Dark Blue Owls

Challenge Month, Day 2

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Day 2: Write 250 words inspired by the color of the walls of the room that you’re in.

It was in that box Danny first heard the words of the voice she’d later come to call “Itsy.” Itsy, because the prompts and suggestions were small, only noticeable if she were looking to find them, and the voice had a spindly quality, like a spider. Friendly, composed, welcoming like a nursery rhyme, but a spider all the same. Not many stories cast spiders in a very good light. Charlotte’s Web did, but then that maternal arachnid didn’t even make it to the end, so she doesn’t count.

The box was just that, a box. Danny could not leave the box, because The Tall Man told her she must stay until he got back. The box had walls like a banana’s dream of maturity, a perfectly ripened, earthy color. A stiff wind could compromise the box’s durability, but as long as Danny stayed inside like The Tall Man said, it wouldn’t blow away. It was her responsibility to keep the box safe. Itsy thought so, too.

Itsy thought The Tall Man was a liar. Itsy was young, but she seemed smart enough. Danny believed Itsy when she said The Tall Man would not be coming back. This was Danny’s box now, she didn’t need to share. It was only big enough for her and Itsy, anyways.

That’s it. Screw The Tall Man. Danny figured he’d be gone a while, but hours. He could find his own box.

He’d better hurry, too, Danny snickered to herself. A grey storm was stirring over the city pillars, high-fiving the sky. He’d want a box before it started to rain. Rain? Danny grimaced. She’d have to make sure Itsy didn’t get washed away.

If that happened, then she’d only have the box left for company.

Boxes weren’t very talkative.

Challenge Month, Day 1

character-names

Day 1: Put your iPod or iTunes on shuffle. Write 250 words inspired by the first and last lines of the very next song that plays.

“You were just a small bump unborn, four months then brought to life.–Maybe you were needed up there, but we’re still unaware of why” – “Small Bump” by Ed Sheeran

We’d only just learned your name. Mmm. “Learned” might be the wrong word. Maybe not. We gave it to you, I suppose, but it was more like we discovered the sounds which were made to fit your soul. Letters and noises which had always been paired to who you are, but were unknown to us until some wandering thought deceived us into believing we came up with them on our own.

I don’t know about your mother, but I dreamed about the day you’d arrive long before we had that word. In my quest and ache to shovel up the correct name, I carved my way through most others. Maria, Priscilla, Anne, Roxie, Sarah, Margaret, Amanda, Victoria, Carol. Not that any of those were bad, of course. They just weren’t you. I couldn’t bare to give you a name which wasn’t yours.

See, she knew, your mother. Every time I’d throw something new at the wall, she would shoot it down immediately. I’d think I finally had it, then in one burning sweep, I’d realize I wasn’t even close. You were quickly approaching and still neither of us could give you the inheritance which God had commissioned us to give.

How were we to prepare your room without such a vital detail of its resident? The name of somebody says a lot. Were pink or blue walls more appropriate, or should we go with something a little more neutral? Would you like a white crib, or one of polished wood? When the lights were out, would you want space ships overhead, or a stuffed birdie by your side?

I suppose it does not matter much. When finally we excavated that part of your soul, that testament of who you were supposed to be remembered as to the world, we learned the truth in the form of a doctor’s reluctant, clearing throat.

You would not be here any time soon. Actually, you would not be here at all. Common enough complication, sure. I suppose God gave us the name only for the stone which would substitute for your pillow.

Well, I look forward to the day I might be able to say it to your face in the heavenlies. I’m not a patient man, but I’ll do my best not to go mad before I meet you. In the meantime, please wait and please smile. That’s what you would have done best.

Update: 03/21/16

Begrudgingly, I have set aside “The Wisdom of Demons” for the foreseeable future. It’s an idea story, and I’m afraid I began the narrative without enough preparation for where I wanted it to go or what I wanted to accomplish. I do hope to return to it someday, once I’ve better netted the tone, didactic principle, and endgame of the story.

In the meantime, because I need something to occupy myself and experiment upon, I’ve been passing time with a fun, mildly satirical inside-joke sort of story called Creeksend, involving all of my personal friends. While Creeksend is fun, it’s reminding me how much better I am at high fantasy than any other genre. Wisdom of Demons was an urban fantasy geared towards adults, slated to be an independent work. It made more sense to go that route than say, a multi-volume, high-fantasy series. The market just doesn’t take those from new authors without a fight.

This is to say, I resurrected one of my old story ideas in this same vein of fantasy, an epic called “Heroica.” I might start readjusting myself to working on that once I wrap up my shenanigans with Creeksend, as I am very fond of the magic system and characters I’ve created in the Heroica universe.

Writing aside, my media consumption has been cut of a different cloth, lately. I’ve almost exclusively listened to podcasts, such as the Cracked Podcast, Criminal, and Welcome to Night Vale, which all have wildly different tones and agendas. I’ve been trying to go through The Office, but I do not like it as much as I thought I would. I’ve played no new video games and watched no new anime, but I did go through every single character bio for the League of Legends roster as research for lore building, character creation, and prose writing. It was marvelous.

On a serious note, someone I care about deeply has been going through a rough time lately, so I’m considering fasting for her heart. There are a lot of bad influences around her, changing her, and it’s painful to watch, but there’s not much else I can do. Fasting and prayer seem to be the most evident options.

(Art is credited to GUWEIZ on Deviantart (http://guweiz.deviantart.com/))

“Leave ‘Em Laughing” – An Exercise in Myth-Crafting

I recently did an exercise in which I needed to create a group of powerful characters who marked the history of their world. So I created this small lore-driven narrative with an enthusiastic amount of my imagination. It was tremendous fun, even if I did just throw words at the wall in some spots to see what stuck. Who knows, I might use some of this in the future, ’cause I think it turned out pretty solid. Hope you enjoy.
…

We are in the business of playing god. It pays well.

When first we began, there were only a humble two in our party, those being my brother and I. We didn’t have much, but perhaps that’s what we needed most. I’m not sure the Red Father would have given us urchins any mind if we’d been pampered or acquainted with fortune. He was not one to lust for the weak of will.

The King of All saw the plight of us brothers, how we sacrificed our meat for small triumphs. I broke my leg once chasing a dog, but we caught him in the end. I didn’t even care, he tasted as good as a mutt could taste. Besides, on the deadroads, nobody cared about the life of a curr, even if it belonged to them. So we killed, we thieved, we learned the dramatic and infinite art of destruction.

My brother in particular was a deity with the craft of arsony, knowing exact measurements, exact tones for the making of brilliant flame. His skill lead to obsession, and in years, that obsession warped into pathology, something defined by empathizing with the inferno’s anxious craving to eat anything and all. He could hear the whisper of the embers, see the suffering of their soul. What’s more, he kept more company with fire than even I, his kin. Dejian even went so far as to speak with the fire, to prostrate himself before its majesty. Some say the blaze, untameable and unfettering as we’d always believed it to be, heard his voice and loved him like a son. So Dejian has been heralded as the second coming of the Pyromath, for his innate knowledge of the Tongue of the Flame and religious commitment to the inferno itself.

It wasn’t until years later, after we’d grown into men, we would meet the others. Already us brothers had conspired the fall of one of the most powerful economic cities in the Northeastern dominance, we’d set fire to the Chalice of Quickening, and it was by our hands that both the King of Viga and all of his heirs met their passing. Twice we’d seen the walls of prison, twice we left them in shambles.

Perhaps is was only natural that the Father would see our efforts and show us His love.

To be invited into His pool of world-changers was a dream fulfilled for which I didn’t even know I’d longed. Back then, it was just about becoming something. All of the violence, the power, the sex, the narcotics, the revolutions. They were a coming-of-age prerequisite for what The King of All had forever intended to be our true purpose. An insidious criteria we’d fulfilled on accident.

We came together all at once. I’d heard some of their names before, but others operated with so much precaution and covertness that they may as well not have existed. In total, there were ten, with my brother and I. A force of unrequited and indomitable power, forged and united under the singular goal of representing our Father.

History has many names for us. Lately, we’ve been known as The Carnival, but we’ve carried other titles. The Duke of Chaos, whom we waged war against for thirty-one hundred years, hails us as The Oppression. For two millennia in the Southern dominance, we were heralded as either The Unkind Hand or Sha’Ju, which was basically their tongue for the same thing. After we assassinated the Four Corners of Creation, we were forever engraved as The Bastard Children. Once, a great warrior managed to seal us into the temporal deadzone known as Tiqtokk. Most records of Tiqtokk were forgotten even before we’d found ourselves in its clutches, and that’s ages past now. Once we killed that place’s infernal gatekeeper and found our way back to reality, we found we’d taken yet another name. The Undying. But still, my personal favorite, and I think most would agree, was the name given to us by a clergyman.

Seeking refuge after our perilous encounter with The Abstraction (an abysmal creature the likes of which even I would rather not recall), we landed in a nowhere village on the Western-most skirt of the mapped world. There, we bunkered down in the local church, which we’d falsely assumed had been abandoned. If you’d seen its decadence, you would have understood our reasoning. Yet, the morning after we’d had time to heal, the head priest found us resting beneath the mural of his lord and savior, its outstretched wings giving us sanctuary. When his eyes befell us, he toppled over himself in terror. At first we were stunned and confused, but that man, he must have had something sharp in his spirit, for his perception was better than most under mortal jurisdiction. His words, they tumbled from his mouth like vomit, but through repetition, we were able to understand.

“Red,” he stuttered, the stink of urine soiling between his thighs, “The Ten Reds. The Ten Reds.”

Turns out, we were prophesied in their holy book. We were the ones who would come to be the conclusion of all things outside eternity. It was appropriate, since our Father, the King of All, whose true name I would not blemish, was red itself. It was his identity and being. That there were, in fact, ten of us in his army, was a delicious coincidence.

We promptly killed that man. More specifically, I ate him. He tasted better than most. An incorrigible fate for one so dutiful to their faith. I feared he’d been praying to the wrong god.

Still, we had identities unto ourselves. That was bound to happen, even to the most discreet of us. Time, action, and mortal fascination were doomed to bare names and characters to us eventually. A century ago, we tallied how many religions we’d been featured in, either as a group, or as separate beings. Some of those religions formed around us, others crafted themselves specifically to our motives and actions. As blasphemic as it was, they couldn’t have known better. They couldn’t have known they worshipped the disciples of god rather than god himself. For the record, we stopped counting after we hit two-hundred and eighty.

As for our members, I’ll do a brief, and I stress that word, detail of who we are.

I am Yaro, the Scribe, the Cannibal, the Slavekeeper. I am most notorious for feeding on the Queen of Guile and her family, all of whom are consequently stored in my Book for safekeeping. There is not much to be said of my accomplishments. Among my peers, I am perhaps of the least impressionable substance.

My brother as I’ve named him, is Dejian. He is a mute, save for his Tongue of the Flame affinity. Mythos herald Dejian as a vengeful, hateful spirit that steals children from their beds and drags them into hell. That only happened once, and suddenly it’s what he’s best known for, which is a shame. He’s done far worse things.

Hell isn’t even that bad. They should see Tiqtokk or Silas’s Chamber. Those places deserve to be Hell more than Hell does. Trust me, I’ve spent a fair time in all three.

Quinika the Wing is our youngest member. When she joined, she was only twelve. Of course, that was circa five-thousand years ago, so age doesn’t mean much anymore. Quinika is a centerpiece in many religions as a goddess of beauty, which was a fair assessment, because that’s basically what she has become. With the exception of her single-handed destruction of the navy of the north kingdom back in the first years (it doesn’t really count for technical reasons), her most renown achievement reflects the time she was publically challenged by the ten-time champion of the Immortal Tournament. She did not win, but she held her own for over twenty-five minutes, which is five times longer than I lasted. What’s more, she managed to wound him, a feat that only one other member of our party has ever managed. She did this at the ripe age of eighty, which basically made her an infant in relative terms. Her primary title was also granted by that champion, when he reverently dubbed her “The Unyielding Bitch.”

Brand is our team’s muscle. I mean, we are all pretty bloody strong, but he in particular was set for doing the heavy lifting. It’s literally what history has given him for a legacy. I cannot tell you how many statues we have passed where Brand is on a knee, holding up the world with one arm, cradling his famous Starborn Axe in the other. Brand the Impenetrable. The Severance. The One in Seven, which he got according to some old Illiaric folklore. Though he hates to admit it, he’s probably our most important member, because he’s basically the punching bag in most fights. He just does not go down. While we’ve had a hard time figuring out which of his actions has made the deepest scar in history, it’s probably when The King of All tasked him with holding open the Gate of Sirens, so that we might have enough time to arrive and do battle with The Hero’s champions. That gate, for the record, is heavier than the world, apparently. Or so Brand has crowed on about endlessly for the last several centuries.

Ori is the second of our three female members and my god is she an animal. I cannot handle Ori’s energy half the time. I don’t know how, after all these years, she still manages to be as relentlessly enthusiastic as the day we met. Believe it or not, Ori’s greatest testament and gift to this world is a sport, one of her own design. After three-thousand years, she’d managed to become the most mechanically proficient player of nearly any physical activity she put her mind to, even when she limited herself for the sake of competition. Finding this boring, she created Ori Disking, after being inspired by flinging the Spiked Angel’s shield at him like a disk and rending him in half. She was the Barefoot Princess, the Lust of the Wild, and many other colorful, decorative names, so many in count that we’ve failed to keep up. If any of our party were to be loved by the world, it was Ori. And that’s amazing, because she once cut the sky in half with a kick, incidentally allowing sunlight to burn tens of thousands of people to death. You’d think that would have killed her good name, but it didn’t.

Damn Ori. She was one of the most beautiful women precluding eternity.

Our sixth member doesn’t even really have an actual name. If he does, I still don’t know it. I call him Tomiro, after the ancient Nigona’s traditional naming process for children. Each parent takes one suffix from either of their own parents, and they merge the suffix into one new, generational helix. “To” could be transcribed as “thorn” or “nettle,” while “miro” was often meant as a compliment in “warrior,” but could also mean “suffering.” This is to say, when I explained the name to my contemporaries, I gave it the appropriate fanfare, claiming the name basically summed up to “Thorn warrior” because Tomiro was a pain the sides of our adversaries, but in truth I preferred to think of him as an insufferable nettle in my life.

Tomiro is the only other member of our party to damage the champion of the Immortal Tournament. It required him to unseal the fifth hydra emblem on his chest though, which he’d been prohibited to do by his clansman father, the one who reared him in the baptism of assassination and merciless abandon. Doing so caused all living members of Tomiro’s clan to forfeit their lives to provide the power necessary to fight an otherwise insurmountable opponent. It was a gesture reserved only for killing their longtime nemesis, the Comet. Well, together we took out that witch only two-hundred years into our pilgrimage, so he didn’t really need it for that anymore. Because of this action, we’ve unabashedly labelled Tomiro as the most selfish among us, since it shows exactly how far he was willing to go just for a decent fight. And truly, that’s all he cares about. Tomiro is a vain, narcissistic, cruel brat who even after so long on our team, still prefers to do everything on his own. It’s for this that he’s known as the Finger of God, single-handedly crippling both armies during the Battle of Trimerton. This, after saying he didn’t need our help. And he didn’t. Other names include The Breathing Shadow, Prince of Papercuts, and my personal favorite, because it came to pass coincidentally and without my help, the Thorn Child.

In the deepest mines of the South providence is a village forsaken by fortune, a place where the nefarious “Bloodforge” resurrected against the will of the natives. From this Bloodforge came Mallory, the third daughter of our Red Father. Mallory scares the most unholy of hells out of me. The Blood Visage, Her Dreadfulness, Stari’na (named after the occultic sanguine goddess as popular in the Eastern underground), and She Who Is are only a few of the loving titles Mallory has met over the millennias passed. While she is historically most known for breaking the Six Crystals of the floating kingdom Extormica and bringing the whole thing down, it’s really her little quirks that scare the piss out of people. Even among our strange and demented company (this is coming from a cannibal, remember), Mallory is fond of pushing the boundaries of convention. Men, women, children, pregnant women, doesn’t matter, Mallory would indiscriminately drain them of all their life blood, assimilating it into a deep well of…something inside her core. With the remaining bones, organs, sinew, and god knows what else, she would form clothing and small appliances for herself.

Mallory is the only among us who seems to hold no regard for revering our Red Father. Instead, she deliberately promotes the sacrilegious worship of herself within many cultures. She enjoys being a goddess. How the King of All tolerates such behavior is still beyond me.

Coming in at number eight is Suga. Suga could be known for many things. Instead, he is almost uniformly, without fail, regarded as the legend with the idiotically massive sword. Suga is of arbitrary significance in light of the fact that he wields this weapon, the notorious Vindra Kai, created from the bonemeal of the last demon king of Silas’s Chamber. He stole the damn thing from Silas himself, which I’ll have you know, is one of the most blatantly retarded and reckless things in our entire history of existing as a species inside and outside of mankind. For perspective, this is tantamount to making a heist of Satan’s father’s most prized possession. You’re basically demanding to get dragged into Hell and tormented until time burns away.

If it were not for Silas being trapped in the chamber, I have no doubt he would have already come, ripped out our eyes, and wrung our necks with our own optic nerves. Suga is actually fairly gentle compared to the rest of our troupe, and prefers diplomatic resolution wherever possible. Naturally, this makes him one of the only people I can actually stomach. Not that I’m altruistic, mind you, but after what feels like a million years of violence, it’s nice to have alternatives every once in awhile. Suga can fight hard, though, when the need arises. He’s naturally protective, and at a point, even spawned a child in the early years. Mallory killed both child and mother, so needless to say, those two do not get along well.

Ninth. Wallace. He was technically the final installment in our roster of ten, but it wasn’t always like that. For the longest time, he simply followed us. He followed and followed. For some reason, we could not shake him, and when we inevitably tried to kill him, we found we could not. Apparently he’s cursed to be unable to take intentional harm. Only accidental damage can hurt Wallace, which is harder to accomplish than you’d think. Eventually, he blended in with us until the Red Father took a liking to the kid and made him a permanent member.

Wallace is a bit mentally absent, and not in your typical daydreamer’s sort of way. He mutters a lot to himself, usually chanting about physical features of people he’s killed in the past. Wallace also seems to possess some degree of precognition, making him that much more difficult to kill. All of his names seem to stem from his aloofness or psychic admonition and not his inclination for being one of the most powerful men in history. The Sloth, Drift, the Perfect Harmony, the Eye of Tempari, whatever. Those people were fools. Wallace was unbelievably dangerous, as I’ve witnessed first-hand.

I mean, how many people could boast that they’d walked through literal Hell and came out the other side completely unfazed. Nobody. Not any of us. Except Wallace. Except freaking Wallace. Damn, he actually made friends while we were there. Like, what?

Then there’s the tenth member, Asher. This man is a tempest if ever there was one. Asher has many names, perhaps more than any other member of our troupe, but there is always one that roots up in every culture, in every religion, in every ghost story. Perhaps you’ve heard the title, as it echoes with force throughout all histories. “Yggdrassil.” It is a name that was specifically given by the Red Father himself. None of us know where Asher came from. Asher does not know where he came from. By birth and nature, he has two sides to his existential coin. There’s the natural, already immensely powerful man on the surface, who wields a lethal brand of charisma with as much proficiency as his mastery over all material weapons. Then, should this fail him, he is able to resurrect the “Broken Man,” a transformative ability which dyes his body black and red, fills his eyes with uncured white, and drowns him in strength. I have never seen Asher lose while in this form, and it is my personal theory that, should he ever face the Immortal Champion with his transformation in full swing, it would likely cripple at least one dimensional plane under the weight of their struggle.

So, yes, we are all strong. We have done many things and are commissioned to do many more before our time is done. We are loved, hated, revered, feared, and all else in the spectrums between. We have fun with it sometimes, but our work is not a joke, even if sometimes our victims are reduced to cackling fools as we cut them down. What can I say? It’s what people do. Take away everything, steal all of their hope, and you can do nothing but chuckle at your own plight.

We take a sick pride in this. We love to leave ‘em laughing.

Update: 02/23/16

Hello all you strange and excellent people,

I do not have any striking prose pieces or related material for you this week. In fact, I’ve been in a bit of a writing trench lately. Priorities have been a bit screwy and my attitude, well, temperamental. Afflictions of self and whatnot. I’m working to help them pass in a timely manner, but matters of the heart can be elusive, so we’ll see.

I picked up Brandon Sanderson’s final Reckoner’s book, “Calamity.” Barreled through it in less than three days, which is super fast for me, because I’m not the most breakneck of readers. Yes, even for easy-peasy young adult novels.

Took me two years to read the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Nevertheless, I recommend the series to all audiences. Anything that takes the superhero genre and flips all the tropes on their heads is something that will receive my mark of approval.

I’ve concluded that, unless I am really inspired to write some type of short-form story, I absolutely hate the activity. Short stories suck to write. I have half a dozen of them complete and undergoing revision, but I fear I don’t like any of them. The heart is there, but the execution was freaking terrible. This is a large part of my discouragement over the last couple weeks.

“The Wisdom of Demons” has seen far more progress. I am currently establishing a coherent timeline for the rest of the story, which will act as a vehicle for pushing ahead to the end. I spent an entire work shift backpedaling through all of my material, organizing it, and fleshing out details of setting and character agendas, so the book doesn’t feel like a flailing mess anymore. Praise God. I was tempted to scrap it for a while, there.

Christina Grimmie released her newest EP earlier this week. Musically, vocally, it is splendid. The lyrics are not bad, per se, they just hurt my heart a little bit and all ring the same emotional chord. She clearly did not have a good relationship this last year, because all four songs follow the same subject. I fear I might sound too self-righteous in asking that she use her skills to sing songs of a different tone. Her pedestal in our culture is far greater than mine will ever be, so she has a great opportunity to shed light upon people who lack light. Do not misunderstand, she does do all of this, just not to my selfish satisfaction. As if I’m somehow in a place to make decisions on what she should and should not do with her abilities and time.

But that’s a rabbit hole nobody asked for. Go check out the EP. Seriously, it’s great. It’s on ITunes for like, three dollars.

I recently discovered the Cracked Podcast, so that has also been a huge drain of my time. A worthwhile drain, mind you, but a huge one nonetheless. I’ve learned a lot about things I never even thought to ask questions about, like how America inadvertently inspired Hitler, gender and racial issues of a fabric I’d never considered, and pop-culture analysis from perspectives far unlike my own. This abridged fluff I’m giving you now does absolutely no justice to how good the podcast is, so if you have an opportunity, check them out.

I’ve been on the hunt for post-graduate, MFT programs. A necessary evil if ever there was one. This also means I’ve been siphoning some time into studying the bloody GRE, which I grow less fond of by the day.

Lastly, I’ve finally put on paper my six-step plan for my writing career, which I’ve theatrically titled “Operation: Prisma.” Yeah, I made a plan for life, that thing which notoriously spits in the face of plans. Because I can, I guess.

Step One, get at least three short stories published, so I can have reference material for future pitching prospects. Step Two, get my first novel published. I’m aiming to have this done no later than five years down the road. Then, in no particular order, the following goals involve increasing my popularity to a higher threshold, helping to make a video game, and helping to make an anime.

Hopefully our world does not implode or break down into forty different kinds of madness before then.

God bless, go about your days with a song in your heart, and always remember to smile.

(*Artistic piece by Yuumei for your aesthetic pleasure. Please go support them on Deviantart.com, because holy crap they have so much cool stuff.)

The Appeal of Dark Media

Hello strange and wonderful people,

I recently wrote an article over in my millings with Geeks Under Grace which has received above-par attention. It’s an exposition on how I define “dark” in terms of media, with examples for different brands of this word spanning several mediums, as well as which facets of those series I find appealing. I cannot copy and paste it here, so I ask that, should some pocket of your curiosity long to see why I think dark media is more appealing than its lighter-hearted brethren, you follow this little link down below and take a gander.

God bless, love your heart, and always remember to smile.

http://www.geeksundergrace.com/christian-living/appeal-dark-media/

“Hymni’s Broken Gift” – An Exercise in Myth-Crafting

Not in the beginning, but very soon after, when the gods set to discover their place in our scheme of lights, one was burdened with shouldering the color black. Hymni would have settled for nearly any color. He would not have complained about blue, which Usiris had requested in a hurry. Green was not his favorite, but he would have taken it if Qitom had not already. Perhaps red was a little rough, but it was passionate. He would have liked red.

But more than any of these, Hymni had hoped to be the god of white. Instead, that privilege went to the gentle-hearted Ririka. Hymni did not hate Ririka, but he hated that she was gifted white, and he was not.

Yet, the Greatest of Them saw fit for Hymni to be the herald of black. What might he do with such a bitter color, he thought? In time, he figured he could find his way around the dilemma.

Because of Hymni, we now have a color for infection. We have something strong and evident for scripting. We have any of several hard minerals, stones, and metals with which to build our societies. Desperately, Hymni found more ways to use his color for beauty. The core of our eyes, the endless adventures of the wandering night sky. He tried, but did not meet satisfaction.

White shine filled the eyes of men, glowing with love and admiration. White stars burned through his blanket of night. Ririka meant nothing cruel of it, she just knew the best ways to find beauty in her color. Hymni’s black helped accentuate her wonders.

That was all well and good, but Hymni wanted more.

So for decades, we had the weeping ash fall of Hymni’s tears. The whole world gone black in the depths of Hymni’s jealousy and sorrow. Of course, we know that black can be just as beautiful as any other color, but Hymni did not think as such. To him, it was a color for evil, a color meant to be overcome by its vibrant kindred of red, gold, blue, silver, white. But if mankind had not detested the color before, it had begun to now. Black killed our plants, coated the land in waves and mounts so thick we could hardly travel from one place to another. It blotted out the sun, it drove away the light. It made us hate Hymni, and so reflected the way he’d come to see himself.

Hymni had never felt a craving for violence before, but there it was, piece by piece, swelling inside of his heart. A strange tumbling captured his gut, curled his fingers, clenched his chest. He did not long to live the rest of his immortality as the dreadful spring from which all blackness sprang. He did not wish to live in sorrow, a subject to the hatred of others.

Gods, it seemed, were not immune to the treacherous whims of anger. In his hour of wrath, Hymni sought out Ririka and struck her down, thinking somehow he might be able steal her white. Perhaps then he would be loved like Ririka was loved. She was fragile and broke easily. He learned there was red inside of her, which he found odd. Was there red inside of him, too?

But Ririka, she died slowly. What’s more, and Hymni found this hauntingly curious, she wore the greatest of tender smiles on her lips, even as red pooled at her side where he rent her open.

“I’m sorry,” she rasped. “I am sorry, Hymni.”

Words scattered from Hymni’s tongue, leaving him dry and abandoned. He watched the girl, observed her slipping away.

“I’m sorry you have not felt loved for so long.” She coughed, and the red came out from there, too.

“I,” Hymni said, “I only wanted your color. It’s beautiful. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

Her nod was a whisper of the body, hardly existing, hardly perceived. “You may have my color, Hymni. I hope you find happiness with it.”

At this, the darling goddess passed into a realm unknown and uncertain even to their kind. Only now, with the trace remaining light banished from her body, did Hymni realize what he had done, and with the understanding came a new sort of sorrow.

As he’d wished, the color we call white fell into his hands. But somehow, it did not make him feel any more loved. The joy he’d anticipated, the sense of peace, they did not come. No, in their stead, he was met only with grief. He had brought about the end of one of his own, and she had gone so far as to apologize for his actions?

Hymni could not hold himself upright. He came crashing to his knees before Ririka’s soul-empty shape, smile still against her cheeks. Taking her body into his arms, Hymni wailed every misery old and young. He did not care for the red stains against his body. He did not care for black, nor white, both now under his dominion. He cared only for the girl, taken unjustly. Taken by his selfishness.

Angry in a new way, Hymni expelled the undying ash-storms from the sky. He pushed the ash into corners and pockets of the world where it belonged, places where fire churned in the air. Then, the world began to fill with tears of white. Hymni’s despair took on such great lengths that it superseded his world and made its way into our own. First it started slowly, then it began to build. One flake became two, which with time became thousands, and then millions and billions.

Infinite white came down all across the world, some sort of request of forgiveness or atonement to a girl who was no longer there. Where black ash had brought difficulty and strife to men, this new ash, something we’d later come to understand was not ash at all, had brought comfort and beauty. In time, we’d call it snow, and it would identify entire seasons of our world.

Now, it stands as the penance of a lonely god who continues to grieve for the foolishness of one mistake. It is a promise, I think, that Hymni would try his best to care for us in Ririka’s place. It is a statement of hope, that we all have an opportunity to forgive ourselves.

I do hope Hymni begins to love himself the way we love him for giving us this snow, this most perfect of gifts. For it is the opinion of no man, that one who can create something so beautiful, could possess a heart worth hating.

I do hope Hymni finds the peace he so longed to find, as all of us do.

An Excerpt from “The Name of the Wind” by Patrick Rothfuss

I have no new material to share, so I decided it would be an appropriate time to whip out a passage from my favorite book, “The Name of the Wind” by Patrick Rothfuss. NotW is the first of two in Rothfuss’s “Kingkiller Chronicle” series, and both are completely worth your time. If you enjoy this passage, please consider buying the book and supporting ol’ Pat.

…
“Perhaps the greatest faculty our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain. Classic thinking teaches us of the four doors of the mind, which everyone moves through according to their need.

First is the door of sleep. Sleep offers us a retreat from the world and all its pain. Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind’s way of protecting itself from pain by stepping through the first door.

Second is the door of forgetting. Some wounds are too deep to heal, or too deep to heal quickly. In addition, many memories are simply painful, and there is no healing to be done. The saying ‘time heals all wounds’ is false. Time heals most wounds. The rest are hidden behind this door.

Third is the door of madness. There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind.

Last is the door of death. The final resort. Nothing can hurt us after we are dead, or so we have been told.”

“The Spirit of Color” – An Exercise in Surreal Prose

I recently found a post that asked somebody to describe the color Red without ever saying the word. Somebody responded to the challenge with a beautiful and engaging series of descriptors. Having been inspired by this I emulated the same challenge using the colors Red, Blue, Green, Black, and White. I refrained from using any examples for Red from the original post, so it was easily the most difficult. Nonetheless, I had a lot of fun and hope you enjoy.
…

Red

It’s the heat in your face when preparing to confess love for the first time, and it’s the buzzing pressure within your chest when you’re angry, because you held in the words. It’s the marks left on your back when protecting someone from danger. It’s the throttle in your skull after a night of screaming, and the pressure of another hand in yours, holding tightly, either for safety or desire. It’s the mark her lips left on your cheek. When you finally fight back, it’s on your knuckles. It’s the blood of all men. It hurts, it heals, it lusts, it loves, it gives you power when you knew you didn’t have any more.

Perhaps it’s the warmth of a hug that means something.

Blue

It’s emerging for air after too long beneath the water. It’s a piano in minor key. It’s the equality found in gentle rainfall. It’s the openness of a traveling wind. It’s sitting down, crossing your legs, and simply being there to listen. It’s a reaffirming hand on your shoulder. It’s somebody’s voice when they talk about the stars. It’s remembering days gone by. It’s calm in chaos. It’s a push of the sea against your body.

When you receive insult, it’s the wisdom that tenderly guides away from retaliation.

Green

It’s an excited puppy’s kisses. When you walk through nature, it’s the brush of leaves against your shoulders. It’s being too young to know and everything healthy your tongue deplores. It’s laughter on a playground, while also the adventure found in wild violins. It’s the slick moss pointing north. It’s the voice of a friend you’ve sorely missed. It’s finding a place where nobody has been, or getting lost without being afraid. It’s working together with people you do not know. It’s the smell of loam, of lake. It’s the last day of school.

More than anything, it’s doing something just because.

Black

It’s waking up alone after the best of dreams. It’s being unable to live with yourself and wishing more than anything, that you could be someone else. But it’s also your heart when you believe yourself better than the person across from you. When you find a mysterious hole in the tide of night, it’s your confidence of its depth or contents. It’s the addiction that refuses to die. It’s finding a wall when you were supposed to be on an open road. It’s hearing you won’t be keeping your kids. It’s waiting for something that will not come. Where things have burned, it’s the smell that scars the air. It’s a quiet of the most absolute sort and the state of things not working. It’s your stomach when one minute somebody is breathing and the next minute they are not. It’s last words, regardless of their peace or horror.

In the end, it’s mortal conclusion.

White

It’s your bed after a trying day. It’s being at peace knowing the person you love, loves somebody else. At last, it’s a promise fulfilled. It’s the fire found in ice. It’s a baby’s first cry. It’s being smitten, without being lonely. When hailed by transgressions, it’s forgiveness. It’s the dress of the bride and the teeth in her smile. It’s believing somebody will come home. It’s a choir in worship and a new idea. It’s listening in isolation. Before you paint, it’s a canvas. It’s the virgin snowfall, crumbling between your fingers. It’s the crown of the aged, the wise, and those fortunate enough to reach either. It’s a victorious fanfare. It is the searing vulnerability of having your innermost exposed. It’s the feather of a dove.

But most of all, it’s wondering for the sake of it.

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