#verdigris navel

[seabeck]

Blue mushroom in moss

[mbhfphotos]

Verdigris Navel Arrhenia chlorocyanea Washington, March 28 2023 Photo Mary Howerton

[summer-fire]

Verdigris

Tumbling steel to slough off the rust,

And caressing the copper to add to the layer

Of teal texture and green vitality.

Giving viridian hues to the orange heat.

All the while, you make soft cooing sounds,

Like the purr of a dove.

An ouroboros

Swallowed through your navel,

And returning out of your mouth

Past your teeth, the bone scrapes its scales.

You hold the loop away from yourself,

Forcing the chain open.

Some of the scales fell off and they blind everyone around you,

With their burnished silver sheen.

As millions of tiny black mirrors skitter away from your feet,

You bite down on the snake, only to realize it’s made of copper too,

And the acid in your spit cannot cut it.

And the serrated edges of your nails cannot cut it.

[lysmune]

po ushi vlubitsya

A Russian idiom; to fall wholly and deeply in love; literally, fall in love up to your ears.

Freeform

(Martin Septim/F!HoK)

Posting it here; took it down on AO3.

      God’s hands are curving her body, shaping her from the gases of the universe. Slender neck, silken hair, glass eyes and soft lips, all of this hers tonight even if they were not before because his touch is creation itself. Strange how he’s all too gentle, all too kind, she would have thought gods were crueler. Is he of a different kind? Yes. Fingers curling away, finding the knots of his tunic that he sheds with a shrug and she lets the smile on her lips emerge before she pushes the fabric back, skimming over taut ironwood skin.

      Her hand drops to cup the heart that has started to glow, light filtering through the spaces between her fingers, warmth seeping underneath, whispering like shifting sands. He leans down to kiss her with the nebulae underneath his tongue, across his lips and it is the first time she tastes the otherworldly. It evaporates gently, mist lifting from the thicket of pines, air puffing into crystals. He cartographs the road from her lips to her navel, crossing the planes of her breasts and the expanses of her abdomen, teasing and kind, and fluttering hands on her waist to steady himself as thumbs draw circles onto her skin.

      “You are a wonder,” he sighs into her, making sure she remembers by pressing a kiss to the peak of her hip and she laughs, unsure at how to take the praise, though far from discomforted. Even with verdigris growing from her flesh, he’s always loved her, she knows. His eyes never betray his voice. She sits upright on her elbows to watch him raise his head, the soft steel of his irises closing as he takes her lips and her back sinks into the mattress when he pushes her down.

      She watches the stardust splinter across their skin as gold sparks the freckles that decorate him, the pulsing of his heart more staccato than legato, starving, craving touches chilling her. He turns her into a garden, growing blooms into her marrows when she thought this wasted flesh of hers could never house such vibrancy. No mere mortal could bring with them spring, but she reminds herself that he is god himself.

      Yet it’s strange how he is the one worshipping her.

      With tongue and hand, and wispy breaths, he inks the words into her mouth as fingers drip star trails that engraves her flesh, weaving the constellations of Mara and Akatosh, Julianos and Kynareth into her hair.  Their names are singing into the night, puffing into smoke as he cradles her in his arms, twining them together when she arches against fabric and touches skin, the roof of her ribcage meeting his, all that he is - ichor, starlight, lavenders, liquid gold - melting into her until she herself wonders if they are truly any different.

      He lavishes her with the promises, the sweet pricks of her skin between his teeth while she marks him with jagged fingernails, their lips pressed together to muffle any cries that dare escape them. A stutter, a soft crow, and he’s heaving, pulling her into his embrace as a wash of contentment settles into her, nestling against his chest. Comfort, protection, the soft warmth of a fire, and she knows she’s where she should be (and she realises that he is half of her now).

      Unspoken words hang in the air, mingling with the afterglow and mist, and slickness of sweat (and she’s suddenly afraid and cowardly, because she loves him ). She holds her breath for a moment as the confessions coagulate on her tongue, but he tells her that he doesn’t need to hear it, that it’s alright.

      “I know,” I feel the same, she can almost hear him say. With a slight squeeze, one that tugs at her heartstrings like nothing she’s ever felt before, he ties them together. With famished lips that hunger (begs, longs, yearns) for him, she tilts her head up and kisses him, and the soft curve of his smile are hers.

[fromthedust]

VERDIGRIS DREAM: TWO NATURES  (reworked) 

top: photographed without flash inside studio

bottom: detail of lens assembly photographed with flash inside studio   

After stitching up the tears in the canvas the stitches were primed and sealed with glue. When dry, the stitches and the canvas surrounding them were repainted to more-or-less match what had been there (you can NEVER match it exactly), and then I added a partially-sandblasted tinted glass rectangle (recycled cover from an old cell phone) under the lens off to one side but in front of the hand. I also sandblasted a broken double row of dots on the reverse side of the lens. Behind the hand was added a horizontal stripe of color pencil strokes (not visible in these photos). Outside of the lens assembly were added four additional horizontal elements — three made with colored pencil strokes on the canvas, and one made with paint on the ceramic navel element. 

to see what it looked like before:

http://fromthedust.tumblr.com/post/87703706288/verdigris-dream-two-natures-stretched-primed

[mbhfphotos]

Verdigris Navel Fungus

Arrhenia chlorocyanea

Western Washington, May 13 2022 Mary Howerton (shop)

[mbhfphotos]

Verdigris Navel Fungus Arrhenia chlorocyanea

Western Washington April 2022 Photos Mary Howerton