When It's Late, I'm Rather Mopey and Altogether Unpleasant to Be Around

The Serpent of Deluna Bay

'Twas Jessie Jones, our Iron Lass,

Who spied it in her looking glass,

And cried for all the deck to hear,

"The monster, men, it's here, it's here!"

And lo! betwixt the yawning wakes

Arose a creature that would shake

The hardest crew to ocean spray:

The Serpent of Deluna Bay.

Its eyes are slits the size of masts,

Its scales as if of iron cast,

Its fangs the end of every boat

That slides into its acid throat.

"Don't let it fly," our captain barked,

"And we shall have its hide by dark.

We'll cut its scales for evening dress,

And from its flesh, we'll lamp oil press."

The first mate

"Quick, boys, the sails,"

***

And here the story would go on

Into a fascinating yarn

About how our fine crew would slay

The Serpent of Deluna Bay,

How on the fearless captain drives

His ship and risks his sailors' lives

For some quite dearly treasured snake

That slumbered in these turgid wakes,

How in the final battle scene,

The ship caught beast and storm between,

Young Iron Jess would make the blow

That'd bring this wondrous creature low,

How on and on the crew would cheer,

Except for Jess, who'd shed a tear

For monsters grand felled by her hand,

How our dear cap'n would understand,

How on the solemn journey back,

He'd tell her of the moistened smacks

Of bodies that once lay on deck,

And so, drop into angsty dreck,

And how a moment they would share,

A strong, but wounded, seaward pair,

A lovely image you can bet

Would drift into a warm sunset.

But other things I'd rather do,

And I am obligated to

Make good upon a promise made,

A year before, that cannot fade.

There was quite a bit of whiny verse after this, but I decided it would be better to edit it all out. See you Friday.

The Epic Saga of Haekreaild

This Friday's entry is a stop-gap of sorts, something sort and simple and light-hearted, inspired by the Lytton-Bulwer Fiction Contest, but given an ending. The stop-gap part? Well...expect some "supplemental material" to appear on the blog within the next day or two.

The Epic Saga of Haekreaild: Being a Translation of the Great Bardic Cycle Only Recently Recovered From Certain Ruins in Northern Iceland, Itself a Translation from the Elvish: Volume One

After spending many days along the half-forgotten spine of the world completing his final rite-of-passage in order to attain manhood, having been bruised and battered by all manner of crags and thorns and beasts too terrible to name, Haekreaild decided to leave his peasant village and widowed mother and go on a quest to save the world from the iron grip of King Maliorious and the coming blight of a supernatural winter longer and colder than any other since the Winter of a Thousand Nights, for a prophecy foretold that a child would be born on the exact day and in the exact place where Haekreaild was born and that after the child had seen seventeen winters pass, he would be called to unite all the nations, learn the secret arts of the elves from far beyond the reach and ken of man, draw the Sword of Throatenguarde from the old tombs of Bael Kai where it lay hidden for ages beyond ages, break the false idols in the Temple of Solitude and expose the church as nothing but a tissue of lies and corruption, and, at last, die in the final battle for the fate of the earth; and so, Haekreaild left the village carrying nothing but meager morsels of bread, his father's trusted sword, which had been handed down his family line since the Age of Myths and kept hidden by his mother in a secret chink carved into the floor for this very purpose after his father died, and his will to save his home and the family he has loved so dear.

Rocks fall. Everyone dies.

Blog, with Occasional Music

A recording of my song "Fly Until Starlight." Should be considered more a demo than a master track because 1). My voice isn't that great to begin with, and 2). I nearly had to shout because earlier, softer attempts sounded very weak. Regardless, enjoy the song, and thank you Lijik and RoahmMythril for your contributions.

http://www.mediafire.com/?mdj3mitznwn

Fly Until Starlight

The following poem is a set of lyrics concerning skypirates and is based on an original concept by Kyle Backstrom. My apologies for any mishandling of the idea.

Fly Until Starlight.

Come with me and we'll ride to the ends of the Earth,

Where we've gold and a cold swell a-breaking.

Come with me and we'll scour the badlands below,

Where there's wonder that's ours for the taking.

Come with me, leave your troubles behind,

And we'll cut through the storms if our blades are aligned,

So trust to the skies and a grin.

'Cause with wind in our turbines,

We'll fly till the starlight shines in.

Damn the Blues in their silly pontoons. They'll be bound

For the ground if Old Davy'll take 'em.

Damn these liars who think they're hot fliers.

Their livers all quiver--a sparrow would shake 'em.

Damn your pride, damn your fears and your doubts.

It's a big bad damn world, but there's riches about,

So ready your pistols and gin.

'Cause with wind in our turbines,

We'll fly till the starlight shines in.

And we'll glide o'er the dark in our airship,

Chasing after the dawn.

Just a cold kiss of blue and the wasteland.

It's a ride, and we'll ride till it's gone.

Feel the chinking of rivets on rivets

As gears dance with gears by the turn of our measure.

Feel the pull of the rollicking thermals that twine

Down to Earth and a promise of treasure.

Feel the warmth of a soft summer sun

And the fresh, tender sting of a dream just begun,

So trust to your heart and you're in.

'Cause with wind in our turbines

And cheers off the port-side,

We'll fly till the starlight shines in.

Fail

So I failed this week. I failed to finish my writing this week, failed to have the self-control to keep to my deadline, and failed to spend even a quarter of the amount of time I should have this week actually writing. By all accounts, I should be wondering why I'm pursuing creative writing if I'm not actually going to do the work. Failure of judgment, I'd say.

I will not, however, fail to deliver to you something more substantial than a pontification of my utter fail. You deserve better than that, Gentle Reader. And so, I offer both a poem I wrote last year and the unfinished mess that was this week's idea. With any luck I'll at least have something finished next time. See you Friday.

---

Why I Woke Up Sweating and Cold

Walking through the school halls one morning,

Past hungry faces and gaudy clothes,

Dull derisions and panicked whines,

And, over it all, the flash of compact mirrors,

I see you.

You notice me, lift your head and try to smile,

But it’s all theater. I match you thin curl for thin curl.

We exchange formalities,

Ask each other how we’ve been, and the like.

“Failing all my classes,” you tell me. “Even Language Arts.”

My eyes go wide. I wait for you to say something back,

Anything, maybe “I know, it sucks!” or “But I’m catching up!” or even “Oh my god, I can’t believe you fell for that!”

I wouldn’t be mad. I wouldn’t mind a joke right about now.

No answer, though, but the stare of empty eyes.

No jokes, no subject change or reminiscences. You’ve cut the fat from our conversation.

You’ve stopped to catch your breath, and I hear it come sharp and painful.

You ache to sit down, to lie down and rest, I can tell,

But you won’t. You won’t ask. Not in front of me.

We keep walking past the buzz of vending machines and gossip.

You sweater hangs loose over wrists, arms, neck,

And I shiver for you.

Could you stop and look at yourself? Would it even change anything?

The bell tolls: one, two, three, four times,

And we’re herded off to our next lessons.

I want to stop you, show you, just for a moment,

But you’re too far gone in the madness of crowds.

I walk on. I have to keep telling myself, or it’ll hurt too much,

That was not her. That was not my friend.

She’s left somewhere, on holiday,

Somewhere they don’t have scales or fat content labels

Or mirrors.

---

And the unfinished piece:

The Amazing Jonathan Shink

The boy first appears in police records from the outskirts of Chicago, back when every paving stone, every drainage ditch, every plank of wood was paid for with rail car after rail car after rail car of cattle. They found him not far from the northbound rails, clothed in a careworn corduroy jacket, and by all accounts he had neither mother nor father nor anything to claim him within twenty miles of the area but an unyielding stoicism. He was sent to the inner-city orphanage, and there, he spent his evenings enchanting the children with card tricks and sleight-of-hand and all other manners of play. “That boy never wanted for attention from anyone,” said Ms. Margaret Trilby, head of the orphanage, and indeed, three months after his arrival, several prospective parents had taken an interest in the child, who through his own education had learned more Greek, philosophy, and the sciences than boys twice his age were expected to know.

Such prospects, however, were cut short after a series of bizarre events that cost him ten years of his life. He appeared several times deep into the night on the rooftop, quite unwilling, or unable, to explain how he had gotten there. He would dismantle the other children’s toys, assembling the broken bits into chimerical nightmares. And he had returned from his play one evening carrying by their ears the heads of three kittens, each head having been severed cleanly, as if by a heated knife, faces fixed in wide-eyed anticipation. [] Unable to tolerate the boy’s behavior further, Ms. Trilby

[] He began to make significant amounts of money, not enough to afford more comfortable housing or less meager meals, but enough to ingratiate him among the more liberal parties of the wealthy. []

The trick delighted audience and critics alike, until the audience became local bank owners and his critics the Federal Reserve. [] At last he gazed out over the infested streets of Chicago, the great and terrible marvel that had never failed to astound him, and calmly lay down along the railroad tracks.

The 11:15 freighter cleaved him into two neat halves. Not half an hour later, the police arrived to clear away the remains, and not an hour after that, the city resumed its normal scuttle of activity. Already it was starting to forget. []

Cheating

Cheating

When the werewolf in his pizza shop, fatigued,
goes home, and never hears the fairy's call,
when the statue gleams on a frosted new year's eve,
but says nothing to the spurned child who scrubs her
grimy base, never feels the disappointment rise in her,
when a boy wandering the Iowa train yards
vanishes before he can perform his last conjuration,
when the king, considering war in far Sha-La,
and thinking better of it, stays his knights,
and the squire remains a squire, and the princess a princess,
then you will know that I am cheating.

An Experiment: "The Craftsman" Audio

This morning, I made a recording of me reading the first work in this project, "The Craftsman," wrote a little musical interlude for the recording, and saved the whole thing as an mp3. You can download it here.

If you'd like me to continue to make recording of my stories as I write them, please let me know in the comments. See you Friday with the next story.