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dycefic · 11 months
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hm. poll. bc a streamer i watch mentioned "getting dressed" to spend all day at home playing a video game
(NOTE: for the purposes of this poll "real clothes"=whatever u would wear outside normally, pajamas=whatever ur comfy sleep clothes are. could be actual fancii pajamas could be boxers and a big shirt i dont care. if you sleep naked idk man)
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dycefic · 11 months
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Hi hello!!! I just saw your last answered ask, and I wanted to ask if you'd be okay with another person recording your stories? I do a lot of audio production stuff and I always love to narrate things (it helps that I have a processing issue that makes me need to read things out loud anyway lol), and I LOVE your work. I'd love to use one for recording/sound design practice, if you're ok with that.
If so, do you have any particular stories of yours you'd like a recording of?
That is fine - my only request is that if you put it online, you link to the story and send me a link to the recording, because I love to listen to them.
As to which particular one... how are you at accents?
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dycefic · 11 months
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pardon me, but do you happen to allow live/recorded readings of your stories? If not that's totally fine, I just record a little video every week where I tell a story (and link to it) and thought I would ask.
I do allow that! Thank you for asking, and please send me a link, I love to hear my stories read aloud.
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dycefic · 11 months
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The Hearthstone God
[The sequel to the God of Prophecy, and the Serpent God of Protection]
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Fire is out of fashion, in this new age.
Some of my kind have found new homes, new names, in factories or forges, in the hearts of wildfires or crystals or volcanoes.
Most of us are simply forgotten.
I was a fire god, once. A god of gathering, a god of communion, a god of song and story. But there are no hearthstones now. No fires around which families gather to eat and talk and tell stories.
I am lucky. I am tied to a great flat stone near a lake. A lake that has survived all the wild exuberance of men, when they learned to change the world around them. Once, this was a place where travellers stopped to rest. At first they travelled on their feet, or on half-wild horses. Then there were carts, and a road. Much later, cars drove down the road. The road was paved.
But some things do not change. People need clean water to drink, and the spring here is good. They need to rest, when they are weary. And even now, when they come to camp in nylon tents, to fish in the lake, or to hunt the ducks, or drive camper-vans to the flat place, their ancient instincts wake, and they turn to fire once more. They light new fires atop my stone, so flat and safe, from which no log will roll to set the woods afire.
Not so many come now. Camping is less popular these days. But some still come. Some still light their fires, and settle around my stone, and talk, or listen to music, or tell stories. So I survive, just barely, on the edges of belief.
I feel it, when things begin to change. Something is happening. Something is drawing old gods back. Not the great ones, risen beyond mortal understanding, but the oldest gods, the small gods, those who rose when humankind were still learning what they were.
Far to the west of me, a god even more ancient than I wakes, and begins to hunt again. I remember the stories that were once told of that old serpent, and tell them over to myself in the long fireless nights.
A god of prophecy, not of this land, settles south and west, and I remember tales of ancient ravens, their wisdom and their guile and their sharp, sharp eyes. There was a raven clan once, who passed this way in the days of skin garments and stone tools, but I have forgotten their name. I only remember the symbol they wore, the black bird with its spread wings, marked in charcoal or charring on wooden talismans or leather garments.
I wait, to see who will awaken next.
To my great surprise, it is me.
The people who come this time aren’t like the campers. They come at night, a ragged family group with few blood ties between them, with a single tent and few possessions carried on devices I haven’t seen before. Bicycles, they’re called, slung over with bags the way ponies used to be. They come at night, and hide when cars pass on the road.
They light a fire on my stone, with wood scavenged from the forest, and huddle around its warmth. They don’t speak much, not at first, but they say enough. They have no home, I learn. They are travellers of a kind I have not known before, who are allowed to stop nowhere, but have no goal but a place to rest. They are thin, and worn, and so tired. So very tired.
They need a hearth.
I am only a weak shadow of a god, now, who once recorded the songs and stories of a thousand generations in my ancient stone, but I am still a god of fire. Their fire burns slow, their little fuel lasting well. The food they heat over it sustains them better. The water of that spring, my spring, puts a little life back in them. This stone has lain in this place since great monsters walked this world, since before humans spoke words to one another, and I came into being with the first fire that burned on it. I am old, old, and though weak, I am not powerless.
They stay.
I cannot speak to them. I am old, and weak, and they do not believe. But slowly, with the power of the fires they build every night, with the tiny offerings of scraps of food spilled into the flames, with their growing confidence in the safety of this place, I am able to do more. I give them dreams and they find the cave not far away, where they can hide. They dream of fish, and begin to try to catch some. A woman remembers that some of the local plants are safe to eat, when I slowly wake a long-forgotten memory of a camping trip from her childhood.
And then a child, a strange, quiet child who rarely speaks, a child without mother or father, in the care of an older brother who is exhausted to the very edge of death but cannot give up while she needs him… that child begins to hear.
She sits on my stone, sometimes for hours, not moving or speaking. It worries the others, but at least she is quiet, at least she is no trouble, and they are beginning to associate their hearth with safety. So they let her sit.
She is *listening*. She is listening to the sound of the water, to the sounds of the forest, to the wind blowing. And because she is listening, where no-one else has listened for so long, I sing to her. I sing to her the songs of thousands of years. From the wordless music of the earliest people, who sang what was in their hearts without words, to the songs I have learned from the fishermen with their radios and bluetooth speakers.
I do not know if she hears me, for some time. But then, one night, while they sit around their fire and eat food the oldest have almost certainly stolen, she sings one of my songs. “In a cavern… on a canyon… excavating for a mine…” she sings in a small voice. The others are startled, confused, for she has not spoken aloud since some bad thing they do not name happened, but one of the older ones knows the song and sings with her.
I have always liked ‘Clementine’. It’s been popular with campers for a long time.
The next day, while she sits on my stone, she sings along to one of the wordless songs the Raven People whose name I no longer remember once sang. It is a lullaby, a soft croon to soothe an infant, passed from mother to mother, and she seems to take pleasure in it.
She can hear me. She can even answer me, as the voice driven away by pain and fear begins to return. And so I grow stronger still. Strong enough to make the raven sign on the stone, one day, in the ashes of the fire of the night before.
She takes a half burned stick, and draws the sign on the stone. Pleased, I show her another sign, a leaping fish. She draws that too.
Soon, I need not shift the ashes. I can show her the pictures in her mind, and she draws them. She draws the wheel of a cart, and into her heart I whisper the stories the travellers in covered wagons once told over my stone. She draws a fish, and I make her laugh silently with the jests of fishermen who boast of fish who escaped them. She draws a horse, and I tell her about the wild horses who once drank at this lake, about the men and women who captured and tamed them and rode them through the forest when it was far greater than it is now. She draws a long-toothed cat, and I show her the great cat that once slept on my stone, and denned in the cave where her new found family sleep.
One night, when all the others are asleep and my fire has burned down to coals, she creeps back to the stone and looks into the coals. “Who are you?” she asks. “Are you real?”
She is afraid that the voice in her mind is the voice of madness, a lie created by a mind that does not work like other minds, that has endured great hardship. I do not want this child to be afraid. To instill fear runs counter to my very nature, save in whoever might threaten those my hearth protects.
I am a god of the hearth. I am a god of food, and communication, and peace, and safety. I am all the things that fire used to mean, before humans learned again to fear the thing they had tamed. I do not often take a form, for fire is my form, but for her I must try.
There was a wise woman once, who knew me, whose clan visited this lake several times every year. I watched her grow up, and grow old. I watched her learn of the god of the fire stone, and I watched her teach others. She slept beside me as a child, and as a woman. She sang her children to sleep beside me, and her grandchildren, and dozed beside me as an old, old woman. To her, I was represented by a sign of a flame in an oval, a fire and a stone.
I build a likeness of her out of the light of the coals and the shadows of smoke, a child with straight dark hair and a simple tunic, and in lines of light I draw the sign of the fire and the stone on the outlined chest. “I am the fire,” I tell her, “and the stone. I am all the fires that have ever burned here, all the stories told, all the songs sung, all the meals eaten. I am the traveler’s hearth, and the rest for the weary, and this is my place.”
“Piedra de fuego,” she says, tracing the symbol with her finger in the air. “The fire stone.”
“Yes. I am the god of this place.”
She frowns at this. “My brother says that God is in the sky.”
“Many gods are in the sky.” I cannot continue to hold the form of the girl, but the coals shift to make my sign. “I am not. I am here. I have always been here, since the first people built a fire on my stone, and warmed themselves.”
She nods slowly. “You are… a small god,” she says thoughtfully. “A place god. Like in movies.”
“Yes.” I’ve heard of movies, which are a new way of telling old, old stories. “Old places, important places, often have gods. And gods who are forgotten return to their old places and wait, until someone believes again.”
“Will you protect us?” she asks. “When the police come, to tell us to move on?”
“I am not strong,” I tell her sadly. “I cannot make men go away from here, if they are dangerous, or even call game here for you as I once did. But what I can do, I will do.”
She sits watching the coals for a long time, thinking. “Can we make you stronger?”
I think too, and she waits patiently. “You have already made me stronger. You listened. You believed. If you can convince the others to believe, that will make me stronger still.”
She sighed. “They don’t believe in anything, anymore. Not good things.”
It is a sad thing, that she knows that. They’ve been trying to hide it from her. “Then,” I tell her, “that means there is a place in their hearts that is ready for me. I am not hope. I am not a happy ending. I am not a god in the sky. I am a stone, and a fire, and a song. I am *real*. They can believe in what is real.”
The next night, she asks for a story, and one of the adults tells her an old fairy-tale from a country far away.
The next night, again, she asks for a story, and another adult tells a funny story about his childhood.
On the third night, she asks her brother to tell her a story. He tries, but he is so tired - not physically, but emotionally - that he runs out of words. So she lays her hand on his arm and offers to tell him a story, instead.
And she tells them all a story about a stone near a lake, flat and strong, that people wearing uncured skins and carrying flint weapons built a fire on. She tells of centuries passing, of people coming to the lake on their feet, on horses, in carts and wagons, in cars and motor-homes. Of thousands of years of fires, of people gathered around them, of the great continuity of humanity, and the Piedra De Fuego that has lain in this place since time began, listening to the stories and the songs and the voices of people long gone. Somewhere in the stone, she says, laying her hand on it, all those stories are remembered. All those songs are still sung. And it will remember us too.
I don’t know if it will work. But I was right. People need to believe in something. They need something to hold onto, when times are hard, when the ties of community and family are broken and they feel alone. And a stone thousands of years old, and a fire endlessly renewed on that stone, always new… that is real. They touch me, and think of those who came before, of thousands of years of history meeting them in this place, and they feel less alone.
It’s not much, not yet. But it is something. My nature, my existence, as explained to them by my small, strange priestess, is a slender lifeline flung to those who are adrift, a tiny certainty in a world they do not trust. And the more they believe in that lifeline, that certainty, then the more they believe in me. I *am* growing stronger.
When the police come, I will not be able to make them leave… but I think I am strong enough now to hide my people from unkind eyes. And if I can do that, then their faith will grow.
Tonight, three more people come. A mother and two children, weary and beaten down with hardship. My people welcome them, give them fish and greens grown by the lake, speak kindly to them. And when they have eaten, my little priestess sits between the two children and tells them a story of a stone, and a fire, and thousands of years of stories and songs, and she sings a wordless lullaby six thousand years forgotten, but living again in a child who draws the sign of the Raven in the dirt while she sings, and the sign of the fire on the stone.
And I grow a little stronger.
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dycefic · 1 year
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Tom Saves The World
Everyone knows that it’s super-heroes who save the world. They fight the aliens, or the monsters, or the bad guys. And mostly, that’s true.
But not always.
I’m a psychic. The thing is, my range isn’t that great. I don’t have much detail more than about 36 hours out, 48 for something really big. I’d had a nebulous sort of bad feeling for about a week before this one finally hit, and it was big. Something very tough and very supernatural was going to come up out of the harbor of Nova Roma, and the death-toll was going to be high. Crazy high.
I did all I could. I told the Unaligned Supers Job Placement Agency, and they put the word out to everyone on both sides of the Line. The Henchman’s Union don’t like natural disasters any more than anyone else, and they’re often quite helpful against eldritch horrors and stuff like that. Things that don’t hire henchmen and ruin the property values.
The trouble was, nobody big was around. The only really big team of heavy hitters on the West Coast were away dealing with some sort of doomsday cult - I never was clear on what that was about - and Guarde and Dog Fox were out of touch and even Mx Frantique was out of town at someone’s wedding. It was going to happen in less than two days and we couldn’t find anyone to help and I was seriously considering calling in some kind of bomb threat or something to get people away from the docks, at least.
And then, about eighteen hours out, it just… went away.
Which never, ever happens.
My powers might be short range, but they’re reliable. I don’t get stuff wrong, and I hadn’t been able to find any way to prevent what was going to happen, or even been able to identify anyone who could. But someone did. Someone had done something to stop the threat, something that happened literally while I was opening my car door. When I reached for the handle, thousands of people were going to die. By the time the door was open, there was no threat at all.
At first I thought it must have been a ranged thing. Like, whatever I’d been seeing (all those teeth, I saw them in nightmares for months after) had been distracted by something tasty on its way here and gotten off track, that it’d come up somewhere up or down the coast. My range isn’t that big, either. Anything outside about thirty miles might as well be on Mars for all I know about it. So we kept a watch out, and warned the chapters of the Union and the Agency in other cities.
But nothing happened. Nothing at all. I couldn’t explain it, and I was really unpopular for a while. Supers do NOT like people who cry wolf. There’s enough freaky shit we have to deal with without someone panicking everyone with a dire prophecy that fizzles out.
Thank all the gods that Tunny showed up. Nobody’s really sure what Tunny actually is - sentient fish creature, some kind of really mutated human, an alien, or what. She changes her story a lot. But she’s pretty friendly, especially for a twenty-foot-long horror-movie-mermaid-thing with four arms, so when she came into harbor to pick up some supplies a guy from the Agency went out to tell her what I’d seen. I’d gotten a wharf and dock number, so she went down to check.
I don’t think anyone had ever seen Tunny scared before. Her English wasn’t good enough to really explain what she’d found hibernating down there, but it was something very old and very powerful and very dangerous, and if it’d been woken up my vision would just have been the start of the crisis.
She rounded up a bunch of whales to help her move it, once she was sure it hadn’t been agitated and wasn’t likely to rouse if moved carefully. They towed it out before dawn, not wanting to scare the civilians, and when I saw the footage from the helicopter the Union sent up, when I saw how big the swell was, how many whales were pulling, I swear I nearly crapped myself. No wonder I’d been getting hints a week in advance. Somehow we dumbass humans had built a whole fucking city almost on top of some kind of Ancient Old… THING, and eroded the sea-bottom until it was exposed, and if someone hadn’t done whatever it was we’d all have been dead long before Tunny arrived. And not just all as in ‘all of Nova Roma’, it could have taken out half of the continent... or all of it.
It took me years to find out what happened. YEARS. It turned into a kind of hobby, tracking everything that might possibly have come into contact with Wharf 38 on that particular day.  
And what I found, eventually, was a city employee named Thomas Briggs.
I’d found out early on that 38 wasn’t in good repair. Not that bad, but not great. It was old, things were getting a bit saggy in a few places, but there’d been no sign that anything was likely to fall off on the day. It had sat there for a couple of years after the crisis that never happened,, doing its job without problems then been rebuilt without any drama at all.
Entirely, completely, and totally because of Thomas Briggs.
The story, when I finally pieced it together, went like this.
There’d been some project or other to build some sort of high-budget science project over on the other side of the harbor, hanging it off’ve Pier 8, the furthest out on that side. Something about tracking sea-life or ships or something. My conversational English is near perfect, I’ve been here for years, but I don’t speak science nerd in ANY language. It’d all been approved, some university was covering most of the cost, it was all gonna be fine. And it was gonna be over on 8 because that side of the harbor is the shallow end. It’s where the sailboats go. All the big stuff that would block visual sensors and deafen the thing with engine noise was over in the thirties, in the real deep water.
They were almost ready to install the thing when a bunch of rich dudes suddenly got their panties in a bunch over having a big sciency tower thing ruining the view from their yachts, and tried to get it moved.
To, and I’m sure you guessed this, Wharf 38.
Which was completely insane. It wouldn’t be able to do its job over there, it’d be way more in the way, and (although they couldn’t have known it) the installation would definitely have woken up the Thing sleeping by the wharf and we all would have died. But rich dudes with yachts don’t care about that stuff. They’d bitched out and bribed up their friends on the city council, and those friends had done their thing, and the scientists had been left in the dark, and it’d almost gone through. They’d figured to install it right away, so that when the science guys found out it’d be too late and they’d either have to pay a lot to move it or just use it where it was.
Enter Thomas Briggs.
Mr Briggs, Tom to his friends, didn’t give a crap about the yachts or the science. He was a senior money guy for the commercial wharfs, the one who figured out things like how much money they’d take in in a quarter, and what the repair budget should be, stuff like that. He found out about this thing two days before the disaster would have happened, and sat down and did the math.
Then he sent out an email to the guys trying to push this through, and he ripped into them like they’d threatened to knife his mother. I got my hands on that email, and I didn’t understand a lot of it any more than the council guys would have. It was ALL numbers. But at the top he wrote it out in plain English. Pier 8 was new, and rated to handle the weight of the thingy. Wharf 38 was going to be scrapped in a few years, and it was NOT rated for that kind of structure. Pier 8 had plenty of room around it. Wharf 38 was already a tight fit for the big commercial ships, and adding a structure sticking out on one side would block off at least half of the wharf to those ships completely.
Bottom line, putting the thing on Wharf 38 would cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars more per year than putting it on 8, AND the city would have to eat the cost if 38 collapsed under it which it could easily do, AND the city would have to pay to move it in a couple of years anyway when 38 was due to be rebuilt.
And he cc-ed every important person he had an email address for, including the mayor, the anti-corruption people, and several reporters.
He must have sent that email right when I was opening my car door.
The whole plan collapsed right there, and some people got fired. There was no news story because the whole plan got killed before the reporters even got to the right office. The installation was started on Wharf 8 a few weeks later and I never connected it to a commercial wharf on the other side of the harbor.
One email, and a man who I never could have located in time, a man who had no powers at all, a man who was just conscientiously doing his job looking after the city’s money saved the city, and the continent, and maybe even the world.
Who could have predicted that? Not me, that’s for damn sure.
I can’t deny that I went home and got drunk off my ass that night. Just thinking about how close that had been made my hands shake. One man. One honest man who’d done the math.
I put the word out, once the hangover wore off. What had happened. That Thomas Briggs was the reason we were all alive and everyone better make his life real nice from now on, because he’d done what none of us could do and nobody but the supers would ever even know it.
He’s got a lot of luck coming to him, I can tell you. We don’t forget debts like that.
And I knew that’d freak him out, because honest men don’t like it when people start doing them a lot of favors for no apparent reason, so I tracked him down at the little bar where he likes to have a quiet beer on Friday nights before he goes home. Hell, I was the one who’d gone through it all, back then. I should get to tell him.
I sat down beside him at the bar and looked at him. I saw a thin, small, balding man who looked like he worried too much and didn’t get enough sleep, with lines around his eyes. Yeah, he looked like a man who’d do the math. “Thomas Briggs?”
He blinked at me through his glasses. “Yes? Do I know you?”
“No, you don’t. My name’s Barkhado Omar, and I’ve been looking for you for a long time.” I offered him my hand and he shook it, still looking confused. Which was fair, ‘cause I doubt a lot of seven foot tall Somali women came up to him in bars even when he was young. He’s got to be close to retirement now.
He frowned. “Looking for me? Why?”
I smiled at him. “Tom, let me buy you a drink and tell you about the day you saved the world.”
It’s usually us who save the city, or the world. We have all the intel, all the advantages, all the powers.
But sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s someone like Tom Briggs, doing the right thing at the right time and never knowing that he changed the course of history.
Wild, huh?
--
This story is a direct result of me and my ex chatting about how different the entire Marvel Universe would have been if Jean’s first ‘resurrection’ - being found in a life pod under a wharf, IIRC - had happened at like... any other time. Earlier. Later. It would have changed SO MUCH.
And we speculated about how it could happen, how someone just puttering around in middle management might have unknowingly saved countless lives, prevented Madelyne’s corruption, the legacy virus, all of it, just by postponing that particular set of repairs a bit longer.... and I couldn’t resist writing a version of the story in which Tom does, in fact, save the world.
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dycefic · 1 year
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Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.
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dycefic · 1 year
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You find a girl crying next to a grave. “What’s wrong?” You ask. She cries harder. “Nobody came to my funeral.”
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dycefic · 1 year
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Isekai
The story this world was created for didn’t pan out, but I still love it. So I sent a visitor from our world to this one, who is not delighted to find that instead of a clear conflict between good and evil, she is confronted with something very different.
#
The priest led the way into the great hall. “It is strange to me,” he said chattily, “that you do not know the gods. Surely there is no place so far that the gods do not hold sway there.”
The stranger cleared her throat. “I do not… know that I do not,” she said carefully. “By other names, or seemings, perhaps… but I would know them as you know them.”
“Ah, I see. Yes, that I can understand.” The priest smiled. With his long grey hair and beard flowing over a white robe, he looked like a small, spare saint himself, genial and contented. “Then I will tell it to you from the beginning.” He walked up the length of the hall, and gestured to the two statues that stood on either side of the great altar, with the gold-leaf sun and hammered silver moon on the wall above it.
“There are eight gods,” he said, and his voice settled into the cadence of one repeating an old teaching. “And no one of the eight stands alone, but always as one of a pair. First among the gods stand Elu and Surm, whose aspects are those of Life and Death. There are those who say that they are the parents of the other gods, and others who say that they are only the oldest, but all that the others are springs ultimately from them.”
“I see.” The stranger looked up at the statue on the left, who stood by the golden sun. “Elu… life… is perhaps the one I know as the Mother.”
“Yes, for all life comes from a mother.” The priest nodded, also gazing up at the statue. It was beautifully crafted, perhaps twice as tall as the stranger, a vivid portrayal of a woman of middle years, with the rounded belly and hips of children borne, the plump limbs of health and plenty, lines of wisdom and of humour on her face. She wore a loose robe, and a crown of leaves and flowers on her long hair, and fruit and grain filled the basket in her hands. “Elu brings life, and all that lives, from the greatest beast to the smallest, from the richest fruit to the smallest seed, from humankind to a flower that blooms and dies in a single day.”
He turned to the other statue, Surm. This was a man, also of middle years, but he wore armour, and carried a bow in his hand. “And Surm, her opposite and equal, who closes the circle. Where there is life, there must also be death, and Surm rules over all forms of death. He is a warrior, and a hunter, and also a healer, as is Elu, for the healer stands between life and death. Surm is the ending, as Elu is the beginning, but in truth they are the two halves of a circle, for from death life comes again, and from life death is born.” He gestured up at the sun and moon. “Elu is the first of what we name the sunward four, and Surm of the moonward, for the sun and the moon, like the gods, are a pair, opposite and yet united.”
“I see. Who comes next?”
“Of the other three pairs, the order in which they stand varies. They are all of equal status and importance, as gods, but in different times and places some may take a greater hand than others.” The priest moved back a few paces. “Here, the second pair are those we call Kord, the sunward, who represents order and creation, and Kaos, the moonward, who represents chaos and destruction.”
The stranger looked from Kord, a statue of a man holding a chisel and a measuring rod, his robes perfect, his braids as straight as the rod, to Kaos, a woman all disorder, from her wild curls to her ragged motley to her very pose – while Kord stood erect, Kaos was dancing, one foot raised, ribbons flying about her. “Good and evil?” the stranger asked, frowning.
“No, order and chaos.” The priest frowned too. “All the gods have their aspects of both good and evil, of course. Elu creates life, and she is the mother of the devouring wolf or bear just as she is of the lamb or the kid. Surm brings death on the battlefield, but also peace after long life and ease after suffering. Kord is the god of order, of precision, of law and of rule, of measurement and of numbers. But Kord is a sterile god, and life does not thrive under his governance.” He turned to wild, laughing Kaos. “Kaos reigns over destruction, it is true, but not all forms of disorder are destructive. She is the song of the bird and the frisking of a foal as well as the destruction of the earthquake or the tidal wave, and she rules over weather both good and bad. She also rules the human heart, its loves and hates, and she brings both joy and sorrow.”
“I see.” The stranger did not sound as if she saw, but she looked thoughtfully at Kord and Kaos before they moved on to the next pair.
“On the sunward side, Sugulahna, the neighbour, the kinswoman, the ally, the friend, the loyal one.” This statue was young and vigorous, with a cheerful smile. She wore a simple tunic, and held out an open hand. “Sugulahna is the goddess of unity, of trust, of loyalty. When she stands with her brother Kord, they watch over cities and towns, and places where many people must live together in order and harmony. With Kaos, she signifies love and friendship, the ties of family and the bonds of loyalty. In her benign aspect, she is generosity and faith. But turned aside, she is the selfish partner, the treacherous lover, the ungrateful child, the usurper and betrayer. She is all that is best and worst in those around us.”
“One who can give great pain and great joy,” the stranger commented.
“None can give greater.” The priest nodded solemnly. “And on the moonward side stands Vu’uras, who is often called ‘the Stranger’.” The statue could hardly be called a statue, exactly, for no face or clear form could be discerned under the enveloping robes that might as easily have covered a clothing-stand as a human figure. The only sign of the body underneath was a single slender hand extending from a sleeve to clasp a traveller’s staff. “The Stranger is the Other, the traveller, the foreigner. The Stranger, when standing with Kord, is the diplomat, the envoy, the spy. With Kaos, the chance-met helper or kindly passer-by… or the bandit. The Stranger is sexless and unknowable, and yet the Stranger delights in the sharing of knowledge.”
The stranger smiled slightly. “Like me. A stranger chance-come, who knows nothing but wishes to learn?”
“Indeed, just like.” The priest moved on to the last pair of statues. “Here you see, on the sunward side, Teadmised, who is the god of knowledge and learning. Teachers, scholars, and the wise are all in his domain, and he is said to have created all means of record-keeping, from wall paintings and lore songs and tally marks to the written word.” He beamed up at the statue. Like the priest, Teadmised was an old man, long-bearded and a little stooped, with a lean, kindly face. He was wrapped in a long robe with a stole, and carried in his hands a scroll and a brush. “Teadmised is the god of wisdom. His benign aspect brings invention, and art, and joy, but his reverse is deception, and error, and lies.”
He turned to gesture at the moonward goddess. “This is his sister Salahdused, who rules over mystery, and secrets, and the unknown. Vu’uras and Surm’s realms both overlap with hers, for death and the stranger both partake of the unknown. Salahdused is the hardest of all the gods to understand, by her very nature, and thus is most often the one distrusted, or considered ‘evil’ as you put it.” He patted the base of the statue. It portrayed another hooded figure, but unlike the Stranger’s, this hood did not conceal a slyly smiling face, and the sleeves of the robe fell back to show slender arms, one hand raising a lighted lamp, the other cradling a wrapped bundle against her hip. “Certainly the unknown can be dangerous, and secrets can wound. Her domain is darkness and the sea, hidden caves and deep water and secret places, all dangerous to humankind. And yet she is also the goddess of luck, which is its own kind of mystery. She can bring ruin and betrayal and death, but she is also the unknown friend, good fortune unlooked for, and aid when all hope is lost.” His voice softened. “It is Salahdused who brings misfortune, and hope, and to whom we all turn at last, with curse or with plea. And when her father Surm comes, to guide the dead onward, it is Salahdused who holds up the lamp to light the way.”
“A goddess we all need, though we may not always be grateful.” The stranger looked up and down the lines again. “They are *all* the known and the unknown, are they not? On the sunward side, in the light of day, stand Life, Order, Family and Knowledge. On the moonward side, Death, Chaos, the Stranger, and Mystery.”
“Yes, exactly!” The priest sounded pleased. “Not many people see that, without being told. That is why they are ordered so. Some people think it is because the sunward are kindlier, but it is not so. It is only that they stand for what we understand. And under the moon, which waxes and wanes, stand the gods who rule over the unpredictable and unknown.”
“Most people… where I come from… equate light with good, and darkness with evil.” The stranger tugged absently on her braid. “But your gods are… more complicated than that.”
“Good and evil are not real things,” the priest said simply. The stranger looked at him, and he smiled gently. “I do not mean that they do not exist, but they are not… of the world. Birth, life, is real. Death is real. They exist, they have substance. A measuring rod or the wildly rolling debris of an avalanche are real. Family is real. Strangers are real. A story or a written word are real things, as are the sea and caves and deep water, be they understood or not. And all of those things may bring about good or evil, depending on circumstances. They can be used for good or evil. But good and evil are not, in themselves, real things.”
She nodded slowly, looking at the gods. “So to you… good and evil are in the effects. The aspects. The intent. Not… powers, in themselves.”
“Yes, you understand.” The Priest bent to pick up a dead leaf from the ground, which might have fallen from a shawl, or blown in through one of the high windows. “Take this leaf. If it fell on a stony street, it might grow wet, and slip under a foot, and cause injury or death. If it fell on barren ground, in its decay it would render the ground a little less barren. Here on the floor of the temple, it might cause additional trouble to a sweeper… or provide a priest with a timely example, thus doing me, and you, good.” He smiled. “But the leaf’s nature does not change. It is just a leaf. How, in its falling, it affects others… that depends entirely on circumstance.”
“I see.” This time, she sounded as if she did understand, and she took the leaf and held it gently. “And what of people, priest? Are they not good or evil?”
“Of course they are. Mostly one, or mostly the other, or more often a mixture of both in some degree.” The priest shrugged. “But that a matter of choice, and of intention, and even then it is very rare that an action does not have effects both good and bad, whatever the intention. To come upon a man robbing another man, and to intervene – well, from the point of view of the man who was being robbed, that is a good action. From the point of view of the robber, it is a bad one.” He smiled serenely. “As the proverb says, the storm that sinks a ship may bring rain to the fields.”
The stranger was silent for a time, seeming to consider, and the priest waited patiently. When at last she spoke, there was a note of frustration in her voice. “I have never known a faith, or gods, so adamantly to set their faces against certainty.”
The priest laughed. “Oh, if it is certainty you want, Kord is in accord with you. He loves certainty. One will always be one, and a square will always be a square. An arch correctly made will not fall, and a law followed will bring order. There’s great comfort in certainty! But certainty is the enemy of growth, and invention, and change, and so Kaos dances through Kord’s order, bringing destruction and growth and change.” He folded his hands over his belly and looked up at the sun and moon on the wall, his voice gentling. “I think that what you are seeking is not certainty but simplicity. An easy answer. The good and the evil. But what is real is never simple, and the gods least of all. All we mere mortals can do is the best we can, with what we have.”
The stranger sighed. “I know that you are right,” she said. “But the other would be easier.”
“It is not the responsibility of the gods to make your life easy,” the priest said, a little tartly. “It is the responsibility of the gods to make life possible. The rest is your own affair.”
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dycefic · 1 year
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My cat: How dare you give me a piece of the chicken that you are cutting up that is not only Insufficiently Tiny for my refined little mouth, but also is breast meat when you know I prefer thigh. I scream at you, cruel mother, and snub this alleged 'treat' and leave it for the dog.
Also my cat: I will fight the dog whose head is as big as my entire tiny torso for one baked bean and hork it up like a vacuum cleaner.
My dog: please I am so confused which treats are for me I do not know
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dycefic · 1 year
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Warning: Blood, self harm, human and animal death, horror themes, discussion of new magical systems.
Note: this started out as a simple creepy story and then the world-building just overflowed.
#
Whispers used to pass from farm to farm, messages that crossed miles, an old magic that no-one understood anymore. Raising the ghost trees requires space, untouched earth, and height. Our farms are hundreds of miles apart, each high on its own mountain. The wells are the only way we can contact each other... or they were.
I'm not sure what happened to some of the farms. I was too young when it happened. I know that some families left, betraying their trust, and some died out, and some just went silent for no reason we ever knew. This is the last farm still being tended, as far as I know, and I am the last farmer.
I need to find someone to help. I know I do. I should find young people to join me, teach them to tend the trees so that they can go to the other farms and re-seed. But I have never left my farm, and the thought frightens me. When my cousin Gilly died, I was so young, only sixteen, and the last. It's been twenty years, and I've kept the farm going, but I have never dared to leave. What if something happens to me? What if I don't come back? These are the last ghost trees. I have to care for them.
Every full moon at sunset, though, I come back to the well. The well that is the heart of the farm. The well whose water glows pale gold in darkness and poisons everything but the ghost trees.... or those who have eaten their shoots.
I feed the spring shoots to my goats and my birds, every year, and eat handfuls myself. They tasted bitter to me, the first year, and the animals that haven't tasted them before have to be forced to swallow. After that first taste, though, we all learn to love them. Bittersweet and rich, they taste like sunset on snow and the smell of spring. I suppose I could avoid the whole process - there's a spring of ordinary water - but it freezes in winter, and why go to all the trouble of thawing tasteless, dull water from the spring when the well water never freezes or even grows too cold to drink safely, when it tastes so much better and makes us so strong?
I drink the well water. And every full moon I come back to the well to whisper news into it, or the names of my family, or of the farms that existed once and are now lost. I whisper, because a voice that's too loud will echo and distort. I think that's why. I'm not so sure any longer.
Then, one evening in early autumn, I hear a whisper coming back. "Antorune... Antorune..."
Antorune is the name of the mountain, and the farm, and though I'm shaking and sick with shock, I remember how to answer. "Antorune is bright," I whisper. "Who are you?"
"Antorune..." The voice is eerie and hollow, and I can't remember if they always sounded like that. It's been so long.  "Antorune, they're coming. They're coming."
"Who's coming? Why?"
"Yours is the last farm. The last trees. Do you know how to scatter?"
My mouth goes dry. Scattering is a terrible thing. Gilly told me stories about it. Scattering is the last act of a farmer under siege, the last desperate hope for the trees and for the world. We all know how to do it, and all pray we'll never have to. "I know. Is it time?"
"It is time." The hollow voice sounds very sad. "Be brave, Altorune. Be resolute. You must save the trees."
"I must save the trees," I repeat, and then I pause. "Voice... my name is Tula. I am the last farmer. I... I wanted someone to know my name."
"I will remember your name, Tula." The whisper was fainter now, but I heard it. "I will remember your name..."
It faded away, then. It comforted me, though, to hear my name spoken once more. It has been so long since anyone spoke my name.
I went to wake the goats. The doves slept in their nests, and were probably safe enough, but the goats would be found. Though it was late, they all got up and followed me without complaint.
I gave them all water from the well, and drank myself. The water makes our eyes and tongues glow, but it also makes night as clear as day and gives us strength for the rocky path up to the trees. The goats all follow me up that path, uttering soft bleats from their blackened mouths.
My mouth is black too. The shoots do that. Gilly told me once that we look frightening to other people, with our blackened mouths and glowing eyes and tongues. It was hard for me to understand. I've never seen anyone who didn't look like that.
We were halfway up the path when I heard noises down below. When I looked down, the farmhouse was burning. It would have broken my heart, if I did not already know the time for Scattering had come. Everything I had ever known was gone... but I could still save the ghost trees. And the goats, in a way.
We reached the trees. There are only four, but they are taller than the tallest pines, their long feathery branches reaching up and up as if they would stroke the clouds. They're bigger around than the farmhouse, now, because every year the new shoots emerge from the outside, snaking up the great blackened trunks like vines before becoming part of the tree. That's one of the reasons we eat the shoots - they have to be thinned, or the tree's new growth might choke its heart.
This year's shoots are already darkening, but they still stand out against the black of the trunk like veins. They won't get a chance to blacken in winter, and I mourn them in my heart as I lead the goats towards the great trunks.
I know the ritual. A tiny nick, enough to draw a few drops of blood, on each goat. A tiny nick, enough to draw a few drops of sap, on each shoot. The goats are bound to the trees by magic, and each goes to a spot to lick the sap, then lies down by the trunk.
By the time I have finished with the last goats, and the last tree, the goats at the first are no longer breathing, and the roots of the trees are already creeping up to draw them down. But it didn't hurt them, I know that. It would have hurt them if they'd burned in their shed, or been slaughtered by whoever is coming. The ghost trees feed on death, but they are not cruel. The goats will live again, on some other mountain.
I will live again. I believe this. I know this. I have talked to the trees since I ate my first shoots at the age of three, and heard their keening voices in my mind. Theirs is the power of life and death, but a farmer doesn't fear death. Death and life and death again, that is the nature of farming. Everything dies. But then seeds grow, and eggs hatch, and babies are born, and spring comes.
When Gilly got sick, I brought him up here so that he could die under the trees, and they sang him to his rest and promised him that he would live again, and drew him down with their roots so his bones would become a part of them.
The trees are agitated now, I can hear their keening. They are afraid, but excited too, for they know it is time for Scattering. They are only given living blood when it is time to die, and live again.
When all the goats are dead, I go to the place between the trees where four channels fan out from a central bowl, one running to each trunk. This is the way I give them water from the well, pouring the buckets hauled up on my shoulders or the filled skins tied to the backs of the goats into the bowl and allowing the water to run down to each of them. Tonight they will drink something else.
The trees do not allow me to feel pain, when the blood begins to flow into the bowl. They protect me from it. My blood will give them the strength they need. I hope it’s enough. As far as I know, no Scattering has ever been performed by only one person. A whole family of farmers should be here, giving their lives to the trees. I don’t know if one is enough.
The slow trickles of red have almost reached the roots when the first men come scrambling up the path. They see me, standing among the trees, but I don't think they can see what I'm doing. My blood glows like the well water, but it's a faint glow, like starlight, and the moonlight drowns it out.
"What are you doing, creature?" One of them steps forward. He is holding a great axe, but his voice sounds uncertain. It is strange to me that a big man, armed and armoured, could be afraid of a little creature like me. His face is strange and featureless in the moonlight, with no shadow around his mouth, no light in his eyes. His face is all one colour, flat and plain like a baby's face. I could have laughed, seeing it.
But he asked me a question, and I need a little more time. "I am tending my trees," I tell him, words coming slowly to my tongue. I do not speak often, except to the well.
He looks up at the nearest tree, then shudders and looks away, "The trees are evil," he says, his fingers flexing on the handle of his axe. "These... these *things* are poison, full of wicked magic."
I blink, really confused. "Trees are not good, or evil. Trees are only trees," I tell him, frowning. "Many have fruits or leaves which are poisonous, or roots which strangle other roots, but that is not because they are evil, it is because that is their nature."
"Not these. these are not natural trees, they are the product of wicked magic." His voice shakes a little, when one of the newest and lowest branches moves a little, though there is no wind. "They will burn."
"Yes. I thought you would burn them." I sigh. It's sad. I hate to see something that has spent so long growing, something alive and beautiful, destroyed. But I look up into the branches, and faint, cream-pale lights are beginning to glow among the branches. "But you are wrong, you know. They are not made of wicked magic."
He sounds angry. "Of course they are! Look at them! They are not natural trees, and you. you with your ghost eyes and twisted body and mouth stained with blood, sorceress, you are their keeper."
I want to tell him that I am not a sorceress, only a farmer. I want to tell him that the trees are just trees, and that magic is just magic, and that evil and good are human ideas that mean nothing to either.
I want to tell him that the ghost trees are the conduit by which magic, wild magic, the magic of life and death and order and chaos, enters this world. That they have been farmed for countless centuries because they are *needed*, because their roots hold the world together.
I want to tell him that this is all a mistake.
But his axe drives into my chest, and I cannot tell him anything. I can only fall foreward, across the bowl, as my blood fills it and runs down the four channels into the trees.
The trees do not let me die. The roots rise out of the ground again, wrapping around me and holding me up. They will not let me go. Not until I see what they do to the men, the first and those who follow after, draining the blood from them with hungry roots to feed the Scattering. Not until I see the glowing fruit ripen on their branches and then break away, rising up into the sky like tiny glowing lamps, letting the air carry them away.
When the men are wise enough to stand back and shoot flaming arrows, and my trees begin to burn, the hot air only carries the fruit away faster.
This is Scattering. The last duty of the farmer. Ghost trees fruit only once, at the end of their lives, and their fruits blow away to take root somewhere far from the danger that destroyed their parents. This is why they are called ghost trees, for they need living blood, life's blood, to fruit, and they die of it.
At the last, I look down at the scene. The burning trees, the dead men, and my own body being drawn under the soil away from despoiling hands. Then I am floating away, with the other fruit of the ghost trees, on my way to a new life.
*
Lina had never entirely believed that Gilly really knew where he was going. She was willing to accept that there were ancient springs of untamed magic in the mountains. It didn’t sound any more implausible than the very fact of magic itself. She *had* doubted that Gilly, the half-wild boy a few years younger than herself, who claimed not to be human at all, but ‘a child of the trees’ and whose eyes glowed in the dark, could find one.
But he had. He’d led them there, straight as an arrow, through thick forest and rocky crags, until they found a high plateau not so far below the snowline. It was gone to the wild, now, but there were still signs for eyes that knew how to look. The remains of a low stone wall. A great stone still marked by fire. Plants growing that should not have been there, where a garden had once been. And in the center of the plateau, a well. It looked ancient. The stones piled up into a crude wall had never been shaped, and she saw no signs of mortar, though perhaps the moss and lichen hid it.
Gilly slid down off his pony, looking up at Lina with his bright, strange eyes. “There’s a spring over there,” he said, pointing. “You can get water for yourselves and the ponies there. Don’t go near the well, and whatever you do, *don’t* touch the water. It’s… dangerous.”
They made camp, while Gilly wandered around, grubbing up pieces of charcoal and small stones. Akal wanted to make him help, but Lina shook her head. Whatever he was doing, it was probably important.
At sunset, when the sky was full of colour that turned the snowy mountain peaks pink and orange and gold, Gilly went to the well. Lina followed, though keeping a little distance, and she saw him lower a bucket into the well and draw it up again on a rope. What was in it didn’t look like water - it wasn’t clear but as pale as milk. It glowed like the moon, and when Gilly drank from it the glow of his eyes brightened perceptibly.
Then he leaned forward, laying his hands on the stones of the well’s lip, and looked down into it. “Antorune…” he whispered, such sorrow in his voice as Lina had never heard. “Antorune…”
And then Lina’s very bones chilled, for a voice came up out of the well, and though it was a whisper she heard it clearly. "Antorune is bright. Who are you?"
"Antorune..." Gilly’s voice was almost calm, but when she moved a few steps to the side to look at his face, Lina saw an expression so terrible that she looked away, shocked. How could Gilly, distant and standoffish with everyone, be brought to such anguish by a voice from a well? "Antorune, they're coming,” he whispered. He was holding one of the small stones he’d picked up, she saw, his knuckles white with the force of his grip. “They're coming."
"Who's coming? Why?"
"Yours is the last farm. The last trees. Do you know how to scatter?" Lina took a few steps towards Gilly, but stopped when he made a brief slashing gesture with his empty hand, warning her off. His voice was still calm, but now tears were running down his face.
The hollow voice from the well held what might be a note of fear, but the answer was as steady as the question. “I know. Is it time?”
"It is time." Grief leached into Gilly’s voice now, and Lina’s own eyes stung with tears at the sound of it. "Be brave, Altorune. Be resolute. You must save the trees."
"I must save the trees.” For a moment there was silence, and then the voice spoke again, the whisper fainter. "Voice... my name is Tula. I am the last farmer. I... I wanted someone to know my name."
"I will remember your name, Tula." Gilly’s voice broke. "I will remember your name..."
No answer came from the well, and he dropped to his knees beside it, weeping, clutching the small stone to his chest. It was only after several minutes that he seemed able to speak again. “I left her,” he sobbed. “I left her.”
Lina watched him, and as mad as it sounded even now, she had no doubt. “Tula,” she said softly. “You… knew her.”
“She was my cousin. My family. And I died and left her all alone.” And while Lina was still blinking in shock, he snatched up the still half-filled bucket and scrambled to his feet and towards the edge of the plateau, to what looked like a craggy, impassable cliff face.
But it wasn’t. There was a path there, narrow and winding, a path more suited to goats than men, but Gilly scaled it as if he’d done it a thousand times… and perhaps he had, Lina thought, following him. She tripped and stumbled many times, but he didn’t. Back and forth across the cliff face the path went, and when they came out on the higher place, Lina caught her breath. She’d seen ghost trees - one that had been discovered and burned out when she’d been a child, and Gilly’s own tree, which he had only reluctantly left to help her on her quest. These had to be the remains of ghost trees… and yet they were huge, as big around as a cottage, the shafts of the branches bundled together making a trunk black and broken-looking. When she moved closer, the remains looked more like stone than wood.
Gilly went to a place in the middle of the four great, dead stumps, where the worn remains of a stone bowl lay in broken pieces. He poured out the whitish, magical water on the ground, and then raised his hands. “Show me,” he said commandingly, and then almost pleadingly he repeated it. “Show me!”
And it did show him.
Lina watched, captivated, as the very dust rose around him, outlining shadowy shapes in the darkening twilight. She saw the small, hunched figure leading a trail of goats up to the trees. She watched the goats lie down, and disappear into the ground, and then the figure - a woman, though there was no guessing her age, with a hunched and twisted spine, who stood over a bowl and let her own blood run into it.
Then more figures, shadows of armour and of axes, and she watched the woman - Tula, she deserved her name - stagger as an axe struck her chest, and the twining roots that wrapped around her and held her up.
And then there was nothing, only Gilly, whose face was still wet with tears but who looked strangely, unaccountably relieved. “She did it,” he breathed. “She escaped.”
Lina stared at him. “She *died*.”
“Oh yes. That’s part of the Scattering.” Gilly went over to one of the stony, broken stumps, laying his hand against it gently. “The trees fruit, and die, and the farmers die. But the fruit fly away, to let the seeds grow far from danger, and they take the souls of the farmers with them.” He turned to look at her. “I was human, once,” he said, and for the first time she truly believed that he wasn’t. Not because of his black-stained mouth and strange, glowing eyes, but because of what she’d just seen.
“I lived a mortal life, and died. And when I was dying, Tula brought me here, to the trees of Antorune, which is the name of this mountain and this farm, and the trees took my body and my soul, and the first became a part of them, and the second they kept until the time of need, so that when the seeds were sent forth, as many as possible might have a keeper with them, to be born from among the branches, to tend them, and teach those who followed why the ghost trees are important.”
Lina looked at the broken stumps, and the boy who was not entirely human, and knew in every fiber of her being that this was why she’d been chosen. This, here and now, this knowledge that had been preserved even after death by a poisonous tree, and brought back again. “Tell me, then,” she said quietly. “Tell me why they are important, and what they have to do with the terrible magic that rampages through our land.”
He shrugged. “They are what prevented the wild magic from ravaging all this world, until foolish men forgot why they were important and named them wicked.” He sighed, and then he moved to the edge of the small flat place, looking out over the great valley below them. “And that is why we scatter their fruit, and ourselves with them, so no matter what happens, someone will remember why.”
“How?” Lina frowned. “How can a tree… even one as strange as a ghost tree… change the nature of magic?”
He picked up the bucket. “The same way you change the nature of water,” he said dryly. “They drank it. This water… the wells are places where magic comes into the world. Once, it poured in wild and uncontained, and all the world was as this land has been in the last hundred years. Magical storms, and monsters, and lands breaking apart and seas pouring in. Magic, in its wild state, is as dangerous as lightning, or the sea, and even more so, for it follows no laws.”
Lina frowned. “Laws?” The word seemed incongruous.
He nodded. “All things have their laws. If you plant a seed from a tree, what will grow is the same kind of tree, not a flower, or grass. If you pour out water on a slope it will run down, not up. Water will only harden into ice when it is cold, not when it is hot. The laws of the world are not like the laws of men, and nothing may disobey them… except magic. And that disobedience is very dangerous, for it unmakes the world itself.”
“I think I know what you mean.” She had never thought of it in that way, but… yes, it was a good way to explain the mayhem of the last century. The very fabric of the world being warped, unmade…
“Yes. You’ve seen it.” He tapped the bucket again. “Magic that has passed through a living creature is different. It… it learns the laws. It learns the shape of the world. It is tamed. But there are few living things which can endure more than a taste of wild magic without dying of it. It is a poison to them, as it is to the world.”
“And that is why magicians are dying? And dying so… so horribly?” She shuddered, and tried not to remember what had happened to Cengolant, his terrible screams…
“Yes. There is not much tame magic left. And when they use the wild magic, it unmakes them.” Gilly sounded different, here and now. More confident, and somehow much older. She wondered how old he’d been, when he’d died. “The ghost trees are different. They drink the magic-infused water, and the magic passes through without harming them. They are called poisonous, but it is the magic in them that makes them so, just as mushrooms grown in unclean land are poisonous, but leave the land clean.”
Lina looked at the bucket. “But you drank the water. Why didn’t it kill you? Because you came from a ghost tree?”
“In part. In part because I have eaten the shoots.” He touched the blackened rim around his mouth. “That is the source of this stain, and the light in my eyes and my blood. Those who eat the young shoots of the ghost tree are changed by it, and we, too, can endure the touch of wild magic without harm. We would feed the shoots to our goats, and our pigeons, so that we too could pass tame magic into the world, and prevent harm.”
Lina laughed suddenly, almost hysterically. “I remember once… when we were in that rat-hole city, I saw you piss up against a wall and I was *sure* it glowed.”
He laughed, too. “It does,” he said, amused. “My dung, too. And that is magic, safe and tame, passing from my body and into the world.”
Lina shook her head, still laughing a little. “Like… like running water through sand and charcoal, to make it clean?”
“Just like.” He was still looking out, but when she went to stand beside him he looked up at her. “Lina, lightning is dangerous, but mage-light is not. A tidal wave is dangerous, but water turning a wheel is not. And that does not make the lightning evil, or the tidal wave malicious. It is only… too much. And thus it is with magic. It is not doing all this damage with intent.  It is only too powerful, too wild, for our fragile world to hold. Never forget that. There is no malice here, no foe that can be fought. Replanting the ghost trees, restoring the farms, that is what will save us.”
Lina nodded slowly. “It is like a flood, coming down a river,” she said softly. “When there is too much water upstream, and it rages down and washes all away.  But the river is not angry, it does not *want*… it just is. You cannot fight it. You can only build better levees and dams and bridges, for the next time.”
“Or plant many mushrooms, on poisoned ground, to draw the poison out.” Gilly nodded. “Which is not to say that fighting the monsters and the mad wizards is not important, any more than rebuilding what the flood has destroyed is not important. But it will not solve the problem.”
She nodded. “So. Where do we start?”
Gilly looked at her. “We?”
Lina shrugged, spreading her big hands and muscled arms. “You’ve been listening to me complain for the last two months about how foolish it was to send a farmer’s daughter, however big and strong, to fight magic. But it wasn’t, was it? This was never truly about fighting. The fighting is only to buy time to grow more trees.” She grinned down at him. “And if there is one thing I know, it is how to grow. I *am* a farmer, and this is the work for me.”
He grinned back at her, and it was the first time she’d ever seen more than a tiny sliver of a smile on his thin face. “We, then. I have some cuttings, live shoots from my own tree. Tomorrow, we will plant them. And then we will begin to search for the other reborn farmers.” His face softened. “I would like to see Tula again,” he said softly.
“She would have been reborn like you, from a ghost tree?”
“Oh, yes. Or will be, perhaps. It takes time.”
“Then we will search. And we will plant. And we will dam this flood.” Lina flexed her hands. She’d wielded a sword too much, these last months. She couldn’t wait to get her hands on a shovel again.
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Text: We used to talk through the wells, a whisper carrying to every farm that had one. There is no one left to send well whispers, and yet I hear one, on a dark, gray afternoon.
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dycefic · 2 years
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Ocean Burial: A History!
Howdy! My name is Olivine! I’ve been a big fan for a hot minute now, but I just wanted to let you know how much I loved your newest story about Bone Beach. Now, I am an aspiring ethnomusicologist, and imagine my surprise when I first saw one of my favorite songs in the story! I just wanted to share some information about its deep and storied history. 
Our story tonight begins many, many years ago, with a young man from New York. Edwin Hubbell Chapin was a teenager when he wrote his poem Ocean Burial, also known as Bury Me Not, while training to become a priest. Shortly after its publication (by Edgar Allen Poe’s poetry journal!), a popular sheet music writer named George N. Allen set it to music, and thusly, one of the most tragic songs of the age was born.
But its growth did not halt there. But first, I have to take a step back and give y'all a tad bit of context. I am a Southern gal, born and raised (Southern US, that is),  and I never did know any “Ocean Burial”. However, when I was just a young child, I fell in love with the mysterious, haunting ballad that my father sung to us all as a lullaby. It told the tale of a young cowpoke who laid in the prairie brush at sunset, breathing his final prayer to his companions.
“Bury me not, on the lone prairie." 
You see, Chapin’s song had grown wings and took flight far over the lands, took the leather and the iron of the cowpokes. Through the oral tradition and the ancient magic of stories among travelers, this sailing song had become a tragedy of the American cowboy. 
First published by John Lomax, sources at the time claimed that it came from the Uvalde region. Some believe that it was originally the Lohn Prairie, the name for the vast grasslands around the region. It was first recorded in the most popular version (most similar to the original, too) by Charles Sprauge, a boy hailing from Manvel, Texas, not too far from Houston. He grew up as a ranch-hand on his family’s farm, learning songs from his uncles, as well as the transient cowboys and ranch-hands who made their way on through. 
After his service in the first World War, he came home and recorded ”The Dyin’ Cowboy“ in 1925, and would go on to produce a few albums with Victor records. Tragically, his career was cut short but the Great Depression. But ultimately, he shaped American music, especially country, into what we see today. He was the original "Singin’ Cowboy”, giving rise to most every country star from Willie Nelson to Johnny Cash himself. He also had a massive influence on the rise of rock, being one of those oft-touted folk singers who “paved the road for rock n’ roll”.
Now-a-days, it still lives on. Covered by popular artists such as Colter Wall, it still lies in the heart of American folk music. However, it lives on in the spiritual sense. You see, it holds a poignance and timelessness that forever holds the grief of a life cut short. Truth be told, I do believe that Chapin, Lomax, and Sprauge would be glad that their songs have lived on in the minds of so many others, that their dying youth may forever be remembered.
Thanks for your time! I know I have a tendency to ramble, so I apologize if I went on for too long, or ended up getting too philosophical. But my words have been spoken and my tongue’s all sore, so this is it for me tonight. Have a good day, and thank you for your patience!
Check out this amazing little glimpse into the history of ‘The Ocean Burial’! I am delighted to know that I accidentally chose a song for my story with such a rich history!
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dycefic · 2 years
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may i draw your fairy tale about the barren woman who strikes a bargain with the fae and gains twins? mostly for practice, maybe post it on my social media, not for profit.
thank you very much for your consideration, 
zombiekabob
Only if you also submit the art to this blog because I LOVE to see fanart. (Also if you could include a link to the story on the social media post that'd be awesome)
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dycefic · 2 years
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The lyrics of 'The Ocean Burial' can be found here.
#
The Bone Beach is a long way from anywhere. It’s always cold there, even in summer, they say. There’s a road to it, but no-one knows why.
Most people go there, once. For a dare, or for curiosity, or to prove that there’s nothing there. And everyone says there’s nothing there. It’s just a scrap of a beach, with a chilly breeze blowing, no reason for the name.
And yet no-one ever goes back. Even in the hottest summer days, when the chill should be tempting, no-one ever goes there twice.  
I’d already noticed that when I gave in to curiosity. I knew something was strange. In the end, that’s why I went. I wanted to know what could have that effect on so many people. After all, nobody seems to have been hurt by visiting it, even if they don’t want to go back.
I drove along the narrow road, and people were right, it was strange. Nobody had ever seen anyone working on it, and yet it was in good repair. No branches stretched across it, there were no cracks or potholes… it was a good road.
It stayed good, all the way to the beach… and I mean all the way. It just ran up to the edge of the sand and stopped dead. No parking spot, just a clean ending, as if the road had been cut off with a knife. Beside the road there was an old sign, wood weathered grey, with ‘BONE BEACH’ marked on it in clear capitals that didn’t look quite… right. They looked as if they’d been written - carved, I suppose - by someone who wasn’t very familiar with English lettering, the shapes subtly distorted. Or by someone who wanted anyone who approached good and unsettled before they ever set foot on the beach.
I stepped out onto the beach cautiously, and I felt the chill. It wasn’t creepy, exactly - there was a cool breeze off the water, I could feel it, and the beach itself was shaded by the cliff. No ghostly fingers or suddenly seeing my breath, or anything like that. It was chilly, though.
The sand was white and fine under my feet. It should be a nice place, even with all the rocks around it and the shadow of the cliffs. I couldn’t see anything to explain the reluctance everyone had to coming back… yet.
But I wanted to know. So I found a place to sit, where I could lean against a rock, and put my headphones in. I started an audiobook - The Fellowship Of The Ring, something I know well enough to let it fade into the background - and took out my notebook to start writing down all my observations.
I don’t know how long I’d been sitting there when it started, and that was strange too, because I’d been checking the time pretty regularly. But when the blurring started, I couldn’t remember what the time had been last time I checked.
It started over the water, little shimmers in the air, the sort of thing that you think is just your eyes playing tricks on you if you’re not paying attention. But I was paying attention.
Then I saw the ship. An old, old ship, with sails on tall masts, the kind of ship you’d expect to see in an illustration to Peter Pan, or one of those old pirate movies. It could have passed for an optical illusion or a dream, at first, but I could understand now why people didn’t come back. Starting to see things would scare most people.
I sat, and watched, and kept taking notes. The ship got closer, and closer. I could see people moving around on the deck, now. And I could see that the ship was chasing something. Not what - it was under the water. But I could see the swell in the water, the thin fins or spines that broke the water here and there. And both the ship and the thing it chased were coming straight at me.
I should have run then, I suppose. But my curiosity got the better of me.
So I stayed. And I watched.
I don’t know when the murmuring of my audiobook in my ears became the sound of what I was seeing. When I started to hear the shouts of the sailors, and the creaking of the ship, and the splashing and wallowing of… it.
And then the screams.
I stayed. I didn’t run. By the time I wanted to, it was too late. I couldn’t move. All I could do was sit and watch, while men in rowboats circled the great creature, slashing at it with their harpoons and long knives.
It fought back. More than one sailor was thrust screaming into that vast, toothy maw. Long tentacle-fingers crushed men, and even one boat, to splintered ruin. But it was already pouring blood from a hundred wounds.
I sat, and I watched men kill a god, or a monster, of the deep. I watched as its blood dyed the water a vile bilious green, and I saw the captain leap from his boat to stand on the creature’s head, and drive a harpoon through its single staring eye. I saw him fall, when the gush of fluid poured over him, and slip into the water. I saw the great body slowly sinking into the water, while the surviving sailors rowed back to their boat, weeping and cursing, bitterly grieved and yet triumphant.
And then, slowly, the vision faded. The water was clear again, and the sun was shining, and when I looked at my phone again, only a few minutes had passed. When I looked at my notebook, the notes staggered off in a long scrawl. On the facing page I found a jumble of letters scrawled over and atop each other all around the edge, and in the center, a drawing. Now, I can’t draw for shit, but this was a perfect sketch of that ship. I - or someone - had even drawn in its name, ‘The Merry Maid’.
There was no hint of the monster in the sketch, which was a relief. I didn’t want to see it again.
I knew now why no-one ever came back. Because if you lingered too long, you’d see. See what happened, one terrible day long ago. See whose… and what’s… bones lie in that deep, cold water.
I drove away still shaking, sure I would never go back.
But curiosity still ate at me. After two days of denial, I got the book out again, and looked at the sketch. Then I startled Googling.
I wanted to find nothing. I wanted it to be a hallucination, a dream, a vision of another world. Not here. Not real.
But I found the Merry Maid, all right.  She’d been a Coast Guard cutter in the last days of the eighteenth century, with nothing extraordinary about her until the day a whaling ship limped into harbour, with two thirds of her crew missing and the few survivors babbling about a sea monster. The Merry Maid had gone out to investigate.
Four days later, the Merry Maid made it back to harbour. The ship was damaged, many of the crew were gone, and none of the survivors ever went to sea again, nor ever spoke of what they’d seen. Most of them died shortly after, of a ‘strange fever’ that discoloured their skin in great patches of green. Only one, a cabin boy, ever talked about what had happened, and all he said was ‘it had to be done. It did had to be done’. What ‘it’ was, he never said.
After the crew began dying, the Merry Maid was set alight and burned to the waterline for fear it carried a plague. I remembered the bilious green blood that had splattered over every sailor and shuddered. It hadn’t been a disease. It had been much, much worse.
No one ever knew what had happened to the Merry Maid, at least not officially. There wasn’t a town here, then. No roads. No fishermen. No one to approach Bone Beach, by land or by sea, to see what it remembers.
I couldn’t be sure anyone but me had ever known. Had anyone else ever stayed to the end? Seen it all?
I went back to Bone Beach, on a summer day when the sun was high, and I stood on the beach and I sang ‘The Ocean Burial’ for a captain who’d fought to his last breath to destroy the creature that had already killed all his men, though they didn’t know it. Maybe it was stupid, but… it was sad. No-one had ever known where his body was. The website hadn’t said if he’d had any family. I was the only person who knew where he was. I wanted to… do something for him. To acknowledge what he’d done, in the place where he’d died. He deserved that much.
I didn’t see anything that time. But while I sang, I thought I heard other voices echoing mine, from somewhere far away and long ago.
That road really worries me now. That road shouldn’t be there. There’s no reason for there to be a road to Bone Beach… except that the bones of some ocean god or monster still lie there, under the water. And I know, right down in my own bones, that nothing good can come of meddling with those.
I need to keep an eye on that road. That captain didn’t die fighting just so some idiots could pull those bones back out of the sea and unleash who knows what horrors.
I won’t let what happened to him, and the Merry Maid and all her crew, be for nothing.
Deep Water Prompt #2604
Everyone warns me the Bone Beach is not what it sounds like. They say there’s no point in visiting, that no one understands it’s strange name.
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dycefic · 2 years
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Updates
I’ve been kind of stealth for a while, so here’s the news from me. 
1. We have moved house! the move is over, though the unpacking will probably take… uh… honestly, until the heat death of the universe, but anyway. 
2. My birthday happened! I am now Slightly More Old! 
3. The pets did NOT handle the move well. A dog who’s been through three different fosters and returned by two adopters before finding her forever home has some understandable issues around abandonment, and Wednesday has been a lot of work. Luna was less distressed, but she *was* deeply annoyed and expressed this by walking around yelling at the top of her tiny lungs at all hours of the day and night. For a small cat she has a very loud screme. 
4. But it’s all over now! Posting and stories will resume. 
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dycefic · 2 years
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Hi Dyce! I loved your cemetery fic, it was spooky and neat!
Just wanted to let you know I found an error in that story, you mentioned first that Lucy was Korean, then said later that she was “clearly Caucasian.” It was a detail that caught my attention
Thank you for the amazing writing, I love your stories, you’ve got such an amazing talent!
Lucy is Caucasian, it's the columbarium attendant who's Korean.
"I showed her how to take it, the ghostly echo of the solid cup, and told her I’d learned it from the day attendant over at the columbarium. She’s Korean, and knows a lot about hungry ghosts. She sipped her tea while I opened the laptop and ran the usual searches."
I should have used Lucy's name at the beginning of the last sentence, to differentiate the two 'she's as distinct, and you're not the first person who's been misled by it, so I apologize for the poor phrasing. That's totally on me.
The columbarium's daytime attendant, incidentally, is Korean because firstly, the majority of modern Korean 'burials' are of cremated remains , and columbariums (places where the ashes of a cremated person are placed in a niche protected by a cover, often with pictures, mementoes, or small offerings) are increasingly common there. Secondly, Korea has a fascinating and terrifying fund of ghost lore, including a lot of fairly common knowledge about how to make offerings of food and drink that a spirit will be able to consume. Whether she knows about Stanley's occult activities or not, a Korean columbarium attendant would certainly be able to tell him how to give tea to a ghost.
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dycefic · 2 years
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Ahhh so someone posted one of the prompts you'd responded to on a Terry Pratchett fan page (the forgotten gods one) and I put a link to your story up and people are wowed and I'm SO HAPPY that I helped other people find your work, besides my handful of friends. They're as excited as I was. :) Hope you get some new patreons from it!
Where, where? I want to see! Where is this fanpage?
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dycefic · 2 years
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First off, I just wanna say I love your work.
Second, how come there isn't a consistent tag for your superverse?
A number of people have asked me that. Honestly, it's because my ADHD gremlin brain struggles with tagging things at all, let alone tagging consistently.
Maybe I should put together some kind of website where I can sort stories into categories, what do you think?
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