sword-and-quill
Literary Frenzy
A place to chronicle & contain my writing fervor.
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Please feast your eyes on this beautiful Jess & Mara happy ending date to Paris dream come true, done by my AMAZINGLY talented friend
;-;
#It's been a couple days and I just keep circling back to it#what a lovely lovely picture#my friend makes SUCH COOL THINGS#thank you for making this
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Descending Is Easy
Paired with Our Hands for a little bit of context + foreshadowings, just for funsies. Content warnings for blood, self-harm, suicide (ish?? She’s trying to go to the underworld, not end herself), weird misogynistic/cissexist takes on the b!ble, aaaand grief/trauma/she’s just not starting in a great place.
Grandmother is an incorporeal ghost in this scene, visible only to magical sight in abstract ways. Ben, on the other hand, is also a ghost but bound to Victoria and using her memories to present with a human face.
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Our Hands
Content warning for toxic fam + mild body horror (purely cerebral, no physical harm)
A little flashback of Victoria’s
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Descending Is Easy
Paired with Our Hands for a little bit of context + foreshadowings, just for funsies. Content warnings for blood, self-harm, suicide (ish?? She’s trying to go to the underworld, not end herself), weird misogynistic/cissexist takes on the b!ble, aaaand grief/trauma/she’s just not starting in a great place.
Grandmother is an incorporeal ghost in this scene, visible only to magical sight in abstract ways. Ben, on the other hand, is also a ghost but bound to Victoria and using her memories to present with a human face.
“Descending is easy.” Grandmother Wolfe’s laughter tinkled brightly through the air around Victoria, filling her vision with lights dancing like the sun through a crystal prism. “After all, you descended from me and look how good you’ve got it. The real trick of every system is learning how to rise.”
Victoria couldn’t argue, even given the tragic circumstances. Their family had many advantages, for all of its barbs. “Do you know how to do that part?”
“Of course Grandmother knows!” Came the cheerful reply. “You don’t think I’ve been swanning around, slacking off all these years, do you?”
“Great!” Finally, the clouds were breaking. The lights of her grandmother’s presence shimmered around her, then faded, leaving a curious sense of coldness. “… Obviously I’m going to resurrect you too. I know I didn’t need to say it, but… I would never leave you dead. Not while I knew a way to help.”
The cold aura persisted for a moment more as she knelt at the graven altar, her knees aching from how long she’d been there. Grandmother had always taken her time to forgive; it was like waiting for a jury to deliberate over the sincerity of a confession, deciding what penalty would be appropriate. Finally, she thawed and Victoria imagined her uncrossing her arms and turning back with a muted smile. “Of course, darling. You know you were always my favourite from the beginning. We did your first rituals together, taught you the meaning of power. Our bond cannot be broken, especially by something as trivial as death.”
At least some of that was bravado, as transgressing the border to the afterlife was the stuff of legend. Victoria had learned early on never to call her on her bullshit. It merely made her cranky and vindictive, even spiteful. If she let Grandmother pretend she was a goddess, she usually behaved like a benevolent one. Usually.
So she smiled and rose to her feet, experimentally flexing her knees again to work out the groaning joints. “So - how do I start?”
Grandmother’s lights sharpened, their prismlike qualities taking on more solid dimensions for a split second. Then one of the shards glowing iridescent blue-grey shot forward and slit a wicked hole in reality. “Reach inside.”
Even though putting her unwarded flesh through a tear in reality sounded like a terrible idea, she obeyed and was rewarded with the sensation of her fingertips brushing across a polished, sharpened surface. With a gulp, she closed her hand around it and pulled it out to reveal a red-stained … was that… a bone? The tapered end had been sharpened into a cutting implement, while the broader end was inlaid with beautiful dualistic golden knotwork. She turned it over gingerly, adjusting her grip so she was less likely to cut herself accidentally. “Can this open a portal to the underworld or…?”
“I’m going to tell you if you stop trying to get ahead of me.” Grandmother snipped. “You’re going to use this bone to cut away the unnecessary parts of your psyche and store them in a physical vessel up here for safe keeping, until you return from the land of the dead.” When Victoria didn’t pipe up with a question again, she continued, seeming satisfied. “We are going to create a duplicate body for you, which will have two results: your flesh will be rejuvenated, all former injuries and illnesses cured. Secondly, the body you take to the underworld will likely not return. In such a case, you’ll require a vessel and the anchor of your own soul to summon your consciousness back to your life here.”
“Well, that’s grim.” She commented, but inwardly felt that made a certain sort of cosmic sense. As above, so below, right? “If that’s what it takes, I’m still in. What qualifies as ‘unnecessary’ bits of my psyche?”
Grandmother’s prisms shied away from the knife as Victoria turned it over and over again in her hands, nervous of contact. “Anything that might attract attention or cause you to fumble in your quest. Fear, for example, is absolutely useless if one has a reasonable grasp of tactics and one’s own relative power. Lust serves no purpose without your flesh. Joy. Laziness.”
“I don’t think I’m lazy.” Victoria protested, finally feeling the need to defend herself. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes!”
“Then it won’t be very hard to cut it out, will it?” She’d almost pushed her too hard, gauging by the sharpness of the shards and Grandmother’s tone. Pushing ahead more brusquely now, she continued without allowing Victoria room to reply. “Be honest with yourself, Victoria, only you know your own true weaknesses. Sever as much as you can. The lighter and more driven you are, the easier your journey to the underworld will be.”
“Jesus, Vic, are you really listening to this?” Ben’s voice suddenly interrupted the all-too-familiar wave of self-loathing as his phantom appeared directly at her left elbow, gaping at the prisms with genuine horror on his face. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to dice yourself up like that, not even to get us.”
“I’m not letting anything stand in my way.” Victoria replied to Ben, shifting to face him, her boots braced in a wide, confident stance. “If it means temporarily making Victoria 2.0, what’s the big deal? Honestly, I’ll probably make out with her, just to see how it feels and answer that age-old conundrum for myself.”
“Victoria!” Grandmother exclaimed. “How dare you be so crass? Maybe you should start with your lust, if you can’t keep a civil tongue.”
The younger Wolfe reddened with shame, averting her gaze from both of her spirit bonds to look down at her clenched hands. “Sorry, Grandmother. I. I forgot you were there for a moment, Ben distracted me-”
“Ben?” Every shard became solid at once, turning to be aligned in perfect vertical formation as the matron stiffened. “Is that your… friend?”
“You don’t have to talk to her, she sounds awful.” Ben made a face at the knife. “Put that back where you found it. I know a guy who helps people learn to astral project. I bet he has a line on how someone could dip into the underworld or something or- it doesn’t matter, just ditch this old lady’s ashes and we’ll figure out a better way. Seriously, I would never tell someone to chop up their soul, it’s not worth it.”
The sincerity of his concern and shock gave Victoria pause. She looked down at the knife in her hand, frowning deeply as she contemplated what the risks were. Grandmother Wolfe was so confident in the plan and she had always favored her above the other grandchildren. From that young age, they’d taught her the only people that could be relied on were your family. Everyone else was either an asset or a mark.
And… Ben had just died. Along with everyone else in their circle. As bitter as the thought was, Grandmother hadn’t died in a magical mishap. She had made it to a ripe old age as a truly magnificent mage, only claimed by the failure of her own mortal body. Of the two, it looked like Grandmother had the better odds.
“I’m bringing all of you guys back.” She promised, a fierce smile breaking out on her face as she turned away from her mentor’s presence, dimming his voice to a worried murmur.
“Of course, dear.” Grandmother Wolfe grumbled, annoyed at being left out of half of the conversation but too determined to let herself be cut out completely. “There is one more thing: this is going to cost you. Adam sacrificed a rib to gain a lesser copy of himself. You’re going to have to give up something more to get a perfect replica… your arm.”
It took a moment for the information to sink in. Victoria found her gaze drifting down to her limp left arm and imagining, fully against her will, what its absence might be like. Her fingers twitched, as if fearing for their lives. “… for good?”
“It is a serious cost for serious magic. I thought you knew that. You’ve never balked at paying a high price before-”
Victoria cringed, but her Grandmother didn’t seem to notice or care what a horrible reference she’d just made. Briefly, she lost her mental filter and heard Ben shout an aggrieved ‘What the -fuck-?!’ before dampening him down again. “I said I’d do it, Grandmother.” What good was a physical arm in the spirit realm? She reasoned with herself, trying to pack away every ounce of self-protective fear desperately trying to crawl away from this nightmare. She could worry about what losing an arm meant after she found a way back to life.
“Good.” The prisms finally fuzzed out again, softening until their pleasant blurs danced like tiny bokeh around the altar. “Good girl. Now before we make the sacrifice, you’ll have to make your choice on what to leave behind in your double. She’ll live your life for a while, likely have a wonderful vacation being a horribly selfish little egomaniac while we’re down below, doing the real work.” Somehow, she managed to make it sound like an insult and commiseration at the same time. “And Victoria - be brave. Once you begin, you must see it through to the end or you’ll mangle your soul instead of sectioning parts of it away.”
Mangling sounded uncomfortably close to Ben’s warnings. But that’s only if I mess it up. That’s why Grandmother’s going to help make sure I do it right. She reassured herself in his absence.
They began with invocations painted in her blood. The uncomfortable, low-grade throbbing in her left palm threatened to distract her with intrusive thoughts of how badly the sacrifice was probably going to hurt - but she couldn’t think about that. She had to focus on what she wanted, not what scared her. When she finished writing the first script, her handwriting glowed crimson. It was low-key, but not unusual for her usual contracts to be sealed so anti-climatically. She took a breath at exactly the wrong moment. Without warning, a crimson bolt of magic fell heavily from the sky and split her skull. The sheer, raw power cleaved her entire body in half in the next moment and then held her there, trembling in agony and blinking desperately at a world now disjointed and off-kilter, trying to view it from de-synchronized eyes. She thought blood was pouring out of her halved body, but she couldn’t tell.
The struggle to form a thought seemed impossible at first, but then became easier and easier as her understanding caught up with the magic-scape holding her spellbound. This was where she would do the division.
The… parting.
First she targeted what she thought was lust and the fear, her grandmother’s words still rattling around in the back of her mind. She added laziness to the list too, aching on a deep, inexpressible level as she did. I’m not lazy- she protested, feeling nevertheless as though something were lost.
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Our Hands
Content warning for toxic fam + mild body horror (purely cerebral, no physical harm)
A little flashback of Victoria’s
“Hold out your hands like this.”
Victoria obediently stepped up onto the stool right in front of the sink and wiggled her dirt-crusted fingers under the tap. She was still too small to reach it on her own, too careless to wash to her Grandmother’s exacting standards. After she was in position, Grandmother’s arms circled around her and began to vigorously, thoroughly scrub her with a loofah. “When we’re done, can I go back outside?” She bounced impatiently on her tiptoes, peering at the suds washing down the drain.
“So you can get dirty again?” Grandmother’s sweet voice didn’t change, but Victoria felt a strange flutter in her stomach.
“No ma’am.” Her skin grew pink under the warm water and persistent scrubbing, stinging gently with each additional pass of the loofah. She tried not to notice the growing sensitivity, focusing on the soapy water and the way its rising steam breathed whorls and clouds onto the metal faucet.
“Children never appreciate what they have. This is how I know the gods have a sense of humor - they give their best gifts to the ones who can’t do anything but ruin them. Look at your beautiful skin!” Grandmother tossed the loofah into the water, lifting Victoria’s hand up and then holding out her own beside it, comparing the two. “See the freckles on mine? The liver spots? The way my veins stand out, instead of staying where they belong?” She turned her hand over one way and then the other, pointing out every tiny blemish and scar accumulated from the simple acts of living. “If I had your hands again, I’d take care of them. You’d never see me grubbing in the dirt. I’d wear ivory lace and leave everything physical to someone else.”
Even though the differences were visible to the young girl, it perplexed her. “Grandma,” She said in a small voice, reaching over to take the elder woman’s hand in hers. “I think you have very nice hands.” Grandmother grimaced in the mirror, looking away, but she continued. “Your nails look like they match your pearls.” Victoria pointed out, touching the manicured tips with reverence. Not at all like her fingernails, with the dirt under them. She also wore intricate rings and circled her wrists with precious bracelets that dangled and sparkled in any light. Grandmother’s hands were like grandmother’s house: old, but so very pretty and jealously guarded.
Victoria watched her face in the mirror, seeing her scowl melt and merge into something more complex and complicated. The nuance was impossible for her to understand, being so young. Grandmother was so unhappy about something, she just wished she knew why it bothered her so much. Without a warning, her icy demeanor suddenly melted and she turned back with a small smile. “You are such a sweet little girl. Do you really like them?” Eager to help her feel better, Victoria nodded vigorously. Grandmother laughed, shaking the water and her granddaughter’s touch away. “I tell you what! When I die, you can have my hands. I’ll put it in my will. How about that? We can trade. Would you like that?”
That confused her more than ever, but Grandmother was beaming down at her so happily that she couldn’t help but beam back. She did it! She cheered her up! So even though she really liked her own hands, dirt and all, she nodded. Watching how Grandmother doubled over with laughter infused a warm, proud glow in her chest. Maybe she did get a little too dirty, but at least Grandmother was smiling again.
Every so often after that, Grandma made a show of checking Victoria’s hands, smiling so widely her eyes crinkled up in the edges. After deeming them sufficient (or criticizing her for an imperfect manicure), she’d hold out her own hands, point out every little flaw and wrinkle, and then laugh and laugh and laugh, imagining their macabre posthumous trade.
The discomfort crept inside of her year by year. Try as she might, she could never quite find the humour in there. Her imagination ripened with possibilities as she tried to work out exactly how Grandmother meant to do it. Would she have to be close when she died? Would they keep her on ice? Would… would they have to cut off… both of their arms to do it? That seemed only logical, except that Grandmother would be dead and buried with Victoria’s long, lithe arms and she would never be able to lift them or use them. On the flip side, Victoria would have to live with the arthritic arms of a dead woman - and it would hurt. In school, they taught her about phantom limb syndrome and her fingers twitched, wondering if she would forever feel their loss.
When her grandmother died nearly fourteen years later, Victoria watched her casket descend into the cold earth, swallowing repeatedly against the metallic lump in her throat. Though the silence around her was only interrupted by people’s sighs and soft murmurs, she strained her ears to listen for anyone - anyone - who might have overhead their oft-repeated pact… but no one did. Of course they didn’t.
It had been a joke.
So why wasn’t it a joke at all?
She buried her face in her mom’s shoulder and bit back a bitter sob. In response, she cast a critical eye down at her, lip barely curling to speak. “Don’t embarrass me, darling.”
Victoria swallowed again, hiding her hands in her blazer pockets so she could clench them into fists, digging her perfect manicured nails into her palms. “… sorry mom.” She whispered back, angry at herself for having even tried to seek some comfort. “I’m completely tipsy right now.” Her mother scoffed and pulled away, giving her daughter the perfect cover to wipe her eyes. Let everybody think she was drunk. Drunk people weren’t expected to be perfect or hold coherent conversations. She couldn’t think of what she’d say about Grandmother even if she tried.
#I keep typing grandma when I mean grandmother and somehow missing it with find + replace#GO AWAY GRANDMA this is for a different honorific!!
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Repurposing this blog to be for all of my projects, rather than just for Mara’s story. ♥
#current events: local mage dives headfirst into the underworld to save her friends#wip title: In The Shade
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My favorite form of redemption arc is “I hate that I have morals now”
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Thinkin’ ‘bout they.
@quillofarcadia
#lonely-android-in-space#aaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA#I know I have already gushed about this over IM to you#but I just saw the notification on tumblr#and I neeeeed this on the relevant blog#be still my heart!#What a gorgeous pic of Mara & Jess#they look so HAPPY together#and I love Jess' floofy hair#and Mara's rockin' denim jacket#and Jess' amazing scars#just all of this is so -chef kiss-#thank you so much for this#I will treasure it :D
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How fucking annoying is it when you feel so restless with creative energy but you can’t decide what to do with it and when you finally try to create something it comes out shit so you just give up and sit there being all creatively annoyed and jittery.
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Fun game: Pick a movie, any movie. Pick a completely different universe / setting. Make it work.
Ex: Fox & the Hound, but in World of Darkness with a fledgling vampire & soon-to-be hunter.
Phantom of the Opera, but in the setting of Blade Runner with a promising new AI model and two competing buyers, one of whom might also be an android OOOO~~
101 Dalmatians mashed up with Cujo (credit to Aury for that one)
#the results can be pretty great#and sometimes you wind up with weirdly compelling characters as a result haha#It's just a lot of fun to break stories down to their base elements#and then mix them up for something new#pls tell me if you come up with any fun ones#I love these
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The only way I get any writing done is to name my files things like “Funzone (Fuck It)” and “Corporate Boogaloo”
#bc otherwise I take myself too seriously#and wind up never writing for fear of getting something Wrong#:|#in other news a nanowrimo camp is happening in April#and I have an idea of a story to tell#let's see how it goes!#I want to finish the Mara story#but I hit a crisis of confidence#will try to get back to that in another few months
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sometimes i really love my fics. i wrote that because i wanted to read it. i love it. nobody visits my fics more than me. they remind me that i’m a hard worker, that i created something. it’s mine and i cherish it and love it because it’s exactly what i wanted so i made it.
and other days i’m crippled by self criticism and hate everything and can’t bear to look at my own work because i know it’ll never compare to the greats
but i live for the days i love my work. because it’s mine, and i made it. i didn’t wait for somebody else to make what i dream about. i went and did it myself.
so don’t feel like your work is awful
it’s the stuff you dreamed about. it’s the stuff you decided to make a reality. it’s not about quality, or poetry, or how perfectly your sculpt your words or keep it so deeply in character; because it’s what you dreamed and it’s what you wanted to see, so you made it.
keep writing; it’s yours, and you made it. and if you want to continue to sharpen and improve yourself? then do it. it’s all yours and you can make it whatever you want.
keep writing.
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75% of writing is convincing yourself that your story is worth it
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I made it to just about 33,000 words this time around, which is actually pretty solid considering I gave up on meeting the word count pretty early on. I wish I could say most of the word count went to this story, but sadly it did not.
On the upside, I’m actually writing on a daily basis again. Holy shit, it’s been ten months since I’ve been able to do that! I’m so happy I’m finally back. Not necessarily quality writing, mind you, but it makes me happy to be able to write again all the same.
I need a bit more time before I come back to this story, I think. It needs to stew in the back of my mind for a while longer. From time to time, I’ll share snippets and answer the memes still collecting dust in my inbox, but I’ll circle back around to it full-time sometime next year and finally wrap up the rough draft... for now, I’m just going with what’s relaxing and fun instead of jumping straight back into pouring my heart & soul into a piece.
<3 It was a tough month, but with great results. I appreciated those of you who sent in support & memes because they were awesome motivation!
#can't stress enough how relieved i am to be writing again#for a while I thought it might have been gone#proud of the results even though I didn't hit the goal marker#this was really good
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Today’s writing soundtrack!
#the music is so nice#great energy definitely gonna have to add this to my regular rotation#I have zero idea what this anime is about#but what a good soundtrack
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Also also I hope my other nano buddies are doing great! I see a lot of people updating your word counts and it’s really exciting <3 Good luck, friends, I believe in us all!
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