gurgled in its throat. “The trees remember you. They drink my blood now, and tell me all about your grand forgetting. “ The coyote could feel deaths’ arms swing wide, ready to catch it in its fall. With the molten spite and rage still pumping in its heart, the coyote reached out. “I refuse to die in failure, to die in loss. I will offer you a bargain, child. There is no stopping my descent into the grave, but if you have forgotten your teeth, take mine. Bite for me, tear into the flesh and blood of your enemies and give them no quarter. Bury me and eat for me. Taste richness I could never imagine and chew your food thoroughly.” 

With a low growl echoing in its throat, bubbling up through the blood filling its lungs, the coyote opened wide to display it pearly, jagged teeth. The child spared only a moment to look into the coyote’s eyes and see the grim determination and utter conviction of its offer. With a confident hand, they reached forward and pulled the teeth from the coyote’s mouth. The sharpness of the cainines sliced across their palm but they did not falter as they pried the teeth out one by one, and more of their blood began to mingle. The child’s palms were red as the petals of poppies by the time they began to slide the treasured teeth into their own mouth. For a moment it seemed like they would not all fit, that they would be too large and grand to fit their own purpose, but with each tooth added it became clear that they would have fit all along. 

“You have forgotten your wings, child. I can see the scars of where your feathers were plucked. They broke your hands to keep you from flying.” said the oldest crow if a hoarse croak. She peered down at the child, weak as they were like a new-born chick. 

“We shall be their wings then. I shall give you the deepest black of my feathers and so will my siblings until your shadow is cowed by their darkness and obeys. Nothing shall keep you from the skies ever again, and you will be as eminent and unstoppable as the night. For this favor you must always remember your family. Keep us fed and we shall keep you in kind.” In a great flurry of wings, the crows descended from the rowan tree and landed on the child’s arms and back. They began to pluck the feathers from their wings and lace them into their arms. Though the crows gave up their feathers, their own wings did not seem to diminish. They were spared in their sacrifice as spirits as free and generous as theirs would never be grounded. By the time they were done the child’s arms were transformed into broad, black wings that were deep as the void that swallows the horizon between land and sky. When the child spread them for the first time, they felt lighter than they knew possible. 

The child looked over their wings and held them close before looking up at the birds one more time. Muscles that had not been there previously were sore from disuse and ached to spring into action “My bones remember these, I can tell, but how am I to fly if I can’t see where I’m going? It has been so long I do not know how to recognize the landscape of my home.” 

“I will teach you to see, I can do that much.” said the Jay. It glided down before the child and brought its head back. There was a sharp burst of pain in the child’s forehead as the Jay pecked at it, and a trickle of blood traveled down the child’s brow. It fell into their eyes, casting their vision in red. As they tried to blink it away dark shapes began to form and the truth came with them. The cut widened as the Jay pecked on and on. Each drop of blood that fell into the child’s eyes brought the truth into focus. Finally the eye that had been grown over was free and its lids tore free of each other to blink ragged ends. “That eye was stuck, only looking on the inside- you know? How good were you at seeing the layers of yourself? With that eye open you can see all the layers of the world, but it takes time to find the edges. Sometimes things that should line up don’t, but that does not make it less worthy.” said the Jay though a crooked beak. 

The flicker was a timid friend of the child, but not so timid as to never look them in the eye. It watched what the child did for others and each act of kindness brought it closer. Now, sympathy bled black from its breast. “You have lost so much, your form, your sight, your knowledge, but you still have one thing now that you had then; yourself. You still bear the wellspring from which all parts of you spring. With enough strength of spirit and will no matter how many times you cut the branches from the tree they will grow again twice over. Grow your will into ironwood. Walk with the knowledge of Persephone that anything lost can be grown again.” The flicker flew down from the salt worn tree and the child caught the bird before pulling it to their chest. The sound of their heartbeats grew louder until it swallowed them both. “You have a primordial sea inside you. Each beat of your heart is the volcanic thrum of magma clashing with cold, nutritious water. This duality of your soul makes earth with all the riches of Hades. Even outside your original container, your seeds grow true. But you must be vigilant to weed out the smothering human lies that break you down into worm food. Tear them out, and if you can’t, embrace the fire as it washes you clean and their ashes feed you. Live with every inhale, and die with every exhale. Any imposter or false idea of you thrust upon you will wither under your harsh extremes. Show them the child your parents raised.” 

One last moment of silence clung to the flickers words before it brought its head back and struck its long beak against the child’s chest. Blood began to flow down the birds beak like sap from a tapped tree. With each strike the child’s heartbeat became a call and response thunder and waves crashing upon volcanic rock. Their veins turned green beneath their skin and blossomed where it split. As though they had been dipped in ink, the child’s hands began to change. The right became a shadow black, velvety soft like a stain of smoke wrapping around their arm, while the left became marble white with immaculate grace of bone china. The ink that stained their skin dripped from their fingers to form long, precise claws that glinted. The coyote could feel a sense of pride in them, for they were a tool of a predator of skill.  

It was odd for a funeral, but a rebirth could only truly come from a fresh death. The child was heavy with the gifts they had been granted and their sinews ached to sit up. Together, these gifts promised hope that the power of the past, or a power of the future, was within reach and that was the heaviest of all. Gently, they reached out and pulled the coyote onto their lap. Their claws did not cut, for this was to be a gentle goodbye. “I will not thank you with words. I’m not leaving you behind here either. I know you now like, well, like the teeth in my mouth. I will thank you every time I bite and tear and chew the gristle of prey and enemy alike. I can promise you that we will eat much nicer things than gristle. Every time I bite and snarl and howl at the moon you will too, right there with me. Part of you may die tonight, but a part of you has many steps to tread still and I will take them for you.” 

A heavy, sputtering huff escaped the coyote as his chest shuddered. All that had taken to bring him to this point was a moment of bad luck in an effort for survival, but the coyote knew a second chance. “It is a promise then. A promise from all of us. You have given your blood and body, and will give your time to satisfy us. As you tear yourself from this human body feed it to us and you shall be free. Feed your family, guard them, and walk them home. See the divinity within yourself and the more you recognize your own power the more it shall grow. Child, be voracious for yourself.” Blood leaked from the coyotes jaws as he gave his final proclamation. 

The child bent and softly wrapped their arms around the corpse. They could feel that the coyote was still with them. From above, the birds watched the embrace. “Pluck the bullet from its chest so its body can be pure.” The flicker said. 

“It has become a seed of transformation, a culmination of the magic here. Use it to guide you and enact your power.” The jay said. 

The child did not hesitate to follow the instruction of their elders. With steady fingers they reached into the wound that felled the beast. Their new claws slipped in with hardly any resistance. It only took a moment of maneuvering before they tapped against something hard and slick. Carefully, the child plucked it out of the wound. The bullet had indeed changed. The metal had turned into a smooth crystal, grey as a stormcloud. As the child shifted it in their claws, the crystal finally caught the light and it exploded a thunderstrike of color. 

“Now then, you have one last job to do. Take him home, child. Practice so you might better know the way. It is time for him to rest.” The matron crow called. 

Again without hesitation the child nodded and gathered the coyote in their arms.  Out of all they had forgotten, these were the only steps they knew. As long as they had that to hold on to, the child would keep walking that path, hopeful that it would lead them home too.

[quiltipcanines]

turn on the sound

[quiltipcanines]

Trump doxes people who wrote with concerns about leaks of their sensitive personal data

Donald Trump is running a national-scale voter-suppression effort, billed as a “Voter Fraud Commission,” whose first act was to illegally demand that state election officials dox every registered voter by sending their lifelong voter records to the White House.

Not only did the states object to this – including red states with GOP governors – but so did many ordinary Americans, who wrote to Trump to tell them that they thought this was a bad idea.

The White House carefully gathered all of those letters from concerned voters, and published them, all 112 pages’ worth, without redacting those voters’ names, email addresses, home addresses, phone numbers, and places of employment.

https://boingboing.net/2017/07/15/seriously-fuck-that-guy.html

[quiltipcanines]

yknow what makes me emotional? that when Hippolyta gives Diana Antiope’s tiara she says “Make sure you are worthy of it” and Diana doesnt put it on (just like she doesnt let her hair down) up until she is going to go up the trench and like???? thats poetic cinema right fucking there my guys, Diana put on the tiara because she is basically the product of Hippolyta’s righteousness and Antiope’s fearlessness in battle, she put on the tiara because she feels like helping humanity and saving these people makes her worthy of it. 

[quiltipcanines]

Richard Shilling - Land Art

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Soul of wood by  Roman Tolordava

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View of Macclesfield from Tegg’s Nose - Cheshire, England by Tony J Gilbert

[quiltipcanines]

ON FIRE ! (by Abdulmajeed Aljuhani)

[quiltipcanines]

by  かがみ～

[quiltipcanines]

Somewhere, deep in the great forests of Ireland, is a house. Those who need it, find it; as do some who don’t. Those that seek it only find themselves lost. A witch lives in that house. Those who have seen her say her hair is as golden as barley and her eyes have a smile that is unafraid of the crows feet beside them. Should you stop for a visit, she will guide you through her garden, gliding barefoot through the patches. Her plants have been touched by that same light that’s reflected in her eye and sparks at her step. You have never known plants to feel, but these feel joy.  Once you are done she will invite you inside for tea. Going into her house feels no different than standing outside with the dirt covered floors and spiders residing in all the corners you look. The door frames yawn with age but still welcome you heartily. It seems like all the surfaces in the house are coated with the dust of unuse but the patterns swirled in them from motion tell another story. Mobiles of wood, feathers, shelves, and tinted glass line the walls in between netted planters. You don’t recall recognizing any of the plants there, but one of the blooms that caught your eye reminded you of childhood.  The saucers, and cups, and teapot she brings you all don’t match but were selected with taste. The Witch will tell you how she grew the herbs in the tea and how they will help you sleep that night- even though you don’t remember ever mentioning your troubles. Still, she smiles at you and continues on. The dreams, she says, are not a burden. They are an opportunity. You must answer the door once it’s knocked on, not cower behind it. Once you do that you will understand, but not until then. Until then, you must fortify yourself to be ready. Her face has gone tight as she talks, and she notices this. With a deep breath gold returns to the lines of her face.  It is late now. The Witch has one more gift for you. She plucks the flower you were eyeing before and presses it into a stone that was on the counter. Once she hands it to you, the two are one with no trace that they were ever separate. It will steel you, she says, for when the time comes. Now, with the orange light of sunset seeping through the trees, you start to wonder how you found this place. As you start to wonder, you realize it is time for you to leave. She walks you to the door, still with her warm smile. She wishes you luck, but it is time for her to help another as she has helped you. You walk away, but don’t look back until  you’ve hit the tree line again. When you do there is no house, Only a patch of flowers basking in the sunset.  That night, you have no dreams. You have become them.

[quiltipcanines]

Andrew Berkemeyer

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Forest//Mount Rainier National Park August 2016

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Ilze Lucero

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Peach flowers by Mars-Hill