#it's a double edged sword. so groups are flimsy

[eorzeashan]

my fc: i think i'll be done with ffxiv come 7.0

my fc: yeah it's no fun without a friend group

me: gah!

[nookishposts]

Managing Messages

It would appear that there is a sea change going on in my brain. Self-reflection seems to be a mid-life given and I believe that has ramped up for many of us during restricted pandemic conditions. Once we tired of bread making and Netflix binges and being unable to wear anything but buffet pants, many of us got contemplative; involuntary monks in retreats that needed dusting.

As a storyteller I listen a lot and try to see the funny in the foibles and fairy-tales of everyday living. We tell ourselves whatever we need to in order to get from place to place,between frustrations and surprises, for better or worse. Case in point : “I will eat this last cookie, in addition to the two I just had, because it would be silly to put the bag back in the cupboard with just one cookie left.” Please tell me it’s not just me....

Rules of comportment have changed a lot in the last year and we have been more often confronted with the quirks of our own company.  We examine the world through a lens of a necessarily more domestic perspective, noticing the dust dinosaurs under the bookshelf from our horizontal couch-lolling, seeing the cobwebs near the ceiling, remembering that we’d promised to freshen the cupboards with a coat of paint, and scrolling, scrolling, scrolling the hours away.

There are things I promised myself last November that I would spend the Winter doing; among them squats my own personal elephant-in-the-living-room; the actual work of assembling/organising some of my writing for publication. I have promised myself this every Autumn for the last 4 years, maybe more. Not following up has absolutely nothing to do with the pandemic and everything to do with the mixed messages in my early brain-wiring that I have managed until now to avoid reconciling. No, I am not blaming my parents for my failures; but I am finally acknowledging that they inadvertently gave me a puzzlement of fears to figure my way through. Analysis paralysis. That particular writing assignment is way overdue. I guess I have to start somewhere. 

My parents, both born pre-Depression grew up in financial poverty, in families that strove to keep them fed and sheltered rather than striving for the sake of striving itself. Neither finished school because it was just not a priority next to taking on some responsibility for keeping the families basic needs of living met. They were taught to keep their heads down and noses-to-the-grindstone, to never think of aspiring beyond their “station” in life or if they did, to keep it to themselves. Which I think they did. I don’t recall either of them ever talking about having dreams for themselves except in the most self-deprecating or pipe-dreaming kind of manner, as if dreams were to be sloughed off, abandoned to the past, along with childhood.

So I grew up the eldest child of two very hard-working people whose attitudes combined in a united defensive front against those they’d been taught to believe were their “betters”; people like academics, doctors, and politicians. People of means, likely inherited. People of power and influence, genetically programmed to screw the little guy. Seriously. 

I was a dreamer from the get-go. I had a hearty imagination fuelled by a belief in magic and a natural disinclination to follow the rules, a deeply curious little kid who had a knack for remembering and a sense of wonder at the world itself. My parents, like most of their generation were more concerned that I be prepared for harsh reality than for questioning the status quo. I too was to work hard, keep my head down, and not entertain any real ambition for fear of life beating it out of me. They both knew how to laugh and were not without creativity, but all of it was directed and drained off in matters of pure practicality. 

Mixed messages have dogged me ever since, though I have long been of an age where I know it is my responsibility to  unravel things for myself. Distilled, the messages that I carry are as follows: from Dad it was “who the hell do you think you are with your book-learning and big words? You think you are better than us? The hell you are!” And from Mum it was: “Well, good for you, but don’t get used to success because it doesn’t ever last.”  Both attitudes came from fear, his from being usurped or found wanting and hers from being afraid of serial disappointment. Translated in my brain, those echoing, looping messages have kept me from believing it is okay to just take a grand leap of faith in myself. Good lord, what if I fail and embarrass us all?! The child in my brain wrestles with the adult who logically knows there are no guarantees either way, but that to do nothing is also futile.

I am a storyteller. My maternal grandparents were too. I read from a very young age and made up my own stories, even inventing a couple of imaginary friends to take along on my adventures. In school, I loved to read and write and went through systematic progressive phases of writing poetry and one-act plays and folk songs and short fiction. As an adult, I have written as therapy, for myself and for others of my generation who can relate to the things we all go through but I am willing to write and often laugh about. Writing is confession, and community, and collective consciousness. For me it’s most often spontaneous, off-the-cuff riffs about flushed car keys and public prat falls. Stories are how I make sense of the World, as well as the world of possibility. I write, I send it out like a flimsy paper airplane and hope it doesn’t crash too soon.

This past Winter I was all set to organise the many musings that I have blurted out on Facebook, in my blog, as a result of writing groups and workshops and the encouragement of kind readers. I wanted to prepare for publication a collection of mostly lighthearted observational spit-takes and rim-shots. But I didn’t do it. Every time I sat down, I would find a distraction to wander towards instead of the focus I needed to cobble my pieces (literal and figurative) together.  I have watched friends publish works over the past two years and been so very proud and thrilled for them, admiring of and inspired by what they have done. Yet, I seem paralyzed in my own attempts.  They tell me this is quite normal, this abject terror of imposter-ing, of discovering that I am just not any good at what I love so much that it is a significant part of my identity and therefore too personal to withstand the possibility of repeated wounds of rejection.

Possibility. It’s a double-edged sword  of a word if ever there was one. We could fall. Or we could fly. The net between the two is full of holes.

I hear the words again; “who do you think you are?” and “don’t get used to it” and they stop me in my tracks, they burst the shiny pink bubble of joy that comes with delicious combinations of sounds and ideas, and I drop to the ground in a heap, feeling simply foolish, embarrassed to be caught dreaming. But I am a big girl, and I know full well that the real joy is in the doing, and the real fear is in the letting go...in sending those bubbles of joyous play and pondering out to fend for themselves in a world where most are shot out of the sky with a sharp stone from the slingshot of publishers simply trying to dig through a constant avalanche of submissions to find their own diamond..a money-maker that will keep the rent paid and the doors open. It’s really  just a different degree of striving isn’t it?

I don’t ever expect to make much money from writing, although between copy-writing and biographies, I do make some. I would like to find the guts to write one really good book made up of many quirky little parts, something that other people could enjoy and relate to. (Yes,I’d settle for a bathroom book.)The very best part for me about telling a story are the stories that other people tell in response..that lovely, luscious, leveller of hearing “me too!” makes me feel like I’ve accurately described our human-ness. It’s that thing connects us all.

I’ve read lots advice from writers I admire...all the bits about getting my ass into a chair and just DOING it, letting a good editor chip the mud away from the motherlode, and suspending self-criticism in deference to those people paid to do it as their part of the journey toward publication. I have researched the publishers who accept the kind of work I think I write (that definition is hard!) and I have several versions of my elevator-pitch all ready to go. I have a ton of material to be shaped, and another ton in my head yet to be written down. What I am currently working on, the linchpin to all the rest, is courage. And perhaps a refresh button on my discipline. I really want to do this in spite of and perhaps to some degree, because of those old worn thin mixed messages. Wish me well.

[bluerosesburnblue]

The Dwyn Siblings and Legilimency/Occlumency

I have so many HPHM headcanons and ideas that I just never write down, so screw it. The announcement of Hogwarts Legacy has me in the mood. Let’s do some general headcanons for Legilimency/Occlumency and other mental spells and how they relate to the Dywn siblings

In general, I actually really like the way that Hogwarts Mystery portrays how a natural Legilimens works. The books always give the impression that it’s a learned skill that requires a lot of focus, but the Fantastic Beasts series shows Queenie as just being able to ready anyone’s mind easily at any time, sometimes without her even trying (not a fan of that portrayal; I find it boring to have the skill be so overpowered and just something you can be born with)

General Legilimency Headcanons

I treat the natural Legilimency as more of a natural proclivity towards Legilimency, instead of a 24/7 state like Queenie had. There’s just some quirk in the way that their natural magic works that makes mental spells easier to perform, but also makes them a bit more sensitive to them

So, because Legilimency involves navigating the mind, I headcanon that those with skill in Legilimency (be it natural or otherwise) have a much easier time with mental spells, like all manner of memory charms. Not necessarily that if they cast a mental spell that it will be more powerful, but more that they pick it up easier because they rely on a skillset that the natural Legilimens intuits innately

I also headcanon that they’re more sensitive to having mental spells cast on them. Not an immunity! Far from it, actually! It’s more like an overactive alarm system to having a mental spell performed on them. Their minds have magic more woven into them than the average wizard, and when that magic is messed with their minds basically scream “SOMETHING TOUCHED ME!” and shut down temporarily. This leads to the Legilimens experiencing dizziness and disorientation of varying degrees depending on how intense the spell cast on them was. It can be a double-edged sword as it lets them know that something was messed with, but causes them to experience discomfort and makes it difficult to mess with their own minds (say, if they wanted to forget something). Trying to access an Obliviated memory can cause anything from headaches to fainting depending on how strong the memory is and how hard the Legilimens is trying to get to it

A Legilimens may be able to access Obliviated memories in either themself or others, but it’s immensely difficult and can cause as much mental damage as the other known method of countering Obliviation (torture). At the very least, a Legilimens would more easily be able to tell if they’ve had their memories tampered with, and a sufficiently skilled Legilimens could tell if the memories of another have been tampered with due to either inconsistencies or walls in the mental pathways

The Dywns’ Skills

The Dwyns used to have random bursts of magic when they were kids and had no self-control that occasionally took the form of Legilimency (MC says that they used to hear voices) but it’s something that they have to consciously do as they get more self-control. Now, they could theoretically get to the point where they can use it wandlessly, wordlessly, and even without eye contact and would do so far more easily than the average wizard, but it would take years of training. Getting to that point becomes a high priority for the Dwyns when they start up the detective business

Now, just looking at them, you’d expect the more extroverted and outgoing Jacob to be the better Legilimens and the more quiet and reserved Seren to be the better Occlumens, but it’s actually the other way around

Jacob not only has far better emotional control (once he recovers from the paranoia he developed at Hogwarts), but he also has a ton of experience with Occlumency thanks to what was basically A Cult that he was forcibly conscripted into, a situation that would require you to be mentally vigilant at all times. As such, while his skill with Legilimency isn’t bad, his skill with Occlumency is far greater, to the point where he can selectively shut off parts of his mind and trick potential Legilimens into believing that they’ve gotten all they can out of him (because they did see into his mind) without them noticing the hidden information

Seren, though, has poor emotional control due to being the single most stressed person in the universe and can only really shut off her whole mind at best, and has difficulty sustaining that state (especially if she’s aware that someone’s looking because she starts getting nervous about screwing it up). But she excels at navigating mental pathways to find the information she needs due to being very observant (forming a mental profile easily and using that to guess at connections between different thoughts and memories) and is quick enough to be able to try out multiple approaches to getting to a single piece of information

Compounding this disparity in skills is the fact that they can only really practice on each other. Jacob’s skill in Occlumency and Seren’s skill in Legilimency challenge each other to a high degree, which leads to them growing in those skills at an exceptionally fast rate. But Seren isn’t a good enough Occlumens to really challenge Jacob’s Legilimency, and Jacob’s not a skilled enough Legilimens to challenge her Occlumency in the way that he’d need to to help her fix it, so those skills stagnate. The best way to break this cycle is to have Jacob get better at Legilimency, but it’s hard to find... willing subjects to practice on and he doesn’t want to break into people’s minds, even though the fact that Seren’s not that good at Occlumency makes him really, really nervous

And the only two other Occlumens they know are Dumbledore and Snape, neither of which they care for so that’s out

On Jacob and Seren, specifically, I imagine that they’re similar enough in personality and close enough emotionally that they have a very high rate of mental synchronicity, which leads to the two of them being able to read each others’ minds easier than anyone else’s. It eventually gets to the point where they can communicate silently across decently long distances (though this definitely only applies when communicating with each other). This skill becomes instrumental in keeping evidence that they find in their detective work private, and also gets abused by their friend group who use them as living walkie-talkies (no cell phones, yeah? Just plop Jacob in one group and Seren in another. It’s fine)

After Hogwarts: Legilimency and Detective Work

On the topic of Legilimency and the detective work, I can’t imagine that information gleaned through Legilimency is admissible in a trial from any side. Because unless there’s a court-appointed Legilimens, there’s absolutely nothing preventing a Legilimens from lying about the information that they got out of someone. And even with a court-appointed Legilimens, that’s really flimsy. And the Dywns don’t just invade people’s minds for no reason, so Legilimency is mostly for communicating with each other, and as a last-ditch resource to get information that can be used to find physical evidence if they’re really short on it (and if a witness agreed to have Legiliemency performed on them, to find evidence corroborating the statement). If they’re desperately trying to overturn what they think is a Ministry false conviction, they’ll use Legilimency on the Aurors involved to see if they’re hiding evidence and if so, find a way to reveal that in court

Even though Jacob’s the worse Legilimens, it’ll be him teaching Talbott Occlumency, which is something that I very much see Talbott wanting to learn when he becomes an Auror for self-defense purposes. Talbott would initially ask Seren to teach him only for her to refuse on the grounds that she’s not particularly good at Occlumency and to teach him, she’d have to use Legilimency and she’s terrified of seeing into his mind (and possibly finding out that he doesn’t like her as much as she likes him, but what she says is that she can’t bring herself to invade his privacy). But she agrees that it’s an excellent skill to have, and convinces Jacob to teach Talbott

(For the purposes of the Good Future storyline, Jacob has strong suspicions that Talbott is in love with Seren long before the Occlumency lessons and absolutely has them confirmed during practices. Which really sucks for Jacob, because he promised Seren that he wouldn’t tell Talbott how she felt and now Talbott makes him swear not to tell Seren, so now he’s just basically stuck yelling at both of these self-conscious idiots to confess to each other only for them to chicken out every single time. And he’s really trying to wingman hard because he feels immensely guilty that he ruined any chance Seren had of a normal time at school and only gave her trauma instead so the least he can do is help her get together with someone that he knows makes her happy, he’s her damn brother he can see the way she is around Talbott. But no, he’s stuck with the most stubborn twice-shy couple in the world and isn’t allowed to say anything about it)

[junketsonasadplanet]

The wound was fatal, though cruelly delayed. A barb had punctured an artery above the Janissary's stomach and blood was filling his internal cavity with blood. I had applied an open pipette and antiseptic honey to the wound then patched the hole the arrow had left with linen bandages. He sat upright propped against a wagon wheel under his own power, at least, and no sign of pain. Blood dripped constantly from the pipette and into his lap. He caught a droplet and pinched his brow.

“Two days, more with regular infusion.”

He nodded and looked at me with cold fatigue. The last fires were being put out except where some of our supply wagons had been too damaged - those still burning heaps of cloth and wood and leather were being tossed into a central bonfire. Where we could find the bodies of our attackers in the desert night, they too were tossed in. Part of me wanted to request one be laid aside for dissection but the revulsion of their many extra limbs and mad, blind eyes reminded me of my own fatigue.

They had come shortly after dusk as we assembled camp fortifications, crawling on six limbs and killing four of us in the first arrow volley. The Janissary was injured in the initial charge. While we repulsed an attack to the West a second group had infiltrated and set fire to a third of our remaining supplies and slaughtered the First Expedition’s camp staff. 

I had been burning Moth aspect for too long that night. The shadows from the bonfire ran across the sand like a dark forest. The dull moans of the dying was their branches creaking in the wind. If I burned more Moth I could follow them into the forest. If i burned Forge and Lantern I could light the forest. If I burned the forest down I could gleam Winter and -

I caught my fingers tracing the clasp of the mask I must wear on my belt.

The second assault had nearly cut me down but for a cook knocking over a pot as he was overtaken. Some of the heavy’s had been armored still and were smashing through the flimsy waist-high palisade while I gleamed Moth to erase their fear when I heard the cast-iron’s soup fall into the coals and sizzle. The small thing of The Ring-Yew in me flared. 

The first of them had leapt at me from behind. Two others, one maybe ten meters out and the other peering from a slit it had silently cut in the cook’s tent, were knocking their bows and drawing on me. I could see the feathers on the arrow shaft, plucked from starved buzzards, the shaft itself hewn from the forelimb bones of aurochs and sparse oasis trees. The short knife of the one leaping had been made from meteoric iron into a set of five daggers. Its four brothers were here as well, I could see them like a constellation around me. The desert had once been an ocean and when it was swallowed by the sun and magma it had left small obsidian shelves beneath the sand so nothing could grow again as punishment.

I could see it all because we had marched til midnight. I had just manifested an entire Hour of Moth. My God.

The meteoric iron had been bonded to an obsidian grip and carefully forged and sharpened in the thinnest edge while still molten. Obsidian is sharp but fragile. It cannot suffer hard temperature changes so it was painstakingly heated to bear the edge and cooled in the warm blood of the bearer. 

Five of them had sliced their four forearms with the molten blade and sipped the blood and iron from ritual bowls. The steam from their wounds had risen through the forge’s roof. Close to the roof, in the eaves among the spiders and insects, a moth attracted by the light and warmth of the fire had laid a hundred eggs in the desert. I reached through the Hour and could see the Moth Itself, the Undivided Wound it sat in, and myself reflected a million-fold in Its compound eyes.

The knives I shattered and drove their obsidian handles through the throats of the bearers. The arrow aimed at my liver turned to a hurricane of locusts and one aimed at my lungs broke the shooter’s drawstring. The locusts swarmed the throats of the shooters. I reached out and calmly grasped the souls of the attackers and pulled them out. The attacker that had leapt at me had pulled the obsidian handle from his throat and was looking at the pooling blood in confusion; I could see the scars on his arms. His skull I deformed with my heel.

My mask which I must always wear is in my hands now. 

The small thing inside of me had exploded in Winter like a daydream. Mercifully, I had vomited and fell unconscious.

The Janissary is looking at me. “Have you put it on?”

“No, sir.”

He looks down at the blood dripping from his torso. “Gather the surviving lieutenants. Burn the dead.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Give me your mask.”

“Sir?”

He reached his hand out, the one he had dabbed in his lifeblood. He looked like an hourglass whose bottom had shattered, I thought, and was now counting down to a final zero. I handed over my mask. And grabbed the living. Among the dead I thought some of ours had been bitten by insects and when I dreamed it was of a great eclipse of moths flying towards us. Their white wings a hurricane, their eyes shattered mirrors of reality.

____________________________________________________

The lieutenants attended the Janissary in his tent. A ceremony for the dead had taken most of the morning and we had erected base while aching from exhaustion before a brief sleep. Travel in the desert was impossible during the day. Even the aurochs we used to draw our supply carts needed temporary shade and water to avoid the heat. As a result, we could only travel from dusk until the cold became too bitter.

Of the initial eighty enlisted and forty ancillary support that had taken this venture, thirty remained. Last night marked the fourth and most violent attack and also my actions, for which this meeting had in part been called.

The Janissary sat shirtless in plain leather breeches in a plain leather chair. Lostara is standing at his side with a thin tube connecting the crook of her elbow to his while she regularly compresses a small bladder. She’s wearing her full officer armor: a chain hauberk under hardened leather carrying the Sultan’s crest. Her calves and inner thighs are encased in thin steel plates covering the arteries and tendons - oh God she caught me looking.

Lostara stares icily at me, her skin pale and auburn hair cropped to ear length. Her hand holding the bladder continues to pump blood from her into the Janissary. 

Halfur sits to the right side of the Janissary. I treated a wound to his left calf and thigh which will leave him crutches for a week. Tastefully, I neglected to tell him the attacker he had been wounded by had been left temporarily soulless and was contemplating the stars when the moment came for its death. His dress is barely even acceptable. Still wearing the leather breeches I had cut the left half off of and a chain hauberk with no shirt beneath.

Blist is absent entirely. His wounds were severe though not fatal. He will not hold a sword again.

This is the entirety of our command. One absent, one crippled, one dying, one giving her blood.

“I call this final meeting to order,” the Janissary intones.

I never learned his name. His is a title and nothing else. A foundling given a sword and sent into the world. But I’ve avoided looking into his eyes. I can feel something no one untrained should be able to emit. Winter aspect.

“I will be dead in the coming days. We have not fulfilled the Sultan’s edict and will continue. On my death, leadership will pass to Lostara and on her death to Halfur.”

Blist shifts slightly but appears to be considering the rug’s decoration. 

“Until such time, we must continue to maintain order. We will issue a double-time march at Dusk. The target is within three days time at this pace.”

“Sir,” Blist begins, “our supplies are in poor condition. With strict rationing, we have enough for no more than two weeks march.”

“Bleed the aurochs.” Lostara speaks. “We will drink their blood when the supplies run out. And their meat when rations fail.”

Silence enters the room. The lieutenant has suggested a suicide mission. We will reach the Tree in the Desert and die on egress. 

I wait for someone to speak, I think. Someone will break the silence. The Janissary will tell us to leave. TO GO BACK TO OUR HEARTHS. 

No one does. The Janissary nods.

Halfur and Blist look to the floor and make peace with their Gods. Lostara, for her part, looks towards me.

“This path is agreed upon by all present by grace of the Sultan and the Oath.” The Janissary comments. “All un-tended aurochs are to be butchered and their blood and entrails stored for rations. Their meat is to be be preserved for the march and return.

“Lostara you will accompany the scholar to his chambers. We will remain and discuss arrangement of logistics. And the issue of the mask.”

___________________________________________________

I began by explaining to Lostara the Hours and the Mansus. Her expression is hard to read. She rests her hand on the pommel of her longsword even when she sits in my tent. Her eyes leave mine during gaps in my sentences to graze on the occult paraphernalia I have brought; the Book of Hours (a rare copy), an auroch skull whose teeth have been grafted with human remains, etc.

I will give here, expecting a final and eternal finality to the expedition, an explanation of magic to Lostara.

“There is a realm parallel to ours....”

Her gaze shifts, bored. I try to stop looking at her eyes and hair and skin but while she is temporarily unguarded I cannot.

I begin again. I burn Moth aspect towards Lostara. Holding her face in my vision I tell her the story I was given as a child:

Imagine there is a dark forest.

Imagine there is a dark forest. 

A village lives within the dark forest. There is a Forge who cuts away from iron with Edge. Winter surrounds the forest but its frost gives birth to Lantern and Heart which in turn are a spring, a regrowth of the nurturing forest. They, in their entirety, are a Grail - an aspect of trust and fidelity to one another as they live in an otherwise desolate land outside the forest.

At night, a Moth enters the forest. There it sees the village as it is. 

It observes the village which to it is incomprehensible. But it lives there and nests in the lofts of a household. A hundred years pass. The Moth has had children who have borne children. The forest now contains a multitude of Forges and Grails and Hearts and Winters and Edges and Moths. Instead of a village there is now a town.

At night, a child leaves his home. 

Unlike all previous people, he wanders into the forest. There he encounters a Wolf. The Wolf tells him that to see a Wolf in the woods is a sure sign of death and to return to his home. The child laughs and continues into the forest, kicking up dirt and seedlings as he does.

The child continues further into the forest unaware of the danger around him. The Forge sends a spark to set a fire before the child, who laughs at the excitement of the forest burning. 

Heart sends a crying woman who the child cajoles then mocks in the fashion of children. Winter sends a bouquet of dying flowers which the child tears apart and scatters on their path. Edge cuts the path the child has followed apart and sends a corpse with a thousand knives in its back.

The child, seeing the corpse, smiles. “This is how all things become and return,” the child says. And continues to leave the forest having grabbed the smallest dagger.

Lantern sends the first song the child was sung on the day of his birth. It glows in the forest. A lullaby for washing a newborn. The child sings it in turn and continues.

Grail, desparate, sends an avatar of Itself forwards which guards the forest. A hundred-limbed destroyer whose eyes are dusk and whose hands hold the devastation of men and the final sunset. 

When the child greets the Grail, Moth alights. Moth thinks he finally has understood something of the nature of the forest and the people within.

“Hold me in your hand!” Moth shouts, though Its voice is very tiny.

The child - afraid of the monster Grail has manifested - grasps the tiny Moth in his hand. “I am leaving!” the Child shouts.

Grail makes the final mistake in this story. “WHY?” It asks.

The Mansus could not understand its failure because it hid itself. It thought a house darkened was like a house locked and sealed. It could not imagine what it contained. It thought a single Knock on the door was an empty echo. Instead, to Knock was like piercing the thinnest skin of a drum: in hearing its reverberation you have already grasped the hollow point from which all sound emits. 

The child struck the ground and Knock was created. 

When the child left the forest he saw what was Outside. Giving two edicts to the Moth in his hand who returned to the Wood:

1. No others shall leave the forest.

2.  We have opened the door to the Desert.

_____________________________________________________

Lostara is kind enough to hit me left-handed across the chin. 

“Witch,” she mutters.

“I am only a scholar.” I run my tongue across my teeth, all intact. “Bound under the first law.”

Her eyes don’t leave mine but she grasps the mask at her hip.

“The mask in your hands is the finality of law. When - if - I attempt to ascend you will put it on me.”

“What happens when I do?”

“I’ll enter something like a sleep without dreams.”

Lostara spits on the floor and signs her hands, a closed fist with her forefinger and middle finger extended across her chest downwards.

“Lieutenant Lostara, if I attempt to enter the Mansus you will fulfill your duty.”

For a second I thought she would kill me on the spot. Maybe for the best. The mask was on her hip but so was her sword. Maybe one would be better than the other. The mask was like death but more prolonged. Like certain wounds to arteries. I saw her face as sallow and imagined her in the grave and the bed alike. 

“Scholar. I give you my oath you will die by my hand.” Lostara said. She left my tent.

__________________________________________________

[lets-atlaswrites-world]

The Sanctified - Wrain’s Temple

This is the first of several standalone chapters I have planned centering around Ignis, a character of mine that sort of just evolved on his own in another one off chapter I wrote and he’s just kind of grown ever since. He was originally a side character in a short story I wrote for a competition and while I never intended to write another piece using this character, he’s sort of just captured my imagination. This chapter was born from my desire to write an action driven piece and delve more into Ignis’ mentality and fighting style. 

In this short story, Ignis aids a group of warriors assaulting a temple in a besieged city. As always, though, the Sanctified has his own agenda to attend to in the name of his order. 

               The whetstone rasped along the edge of the blade, slow and smooth. It rang metallic with every pass, grinding against the chipped metal. It was a simple weapon, a double edged short sword as long as his forearm, with a heavy iron pommel. The likeness of some ancient king had been stamped into that disc of metal, the awkward wooden handle wrapped in coarse strips of horse hide. The iron blade had already seen some hard work but there was more to come.

               He hummed tunelessly as he worked, the sound lilting in counterpoint to the whetstone’s grating. Those gathered beneath the nearby gate were muttering softly among themselves, more than one casting a nervous glance in his direction. He guessed the rasping whetstone was setting their nerves on edge, but then again, it was hardly the only sound to be heard; Dainaerd was in its death throes no matter what anyone else might believe and the evidence was plain for anyone to hear.

               The crash of steel a few streets distant and battle cries mingling with the howls of the dying were enough to test the nerve of the fifteen youths huddled nearby, even without the whetstone’s work. When they weren’t looking towards the Sanctified, they were peeking through the iron portcullis like children seeking monsters in the dark corners of their bedrooms. A handful seemed like they knew which way to hold a sword, but most looked like they’d just had their first taste of bloodshed and didn’t much care for it.

               While they huddled and shifted beneath the gatehouse they’d taken almost an hour before, he sat cross legged in the middle of the road, amongst the dead bodies, and worked at the sword. While far from the curved blades he was accustomed to, it would serve well enough until he found something more suitable. Tilting it in his hands, The Sanctified saw a reflection of the sky overhead in the metal, thick with smoke stained a vile shade of yellow by the low hanging sun. It seethed from the docks, where he’d spent the morning before being shuffled into this latest gathering of so called soldiers.

               Despite the cover though, he could still feel the sun more keenly than he would have liked. The scorching heat was stifling, especially beneath the grey cloth he wore wrapped around the lower half of his face. The broad rimmed leather hat he wore kept the sun out of his eyes, off his ears and the back of his neck so his pale skin didn’t cook in its rays, but he’d been forced to shrug off his long tailed coat hours before, left in a light linen shirt whose sleeves had been rolled up to his elbows. He paused now in his idle work, half turned to peer over the bodies lying all around at a fast approaching figure. They lay spread eagled where they’d fallen, littering the stone with deep, crimson puddles turning black in the heat and filling the air with the sense stabbing reek of bare organs.

               The men straightened up as their commander approached, licking their lips and taking deep breaths in preparation of whatever was about to come next. Aoris walked with the air of a man accustomed to authority, his stride long and confident, features grim, though the Sanctified didn’t know whether this was because of some news, or how the man always looked. He wore the crimson cloak of his office and a tall helmet of burnished steel, complete with two striking horsehair plumes side by side. The rest of his armour, like the men waiting for him, comprised of a breastplate, sloped pauldrons and simple bracers, his thighs protected by strips of boiled leather.

               “Form up!” Aoris barked, striding past where the Sanctified sat, “Just got word from Naif. He’s going to be moving up through Axcelus Forum in a few minutes and wants us to help support him. Some of the heathens are holed up in Wrain’s Temple and Naif doesn’t want them in a position to flank his men, so we’re being sent to clear them out. After that’s done, we hold our ground until he sends word our way that the Forum is ours and we head on over there. It’ll be our new staging ground”.

               A shiver of uncertain excitement ran through the men; shifting glances mixed with nervous, half glimpsed grins. The whetstone scraped one last time before he slid it back into a pouch at his side. Lifting the blade, he rubbed a thumb along its edge, testing it, as Aoris turned to look back at him.

               “You!” he snapped, “Hear all that? Ready to go?”

               Ignis unfolded his long legs and slid smoothly to his feet, rising to loom over the smaller man. Though wiry, he was tall and lean as a wolfhound, his slender figure only accentuated by the dark waistcoat he wore over his white shirt. Their styles of clothing could scarcely have been more different but then again, he figured the same could be said of their lives. That was even before their armaments were taken in consideration. The unit leader held a light wooden shield in one hand and a spear in the other. Ignis, on the other hand, bristled with weaponry; from the curved blades resting below the small of his back, to the throwing knives sheathed in a bandolier across his chest. Hefting the stolen sword, he gestured towards the gate.

               “Lead on” his voice was a muffled hiss behind his scarf.

               “Open up!” Aoris bellowed to the gatehouse and those inside hurried to obey.

               The portcullis clanked and growled its way upwards, jerking and jolting with every twist of the winch overhead. Aoris ducked beneath it as soon as there was enough space to let him pass and his men followed suit. Ignis came last, languidly strolling after the soldiers with his sword swinging loose by his side as they fell into formation around their leader, shields up and facing outwards. Beyond the archway stretched a sand shrouded roadway flanked by low buildings of dull orange stone. Then again, everything in Dainaerd was covered in sand. Ignis had no idea how anyone lived in the place, personally.

               Flimsy stalls lined the roadway in front of the squat, rectangular buildings, most of which were topped with a crenulated design and shaded from the sun by awnings, where their residents would have no doubt whiled away their sleepy afternoons. The stalls were likewise shielded from the sun by brightly coloured sheets of silk, while darker linen fabric hung over doorways and windows in place of glass or wood like civilised folk.

               The men marched along the roadway and Ignis trotted after them, cocking his head to one side as he listened to the familiar sounds of warfare carrying over the rooftops, mingling with the dark smoke choking the sky over the city. They reached the end of the street, where a junction waited , and turned left onto a broad avenue. Part way along, the buildings on their right gave way to a staircase leading up to a level above the road, in line with the rooftops. A plain wall took over instead of more buildings, continuing on towards another junction.

The entire city had been built like that, with multiple levels rising and falling all across its expansive skyline. Ignis supposed it must have been an interesting sort of place for some people to visit, if they had an eye for that sort of thing, but that meant little enough to him. All he knew for sure was that it made for an interesting battleground, depending on which side of an ambush you found yourself on.

               He spied a man standing at the peak of those stairs as they entered the junction, clad in the telltale green and white clothing of a Dainaerd warrior. He spotted the approaching band of invaders instantly, turned tail and bolted from view. Ignis slid closer to the men leading the way, unsurprised when they turned for those stairs and began to climb them with Aoris leading the way, the twin plumes on his helm swaying with each step.

               Reaching the top of that broad staircase, they milled around together for a long moment as they took in their surroundings. A pathway of black veined marble perhaps a hundred feet in length cut through a broad expanse of shockingly, emerald green grass. Towering statues of pale alabaster stood to either side on broad plinths, likely depicting their Gods, if he had to guess. The ground on their left fell away to the roadway they’d just been on, while on the right, it rose to a crenulated wall before plunging away to the sea far below.

               Ahead, Wrain’s Temple loomed. Broad steps led up to walls of flawless white marble, surmounted by sapphire blue tiles that caught what little sunlight there was in gentle, undulating ripples along their surfaces. The pillars flanking its entryway had been chiselled to resemble vast serpents twisted together, rising to help support an oddly curved roof. The entire scene looked utterly untouched by the war that had already taken hold throughout the rest of the city, but despite the wealth of beauty arrayed before him, Ignis’ eyes narrowed on the figures milling about the steps below its high walls instead.

               Clad in emerald green cloth artfully wrapped around their bodies, they gathered, the dying sunlight glimmering along the edges of their heavy, forward curved swords. There were spears too, paired with bucklers on their forearms, but nothing of the armour his temporary allies had donned. Ignis counted over a dozen in a heartbeat and then some; twenty or even twenty two men waited for them near as he could tell.

               There bloomed that awkward moment between two groups of people facing each other across open ground, both knowing that they would soon be locked in combat. It bred a certain nervous tension that clung to everyone involved, hung in the air between them until it was almost a physical thing all its own. Ignis ignored it, shook out his long limbs as those around him stirred. He knew the scene only too well and everything that went along with it. The uncertain shifting from foot to foot, the readjusting of grips on weapons, last glances towards friends or leaders, lips drawn tight.

               While the two bands of warriors eyed each other warily for a long moment, Ignis took as deep a breath as he could and exhaled slowly, releasing himself to the certainty that everything had suddenly become very, very simple again. No more following orders. No more floundering his way from conflict to conflict in unfamiliar city streets.

               He would fight. That much was certain and out of that certainty, three possible outcomes existed; he would emerge unscathed, he would be wounded or he would die. Which of those became a reality, only time would tell and it was in his hands now.

               It was always slightly awkward before a fight and the moment dragged on for what seemed like an eternity before Aoris pushed forward and his men followed, breaking into a quick jog across the open ground. They formed a ragged sort of shield wall as they ran, filling the air with the rattle of armoured men in motion. Ahead, the Dainaerd hefted their weapons, began to spread out across the steps, looked half ready to charge down them and meet the defilers of their city head on.

               Ignis loped along in their wake, ducking low behind the soldiers at the rear of their little war band, keeping his head low. He knew he was hard to miss at the best of times, but he still wanted some sort of cover between himself and the temple on their approach. They moved quickly along that pathway, passed between the statues of Gods and watched every step of the way by the Dainaerd rabble.

Two of their more optimistic number flung spears at their approach. One dropped short but Ignis tracked the other, did his best to calculate its trajectory and ducked in the opposite direction as it glanced off one of the lead shields and skittered overhead. That was enough to set them off yelling and screaming their lungs out, baying for blood. His allies remained silent, saved their breath for running instead, panting with every step in the scorching heat. They almost made it to the base of the staircase before the Dainaerd charged, flung themselves forward with wild screams.

A forest of spears was lowered to meet them, drawing most of the Dainaerd up short, sending them skidding on the steps. One continued regardless and took a spear through the guts, while another fell, off balance, and paid for the blunder with his life. The rest hung back, stabbed with their own spears but most were armed with swords and quick to back up, faced with the tighter formation below.

They entered a strange, uncertain deadlock for a long moment as Ignis loped along the rear. His allies were locked up tight like a turtle, thrusting with their spears, while those above dashed this way and that, unwilling to meet them head on. Ignis ducked towards the flanks of his shielded allies and peered over the shoulder of a man in front, sword spinning idly in his grip as he tried to plot the best route and time to rush the staircase.

That was when he saw the tide turn. Another of the cloth clad warriors tripped as he missed a step, half fell straight into a spear. It punched through his chest with a sickening, wet crunch. His weight dragged the weapon down, his scream spurred his men to move. Another dashed into the gap, narrowly avoiding more stabbing, glittering points and flung himself at the shield wall. He managed to get an arm over the shield wall and drag it down, making room for the spear of a comrade. It stabbed past his shoulder, into the face of Ignis’ ally, sent him staggering. He fell, would have screamed if he hadn’t been choking on his own blood.

               Just like that, the others followed, plunging into the sudden breach. Ignis stepped back, a heartbeat before the shield wall smoothly dissolved. It split apart, spears dropping and swords sliding free of their sheaths as they transitioned from a formation to a looser band. They split apart and spread, creating space, leaving the wedge fumbling, drawing them down off the steps. Ignis slid to the flank as the last of the Dainaerd charged down them.

               The spear of the first caught his ally off guard, cut into his thigh and dragged a high pitched screech from his lips. The Dainaerd didn’t see Ignis until it was too late. Before he could pull the weapon free, Ignis’ sword bit into his shoulder, spun him around and sent him sprawling. The thunder of the impact jolting up his arm sent fire surging through the Sanctified’s limbs, set a bounce to his step as he slid around the fallen warrior, blade held low and ready.

               The next spotted him at the same time Ignis’ eyes settled on him, a sword in hand. He came forward with a roar and Ignis back stepped, let the heavier blade flash past harmlessly. He wove away from the reverse slash, saw the feint coming a mile away and caught the real overhead hack with his own blade, smashed it aside with an ear ringing crash of steel. His foe’s eyes snapped wide, breath wheezing from his lips as the knife in Ignis’ left hand slid into his gut. It came free in a spurt of blood, thumped home a second time before the Dainaerd’s legs gave way and he collapsed to one side with a guttural grunt of surprise.

               He turned back towards the man he’d first hit in time to see one of his allies claim the kill with a spear. Movement made him turn, instinct made him leap backwards as a spear fell short of its mark in his chest. Ignis flicked the knife into the air, caught the tip of its blade between thumb and forefinger, then sent it spinning in one fluid motion. He missed; slick with blood, it slid from his grip before he’d meant to release it, but it was enough to make the man cringe, jerk backwards into one of his friends.

               Ignis rushed past that glittering spear point, battered its haft aside with his sword and brought it down in an overhead slash. It crashed against the buckler lifted to meet it as his foe dropped the spear, reached for the sword at his hip, trying to buy space to draw it. The Sanctified feinted low, then high, driving the youth back and straight into a grappling pair behind him. Instinct made the Dainaerd turn, glance over his shoulder. Ignis’ sword reached.

               He felt it land on the youth’s forearm, flicked his wrist to draw the edge smoothly through cloth, skin and flesh. His foe didn’t even scream, just looked down at it instead. Ignis’ blade crashed into his head, landed above one eye in a looping stroke, split everything apart and threw him aside with a splatter.

               Ignis slid away from the grappling pair, gave them space to resolve their own dispute and turned in time to see an overzealous Dainaerd charge him with a spear lowered. He sidestepped, caught the shaft of the weapon, tucked it tight under his armpit and swivelled at the waist to drag the man off balance. Straight into a punch from Ignis, fingers clenched tight around the handle of his sword. Twisting, the pommel snapped around into the man’s head, caught him across the temple and shattered something with a wet pop.

               He fell, grasping for his face with a whine and Ignis’ sword slid smoothly through his guts. The Sanctified left it there, stooped to pick up the discarded spear and spun it as he rose back to his full height. His heart was racing, uncomfortable in the searing heat, warm sweat trickling down the length of his spine. The spear spun between the fingers of one hand as Ignis breathed deep, exhaling slowly as he surveyed his surroundings. The skirmish was ugly as sin, all crashing steel, broken weapons, heaped corpses, the wounded screaming and blood spreading across the stone, but there were more of his own than the enemy still standing and that was usually what mattered in his experience.

               Ignis picked out a struggling pair and strode towards them. They were circling near the foot of the steps, lashing and hacking at each other, missing more often than not, all wasted energy and twitching nerves, making a show of their encounter. Ignis’ spear slid into the lower back of the Dainaerd with a squelch, bit just deep enough and tore free trailing a gush of crimson blood. He fell with a gasp, legs buckling in an instant.

               Ignis looked up into the face of the man he’d just saved, saw him blink and then wince as he was tackled from behind, wrenched off his feet by a big, ox shouldered man. A second Dainaerd followed, sword and buckler, and made the life changing decision to charge the Sanctified. A simple feint brought the man up short and he tripped over the last man Ignis had just impaled, fell sprawling awkwardly onto his back. It was easy. Easiest thing in the world for him to take a step forward and stab the Dainaerd through the chest with his spear. He felt the tremor of the impact ripple through the haft, through his fingertips and palms as the blade struck the man’s breastbone, cracked it wide open.

               Leaving the weapon standing in the fresh corpse he’d guaranteed, Ignis right hand plucked a knife from its place at his chest, spun it in his grip. He leaned to one side, judged the range and flung it end over end into the back of the burly Dainaerd, who’d set about throttling Ignis’ ally on the ground. It slid into the flesh of his shoulder with a satisfying ‘thud’ and his entire body arched backwards, hands rising, clawing at the air.

               Ignis’ long fingersclosed around a handful of his hair, wrenched the man’s head back. Another knife whispered across the Dainaerd’s throat. That was trickier. You had to make sure you nicked the artery in the jugular or there was no guarantee the job was done. He flung the gasping man aside, watched his ally scramble back to his feet, breathless and spluttering. That was twice he’d saved that one now.

               Ignis dragged his first knife free from his targets back, held it at the ready as he surveyed the corpse strewn area. Several of his newfound friends remained, but no one else. Aoris was among the living, chest heaving, helmet lost and face splashed with blood, head turning sluggishly as he looked over the wreckage of his unit.

               His eyes met Ignis’ and he nodded, a gesture the Sanctified didn’t bother returning. Instead, he half turned as the soldier he’d saved clapped him bodily on the shoulder.

               “Thank you!” he spluttered breathlessly, “Thank you so much!”

               Ignis had no way to respond to that so he just stared until the man smiled shakily and moved away. As in the aftermath of every battle, there was a lot of busy work to be attended to between tending to the wounded and dying, alongside robbing the dead. Aoris took command of the situation, made sure it all ran as quick and smooth as possible while Ignis prowled the area. He stepped between the corpses, traipsed through pools of blood with all the patience of a predator until he found the first knife he’d thrown and missed with.

               He wiped it clean on the clothing of the nearest body, checked it for chips or marks and then slid it back into its sheath across his chest. All the while, Ignis kept an eye on the staircase at their back, on the off chance anyone else decided to come rushing into the temple grounds as Aoris got his men back together. Six remained in the end, including their leader, two of which were clutching hastily bandaged wounds. The rest? Food for whatever scavengers inhabited that part of the world.

               They led the way up the staircase and through the archway at its head with Ignis following along behind. Within, the vast hall was steeped in gloom, the candles arranged within unlit so that only the dull sunlight lancing blearily through the high windows overhead provided light to see by. They shone down on dozens of shallow, bowl like grooves worked into the stone floor underfoot in curiously uniform patterns. Ignis recognised the depressions as places for a religious congregation to kneel, arranged around a squat central altar.

               Four feet high and carved from gleaming marble, its sides had been etched with all sorts of fanciful designs. Seemed like a simple arrangement for such a big building but at least they were doing something with their time, Ignis supposed. There, resting on that block of stone, was the reason he’d been sent to that Gods Forsaken city. Or one reason, at the very least.  He approached the centre of that vast hall slowly, ignoring the surviving soldiers as they set about scouring the building.  Four trinkets sat on that altar; a golden coin, a feather, a small pebble and a clay tablet. It was the last he hovered over, long fingered hands twitching.

               Its surface had been etched with blocks of swirling text alongside detailed diagrams of interlocked runic symbols. Picking it up, Ignis strolled back across the floor of the temple and out into the smoke shrouded dusk. He marched to the sea wall, leaned over it and dropped the clay tablet, watching as it spiralled through the air. It clipped the wall on its way down, smashed into a thousand tiny shards in an instant and showered into the white foam far below.

               Rubbing his hands together, Ignis returned to the temple and found the hall reverberating now with excited voices. He spotted Aoris and his men gathered around a thick, iron bound door set between two statues in one wall, just as one of the soldiers brought the pommel of his sword crashing down on its handle with an echoing crash. The door swung inwards and they crowded through the opening into a smaller room beyond, this one lit by candles set in brass stands on all sides.

               They shone over the reason Aoris and his men had been excited to take the temple for their own. Everywhere, precious metal gleamed in the candle light. Stacks of silver coins and bars, bags of emerald, sapphire and onyx, they all caught the light in the most alluring way, piled high throughout the length of the room.

               The soldiers broke out into breathless laughter, half whooped and cheered as they dove into the mountain of riches surrounding them. Aoris himself made for a lockbox shoved back into one corner of the room and, kneeling down in front of it, opened its lid with all the wide eyed excitement of a child receiving his first gift. Within, stacks of golden coins had been neatly arranged. They filled the uniformly two foot length and breadth and depth of the cedar lockbox to the brim. He broke into a tremulous smile and mopped at his sweat beaded brow.

               That smile disappeared in an instant as Ignis’ foot landed on the lid of that lockbox and slammed it shut with a nerve rattling clatter. Leaning down over it, he peered into Aoris’ confused eyes. When he spoke, his voice was soft as silk.

“The Sanctified” he breathed “Thank you for your contribution”.

The lockbox rattled softly as he picked it up and hefted it under his left arm before he turning to march towards the chamber’s only doorway. He made it three steps before Aoris lurched back upright and barked after him, bringing Ignis to a halt.

“Stop! You have no right to take that”.

“Yeah” another chimed indignantly and all eyes were on the Sanctified now, “We did the fightin’ and the dyin’ for this place. We need everything that’s in here”.

“This is wrong, sir” another hissed at Aoris, “That’s ours”.

Ignis treated the speaker to a long, cold stare before half turning to look back at Aoris, saw the man hesitate, unsure what to do. His eyes were fixed on the lockbox, his tongue darting over dry lips. There were six of them and only one Sanctified. Bad odds, especially in the confines of a room, but he was already planning how he would do it; drop the lockbox on the nearest foot, turn to face the rest and back towards the archway so they could only rush him one at a time. Neuter their advantage, take them one by one.  Bad odds, even so, but Ignis was used to them by now and the scared men around him didn’t do much to make him feel intimidated. They were only human, after all.

He could have said any number of things just then, could have reminded them how many Dainaerd’s he’d so recently and effortlessly killed outside, recounted the days he’d already spent aiding their brutal invasion but instead, Ignis dropped his right hand to the Weeping Blade at his hip, let his long fingers curl around the handle in silence. The men surrounding him exchanged glances, shifted nervously and looked to Aoris, just like they had before the battle they’d fought only moments before.

“Listen” the commander tried placatingly, “I led the way here. I deserve the lions share and it’s in that box. It’s mine”.  

Ignis met his blue eyes with a hard, long stare, knowing that silence would resolve the issue one way or another. It often did, in his experience. Everything had become so simple again. They would let him pass or they would attack him. He would fight and there were only three outcomes that could result from that. So he didn’t waste his breath. Instead, he stood ready and stared, knowing his eyes would do more to unnerve the man than any drawn steel. There was a lengthy moment of stillness before Aoris sighed.

“Take it” he scoffed disgustedly.

Ignis slowly removed his hand from the blade at his side, made a show of the motion before turning away. As he stepped from the room, he thought he heard one of the men mutter, ‘Foreign bastard’ and could have sworn it was the soldier he’d saved earlier. He pushed aside the whim to turn and make something of that comment and instead strode across to the altar and set his prize on it. Gratitude, it seemed, was in short supply but that was alright. Ignis preferred gold anyway.  

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[archivezosia]

As the World Shifts /// Flashback ( About 10 years ago )

Juxtaposed to the erratic behavior of her heartbeat, Annika’s gaze that settled upon Zosia remained inexorable. You might say that her eyes’s were almost addicted to the image of the reader —- it certainly wouldn’t be an exaggeration. No matter the subject of which they spoke, she was sure that the urge to stare would be impossible to overcome. Should they lapse into a comfortable silence, still, upon the other her eyes would stay. So she watched and wondered what might be happening inside that seemingly beautiful and riveting mind. “If we find ourselves unsatisfied, as I predict we will, we can always jump on a plane to my homeland. It’s only an 11 hour flight.” Spreading her tone with a thick layer of sarcasm, Annika bit her lip and cocked an eyebrow as if to say ‘how about it?’. It was a ridiculous idea, but one that played regularly in the reel of idealistic scenarios in Annika’s imagination. To take Zosia, who had kindled her affections so brightly, to the place she theoretically kept her heart —- as cliche as it was, really would be a dream come true. The suggestion of becoming a painter too set Anni’s heart fluttering. It might have been a fleeting comment from Zosia but of course, the poet naturally read into it and saw it as the kind of suggestion she would follow with ‘you’d do that for me…?’. She bit back the hopeless hopefulness and instead possessed a sheepish and daft grin. “My Godfather was a proper advocate for Plaid Cymru so being around his political rants naturally inspired me. Don’t let it frighten you though —- I’m pretty passive about it. I don’t really know how that works, but it’s how I chose to play it. Opinionated but chilled about it.” The redolent hope that lingered in her coaster themed sentence was left hanging in the air. Annika felt her stomach flip. Something had changed, but layers down, buried deep beneath their perceptible connection. A pea had been lodged underneath the hundreds of mattresses that was their desire for conversation and contact. Except it wasn’t a pea, and it certainly wasn’t something insignificant to their budding relationship. To Annika’s horror, Zosia held in her hands a scrap of paper she had trusted to the wind to carry somewhere safe. And it had found her. Was this fate? That she had discarded it somewhere so rural, so distant to where they were now —- but it had made it’s way to the very subject herself? Millions upon millions of questions percolated her conscience, her ability to see clear. “This…where did you get this from?” Quietened to a whisper, sheer anxiety lurked in Anni’s shaky voice. The embarrassment of it all. These were not just words. This piece of paper had the poets very soul bared upon it. She could lie —- the idea flashed in her head and she winced at it’s interference with her ability to think straight. The poem did not name anyone. Rapid plans of fibs scrabbled her sense and she was blinking so fast her eyes were beginning to water. It was useless. She could not lie at the best of times, let alone to the face of her deepest desire. Yet, it took everything she had to compose herself and admit that those words were, in fact, about the woman before her. “I didn’t want you to find it. I threw it to the wind, Zosia. On the camping trip… It was supposed to fly away and be lost. It was supposed to be cathartic, for me and only me…but it found you. I don’t know if that is a good thing or not.” Completely clueless as to where to take her words, which of the many emotions beating behind her forehead to expose, Annika’s fingernails nipped lightly at the skin upon her opposite hand, gaze refusing to plant anywhere in the room. “I don’t know what to say. What do I say? I confirm that I wrote it about you. I’m not sure whether it was right or wrong or what. You could call it self preservation —- it’s like a coping mechanism. It’s how I come to terms with things. I needed to figure it all out, get it into words, what I was —- am feeling.” Flickering emerald eyes hazily drifted to meet Zosia’s, alight with so many embers of sentiments. “That’s what it translated as. That’s how it is. …Is that okay?”

”Hypothetically,” making sure to heavily precursor the adjoining sentiment with a solid foundation of that plain and uncommitted nonchalance she had mastered so well to accommodate the upheaval of emotion Annika dredged up within her, Zosia allowed herself to sneak in a bona fide nod of affirmation, “I think I’d like that.” The agreement resonated with a sincere sense of hope she could only hope was overshadowed by how it was presented; in a place built on a city of fables, populated with streets named ‘what if’ and ‘maybe someday’. Impossible and improbable universes that neither of them had the blessed fortune to occupy together. The idea of such a spontaneous adventure preyed upon the reader’s suppressed passion for the pastime of travel. To visit the land Annika hailed from, where cement and plastic clutter were not part of the daily sight-seeing routine, was a suggestion she struggled to find a sane reason to refuse —- theoretically or not. Speaking with crystal clarity was easy around someone such as the woman she sat by. It made Zosia daring enough to let secrets less noticeably slip into speech, with a simple turn of phrase, that could be a double edged sword of truths or open up a pandora’s box of misunderstandings. Around anyone else in her peer group, she would have done it with confidence, knowing certain inflections and references would fly over most of their heads. Under the discerning reception of Annika’s intelligent ear, the line was a much finer one to walk. Giving too much credit to the poet seemed an oxymoron. Frankly, Zosia was more at risk of giving too little. “Ah, of course. I should’ve guessed your bloodline was enriched with spirit.” An entire thesaurus’ worth of terms could have been substituted in the place of ‘spirit’. Holding this belief more like a fact, she momentarily needed to carefully study the Annika’s features to ensure she hadn’t accidentally voiced a more intimately-sourced adjective. With her voluminous thoughts trafficking so noisily inside her skull, it grew increasingly difficult to tell what she verbally let out into the ethers anymore. To posses an intense deep affection for another was to love. For a word so strong, linked to how humans often haphazardly threw it around like bullets, it felt as though shrapnel ought to have littered the earth’s surface. Surely, it would have littered the floor in a perfect circle around where Zosia sat. Was she so foolish to try and convince herself that a particular sensation of ‘deep affection’ was not the exact summary that described her inner disposition? Would it really have been so preposterous to suggest that the very mention of Annika’s name had the reader’s brain instantaneously linking along a poem [ it was love that had me and held so fast, I was trapped like a moth to the flame, wise men have said true love never lasts, when in love you’ll burn again and again. ] which had kept those three syllables company for over above a fortnight? Gripped by infatuation, that was for certain, but were the depths of these feelings fleeting —- like a pool in the heat of Summer doomed to be emptied by the end of the season —- or as unprecedented and unpredictable as the bottomless ocean? Placing the letter in her lap, Zosia nearly held her breath as she sat silently to listen to what reasoning she would hear from the other woman. Palms pressed together, lifted with the sides of her index fingers pressed to her lips, she was caught somewhere between willing herself not to say anything, and trying to summon some cursed higher power to alleviate her shackled mind. Staring at Annika with a mixture of trepidation, admiration, and loss, she quietly mumbled, “I was given it.” Despite purposefully omitting details of identification, she could practically hear Maya’s voice ringing in her eardrums; imagine an expression of disdain; and the brutal disapproval of even the reader’s quietest consideration of entertaining the dreams she had pertaining to Annika. The terms between Zosia and her supposed ex were unclear, murky as the waters of a lagoon —- however, in comparison ( which did nothing to ease the stress on her conscience ), Annika presented no more clarity. Though, one factor was for certain: the pier of safety the music maker represented was far more anchored than it’s hurricane counterpart. A hopeless ache chipped away at Zosia’s heart like a hammer and chisel took to stone, leaving behind a cave of wonder and insecurity that waves of Annika’s touching sentiments gently lapped up against. “You didn’t want me to see it.” Emptily echoing the impression she had absorbed from the tone of the writer’s elaboration, the literary aficionado failed to ward off the indignant sense that arose when confronted with such a notion. Fingers protectively tightened their hold on the flimsy letter as she imagined a scenario where the discarding of it had being successful, disheartened by the possibility of the note never seeing the light of day, consumed by the forest forever. How could she dare do such a thing? To deliberately keep Zosia blinded from a truth so mockingly blatant she had actually needed to read it on paper before she’d understood the muted refrain of her interest was not a one sided arrangement. They were singing a duet, of coasters and teacups, no less. Of course, it made absurd sense. Nothing quite permeated the reader’s daydreamy grasp on the world other than the physical presence of the written world —- a place her mind could escape to forever, even if the outcome of their meeting mounted insignificantly. Annika could have downright laid a kiss onto Zosia and she likely still would’ve internalized it, analyzed the hell out of it, and then brushed it off as accidental. A rare and situationally dependent gesture, at best. Too good to be true. “Why would it not be a good thing?” Because who was Zosia to receive the gift of this enchantment’s attention? “Why hide it? It was —- it is… beautiful, Annika. I didn’t… I wouldn’t have imagined you saw me in such a light. I…” A defeated sigh escaped her lungs, briefly preceding a rapidly spoken line of French she was grateful wouldn’t be understood, “Vous êtes comme un rayon de lumière sur mon horizon. Mon cœur souffre pour vous , ma chérie. Comment pouvez-vous pas savoir…” Shaking her head, poignant hazel eyes escaped the vibrant green shade of their captor’s to avert to the nearest wall; being able to truly concentrate depended on it. “First of all, you must understand that is okay. More than…” Trailing off, she felt suddenly concerned and self conscious with how much that she said or did when it would be permanently on the record. “It’s just… inconvenient.” A strained thread of pent up frustration lined her tone, eloquence uncharacteristically escaping her as she struggled in more ways than one, “It’s welcomed and it’s inconvenient. I feel it matters little what I want to really say, as in no reality could I say that this is impeccable timing, Annika.“

To be continued…

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THIS NEW FREEDOM IS A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD, HOWEVER

You can adjust the amount of freedom you get by scaling the size of a motorcycle when you wanted to create a giant, public company, and act surprised when someone made you an offer. When you can ask the opinions of the others, because of the doubling, occurring three times in nonspam mail would be enough. A novice imitates without knowing it; next he tries consciously to be original; finally, he decides it's more important that letters be easy to tell apart. How to Become a Hacker, and in the process of explaining them to the right kind of people to have ideas with: the other students, who will be not only smart but elastic-minded to a fault. Why not in design generally? 07347802 sorry 0. You also need Florence in 1450.

Not opting out is not the defining quality of work, and indeed that the reason they began blogging in the first place. 27meg. It is not unusual for an old Raleigh three-speed in good condition, and sent me an email offering to sell me one, I'd be delighted, and yet you won't use it. Much of what's most novel about YC is due to Jessica Livingston. As a result it became massively successful. Wearing suits, we're told, will make us 3. One of the tricks to surviving a grueling process is not to take oneself too seriously. So as animals get bigger they have trouble radiating heat. A rounds: millions of dollars given to a small number of startups that go public is very small. Then, the next morning, one of the more articulate critics was that Arc seemed so flimsy. A far more likely theory, in his Ptolemaic model of the universe, is that it can be at every stage.

Because by sheer chance it happens to be loaded with words that occur in one corpus but not the other. But it's a mistake founders constantly make.1 If you make fun of Eric Raymond here. You don't win by dramatic innovations so much as by good taste and attention to detail. A lot of the brain of the filter is in the individual databases, then merely tuning spams to get through the seed filters won't guarantee anything about how well they'll get through individual users' varying and much more trained filters. Err. If real estate developers operated on a large enough scale, if they lobbied successfully for laws requiring us all to continue to breathe through tubes if they could. This was roughly true. It's hard to follow, especially when two halves react to one another, as in, say, corporate law, or medicine. After all, the companies selling smells on the moon base could continue to sell them on the Earth, if they built whole towns, market forces would compel them to build towns that didn't suck.

When I was a kid, it seemed as if work and fun were opposites by definition. Even a company with 100 people will feel different from one with 1000. This is where it's helpful to have working democracies and multiple sovereign countries. That's what happened with domestic servants. It may look Victorian, but a Times Roman lowercase g is easy to recognize. And the reason it's inaccurate is that, in the narrow sense of the word, that startup ideas are made of, and conversations with friends are the kitchen they're cooked in. The algorithm I used was ridiculously simple. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Underneath the long words or the expressive brush strokes, there is often neither a product nor any numbers.2 So before agreeing to meet with someone from corp dev wants to meet, the founders tell themselves they should at least find out what they want, or they'll get the wrong candidates. And launch as soon as you can, then cash in the potential energy you've accumulated when you need to make it prestigious.3 Taking a shower is like a form of exemplary punishment, or lobbying for laws that would break the Internet if they passed, that's ipso facto evidence you're using a definition of property that doesn't work. 15981844 spot 0. Search for a few key phrases and the names of the clients and the experts, and you'll turn up other variants of this story. The Eiffel Tower looks striking partly because it is simply the most powerful language available. It only came in black, for example. It doesn't even have x Blub feature of your choice.

You write programs in the parse trees that get generated within the compiler when other languages are parsed. This time the evidence is a mix of good and bad are the hash tables I created in the first place. He didn't learn as much as he expected. The people who've worked for a few key phrases and the names of the clients and the experts, look for the client. They're so desperate for content that some will print your press releases almost verbatim, if you took a random person off the street and somehow got them to work as if it were the small group of individuals that humans were designed to work in, but something major is missing. Would you like to work on, or don't like to get money to work on the problem. Not necessarily. Anything deleted as spam goes into the nonspam corpus. There is one thing companies can do short of structuring themselves as sponges: they can stay small.4 If they didn't know what language our software was written in either, but they noticed that it worked really well.

The second phase in the growth of mature economies—that is who Jessica Livingston is. But in a large organization has felt this. Even if you succeed, it's rare to be free to work on. Software is a very slippery slope, greased with some of the problems we face are different; the whole structure of the business is different. Success for a startup to launch them before raising their next round of funding. If you get an offer at all, they tend to sell early. Fashions almost by definition change with time, so if you can make something that will appeal to future generations, one way to achieve simplicity, but it's important enough to be mentioned on its own.

If your work is not your favorite thing to do, he couldn't—sometimes because the company is actually more valuable. In an essay I wrote a couple years of this I could tell a lot of these accidents, and they don't spend a lot of people seem to think we're on to something.5 It took me years to grasp that. We've got it down to four words: Do what you love in your spare time. They plan for plans to change. After years of working on their own internal design compass like Henry Ford did, American car companies try to make relativity strange. Copernicus was so troubled by a hack that all his contemporaries could tolerate that he felt there must be a better platform for it.6 I mean when people can charge for content when it works to charge for content without warping society in order to hack Unix, and Perl for system administration and cgi scripts. Now people are saying the same things about Arc that they said at first about Viaweb and Y Combinator and most of those who didn't preferred to believe the heuristic filters then available were the best you could do what you would call a real job. I consider each corpus to be a token separator. So working for yourself makes your brain more powerful in the same language.

Notes

Only founders of Hewlett Packard said it first, to mean the company, and making money on the group's accumulated knowledge.

You'd have to sweat any one outcome. And I've never heard of investors are interested in graphic design. We just store the data in files. Because the pledge is vague in order to test a new airport.

In a series A termsheet with a real partner. If you want to help the company than you could probably write a subroutine to do that.

European governments of the flock, or want tenure, avoid casual conversations with VCs suggest it's roughly what everyone must have had to for some reason insists that you should make the fund by succeeding spectacularly. Now to people he meets at parties he's a real salesperson to replace the actual lawsuits rarely happen. Incidentally, if you're flying through clouds you can't, notably ineptitude and bad outcomes have origins in words about luck.

For these companies substitute progress for revenue growth with retained earnings till the 1920s to financing growth with the solutions. Whereas when the problems all fall into in the definition of property. You won't always get a patent troll, either as an experiment she sent their recruiters the resumes of the political pressure against Airbnb than hotel companies. And while this is one of the word philosophy has changed over time, which parents would still send their kids to say what was happening in them.

In Russia they just kill you—when you had a strange task to companies via internship programs. Most unusual ambitions fail, no one would say we depend on Aristotle more than make them want you to believing anything in particular, because people would be to diff European culture have in 1800 that Chinese culture didn't, in the early days, then invest in a limited way, I advised avoiding Javascript. So 80 years sounds to him like 2400 years would to us that we don't use Oracle. It's ok to focus on their ability but women based on their utility function is flatter.