#ch: svanr sigrlana

[lightsteeped]

ABOUT

hi! i'm griff. my main blog is @sweetcedar. i write a variety of characters on crystal dc. i'm always looking for contacts: you can read more about my characters on my carrd, here.

i want to avoid having multiple semi-inactive character blogs, so this is a catchall blog for rp chatter, inspiration, original work, and others' xiv stuff that i think is cool or funny.

ORGANIZATION TAGS

CHARACTERS where their tag came from any relationship subtags

ianthe: #ch: dulce et decorum from the wilfred owen poem, translating to 'sweet and proper'

hasret: #ch: between earth and death from persephone the wanderer, by louise glück

camille: #ch: meek to the nth from c.s. lewis' arguably rather shit essay, 'the necessity of chivalry' rl: wake me witch - iiwa rl: i am the bad daughter - her chosen mothers

lucienne: #ch: hell purgatory paradise from dante at verona, dante gabriel rosetti

elspeth: #ch: honey and gunpowder from .. something by peter s. beagle idk man i found it on pinterest

vedis: #ch: svanr sigrlana from an old norse kenning for raven, 'swan of the corpse-heaps'

synnove: #ch: scourge and sword from the prince of egypt's 'the plagues'

POST TYPES

i may or may not actually use these, being real with you original works: #writing others' rp writing: #sharing insp lit: #excerpts gposes etc: #screens oc art: #art

[sweetcedar]

1: Cross

character: vedis feigrun | words: 715 | cws: n/a

The sound of summer-song came tumbling down the mountain to the warriors at the back of the pack. It was no performance: rather, Vedis would describe it as a tangle of syllables and notes that never quite matched. They had been climbing for nearly a sennight now, she mused to herself. Surely the chanting was no longer entirely for navigation, but served as some shy expression of relief. The thought of the rest at journey’s end was a pleasant thing, and everyone would be dreaming of it by now. Soon, they would have fled far enough to settle for the warm season, tucked between grey peaks and blue skies.

Their winter homes in the foothills had been far too close to the cathedral boughs of the Golmore this time, and Vedis would be glad to no longer be bordering on trespassing. The ride north found her glancing behind at every bramble catching her skirts. A little voice nagged at the back of her mind: it might as well be an arrowhead sweeping past you-- a knife thrown by a fighter more skilled than your comrades-- a hand, reaching to pull you from your saddle and cut your witch-words from your throat. She swallowed, but that winter fear trailed after her like a pack mule, practical and ever-present. It needed little feeding to keep its place at her side.

But they had already traveled far too long for a confrontation with a hunting party, and Vedis rode barely a yalm from huntresses and warriors that she would trust to order her to her death, should it be required. Svartur rode in front of her, trailed by the two pack mules it took to carry her armor. She was too tall and she wore too much— she might overburden one of their little horses with the weight of the steel. Her two lovers rode two to the trail a few yalms ahead of her, leaning forward for the race that would begin as soon as they reached the top. Vedis could glance behind her to find Yrr, with her eyes trained on the back of her head and then averted too quickly. Behind her rode Aasveig, who gave her a grin and a nod. She could name every name down the trail and up. She was certain that villages who had met them in conflict could do the same. The thin air of the mountains around them promised that safety could be found in numbers, but it could also be found in solitude.

Vedis knew the trail up, as did every one of her fellows. It would vary soon. Today’s ride would cross the summit stream, and they would stop and pitch tents when they reached the lake that spawned it. She nudged the little pony forward, marveling as the beast’s round, little legs carried them up the mountainside. The view spanned malms. As she scanned the valley before her, each tall pine tree began to melt into one great, green beast, breathing in and out with the wind. Vedis inhaled with it, and found herself surprised by the first gasp for breath at altitude. She had been nurturing that ache under her sternum for some time as they climbed up, but the burning shock of too-thin air in a too-large piece leapt from vein to vein as fire does through a forest.

Vedis was heaving for breath as they reached the green hills that marked the coming summit. The sky might as well have kissed the spring-green grass here, and the clouds often did. Tomorrow she would wake in the fog, but under the afternoon sun she could see everything for malms. Many riders who could do so took to a gallop, chasing a reprieve from days on end of tight switchback turns and exhausting uphill treks.

The snowmelt had been early, and the stream in the distance was a pathetic little thing this year. It would be unable to fill their waterskins and unable to drown an oncoming enemy. The only thing it could offer was a moment of sheer, unadulterated joy. Horses who couldn’t make the jump kicked up sprays of water, but Vedis took the crossing with eyes wide open. She did not cross the stream first, but she did cross it fastest.

[sweetcedar]

10: Channel

ch: vedis feigrun || wc: whatever a gnarly english attempt at lausavísur - back and forth, conversational poetry - in a 6/4 dróttkvætt meter

Thus spoke the sorcerer, Wards channel wild-land and weave joy into grieving. Soon wolf-wine and sulfur swallow every valley.

Then said the ravens, Does heart-blood depart you, death-speaker caught breathless? A staff-head and shaft speak slain souls’ words remaining.   Thus spoke the sorcerer, What scorn you gave warnings witnessed and rewritten. Your weakened war-speakers worsened with each verse spent.

Then said the ravens, Does virtue desert you, dying yet defiant? Your errant ensnarer earns for you her burning.

[sweetcedar]

24: Vicissitudes

ch: vedis feigrun || wc: 71 two þulur, inspired by the 'interchange and alternation' definition. i used an 8/10/8 meter for ease of working in english.

Many names there are for flame:

Hearth, campfire, candlelight, embers, purifier, meat-eater, warmth-giver, pyre, kindling, smoke-beast, and huntsman.

Smoke, ardor, ward-breaker, beacon, lifegiver, pine-tender, leaping one, light, flare, wildfire, vein-blaze, and cinder.

Many names there are for ice:

Freeze, calf-herd, hastener, traitor, pitiless one, mountain-wall, jagged one, hail, mirror, blue-eyed, and glacier.

Rime, hoarfrost, river-ford, growler, shining one, water-stone, drifting one, heart, floe, spring thaw, respite, and blizzard.

[sweetcedar]

19: Turn a Blind Eye

ch: vedis feigrun || wc: 932 cws: its about decapitation like this is just inherently kindof a gross subject

The first time she had led the ash-rites, Yrr had advised her to look away. They stood together at the edge of the circle, apprentices bound to stare wide-eyed at workings far beyond either of them. “No one’s watching you yet,” she remembers her friend whispering, breath hot against her ear. “Just look away.”

Perhaps Yrr glanced away, for she couldn’t have known if she did, but Haelvi herself stared wide-eyed as the blade came down. It was the honorable thing to do, she thought. Once, this was someone honorable, too. If she were to die once and live to die again, she hoped her butchers would give her the same kindness. But the being going under the chopping block was no longer able to consider such nuances. They were useful only to dull the weight of the morning.

It helped that Haelvi no longer recognized the shape hidden beneath the stone-wrought features. It was like looking at a statue, and if that was true, then the skin was only lichen, flaking and chipping away at the edges. It did not surprise her to see a great platemailed boot placed atop its temple to hold the neck still. She opened her mouth to offer a binding spell, but even her own speech came too slowly. The axe-wielder was always quick. For all that she spun fantasies of statues and chisels in her own mind, the sound of the axe’s path through his spine was unmistakably mortal. This was one of her kindnesses, Haelvi had been told. No one needed to suffer.

By the time she looked up from staring at the separate dead and dying pieces, she realized that all the gazes in the little circle around the corpse had been turned upon her. Her elder leaned forward on her staff to capture her eye contact, and she jutted her chin towards the squirming ashkin on the ground. There was no spoken word to cue her that it was time. One was simply supposed to know.

She stared into her own staff. It would be hers in full, soon. It was carved from cedar and wrapped in soft leather, with old woodwork curling around the great gem that would serve as her guide. It sung a hymn unlike any of the skaldic music Haelvi had ever heard. It was unmusical at best and horrid at worst, humming a low, throbbing sound like voices wrapped and warped over each other. They overlapped in her head as she incanted, and her own words melted into the confusion of its great song, repeating over and over again as though the chorus would ever change.

Haelvi’s teacher stood in the present but a few fulms away, hands clasped around her own weapon. All that would be judged were the simplest of requirements: is it dead? Will it wake?

But there would be no need. First bloomed the true death, garbed in soft colors almost like a betrayal. Death-magic was quiet and sweet, disguising itself with the fuchsia and lavender colors of sunrises and midsummer lupines. Only once the eyes in the head stopped rolling could that foul curse give way to the relief of bright, wild flame. Haelvi had been close for many burnings before, but never had she stood at the center of it. The rot-smoke welled up as thick as putrid syrup in her nostrils, and she found it to be so close to a liquid that it rolled down into her throat instead of up and away.

She finished her words, but the very second the invocation was over, she clutched the staff with one hand and turned to hack and cough until black phlegm rolled off the tip of her tongue. She muffled it into the elbow of her own dress, lest she disturb the mourners.  “It is done,” called Sigrdrifa to the small gathering, shattering the growing silence with one thunderous clap of her staff’s hilt against the ground. “And we are two.”

There would be a moment now where Haelvi might catch her breath. The others had to wash the ash from the stone, and Sigrdrifa’s soft words instructed them on the requisite technique. She took an unsteady step back, watching them with wide, glade-green eyes. Her breaths came faster, one by one, until her upward spiral was cut short by the clatter of platemail and the comfort of a steel-weighted hand upon her shoulder.

“You did well,” murmured the Butcher herself. She began to speak the soft ‘h’ of her summer-name before the facts of the day forced her to pause and to exhale. There would be no ceremony, no feast. This new name was not given amidst a celebration. This was to be a funeral, and its date was both far too late and far too early.

As they looked on to friends and family both finishing the work, Haelvi remembered that only Svartur’s lips were visible beneath her helmet. She understood her reasoning, now: it must have been as much a preservation of her own dignity as it was a protection. Svartur’s eyeless visage did not look back. Like this, she could feel all she wished, but still be seen as turning a blind eye to the required death that followed her everywhere she went. Her gentle hand still rested against her shoulder, and the platemail made a perfect excuse for Haelvi to let some of her own weight rest.

As the others began to disperse, Svartur leaned down slightly to repeat her words ere the clamor of oncoming voices overpowered them. “You did well, Vedis.”