#circle skirt worn today in honor of Mother taking back the year she was born 🥹

[shea-like-the-butter]

Friday, October 27th 2023

Got love-struck, went straight to my head

Got lovesick all over my bed ✨

[thatboomerkid]

Evil Big Wind

Evil Big Wind

The swordsman called Seven Falling Black Feathers strode with a slow and confident swagger up through the wide and winding valleys of the Felldales, his heavy sky-steel great-blade glinting upon his bare back, his late father’s worn leather sandals strapped-tight upon his tanned feet, and a song thundering in his heart.

Today is good, the swordsman decided after a moment, breathing deep and closing his eyes.

Around his neck was a gift from his youngest daughter: tiny white snail shells -- polished, glimmering like little beads -- strung upon a knotted length of scavenged, lusterless grey rubber. He treasured it, and had sworn to wear it every day; his mother’s gift, a gnarled wineskin once half-full of fermented mushroom-tea, was already near empty. The violet mark of his wife’s savage love-bite at the right side of his throat – his favorite gift of all, in truth – ached, and the huge man’s pale, scarred face burned slightly to remember the mingled hunger and pride in her bright blue eyes as she sent him forth to go a-reaving.

Yes. It is a good day, the swordsman thought.

The braids of his long, ash-blonde hair caught at drifts of the cold breeze, ripe and raw and rippling on this early autumn afternoon ... and the swordsman laughed to himself.

Ash and aluminum were on the air.

It smelled like killing, and the killing was good.

original image from here

Seven Falling Black Feathers was a full high-man of the tribe, this day. He had bedded his wife, bested a horde of summoned slave-fiends, and recited the many names of his honored ancestors, each, all in full view of his family and of his Lady, Speaker of the Evil Big Wind. He had been proven a worthy warrior, a proper husband, and rightful heir to a legacy of blood and thunder.

Each hunter, demon-caller & flame-seer of the tribe had been offered the chance to challenge him -- one final time -- in single combat, to the death, for the rights to his name; not a one had stepped forward.

By their silence, they had made Seven Falling Black Feathers a full voice in the Speaker’s Choir.

The sky-steel blade on his back sung with him now, glowing; another strong baby grew in his wife’s belly, soon to be born with a fierce name blessed by the spirits. Today, he was the deadliest thing on the planet. That was enough to make any man smile.

From far above, the cry of his hawk signaled that more fools came to face Seven Falling Black Feathers … men clothed in bolts and iron, armed with sharp crossbows and their loud, black-smoke sorcery. A small force, moving his way swiftly upon horseback. Hunting. They would all be dead, soon. More souls for mighty Pazuzu, greater glory for the people of the Evil Big Wind tribe, heaps of treasure to be brought back for his wife and family.

The cruel smile deepened upon the face of Seven Falling Black Feathers; he palmed a jagged chakram to his throwing-hand and moved to conceal himself at high ground.

In the long shadows of the valley, the hulking swordsman was the most-lethal of predators.

These lands, in the long-ago years of his grandfather’s youth, had been contested. Claimed by many, conquered by none, and held for hunting only by the fabled Black Sovereign in his sick-man’s citadel far to the east at Sky Fall; there were giants here, twisted sorcerers and hunched scavengers, orc-blood raiders and metal things not born of this earth nor constructed under these stars.

Feh. Those were the before-times.

Then came the Speaker of the Evil Big Wind, striding down upon shining clouds from the Worldwound in the north, with the demon-spirits she could call-forth from the air. She alone now claimed these lands, and she challenged all to face her or to take her blessing.

Her magics were strong, indeed: a pass of her hand made the flesh of slain foes into the finest of feasts; by the pointing of her finger, fresh water sprung up from the desert; with her kiss, the hot blood of her chosen raged and burned like sky-fire. To behold her face was to invite nightmare and madness; to hear her voice was sheerest earthly ecstasy.

All before her bowed, or fled, or were slain.

Her many miracles unified even as they divided; with each passing year, the tribe now multiplied in strength. With each winter, their treasuries swelled and their ranks grew bolder. With each nightfall, their hunting improved.

The tribe of the Evil Big Wind was still small; their territory could be walked, in-full, in less that a ten-day, and they counted fewer than a thousand souls amongst their war-choirs. But they were swift, and sharp, and they possessed a boldness born from the blessing of wicked spirits.

His hawk cried again.

Seven Falling Black Feathers leapt up. And up. And then he crouched low upon a tall, sunset-colored stone, gauging his choke-point; his pale green eyes tracked the rust-strewn path he would follow to charge-upon the survivors of his first assault. Tuning his ears, breathing with measured calm, after a few minutes the huge swordsman caught the low, ominous sound of a half-dozen men riding his way.

He blew a sharp, high whistle; his hawk began to circle in tighter loops. She would strike for the eyes, trained-well to come crashing down like a bolt of thunder at her lord’s command.

Without looking, Seven Falling Black Feathers began to prepare an enchanted extract from the demon-bag that hung at the hip of his leather skirt. Once his sharp chakram and a volley of explosives had done their gruesome work, he decided, he would quaff down the fiend-potion.

Indeed, he would stride into the blaze and fight the last of the survivors in the shape of a cancer-titan.

Yes. He would challenge them then, and roar his name, and send the last of these fools screaming to their weak gods with the sound of the Evil Big Wind – and of the blazing title his daughters now bore – on their blood-foamed lips.

Then he would carry back corpses, to be welcomed by his Lady and by his ladies.

Before sunset, both this world and the spirit-world-to-come would speak tales of his power & his prowess. Tonight, he would dance around the blazing cook-fires with his hunting-kin, he would make love to his wife, and he would tell his precious little girls of his skill at arms as he tucked them into a warm bed.

He would pray, and boast, and Pazuzu would laugh with terrible delight.

The hulking man shrugged beneath the welcome weight of his glowing great-sword as the first of the armored men rounded the corner, oblivious to their foregone fate.

He let them get closer.

Closer.

There.

A single chakram sang through the cool & lonely air; the stench of raw explosives began to sizzle as Seven Falling Black Feathers -- without looking -- tossed a writhing demon-bag into the nimble fingers of his throwing-hand and gauged its weight.

It was perfect.

He moved, crouched low, and threw again.

One armor-man’s head came loose from his body then, as the shrill whine of the chakram became a wet and discordant clang; before the man even knew that he was dead, there was a twisting coil of sticky, slimy flame half-scattered among the iron-shod hooves beneath his companions.

The swordsman moved once more.

A sharp whistle; the scream of a hawk taking its prey. The helpless cries of men, filled with empty half-prayers; the wordless, panicked terror of horses: more honest, if not more useful. And then the dull, oppressive thunder-crack of gunfire, so loud in the canyon that it forced-back all other sounds, making even death-howls fall away like a fistful of fallen leaves before the flood of rainstorms.

Nothing but a panicked misfire.

Grinning broadly, Seven Falling Black Feathers moved again, and again, dropping ever lower; whisper-quiet rings of steel sang from his finger-tips, one after another, finding gaps in armor and exposed flesh to slice ... or simply crushing those bones beneath the steel, where the plate was too thick.

Bolts, shrieking, scattered off the stones around him.

Something hot -- stinging -- pinched at his shoulder. With a glance, the hulking swordsman discounted the crossbow’s wound as insignificant. It would bleed, and badly ... but it would not hamper him.

In truth, it would kill any normal man by daybreak ... yet with a touch, this very evening the Speaker of the Evil Big Wind could make him whole once more.

Laughing, the massive man dropped one last time, setting loose the last of his bombs just before he fell behind an outcropping of worn and ancient coral. Unwholesome fires swiftly bloomed upon the other side. Smoke rose, and now he stood tall upon the slaughterhouse floor.  

His missiles were exhausted; a gleaming great-blade fell into the swordsman’s hands.

The taste of demon-blood rushed down the hulking man’s throat as his stomach knotted; thorns coiled from his brows as thick fingers fused beneath new muscles and he flexed into a mountainside of alien bone.

Seven Falling Black Feathers thought, then, very briefly of his wife’s sly & knowing smile.

Yes. Yes, the killing was good today, indeed.