Tag Archives: mordi
Progressions – snippets from ‘The Stray Chronicles’
An excerpt from my latest revisions, chapter 8 – The Stray Chronicles
Why? What was so important to hide – what had Valdyir done? She shook her head feebly.
The Chief pulled a worn dark leather pouch from his cloak. As he carefully loosened the tie, a fine haze seeped from the pouch. He cast its content across the broad table. Fine, jet black opalescent sand. Nyhm knew in an instant what it was; The Dark Sea. The sand hissed as it scattered across the table and bubbled where it met Mourdrid’s blood. The Chief spattered out a few crude words then tossed a handful of the bubbling blood-sand atop it. There, where it landed, the blood solidified into dark jewel-like stones. The ripples and folds of the sand began to quiver, and stir.
“…Take us there…” The Chief spoke.
The ripples moved. They bobbed and ebbed, and the stones began to form faint figures amongst the sand. As she watched these figures, raising and falling, materializing then smoothing again in a dark dance, she started to lose herself. She was hypnotized by this haunting, yet dazzling image. Distracted by this vision, she forgot the horror around her. She forgot the throbbing in her head, the pain that welled in her chest. Her tears dried, and she simply stared. Deeper. Deeper.
The hall darkened into shadow, and faded from sight and mind. She no longer saw the table laid before them, only the sands and the figures. Their world slowly faded out of sight, and new images grew up around them. Suddenly the dancing image of the sand-shades began to fade as well, and new, stranger images took their place.
In front of them she saw an overcast valley, gloomy and dull. A heavy storm loomed over them, pouring rain in torrents across a dreary, meek cluster of small huts, thatched houses and clay buildings. The winds raged upon the quaint village, and seemed to rip it to ruin. All about them, the lands grew dark. The fields began to rise and fall, just as the sands of the DarkSea, and she realized they were no longer in the hall of GanorPalace, but they were there: they were in the vision.
She sat in the field, wind raging all about her drowning out all other sounds. The tall grasses ripped in the winds, slicing at her and drawing thin streaks of blood against her hands and cheeks. Around them she saw the ebb of the valley, mimicking the sands that controlled them, and amongst them grew figures, the shades, forming into an evil, half-dead army of ghostly shadow beasts.
Horrific, tall and spindly. Their dark, sickly grey-green skin pulled taut over defined, if lean, muscle and bones that spired into dagger like points at the joints. Their hair was wet and dreaded that hung limp and stringy across their shoulders and hid their faces, though their fanged grins flashed in the dim light. The little you could see of their faces peering from beneath their mangled manes were vulgarly distorted. Not unlike men, but not human at all. They stood with spines arched, the vertebrae cresting their backs as they pierced through the flesh, bent with their elongated legs folded beneath heavy, muscular thigh as they walked on the balls of their clawed feet.
Nyhm stared, wide-eyed in horror as she watched more and more of these creatures rise up from sand-shades into reality. Thunder crashed, and lightning flickered. Nyhm jumped, hiding herself beneath her arms as more appeared all around her. She has seen many foul and cursed beasts of Caermeryn – horrid creatures, the mutilated remnants from the backlash of the fall of the Olde Empire. But she had never seen anything like these. These had none of the same characteristics or attributes of the beasts she was familiar with. These were something more; something older…these were no beasts. They were demons. They were the creatures of nightmare – what the people had feared so much, what stalked in the shadows…they were real…
They were real.
She clasped a hand over her mouth has she huddled amongst the grasses, unable to move, unable to speak. Petrified, she could do nothing but watch the horror. The Reapers faded away into shadow, looming over the field as the demons moved on towards the village. The Chief stood to command.
“Kill them all…leave nothing for him…”
With that the beasts erupted in a rampage. They cried out an earth-shattering roar of bloodlust that resonated through her bones. She wept. They took to the fields, hoards of them, racing faster than any mount or steed Nyhm had ever known, across the valley – towards the village. She covered her ears and hid her face as she lost control, sobbing into her lap. The Reapers cried out their hallowing call in response. They raced past her, over her, around her, as she huddled, and cried. This was it.
This is what happens when you cross those who hold the Reapers.
What had Valdyir done?
I’ve written myself into a corner…..
…and it feels like I’m beating my brains out to get out of it.
While going through my revisions, and working on re-writes and edits….I made a horrible realization.
I’ve totally jacked up all my timelines. The are generally related to each other in a sense of chronological order. But the reality is – they are not cohesive, or consistent. wtf. How did I do this?
How did I not notice this until just now? The bigger problem is that this particular set-up needs to happen in this way. It sets up so much more to come, in a drastic – even if subtle – way. If I change this particular scene, or act to fit what has already been written, it fucks up everything else to come. It simply will not work. Or, in order to get it to work, seriously alters the plot line as it currently stands. Which I’m not exactly apt to changing at this point. Yes, sometimes it is necessary to take a turn you did not initially plan for, but this isn’t one of those times without changing the impact of the story as a whole, and basically puts me in a stalemate with myself or my story telling. Which means there is only one option : go back and fix all the previous written time-line.
…all that work I just finished.
*FACEDESK*
One step forward….ten steps back ? uhg.
SOME PROGRESS IS BETTER THAN NO PROGRESS
I just have to keep telling myself that.
It’s Beltane…and it’s not what you think.
The obligatory Beltane / May-Day post.
Well wishes, happy harvests, and bountiful blessings for everyone this season – as it should be (or hoped to be) every season.
But, I can’t say that it is a warmly welcomed season so far. Every holiday / harvest day / celebration that comes around – I am bombarded with article after article and post after post from pagan communities, blogs and centers from all over blaring out, and sharing, and reposting on histories and traditions…….that just aren’t true. Or misconstrued, greatly. And it’s disheartening.
Now, if you are a Neo-Pagan, and you follow these modernized traditions – then you go for it. BUT, when we are discussing histories and traditional ideology of where the celebration is rooted – that’s a much different discussion than simply talking about personal practices or customs.
I’m sure you’ve all heard all the discussion of the sexual prowess of Beltane, and the Great Rite, and the copulation of the God and Goddess and the marrying of the Land and great orgies by bonfires for the sake of fertility.
And frankly, in my own opinion – that is all blasphemy. And insulting.
Beltane is a harvest festival. That is all. It is the celebration of the bounty of Spring, and welcomes Summer. Traditionally, it marked the “beginning of summer” and was a time that they would reap harvest, turn fields, begin the breeding season of certain livestock, and send the cattle out to pasture, and hope / pray for the fertility and ripeness of the land.
As a celebration of summer, and the over-turning of the seasons, it was thought to be one of the pinnacle points of the year when the spirits were most active, and the veils between worlds was the thinnest – allowing the influence of the gods / spirits to be at a peak. They would make offerings to the gods for their blessings for the upcoming season, and they would perform special rites to purify and protect their livestock, land, and even the people themselves.
It’s basis was centered around a sense of renewal, blessings, optimism and hope. Not a sex fest as modernism seems to have turned it into. And yes, arguably – you can say that the idea of the rebirth of the land, and it’s heavy focus on fertility *could* be interpreted in a sexual and symbolic manner. Yes. That could be argued – but that interpretation and ideology has developed over the modern era, and was not *traditionally* what Beltane was about at all.
Beltane is rooted in Celtic Ireland, and can be read about in some of the oldest, most influential Irish mythos – and has been well documented throughout the medieval era all over Celtic Europe.
We, of course, don’t know everything, in every detail about the very first traditions and customs of those first Beltane rites – but the fact that they had survived for so many centuries, and had been documented by many different cultures throughout the region leads us to a pretty clear picture of what exactly this Season, and celebration, meant to them. And to imply otherwise, or to perpetuate wrong-information as fact – or to state that modern interpretations and rituals as “traditional” is ignorant, and doing a disservice to the culture – regardless of if you try to walk a traditional path, or modern one.
There is a reason why we are often looked at in society today as being little more than a bunch of free-lovin-hippy-cult-revival of over-sexualized debauchery – or why certain circumstances of criminal acts seem to be so scrutinized, and impactful to our community – because the community continues to influence the idea that our culture, and history, is rooted in nothing more than a prominent sexual overtone. Which is a very shallow, cut-and-dry image to paint to a culture that has so many depths and histories within it.
We are much more than a Sex-cult. So on these days, lets try to share some of the proud, deep rooted histories of our people and customs so that others may see a different, and hopefully insightful, side to the people we really are.
A disappointing read
Gods & Fighting Men – Lady Gregory
though I have read most of the tales dozens of times over, I had always wanted to read this collection. I was excited to start, but after weeks of scattered reading I finally had to give it up. This is such a disorganized rendering of these tales I just couldn’t follow it – and that’s saying a lot for someone who *already knows these tales*. I don’t know if it was the fact that I was reading it via ereader – as i’ve found it is much, much harder for me to follow, and retain via an ereader than an actual book, or if it was a combination of that and the language. I just found this so scattered and incohesive, with over exaggerated language, usage and run on sentences that cover half a dozen topics / people/ places all in one thought process that span entire paragraphs and excerpts. This is just plain bad writing. There are hundreds upon hundreds of stories or anthologies written in this same era, and earlier, that retain their original language paired with romanticized lyricism that are beautiful and amazing works of visionary word. I feel like this is what she was trying to capture, but did not fully understand it – and therefor left the collection empty, hard to navigate, and just plainly confusing and hard to read. Perhaps one day I will pick up a hard copy of this book, and try again with a physical copy in hand. Perhaps that will make all the difference in the world…but until then, absolutely no. I cannot finish this. It is not worth the time nor the headache, especially when there are so many other wonderful presentation of these tales.