This violet is a lotus

I kissed a(nother) girl...

2009-01-10T11:41:39Z

For funsies, I'm gonna make this horrible, no-good, catchy pop-song more acceptable to me. Because while cheating is bad, psuedo-lesbians are worse, in this case. Grrr.

This was never the way I planned
Not my intention
I got so brave, drink in hand
Lost my discretion
It's not what, I usually do
Just wanna try you on
I'm curious for you
Caught my attention

I kissed a girl and I liked it
The taste of her cherry chapstick
I kissed the girl just to try it
I hope my girlfriend don't mind it
It felt so wrong
It felt so right
Don't mean I'm in love tonight
I kissed a girl and I liked it
I liked it

No, I don't even know your name
It doesn't matter,
You're my experimental game
Just human nature,
It's not what,
Good girls do
Not how they should behave
My head gets so confused
Hard to obey

I kissed a girl and I liked it
The taste of her cherry chap stick
I kissed the girl just to try it
I hope my girlfriend don't mind it
It felt so wrong
It felt so right
Don't mean I'm in love tonight
I kissed a girl and I liked it
I liked it,

Us girls we are so magical
Soft skin, red lips, so kissable
Hard to resist so touchable
Too good to deny it
Ain't no big deal, it's drunkenness

I kissed a girl and I liked it
The taste of her cherry chap stick
I kissed the girl just to try it
I hope my girlfriend don't mind it
It felt so wrong
It felt so right
Don't mean I'm in love tonight
I kissed another girl and I liked it
I liked it

Original no-good, bad, catchy song belongs to Katy Perry. I'm just having fun. I'm not sure about the "it's drunkenness" line, there, but "it's innocent" certainly doesn't fit, but I can't come up with anything else. If anyone does, please suggest a change! xD
(This parody should, of course, be sung by a girl like the original, for the proper funsies, but it would of course work just as well with a guy.)

CHEATING IS BAD, PEOPLE!
Remember that!

Mary, Mary, Why Don't You Make Sense?

2008-07-05T20:45:20Z

Saw Hancock today. Movie? AWESOME. So much awesome, I totally missed its faults until I started thinking on the movie after. But, before that, more awesome. The way they did the flying? My heart is all a-flutter, because it was, yes, awesome, and cool. it was funny at parts, and definitely cool all over. Except for the standard heterosexual threesome-that-wasn't plot, but it ended satisfactorily, so while I still have no points to give because it was used at all, I give that a pass.

But. Yeah, there is comes, the but. Problem is, I'm having trouble articulating my "buts" while not detracting from the awesome, because the "but's" are there... parallel to the awesome. Yeah, I think that's it. So, without further ado;

First case, also known as "Let's Count the Women!"
Right. We could also call this the "How many female characters even speak?" case, because, well... mostly, they don't. Let me count them, and please add if I missed any, but I have the depressing thought I won't have missed any:
Anchor Lady who gleefully reports Hancock's being arrested for all the property damage he's done.
Police Woman who's only line is "Get me the hell out of here!" ... another version of the "HELP!"-line women so often are only there to scream.
And Mary, Ray's wife.
Does any woman at all speak to each other? No.

Then the other women; there was one of the hostages in the bank, cradling her kid. Usual role. And then... uhm... The only other women besides the woman (... wasn't she also the ONLY woman of colour having some sort of "separate-from-a-crowd" scene?) who's car Ray's car landed on after Hancock saved him from the train were part of crowds.
Seriously. Only three women in any sort of "separate" scenes. The Lt. who puked all over Hancock's not-so-good-name and not-so-well-consequenced-deeds couldn't have been a woman? The Chief of the Police couldn't have been a woman? For all that, why couldn't the Anchor Lady, or the police woman, or even Mary, have been a woman of colour?

That leads us to our second case, also known as "Mary, What Did Those Film Makers Do to You?" There's several facets to this one, at least one I didn't notice until after the movie, because I was happily high on said movie.
Firstly, there's Mary's disgusting (and rather incomprehensible, the woman's several thousand years old and she doesn't feel hemmed in by apparently having nothing to do??) complete comforming to heterosexual femme sex role; that is, "make all the food, apparently stay home all day, blah blah blah". Why was she so completely conforming, in both deeds and looks? Not even a whiff of what she might be doing besides playing house!
And then the thing I didn't realize until after the movie, because it's also something that doesn't become clear that it is a problem, at all, until late.

Mary initially disliked Hancock, despite, as she says, not knowing him. He just "breaks things" all over. Okay. I can go with that. But then, later, we come to the explanation for her reaction, the supposed over-arching reason for Mary's dislike of Hancock, and... It doesn't make sense. When she first explains what they are, and that they were paired and then "we're brother and sister.", there's some implied "You're a FUCKING ASSHOLE, Hancock!" She implies her time with him was so completely horrible because he apparently was an asshole (beyond being a bum and drunk for apparently eighty years). And... When she later 'fesses up to the "We were kinda married." and extrapolates a little on it... There's nothing in her speak and action that indicates her time with Hancock was particularly unpleasant. In fact, she seems more upset by the fact that them being together led to them becoming mortal and that led to trouble of the bleeding-and-heart-aching kind as Hancock was apparently built-in with a giant Hero Complex along with general societal machismo of "stepping in front of your beloved".
But it doesn't seem as if Hancock was an asshole personally, or hurt her besides taking shots for her and... Her complete hostility and rage and wanting him out of her life with such rancor just doesn't make sense.

Not even the "threesome-that-wasn't" plot explains her want to have him out of her life (I hate this sort of plot, but at least it was resolved nicely!), and, in fact, after all is said and done, Mary's actions make even less sense than they did when one just assumed that her problem was that Hancock was a wandering property damage catastrophe.
FILM MAKERS; THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO WRITE A FEMALE CHARACTER! She doesn't make sense! At all! Poor Mary is just a mess, character-wise, and it's painful. She's cool, despite holding nothing more than the "woman between two men to be homosocial with each other" role. She could have been cooler if SHE ACTUALLY MADE SENSE. It's not even a nebulous problem you can be pissed at the character herself at, because it's so obviously bad writing of the female character it's almost physically agonizing.
And, let me just say; the threesome-that-wasn't, plot? Honestly, Ray and Mary generated more mHz on the sex-generator than Hancock and Mary. For all the sexual spark there was between them, Mary's first explanation of brother and sister fit more than even estranged husband and wife. Their looooonnngggggggg "meaningful" staaareessssss made me want to puke. But that was, admittedly, not a fault of the missing sex-spark between Hancock and Mary, and rather due to me generally wanting to puke at those soulfuuullll staaaresss. Ugh.

But, despite this, parallel to this? The movie IS awesome, and I would def. see it again! :D

electrainverted @ 2008-05-11T21:13:00

2008-05-11T19:30:41Z

This is what happens when you're coming up with myths and legends concerning the founder of a (in)famous pirate port. Your brain just won't let it stay as "legends" and starts to work with figuring out what is myth and what is reality...

Title: A Life Most Extraordinary (Otherwise known as The Life and Times of Captain Demoneyes)
Chapter One: Childhood (Ends)
Rating: Adult, I suppose, or at least teen.
Warnings: Violence, some gore with that violence, pirates, death and sexuality. Perhaps sex later. Nothing right now, though.
Summary: There's a port town on the western coast of the Koribii Peninsula, facing Blackglass Ocean. Pirates, robbers, thieves and other scum of the world, along with a small amount of drug dealers, rule this city. It was founded around two hundred years ago by a pirate captain known as Demoneyes. The city was named Kruvia's Crown.
This is the story of the girl who would become Captain Demoneyes, of the pirate behind the sacking of the town that would become her base of operations, and of the woman that decided on the name of the future "capital" of the Pirate Coast.
This is the story of a life most people only know from adventure stories, and everybody knows those kind of stories lie. But this is the truth.

If anyone had told Kruviya she would spend most of her life on the ocean when she was thirteen, she would have asked them if they had drunk too much giva.

The ocean?

Here?

In the dry, dusty foothills of the Willow Hills, with cracked and reddish-gray-violet rock and ground and sand and gorges and crumbling rock formations slowly smoothed and formed by wind?

Here, where rain fell about as often as old grandma Miak sang and in amounts usually not enough to, seemingly, even fill a bucket? The flash-floods were sudden and frightening, but gone as soon as they appeared, leaving an explosion of green and red and yellow in their wake.

Sighing, Kruviya dipped her fingers in the waters of the fountain, creating small rings that were quickly subsumed under the larger ones created by the water falling from the generous bowl the Sky Child of Mana was holding aloft. Kicking her feet in the air, stomach and thighs warmed by the stone of the fountain's basin and chin resting on the palms of her hands, Kruviya stared at the smudged sand-and-dark blue figures wandering over the square quickly, most retreating to make midmeal.

She should also go home soon, otherwise she would have to go back to her lessons without food. That would just make her fall asleep during the lectures about an hour or two before classes let out, and then she'd have to stay to make up for falling asleep...

But it all seemed mostly useless.

Sure, the lessons were probably useful, but what use would she have of history, reading and writing and the geography of her country - which wasn't much of a geography, as it all apparently mostly consisted of desert, which was even more featureless than these hills and the badlands further west - stuck here in this little out-of-the-way village? Freeing one hand to play with the edge of her veil, Kruviya scowled.

Useless, useless, useless...

Rolling onto her back, shielding her eyes with one hand and letting the other drop down bonelessly, Kruviya didn't care she got wet up to the middle of her lower arm.

Boring, useless and stupid. If this was all life consisted of, along with stealing kisses from Tofa behind the tailor's dragia bushes, which was fun, Kruviya didn't know why it would be worth growing up.

Holding up her hand above her head, fingers spread out and staring at the resultant illusion that made her fingers seem see-through, Kruviya thought more about it. Perhaps if she could continue to steal... or just get, kisses from Tofa it would be all right?

But no matter how cute Tofa was, or how well she kissed, and Kruviya ought to know, she'd kissed others to compare, even marrying Tofa when they were at the right age wouldn't get her anywhere.

It certainly wouldn't make these classes any more useful, since she could hardly impress Tofa with her knowledge. Tofa took the classes too, after all, and the poetry writing was about as useful as an empty bucket with a hole in the bottom, because Tofa and Yarraf were better than her at that...

Frowning, Kruviya sat up and looked around, confused at the smell of smoke. No one would cook food outside at this time of the year, and besides, cooking food only ever smoked if you dropped something, like fat or a piece of meat onto the stones.

Squeezing the water out of her sleeve, Kruviya looked around the square, wondering at the stillness.

It seemed unnatural, somehow.

The air smelled of smoke, but she couldn't see any, and suddenly the sound of falling water seemed subdued, almost non-existent, as if it had been smothered by the invisible smoke and Kruviya took a harsh breath, unable to hear the sound of it whisting into her throat, and swallowed.

"FIRE!"

"BANDITS!"

The shouts were simultaneous, shards of a broken mirror flying away from the frame at the same time, but in different directions. People streamed out onto the square, shouting, pushing, pointing, the sun slithering off the knives waved around and gently bouncing off the heavy diamondwood maces held low to the ground.

She needed to get home.

Home.

What about Yusiv, only five, and her pregnant sun mother?

Yusiv couldn't fight, she was too little, and maemi had swelled up like a bloated camel a month ago, so close to birth, now. Her moon mother couldn't protect maemi and Yusiv all alone.

The sound of falling water, before so delicate and drowned out by the slap of feet against stone, of good-natured calls between neighbours, now roared in Kruviya's ears as she ducked under the swing of an arm of someone trying to impress the need to protect the east side of the town, and not the north, because her house lay to the east, hers and many others, and if they didn't protect the place where the bandits would be, then it wasn't much use, now was it?

North, north, north.

Kruviya could see the smoke now lazily swaying up towards the painfully blue sky to the north. She supposed it was the granary that was burning, since there was something of burning, musty grain to the smell in the air now.

The sound of screaming seemed to be trapped in Kruviya's head as she ran, following the dusty main street and almost slamming into several running adults, both going her way and not, though a few shouted *at her* and tried to grab her and drag her into the relative safety of whatever house was closest, small, wide-eyed faces staring out from latticed, curtained windows.

But she had to get home, had to help mama protect Yusiv and maemi, because her grandmothers on both sides had her aunts living in their own homes, and small cousins that needed to be protected, and if she and mama didn't protect maemi and Yusiv, who would?

Kruviya lost her footing on something as she rounded the corner of the baker's, and slammed her right cheek and chin into the dry, hot, harsh stone, not catching herself quickly enough.

Someone was screaming.

Several someones, and not just mana; Kruviya could hear the sound of koribii calls echoing between the buildings, and the clash of weapons.

Weren't the bandits supposed to be on the north side of town?

"Kruviya!"

Staggering away from the wall of the baker's house, Kruviya raised her head, briefly catching her mama's wild, shiny-eyed look before something slammed into the same corner she'd had a close encounter with, but on the other side.

It was a muffled sort of fleshy thunk. Not the sound of someone aware of where they were going and having tensed themselves for impact, but rather the sort of sound that comes when every muscle in your body is relaxed and you fall towards something bonelessly, without control.

Blood spattered like rubies on the stone, flew past Kruviya and landed in broken, flat little circles on the ground, glowing in the sunlight.

Something larger than blood flew past Kruviya's face, landed a step away, bounced, and rolled.

"Kruviya, don't look!" Mama sounded desperate, dry-voiced as if she'd been out on the fields a whole day, instead of not even half a day and come back for mid-meal. Kruviya blinked, head empty, though she knew she'd been running home to do something important, and then looked down.

The face was slack in death, but her eyes were wide and staring.

Staring right at Kruviya, and her slack-jawed grin spoke of some horrible joke Kruviya could be privy to, if she just... did... what that mana had done.

The thump of the body sliding out onto the street made Kruviya gasp and jerk backwards, tearing her eyes from both severed head and headless body, realizing mama was fighting with a mace and a knife both. The mace held the meat-hook curved beak of the koribii away, while the knife was sliding and clanging against that of the rider's.

That was right.

She had to help mama fight the bandits, for Yusiv and maemi's sake.

The sand-matted yellow body with the usual pale spatter of dots on the chest that stepped in front of her had Kruviya stumbling back, almost falling in surprise.

The koribii's eyes shone golden in the sunlight, its beak decorated, but thankfully not dripping, with blood. The impatient thread of its two feet with those suddenly much-too large claws seemed so very threatening, where before that had just been an adorable trait of her aunt's Kayve.

The mana on the koribii was wearing a turban in bright turquoise, and that seemed much too cheerful, too friendly and non-threatening when the knife in her hand was dripping with the last vestiges of a beheading, when her red eyes were narrowed in cold blankness and when her face suddenly twisted from a fierce scowl into what only loosely could be described as a smile.

"Kruviya! RUN!"

"Pretty eyes, little girl," the mana said with that teeth-baring smile tugging the corners of her mouth too far up and to the sides, and Kruviya would have gasped, but choked on it, somehow producing a hiccup, ducking under the swing of the knife coming down hilt-first towards her, burying her fist into the side of the Sessan's knee, and dashed around the koribii's back.

It seemed more safe than trying to run around the front, with that cruel, horrible, blood-spattered beak there, and while mama had obviously meant to run away, she couldn't do that, she had to help...

The last thing Kruviya was fully aware of, was the speed-smudged claw-tipped foot of the koribii coming up at her out of the corner of her eye and mama's wild-eyed stare as the knife of her opponent slid wetly into her side, but Kruviya couldn't see if mama would end up like the beheaded mana, which she realized was the baker, because the koribii's foot was in the way, and then there was heat and light and rainbow-flashing pain.

The wall was warm from the sun, warm and dry and gravelly, the cloth of her veil scraping against the stone and catching a bit as she fell. There was the sound of falling water in her ears, which was strange, as she wasn't even close to the fountain in the middle of the square of this little, stupid, useless town.

Kruviya hoped maemi and Yusiv had hidden well, since she'd been unable to help protect them.

She hoped mama had remembered to take the stew she'd undoubtedly made for mid-meal off the stove, because it would be a pity if it cooked dry and turned clotted.

Kruviya also wondered why she wasn't unconscious yet, because, she realized, in a detached, factual way, she really should be, shouldn't she?

Then a wave of light-coloured darkness rose up and swallowed her.

***

"Blessed Mana, Divine Creator of the world..." The three voices were choked, muted or completely incoherent from sobs, while the words either half disappeared by being so garbled or muttered so quietly it didn't matter.

But the three other people seated or laying around the small, scraggly and gnarled tree were speaking in perfect harmony, so what one made unintelligible, another made heard, and it was starting to drive Kruviya insane.

She could admit to having uttered the line as she first woke up... well, that was lie. She'd called for maemi first, then prayed.

Prayed as she realized that maemi wasn't here. That mama wasn't here. That, thankfully, horrifyingly, Yusiv wasn't here. She hoped they were all right. But, she had uttered that line, familiar and well-worn, after she'd called for maemi and had gotten a snicker and a cuff to the head, then a few more times mentally.

Kruviya understood the comfort of the words, having heard them often during sermons, having heard it said in the morning as maemi opened the windows to the rising sun while it was followed by the wish for Mana to bless the new day.

She'd heard it many, many times, but hearing it now, repeated into infinity by shaking, crying, exhausted girls, Kruviya felt like tearing at her hair, slapping the others silly and screaming at them.

That might have made her feel better, but since screaming, being the only thing she could do, would only bring kicks, cuffs and swearing down upon them, she'd say nothing, and only gnashed her teeth.

She didn't want to be here.

The ropes were biting into her wrists, her palms were clammy, her legs were shaking ever-so-slightly and she was so tired.

"Be quiet over there, or I have another way of making you go to sleep!" The shout slammed into the four girls like the force of a summer wind, and, blessedly, the other three fell quiet, except for very muted sobbing.

Kruviya wondered what would happen, but knew she wanted to have nothing to do with what the bandits had planned for her... for them, and she intended to get out of it, if she so had to gnaw her way through the ropes.

Which was, currently, what she was doing.

Slowly, slowly, with the taste of wet, musty threads in her mouth and never really feeling hungry as she didn't dare to spit any of the chewed rope on the ground less it be seen and she'd be discovered, Kruviya was working through the ropes around her hands. Not all at once, since if anything fell off, that was sure to be seen, but she let only threads left on her bindings.

Three days, and she'd come perhaps a third of the way.

She didn't know what she'd do when she got herself loose, but she knew she wasn't going to take any direction her life should take from anyone but herself. Or maemi and mama, but they weren't here and could so not say anything.

Kruviya would get loose and away, whatever it took.

***

Blessed Mana, Divine Creator of the world... Seven days since the world had been turned upside down and rolled out her control like that severed head had rolled from the mana's body.

Kruviya wanted to weep.

She was so tired.

There were blisters where the shoes had rubbed, despite them being some months old, and she felt nauseous. Obviously supplementing your diet with rope wasn't a good idea, at least not for any length of time. But at least she never felt hungry, which she surely would have done should she have had to satisfy herself with the food given to them by their captors.

"Move, girl!" The shout was swallowed up by the rolling, knee high yellow grass all around them, the words coming before the kick, so Kruviya managed to avoid the dirty foot covered in dried mud and the force behind the movement.

She stumbled, though, and breathlessly jumped on one leg for two steps or so before she managed to stabilize herself. Knowing, that if she had fallen, the mean-spirited koribii glaring at her with narrowed, bright blue eyes would have taken a swipe at her back.

She, along with the other three, all had the puffy, itching lines to prove the punishment for falling.

That the wounds nonetheless weren't deep, mere scratches really, proved the koribii was exercising great restraint and control.

"Did you really have to insist on bringing that one?" The bandit that had tried to kick her, now back beside the koribii of the bandit that had called her eyes pretty, muttered to the other. The glance she cast over her shoulder at Kruviya was chilling, her red eyes in this full-noon light reminding of newly spilt blood. "Her eyes are surely the work of the Wyrms' minions... if not proof of her willing cooperation with them," the bandit continued, her voice rough and the words spat out as one hand gestured sharply behind her.

The other shrugged and scratched her chin, worrying the obviously bad wound that lingered there, half covered in a healing scab, the other half... not.

"They make her look interesting. She is rather plain otherwise, though she has a nice, strong chin. And even if that superstition is true, we could perhaps find some of those cult members that supposedly still exist and worship the Eastern Wyrm Queen; they might like her. Or sell her like the others to someone who'll sell them to those that know nothing. So if anything happens, it won't happen to us," she said with a shrug, angled so that Kruviya could see the lopsided smirk that twisted the badly healing wound and made the scab crack a bit. The bandit grimaced, quickly stilling her face as she gingerly patted the wound.

"The cult? Are you insane? Who'd deal with those creeps? And you might put less truth in superstition than others, but no one can convince me eyes like that on an Iskandarian is natural! I know just as much of Iskandar as you, and only even the ones further north have so much as that strange green. Pale blue like that only appear in the north! With those pale people who live there. Not down here." The one who had tried to kick Kruviya growled and shook her head, the brass decorations hanging from her headdress jangling as they clacked together with the movement.

"It doesn't matter. We're going to meet the people who'll take those four," the wounded one made a general gesture behind her, indicating the four captives spread out among the slowly advancing bandits, "off our hands tomorrow, and then we can get into the town and have some fun."

Tomorrow? Kruviya shivered and looked around, but could see no difference in the gently rolling landscape covered in grass and huge trees with trunks many times wider than she could stretch her arms wide.

Nothing to indicate that they were close to the coast. Nonetheless, this meant that she would have to escape tonight. Glancing down at the ropes around her wrists, she hoped she could bite through the last, and that she would be strong enough to snap the last of the threads that held the coils of rope together.

She had only this chance, for who knew what would happen after this.

After they had been "gotten off of" the bandits' hands.

Seven days and a night... so perhaps even the beginning of the eight day since their capture. Kruviya's eyes burned from the lack of sleep, because she'd spent most of the hours since they'd been left alone after having been given the pitiful scraps of bread and slices of fruit chewing through the rest of the rope.

She'd automatically swallowed most of this rope, too, even though this was the all-or-nothing, and that if she didn't get away this night, it wouldn't matter if the chewed up rope was found beside her.

Breath shallow, hands shaking and her stomach heaving heavily, Kruviya rolled over onto her stomach, hands beneath her to hopefully muffle the sound of rope snapping.

If she could sever it.

If she couldn't, it would, once again, not matter if she was found out or not, since then it would be too late.

She would do this.

Gritting her teeth, jaw protesting, Kruviya tightened her protesting muscles and slowly dragged her hands apart.

She would do this.

She would not end up wherever these bandits would have her end up, or anyone after them. Her life was hers, and she might... should, have spent the whole of it in dull, ever-same small-town life in the Willow Hills, but that would have been fine, because at least she would have decided that for her own.

She might have wondered, pondered, but even if she didn't know anything else, ever, it would have been her decision to stay there.

And this would be too.

Groaning, Kruviya angled her hands as well as she could so the wrists were together but the heels of her hands as far apart as she could make them, hoping the angle... would... help. The sound of rope snapping was, to Kruviya's ears, appallingly loud.

No one came.

Breath loud in her ears, heart hammering fit to slam itself through her chest and eyes burning with tears, now, instead of exhaustion, Kruviya snapped the rest of the rope and stood up, shaking her hands and rubbing her wrists.

Now she just had to free the others and somehow herd them to leave in a coherent and *quiet* group with her. Stumbling on her feet, Kruviya wove towards the closest girl; one of her year mates and the one that along with Tofa was so good at poetry; Yarraf.

Tofa...

Distracted for a moment, Kruviya stumbled on a stone large enough to send her crashing to the ground, breath whooshing out of her lungs and leaving her groaning. It also alerted the closest posted bandit on guard that something was wrong.

Steps echoing in the night, closer and closer, Kruviya closed her eyes, disappointment acid in her mouth.

This was it.

"What are you girls doing over here? Having a feast..?" The chuckle sent shivers like that produced by scratching metal against metal down Kruviya's spine, and her eyes flew open.

This was not over yet..!

"Hey, how'd you get all the way over here, eh? Get back to your spot," the bandit said, the chuckle in her voice changing to a growl, a growl that was matched by Kruviya's animal snarl as she rolled over on her back and kicked the bandit in the knees. The sound as her feet hit the kneecaps was muted, not exactly branches breaking, but definitely being bent. It was a sound Kruviya would remember. The mana went down with a choked-off cry, scrabbling for her knees and knife both, unable to decide which to clutch first.

Kruviya, breath coming in quick, open-mouthed gasps, threw herself on the downed bandit, burying child-sharp elbows in the mana's stomach and dove for the knife, slamming her little fist over the bandit's knuckles to get to the knife before her. It was heavy in her hand, the hilt made to be gripped by a grown-up mana, and not a child.

The metal blade gleamed briefly in the light of the three-quarters moon as it was unveiled by the rushing clouds, and Kruviya stared into the pain-muddled eyes of her opponent.

They were tear-bright, gleaming like the blade between them, but the grimace on the mana's face was not of pain, but rage.

"You little wyrm! Strangle the life out of you!" Her voice was heavy with intent, despite the pain muddling the words; pure murder. Kruviya automatically jerked her hand down, slamming the side of the hilt into the bandit's cheek just as she was clawed over the side of her face, the other hand grabbing for her knife-wielding hand's wrist.

Kruviya realized that this was it.

If she lost the knife, her life was also lost.

If she lost the knife, others would irrevocably decide her life for her.

If she lost the knife, her questions over whether life could contain more than sweet Tofa-kisses and bright sunlight over dusty hills would definitely end as the gleaming intent in those red eyes fulfilled its purpose.

Yells rising around them as their struggle finally called attention to itself, Kruviya wrestled her hand to angle another way, if not away from the other mana. It didn't need to be away from the bandit.

Heart stuttering painfully in her chest, hands going cold, Kruviya stared as those red eyes widened, as the mouth opened wider, voiceless protests being issued and the hand half-clutching her throat jerked spasmodically before going limp.

Hands shaking, feeling as if she'd dipped them in cellar-stored water, cold, cold, cold, she stabbed the knife again and again, down into the yielding softness.

It was only the once again slap of feet approaching that roused her from her single-minded duty of making sure that mana couldn't decide for her.

Staring up into yet another approaching pair of eyes intent on pain for her, Kruviya stumbled up and off the body, dashing away into the darkness, as the moon was once again hidden behind a veil of clouds.

Cold, so cold.

Her hands has been briefly warm as the blood had ran over them, coating her pristine skin with their guilt. Her hands had looked so pale next to the Sessan bandit's skin that was coloured like rich, fertile earth that had recently been watered. Almost black in the night against hers that reminded more of the mellow brown dust coating the Willow Hills in their own sort of veil.

Cold, and Kruviya wanted to stop and warm up, to curl up and get her guilt off her hands, but it would never go away, and she couldn't stop anyway, because then the bandits would surely get her.

She'd fallen down the long, lazy slope of a hill, cushioned by rough grass just as her palms and knees and calves were scraped by the sharp blades of the grass and the pale ground. She'd almost gutted herself with the knife as she fell, but she couldn't let it go, because then someone else would decide her life for her.

She ran until false dawn lightened the sky to the east, where Mt. Arraran towered in the distance, her attendants the Willow Mountains to the southeast of her, and the Willow Hills to the northeast.

She ran until she hit a narrow, muddy little stream, washing her hands and sleeves in the dirty water, tears leaving scalding hot trails that then grew cold and crusty on her cheeks. And yet she couldn't stop crying, couldn't stop screaming, because the bandit's throat had been giving under the blade, her blood hot as it gushed from the multiple stab wounds until her throat looked like so much ground meat, the white of the bones of her neck gleaming in the darkness.

Kruviya stared at a clump of grass, throat raw, her free hand shaking while the other held the knife to her chest in a pale-knuckled grip.

She wasn't sure how long she laid there, but when the sky was lightening, Kruviya realized she could hear a fountain.

It was a really huge one, if it could roar like that...

Sitting up, legs shaking but then stilling, Kruviya stuck her knife into the waistband of her pants, lifting up the long shirt to do so, and then slowly unwrapped the dirty, unsettled veil.

She hadn't had the chance to set the hijanji right all these days, and it had felt wrong.

Almost naked.

She felt even more naked now, out in the open instead of inside their house with her head bare like this, but there was no one around. When the hijanji was wrapped correctly again, Kruviya raised her head and stared.

"That... must be the sea," she muttered, her voice scraping uncomfortably against the back of her throat, but it was an observation that had to be uttered out loud.

"Maemi... Look at the sea." Kruviya sniffed, but no tears came as she stared at more water than she had seen in her whole life, the sound of it meeting the coast the origin of that low, fountain-like distant roaring.

It was like it called to her.

Kruviya wandered slowly though the waking little port town, following the sound of waves hitting land, or, in this case, a harbour, and the stench of fish. Her sleeves were cold and moist, but they'd dry in time, and at least her hands were clean.

No sign of her guilt now.

Leaving the houses behind, Kruviya stared out at the lazily rolling expanse of ocean outside of the still harbour water. She wondered what it would be like to have water under her feet.

A loud, angry cry had Kruviya jerking around, pale eyes wide and round as she whipped her head from side to side, staring around for the bandits. But the cry had just come from a server that threw a drunken sailor out of the harbour-side tavern.

There were no bandits.

Yet, Kruviya realized, because they would be coming here, as this was obviously the closest town to where they had camped, later today.

She had to get away.

Looking around, Kruviya felt like her heart was being squeezed. She could start walking this moment in the general direction of the yellow and orange light-smudged Hills so far in the distance. She didn't know where her home was in comparison to this town, though, and... what would still be in her home if she got there?

What would, and what wouldn't, be left after the bandits had been through?

The other possibility stood obvious in front of her, glittering invitingly on the surface and sounded with water falling from a fountain, but many times magnified.

She could take to the sea.

But... Where would that lead?

"Tide's turning, get ready to leave, people!" The high, piercing cry started Kruviya, and she began running without even noticing it.

The distance between her spot and where the ship was getting ready to leave seemed infinite, the spurt of energy that had carried Kruviya this far starting to wane.

"Wait! Do you have work for me?" Kruviya thought her shout, rough and abused as it was, had gotten lost in the sound of the sea, but activity halted and a tall Iskandarian mana, the embroidery bright and bold on her dark hijanji came up to the side of the ship.

"I wouldn't say no to a cabinhand. There's been a while since we had one and I certainly notice some things doesn't get done as they should. What's your name, cabinhand?" The mana smiled down at her as two other sailors, a Sessan and an Iskandarian, helped Kruviya aboard. Kruviya stared into the dark, friendly eyes of the captain, ignoring the mutters from the few Iskandarians on board and took a deep breath.

"... Kruvia."

Because Mana surely didn't recognize the girl that had been hit on the head in her hometown and that now stood on the deck of this ship on the coast in the very westernmost part of Iskandar as the same person.

There were decisions, actions, mistakes and guilt to this person that "Kruviya" had never known, taken, or done, having been watched over by the goddess.

No, Kruviya didn't exist anymore, for the goddess wasn't in her name.

Couldn't be.

There was only a bird that would fly over the sea for as long as she felt like it.

"Welcome aboard the Dancing Wave, then, Kruvia. We're shipping wool and wine to Beak Bay City. I hope you'll like life at sea."

***

((If you're wondering about the names, and what the differences are; firstly, Kruviya would be pronounced with a silent 'i', the stress lies in the 'ya' part. Secondly; the 'ya' comes from shaya (divine/holy/goddess), so it's a whole word with a particular meaning when used in a name, and Kruvia removes that from her name.))

electrainverted @ 2008-04-06T00:23:00

2008-04-05T22:29:27Z

A continuation, of sorts, to the story posted back in January. I got poked, prodded and inspired into writing down another of the danaane's myths, despite their poetic way of telling it being a pain in the ass. But I can't just not write down their myths in ways they wouldn't tell them, now can I?

So...

Title: Mana's Light
Sequel/continuation to A Beginning Song
Rating: All. Seriously. There's the most poetic of mentions of sex, but, yeah.

"... And so, that is the world today," the Bard murmured, her voice barely heard above the last, drawn out shivers of music as her lyre quieted. The sky outside of the house was the same deeply blue so prized by the Danaane, though the horizon, visible between the buildings, was still tinged with the last, deepest heart-blood red. The Bard's eyes opened and swept over the large, round room, waiting with a soft, narrow smile as two of the adults took out bedding and laid it out on the floor, urging the three youngest down, despite protests.

"It's for later, dear hearts, now down with you. The evening's not over yet." The promise that they weren't expected to go to sleep yet settled the children and the Bard nodded, fingering the uppermost points on her antler-lyre.

"Then, as we know how things are in the now, we will travel backwards... For from the now, history is born and in every moment we can know how things have been. And for things to have become as they are, rhythms have had to be set. And the all-pervading rhythm we will find informing all other rhythms is that of night and day. Sun and Moon. The beginning of life as it is requires light, but light did not exist in the beginning..."

***

The sky was dark, the earth was cold, and Mana, Horned Goddess, Greatest Mother, wandered the world. She wished to stir the life within, and her hands were soft, her breath was warm, her body bright. But the spirits would not wake, for however warm and light, when she left it left with her. No matter thus that Mother's strength could raise the skies, could stir the seas. Without light warming earth, without light brightening sky, life could not grow.

The sky was dark, the earth was cold, and Mana, Horned Goddess, lit all she met. Tender greens and violets, seeking upwards towards her smile and warming breath, turned cold and brittle as she left. Their colours paled, they withered, and Mother, grieving Mother, spilled the world's first tears.

The sky was dark, the earth was cold, and Mana, Horned Goddess, spilled bitter tears onto earth, into sea. The waters deep, the silence huge, the rocky beaches cold and still. At this end she knelt, she knelt down and cried. Cried for failure and loss of life, for life not even given chance to grow. And Mother's tears streamed into the sea, a sea that was now stinging on the tongue, a sea that before had been as sweet and cold as ice.

The sea was deep and dark and cold, and embraced all the land. And Mana, Horned Goddess, cried alone by the edge, her body lit by an inner light. But in this deepest sea, darker than the secret depths, slept sweet Darkness quietly. She had slept for aeons past, never noticed Mana's plight. But so different this bitterness, it roused sweetest Darkness from the deep.

The sea was deep and dark and cold, only stirred by Darkness' eager rise, and Mana, Horned Goddess, was met by surprise. And Darkness sweet was struck by this; her brilliance bright, her beauty dark, her hidden eyes like sparkling stars. This all lit a burning need, a passion deep. Singing brightly, charming words, first sound at all. And then dancing to the tune, hair streaming, moving, barely concealing, Darkness drew the Goddess in. Their bodies moving sinuously, in harmony, their movements stirred the sea. Passion warming sea and sky, colours burst into light. And from this loving union, of body, spirit, mind, two children, the Sisters, sprung. First life, first light, birthed one from each.

The world was still and dark and cold, but now from Mana, Horned Goddess, Greatest Mother, came brilliant incandescence. Soft and warm, the Sun lit all. And from Darkness, sweetest lover, origin, came shyest light. Hard and cold, the Moon guides sea and night. The Sisters' scream, as one, was the second sound. The children grew as children do, and each a boat was given, and a course the hold. The Sisters thus lighting the world, the spirits of land and sea and sky stirred.

Mana, Horned Goddess, Greatest Mother, could then walk the world, the spirits in her wake. The earth flourished with greens and violets, the sky with clouds and wind and rain, and the sea with careful life, which all would become what is today.

Female Genital... Whatever

2008-02-26T15:54:14Z

What to call it? That seems to be the problem. If you use "mutilation" as the third word, you're disrespectful against the women it has been used on, despite the fact that it is a mutilation, though only if we're talking about anything beyond removal of the clitoral hood.

Removal of the clitoral hood? Closest possible analogy to male circumcision, so, that could be "female circumcision", right? I, at least, can go with that, it's as non "mutilating", though completely useless, as male circumcision.

Beyond that? Taking away the clitoris, the clitoris and part of the labia, or taking the whole works away plus sewing it up? I don't care how "disrespectful" the terminology is, but that is mutilation. Why be respectful about a practice that isn't respectful towards the women who it's used on?
But, okay. Shouldn't use "FGM" anyway, all right. I suppose using FGC (female genital cutting) is as neutral as you can get, but it doesn't convey what is done. And if anyone uses female genital surgery, I'm going to scream. "Surgery";
1 : a branch of medicine concerned with diseases and conditions requiring or amenable to operative or manual procedures (Merriam-Webster)
# The branch of medicine that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of injury, deformity, and disease by manual and instrumental means.
# A surgical operation or procedure, especially one involving the removal or replacement of a diseased organ or tissue. (The American Heritage)
4. a medical procedure involving an incision with instruments; performed to repair damage or arrest disease in a living body; "they will schedule the operation as soon as an operating room is available"; "he died while undergoing surgery" [syn: operation] (WordNet)

I had no fucking idea that taking away normal(ly functioning) parts of the outer female organ was a "surgery". To me, surgery implies fixing something, making it better. Completely destroying parts or the whole of the outer female sexual organ is not making it "better", is not "fixing" it.
How about FGD? Female Genital Destruction? Because removal of the clitoris functionally destroys a dimension of female pleasure that's not connected to reproductive sexuality. Going even further and sewing it up doesn't just destroy the outer sexual organ of a woman. It negates it. Annihilates it. It's a smooth, negative space where there before was a positive (as in, folds and parts part of a normal vulva that existed, and taking this away negates it) space.

I'm tired of passing off various efforts of change/destroy the female body as "surgery", as "fixing" it, as "making it better" as "making it societally/culturally acceptable, whether that "acceptable" is outside pressure or one the woman experiences in her head.
Breast surgery? Adding or taking anything away (besides reducing breast size because it's injuring you); Wrong.
Taking away "excess" fat? (If it's not done because all that is threatening your life); Wrong.
Putting in toxins or whatever in your face or other places to smooth out wrinkles? Wrong.
Binding feet? Wrong.
Cutting off the clitoris, or the clitoris and labia and then sometimes sewing it up? Wrong.
Most of the examples up there I count as "wrong" simply because they're mostly done so the female body will conform after some social/cultural idea of "good/beautiful woman" (or to avoid excessive attention, like huge breasts can give you), but they're also harmful, and all of them are destructive. They destroy a woman's body. End of fucking story.
So, really, fe/male circumcision is also "wrong", but it doesn't destroy anything, really (except when it does, due to accidents), but it's completely useless.

But, okay. I suppose FGC will have to be used, even though it does not express the complete destruction of (part of) women's sexuality as well as genitals. There's nothing "respectful" about destroying women's sexuality, and "FGC" doesn't really express the whole dimension of annihilation going on in that procedure, but, whatever, right? It's not just about the destruction of women's genitals, you know. It's about the destruction of a dimension of pleasure not tied to what traditionally is seen as the be-all and end-all of the Woman; reproductive function. Babies. Woman as Nothing Else but Mother. It's about the destructive annihilation, physically, culturally, socially and mentally, of a part of women's sexuality that is independent of reproduction.

...

Come on, now. Call me a sex-fixated imperialist (or should that be sex-and-genital-fixated imperialist, to be more complete?). I know you want to, right?

electrainverted @ 2008-02-23T00:41:00

2008-02-22T23:57:31Z

And now, a ficcy interlude concerning Sweeney Todd.

Title: Never Fine Again
Rating: Teen, I suppose. There's some kissing and groping going on here.
Pairing: Mrs. Lovett/Lucy Barker
Summary: Not long after Benjamin Barker was sent away, Mrs. Lovett goes upstairs to warn Lucy that the Judge is back again, but it all ends up so much more, whether beneficial or not.
Movie/story not mine, but the, uh, "song" is.
Spoilers: Well, if you haven't seen the movie... This also takes place before the story itself, just a few weeks after Benjamin Barker was sentenced and shipped off.
Notes: This isn't a songfic, but it includes lyrics, changed as well as not, from the movie, and an original "song".

The sky outside the little window was smoky gray, but whether from chimney smoke or clouds was, as always, hard to tell. Bouncing Johanna on her arm, Lucy paced the room from one side to the other, the floor creaking below her feet. Casting a glance at the window, Lucy quickly looked away and smiled at her daughter, the corners of her lips starting to quiver the longer she looked at Johanna's soft, round little face.

"Hush my heart, my dove, hush. I know I'm not dada, but sleep for me. Sleep, and I'm sure... sure he'll be back before you wake up..." Lucy's voice caught, and it was a struggle to finish. Suppressing the sobs, Lucy shook her head and kissed Johanna's forehead, her pink baby-soft skin smelling sweetly.

"Yes, I'm sure Benjamin will be home soon and have all sorts of things to tells us. Don't you think so, Johanna? I have never been beyond the bounds of London. Beheld no wonders but the one embraced. So tell us when you come home, dada dear, for there is no place like London..." Lucy's smile was tight, stretched thin over her face and heart alike, but at least Johanna was now staring intently at her, hands slowly relaxing.

"No, there's no place like London!" Lucy tried to check the emotions welling up into her throat as her thoughts wandered away from getting her daughter to sleep to other, more unpleasant thoughts.

***

Below, Mrs. Nellie Lovett glanced up at her ceiling, where the restless pacing of the woman above made the floorboards creak rhythmically. It seemed the child would not go to sleep without it's father.

"Oh Benjamin, love. See what has happened without you? There was a barber and his wife. A young barber and his wife. Life was kind to them. They have learned..." Mrs. Lovett looked up from her needlework and stared out the window, not sure what made her look, but felt her mouth twist at what she saw.

The man was well-attired and handsome enough, if you liked his sort of features and the flowers in his hands were fresh with not even a slumping petal yet. One could almost see the dew-drops glittering on petals and leaves. He looked severely out of place against the sooty, sagging buildings behind him and the more or less well-clad people hurrying up and down the street, leaving a wide, empty space around the man.

"Oh yes, my love, the law chased you out, chased you away, and what's left... Is nothing more than flies and shit. There's a hole in the world, like a great black pit. And the vermin of the world inhabit it," Mrs. Lovett stood up, putting away the needlework with a grimace at the man and his flowers. Not really minding the man's intentions now, if he'd just been quicker about it, seen... her... earlier, something, whatever, anything! Anything but the situation that had gotten her Benjamin run out of town for nothing but a silly blonde little goose, however sweet she was.

"Oh, yes, the vermin of the world inhabit it, and its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit, and it goes by the name of London!" Spitting as she opened the door and wandered around the corner, Mrs. Lovett chanced a glare at the man before she went on, and luckily the fool was all too focused on the window above to see it.

***

Lucy hummed as Johanna's head bumped at her chest, wandering over to the window to look out it. In the days... weeks, since... the trial, she had begun to fear that window, fear it for... Hissing, Lucy jerked back, eyes filling with tears as she saw the exact thing that was the reason for her reluctance to walk up to the window.

Judge Turpin.

Johanna squirmed and whined in her arms, as she had obviously tightened the grip around her girl.

"I'm sorry, dove, I got distracted. On these streets, once so safe, I see shadows, everywhere. Shadows filling this hole we live in. And at the top of the hole sit a privileged few..." Lucy gently caressed Johanna's head, the pale hair soft and feathery, trying to ignore her shaking hand and voice.

"Making mock of the creatures of the lower zoo, turning beauty into ice and despair! I have never gone beyond the bounds of London, but even in the blackest pit, there must be those in whose heart mercy sit. For there is no place like London!"
The sharp knock on the door had Lucy jerking, but the movement, thankfully, didn't wake Johanna, so she could lay her daughter down before turning to the door.

Had the Judge gotten so bold so as to come to her door?

Was there nowhere to hide, to be safe anymore?

Another knock forced her to move, slowly, nails biting into the palm of one hand, but the other was free to shake as it willed. Tears hot in her eyes, but not falling, Lucy took a breath, quickly rubbed her face and opened the door.

"Ne-- Mrs. Lovett! Oh, I... I'm sorry about the time I took... I... Please come in," Lucy said with a smile that was mostly straight, and a laugh that quivered.

"No worry, love. You've got a child, don't you? A sweet little thing... miss her father, don't she?" Mrs. Lovett walked over to the sleeping little girl, one hand sketching a caress in the air above the cradle. Lucy couldn't get her voice to work, only nodded as she closed the door.

"That judge is here again. Awfully opportunistic, I would say! Even though he's a great catch..." Mrs. Lovett turned away from Johanna to face Lucy again, studying the pale face and bright pink cheeks and eyes, the quivering lips.

"Oh, love! Come, sit. It'll be fine, you see!" Mrs. Lovett shook her head, quickly crossing the floor to Lucy and gently tugged her over to a chair, crouching beside it.

"Poor thing. Poor, sweet little soul. It'll be fine..." Mrs. Lovett trailed off as Lucy sobbed, bending over and hiding her face in her hands.

"Hush my darling, hush my love. I will hide you, safe and sound. I will hide you, hide you, until you can, stand."
"Oh, Mrs. Lovett, how can I ever, ever smile again? How will it ever, ever..."
"Until it is..."
"Be..."
**Fine again.**
Gently bending forward, Mrs. Lovett pried Lucy's hands away from her face, rubbing the shaking, cold hands between her own. Lucy hiccuped, then jerked her hands away, grabbing at Mrs. Lovett's shoulders and tugging her forward, kissing the corner of her mouth with heavy, quivering lips, again and again like a scared rabbit's heart. One hand falling down to Lucy's ankle, Mrs. Lovett pushed it up under the skirt and followed the leg, squeezing the knee and bunching up the skirt of the dress.

"Oh, love. Hush." She leaned far enough to lay a feathery kiss just above the cleft between Lucy's breasts, then upwards again to press a kiss against Lucy's lips. Their mouths slid together gently for a rose-smelling, suspended movement before Lucy jerked to the side, her fingers like claws into Mrs. Lovett's shoulders, but she didn't push the woman away. A tear slid down one of Lucy's cheeks.

"His gentle smile, his hands so sure..."
"Did they caress you here, my love?"
"Oh, Mrs. Lovett--ah! No, Mrs, Lovett, don't erase his touch, his smell, his smile!"
"Hush, my darling, hush my love. I will hide you, hide you, until..."
"Oh, Mrs. Lovett, if you do, Mrs. Lovett, how will it ever, ever..."
"It is..."
"Be..."
**Fine again.**
Her hand on Lucy's knee now wandering further up, hidden by bunched-up folds of flounced cloth, curving against a milk-white, warm thigh. Mrs. Lovett smiled, kissing the front of the throat as Lucy shook her head. Nonetheless, one of Lucy's hands had let go of its shoulder and was now caressing from Mrs. Lovett's throat down to her breasts, cold, unstable fingers slipping beneath the cloth every now and then to reach a nipple and pinch most delightfully, and caress a handful of breast.

"Poor thing, hush. Hush, my love and tell me... Tell me more. Where did our Benjamin caress you, hold you, love you?" Mrs. Lovett dropped kiss after kiss all over the bare collarbone and whatever of the breasts that were exposed, while the hand under Lucy's dress rubbed against the only thing beside her mouth that seemed hot enough to belong to a human body.

"Nellie..." Lucy's sigh was barely the ghost of a whisper. Gently, quickly, firmly, not even the breathless sigh nor the kiss that followed, though quickly broken off, distracted Nellie from her task.

"My thoughts are burning, aching. My hands are trembling, shaking. How will I ever, ever, stand again? His hands they held me, so secure. His lips they breathed, breathed..."
"No, my sweetest, foolish love. To live you must forget, my love. To stand, to speak, to walk, my love, you must learn to breathe, my love..."
"All the air I ever needed!"
"On your own, my love! Otherwise, my love..."
"Oh, no, Mrs. Lovett! Stop, Mrs. Lovett! I think I just forgot his kiss, Mrs. Lovett! How will it ever, ever..."
"It will never, never..."
**Be fine again...**
Lucy's body tightened, and despite her earlier protests, she tugged Nellie's head up and this kiss clashed together like two angry, eager bulls, their horns locking... and fitting together. Their lips slid and danced together, Nellie's fingers pressing against cloth to push, just a bare bit, inside the burning heat, then out and up to flick against the most sensitive place Lucy possessed, and the choked-off scream jerked fitfully along Lucy's limbs, down Nellie's legs and then died a slow death on the floor.

Lucy's tears were hot and wet against Nellie's face, while her hand was moistened through the cloth. Then it was over. Lucy's breath came in hiccuping shivers, bursts of hot, moist air puffing against Nellie's forehead as she rested her face against Lucy's collarbone.

"Nellie... I don't think..." there was a gasping hiccup, and Lucy's hands gripped spasmodically at Nellie's arms, the sleeves wrinkling.

"Is Judge Turpin still outside?" This time her voice came out surprisingly steady, with only the ghost of a shiver beneath her sweet tones. Nellie shook her head and stood up, straightening the skirt of her dress with care before she slid over the floor to the window, staring down at the street.

"No, he isn't. I still think you should consider, Lucy..." Nellie checked herself as Lucy sobbed again behind her, but when she spoke, the voice of the widow (for all intents and purposes, at least) Barker was strong, refusal thick in her voice.

"Never! I don't... I can't... How could I let the man who sent my Benjamin away ever touch me? I don't think... I'm, I'll ever be able to, to..." Lucy trailed off, her eyes glittering with unshed tears as she looked from Nellie to the door and then down at the floor, hands shaking as they gripped her rearranged skirt.

"Oh, love. When you feel ready, come on down and I'll have a glass of wine ready for you." Nellie shook her head, walked back to where Lucy was sitting, and before she left bent down over Lucy's head and kissed the top of her golden crown of hair.

***

When the door closed behind her, Johanna's startled, just-woken-up cry was abruptly muffled. Leaning against the wall beside the door, Nellie lifted her hands and breathed in the scent of Lucy still lingering there, and if she concentrated really, really hard, she imagined she could smell Benjamin there, instead. It was, almost, as having touched him herself.

"There was a barber and his wife, and they were beautiful. A foolish barber and his wife. He was my reason and her life." Nellie shook her head as she slowly went down the stairs. If only... At least she had touched where Benjamin had. At least that...
"And he was beautiful. And she was beautiful. And I was... naïve."

***

Hope I didn't make a total idiot out of myself with that song. :D;

electrainverted @ 2008-01-28T16:14:00

2008-01-28T15:19:56Z

:D This is the prologue, not to any particular story, but rather to my universe/the world of Aldaliss itself. An "introduction", if you will, to how things are and work in Aldaliss. It's more poetic than straightforward explanation, though, as it's framed as a traditional recital/song of one of the peoples of Aldaliss.

The sky was turning dark purple, only edged in fiery orange at the horizon when the Bard's Heart began to sound, strings plucked in a gentle cascade to accompany the soft murmur of the Bard herself. Sitting on a collapsible stool in front of the assembled audience, the Bard smiled and nodded to the youngest child.

"So what do you want to hear? Adventure? Myths and song, romance or history?" Her voice was a sing-song rhythm that made several sigh in anticipation and shift to get into better place on their cushions, and the youngest, merely six, smiled eagerly.

"The beginning! Mommy told it to me yesterday, but I want to hear a real Bard tell it!" Her voice was high and bright, a tumbling storm of spring leaves, and one of the adults laughed and buried her face in the shoulder of the one beside her.

"She did, did she?" The Bard smiled and the antler-lyre sounded a brief rain of glittering notes. "It's history then, but before we come to how things came to be, I'll tell you how things are..."

This is the world that Mana, the Horned Goddess, created. The skies are blue, decorated with birds in uncounted numbers. The land is in greens and violets, lush and rich with all its animals and flowers. The oceans are blue, deeper than the sky, and teem with fish and graceful shapes.

This is the world that Mana, Horned Goddess, created. The dragons rose from the earth, warmed by the sun. A few flew in the air with wings, others rose without. But graceful were they all, scales like rainbow amber in the sun. The greatest of those beings, ignored all rules laid onto them, and dominated world and skies, until all they fell but the old one in the north.

This is the world that Mana, Horned Goddess, created. In the south, her children there, took her name as their own. The sun was hot upon their heads, and hair they lacked on all but their rounded heads, lacked a lushly tail and long, graceful ears. In the north, the greatest dragon, lonesome in her might, gazed jealously upon the children the Goddess had breathed into life. Her magic huge, she did so violate, the life-filled potential of the magic springs. From such a lowly origin, the Wyrmlings rose, their wings spread wide, less hair than even Mana's self-named ones. Their ears not ears but horns to catch all sound, they were given tails but yet so different, stubby, short, no grace at all, to help balance them.

This is the world that Mana, Horned Goddess, created. While her hairless ones flourished in the hottest sun, for us she gave plains and hills, for us a milder wind. Long, pointed ears, moving, to let no sound unheard. Moving like the wind in grass, soundlessly in graceful bounds, our hoofsteps small and light. And in her wisdom, to balance us, the most perfect trait of all; a tail of such length and strength, none could match its sight, hair draped in such a way, the full end dancing in the wind.

This is the world that Mana, Horned Goddess, created. All the children of the Goddess, share her love and passion. All beings on this world, grow yet more numerous with her blessing. Some, so far from us, match their bodies' crude difference, opposites to somehow make a whole, and from this union comes more. The children of the Goddess, closer to her light, though different in shapes and minds, unite no halves that differ. Rather sameness in two shapes, halves to make a whole, and from this perfect unity springs life anew. The dragons, koribiiti, mana's self-named ones. Along with us they are so made, and if there are yet more around, be sure they will appear, but I for one know nothing more.

This is the world that Mana, Horned Goddess, created. And if there is yet more to it, I know for now naught else!

electrainverted @ 2008-01-13T02:19:00

2008-01-13T01:24:42Z

Would the phrase "ample yet perky breasts" please follow the guards quietly over behind the chemical sheds for execution? THANK YOU. We have endured its tyranny for long enough, now. NO MORE.

GRAVITY EXISTS AND MY BOOBS ARE SUBJECT TO IT, NOT YOUR MAGICAL REALITY OF EVER-HAPPY PERKY BOOBS OF LUSCIOUSNESS!

Bah.

Bah, I tell you! *shoots the phrase herself*

Christmas (kinda) story!

2007-12-21T19:12:23Z

This is the equivalent of a Christmas story, though, of course, it's not Christmas at all, since this story take place in another place entirely from Earth. But before you read the story, a myth has to be told...

Darkness was alone in the world, beside the great goddess Mana, and she was lonely. That the life Mana created each time perished in the all-pervading night that reigned didn't make Darkness feel any better about herself, for nothing can survive and flourish in complete blackness. Lonely, and ashamed that it-her very existence was making any new life impossible, Darkness hid at the bottom of the sea.

Down on the empty seabed, Darkness found a single stone sparkling despite the fact that no light yet existed. Fascinated, Darkness ate the stone, and then quickly had to rise to the surface in surprised horror as it-her stomach grew and distended. Calling upon Mana and her daughter, the goddess of knowledge, the two helped deliver the first life-light unto the world. And so the Sun and the Moon were born, and life could flourish in their presence.

Frost covered the ground, buildings and windows in delicate, sparkling patterns as lamps decorated with branches of evergreen lighted the city as the sun set early enough to simply not matter.

Her breath clouding in the air, Linn tugged her coat more firmly around herself, wondering if she shouldn't have asked for a fur-lined cloak instead last year. Even with the fur they were cheaper than a thick coat.

The smells in the air were sweet and spicy, heralding the evening's feasts that would be partaken of in each home, and Linn smiled widely as a particular scent reached her nose.

Quickening her pace into a heedless run, laughing and waving apologetically behind her as good-natured protests were called out against her back.

At the right-hand corner of Great Flower Square where the street Linn had been walking on met the square itself was a small stall with a utilitarian brown canvas for cover, though much decorated with evergreens and brightly-coloured ribbons. The smell that wafted from it was dark and heady and positively sparked with spices.

"Mana bless, someone's eager!" The voice, as rich and dark as the scents promised the treat to be, was heavy with an accent Linn had learned to place only by years of being treated to this drink.

"Well, I can't help it... can't get it at any other point in the year!" Linn smiled widely and handed over her rings without her usual hesitance over spending, almost grabbing the steaming cup right out of the mana's hands.

Red eyes dancing with laughter, the Sessan raised an eyebrow and Linn had the grace to shrug with a smothered smile and withdraw her hand from the not even completely filled cup.

"I don't blame you. It is a special thing..." the Sessan smiled, dark eyelashes partly covering her glittering eyes, and Linn squirmed in place as those pearly white teeth peeked forward from behind dark, plump lips, and a pink tongue clicked against those teeth.

"Oh..?" Linn urged, knowing the secret in those strange eyes had to be worth knowing, noting how the frost-pale fur contrasted with the rich darkness of the Sessan's skin, and wanting to touch both skin and fur, to compare their softness and feel.

Laughing, the Sessan filled the cup to the brim with the frothy brown liquid, adding something ground from a heavy mortar beside her, a pinch of nail-sized bright red leaves, and a cup-long stem smelling strongly sweet, but which Linn knew had a right vicious kick behind the sweetness.

"If you get the right gift, come see me tomorrow and I'll tell you. It's a country secret, see. Can't go spreading it around to just anyone on the street," she said with another lowered-lid, tongue-peek smile, and Linn had to bite her lower lip as she smiled back.

She knew the fluttering in her stomach was only half due to finally being able to taste this sweet-spicy rich liquid that surely was a gift from the divinities.

Forced to leave the stall as there was a line of people behind her, Linn wandered out on the square and sat down on the edge of the fountain the middle of the open space.

The people wandering around were all clad in colourful cloaks or coats, the thick, slightly puffy pants stuffed into boots peeking out under the edges of the outer wear, usual winter clothing.

Here and there, though, one could see someone dashing around in a cloak and only a dress, that person obviously not having bothered to change from inside clothes to outside ones. Surrounding her were many stalls, large as small, colours and scents both familiar and foreign, but all being right for the season.

This was the shortest day on the year, the beginning of life and the end of the reign of darkness as the sun and light returned again.

Breathing in the heavy scent and dancing steam from her cup, Linn followed without seeing two laughing little children chased by their mothers, wondering if she'd be able to get a few words exchanged with the tender of the stall when she returned the mug...

The Sessan was tall and warm, Linn could almost see the steam that rose off of her in the cold air and Linn wanted to touch...

Laughing softly, Linn rose and wandered back with the empty cup, licking her stinging lips and savouring the burn and tingle in her stomach that rose up along her spine and downwards, warming lower, wondering if she could ask the Sessan to come with her to the Stone Gifting the city had in the Great Flower Square each year.

To Linn's disappointment, however, there was an older woman there, fine lines around her eyes and mouth and a warm smile that reminded of the younger mana, but with less... spice, was the closest Linn could come.

And despite her want to ask for the younger Sessan, she couldn't make herself ask the mana's probable mother for her daughter's whereabouts, just handed over the cup with a muttered thank you and blushing as she remembered the smile the Sessan had given her, alike but so different from the mother's smile.

***

Feeling somehow robbed of some great possibility or opportunity that left her stomach flopping emptily, Linn stomped home. Now only irritated by the faint tingling still along her spine, as the warmth just made her think of the Sessan, that smile, and the dark, heavy voice promising to tell her things...

Shaking her head, Linn tugged off her coat and hung it on its peg along the wall, wondering how the Sessan thought Linn would be able to find her tomorrow, and, even if Linn came over to the stall at the right time, what constituted the "right gift".

"My, what a pinched look. Who stole your stones, sweetheart?" Mami said with a raised eyebrow, neat short hair around her head like a feathery cap, the two long braids framing her face like flames where she stood bent over a pie, adding the last decorations to it.

Linn shrugged and flopped down at the table opposite her mother, grimacing, but aware it was probably more of a pout than a proper grimace.

"Pretty Sessan in the stall, gone when I came back," Linn said with another pout and crossed her arms, slumping over the table and stretching out her legs under it.

"No sulking on the day of the Birth, child! Otherwise no stones after dinner," her other Mami said as she came in from the entrance, slapping Linn over her head. Waving futilely after the hands she'd been punished with, Linn rolled her eyes, but nonetheless straightened and and took the platters she was handed.

"Whatever, Mami. That might work on Vayitta and Kassa still, but I'm not ten," Linn snorted as she placed the platters and other dinnerware out around the table.

"Talking about the little monsters, where are they?" Linn looked around with a frown, realizing she wasn't hearing the usual screams, laughter and constant slamming of the front door (accompanied by freezing drafts of air) as the twins ran in and out and up and down from the bottom floor to the upper floor, where the bedrooms were.

Mami laughed, her honey-brown eyes sparkling and red braids swaying as she shook her head, relieving her joined of the heavy pot with it's temptingly-smelling steak and put it in the middle of the table.

"Your grandmothers took them to the market for a while, and then over to your aunts. They'll all be coming in soon." She nodded as there were faint familiar voices coming closer, at least four of them raised in excited babbling that broke out in screeches and laughter every now and then.

"And I wouldn't worry about your Sessan, Linn," Mami said with a smirk, pale eyes knowingly narrowed as she grabbed a braid and tugged her joined in for a brief kiss. "It's the eve of the Birth of the Sun and the Moon, after all... Things meant to happen, will."
Rolling her eyes at her mothers' antics, Linn nonetheless hoped Mami was right...

But she had other things to do right now than think of pretty eyes and a hungry, secret smile. Like family and screaming, chattering monsters laughing in excitement running around everybody's feet.

***

"And what now, child? Was there some reason you're suddenly too shy to confront that blushing little spineback that came over with the mug before?" Sbala snorted with laughter in her voice, giving her daughter a sharp glance out of the corner of her eye.

She knew well enough that Sesl was far from being anything even close to "shy". Sesl shrugged and tilted her head, answering when there was next a pause in the flow of people to the stall.

"Not really, no... But it needs to happen as it should," Sesl said quietly with her eyes fastened somewhere far away over the frosted roofs of Vaymassa. The sing-song quality of Sesl's voice told Sbala all she, once again, needed to know.

"Be careful with your "should be's" and "need to be's", child. Not all thinks such a forward-planning trait is sweet when first faced with it." Sbala shook her head as Sesl only shrugged again, her small smile sporting that familiar tongue-peek.
"And put your tongue away, Sesl, I'm not twenty, and I'm your mother," Sbala said, rather surprised that Sesl was already dreamingly planning in her mind. Usually, that stage happened somewhat later in the proceedings.

"But maemi dearest, I love you so! What if I would like to share such deeper intimacies with you?" Sesl flung herself at her mother, but collapsed laughing against Sbala's shoulder, and the older woman snorted viciously as she threw her daughter off.

"Away, you star-struck little fool! If I didn't know better, I'd ask if you've become blinded by that little one."
Sesl tilted her head again, staring into the mortar of ground nuts as if they held the secret of the universe.

"As they would say here, Lelimara speaks through her eyes, maemi. I need to touch... But only if things go as they should," Sesl said with a frown, tracing the edge and outer sides of the mortar. It wouldn't have been hard to ask a question, to reveal the want that spoke of wanting... no, needing, to see, meet and talk with the vaymassan girl, to touch and taste and know.

But Sesl couldn't help her machinations and dreamy "if this happens, then...", even when she many times had been confronted with the failure of something wanted, or the loss of a brief sexual entangle or a full-fledged relationship for all that, because of it.

It simply was.

"If you say so, child. Just don't sulk if things fall by the wayside due to your round-about ways," Sbala said with a shake of her head, wondering quietly how things would turn out this time.

***

Leaning back against Llarali, Avantai closer her eyes briefly and simply listened to the chatter of a handful of children often interrupted by laughter.

"Sweet, isn't it?" Llarali whispered against Avantai's ear, her breath ruffling the short red hair hiding the pink shell. Avantai hummed in agreement, rubbing a hand over the arm that encircled her waist.

"Do you think she'll figure it out?" Avantai murmured and cracked her eyes open, studying her daughter through her eyelashes. In the warm light from the glass lamps, Linn's short spikes had turned warm, shifting like fire as she was bent towards her cousin in conversation.

"Give her just a little more time, and she'll have it. She's clever like that, just needs a bit of time, even if she doesn't even notice it, to think of a problem," Llarali chuckled softly, nuzzling the hair and ear in front of her face.

"I wonder where she got that trait from, uhm? You're not known for being very clever, dear," Avantai laughed, reaching back to bury a hand in Llarali's thick mop of dust-coloured hair, leaning her head back on the shoulder behind her to stare into pale gray eyes. Llarali grimaced, sticking her tongue out and then bowed down to kiss her joined.

"Ewwwww! Mamite, stop thaaaat!" The twin chorus of voices from the floor over by the basin made Avantai and Llarali laugh into each other, breath mingling.

"Happy with your gifts, children?" Llarali asked as she and Avantai separated, and the beaming grins on their twins and the smiles and nods from the rest told all.

The stones that had been picked up out of the basin and exchanged for gifts were now littering the same table the basin stood on, lighter points in the dark material catching the light from the lamps and sparkling, every now and then.

The room was bright and warm, with lingering smells of the earlier dinner still in the air and the stove radiating warmth. The floor at one end of the kitchen had been covered with furs, on which the children, along with Hioske and the baby she was for the moment nursing, were spread out on.

Most of the adults, then, were sitting by the table or in the two chairs (one of which Avantai and Llarali had claimed together) squeezed into this end of the room. Linn sat closest to the table with the basin, and, apparently distracted while talking with her cousin, reached up and took one of the stones off the table, playing with it.

Avantai and Llarai looked on with amusement as Linn momentarily froze, hand squeezing shut over the stone, and then she fairly exploded upwards, the stone landing on the table with a clatter.

"Gifts! Stones! See you later!" Linn called out in a cry where the words jumbled together, and in a swish of cloth, cold draft and a bang of the door, Linn was no longer in the house.

"I hope she won't be too cold, running out in a house dress like that..."

***

Breathing heavily of the frozen air as she ran, Linn wondered *why* go through so much trouble? For what would count as the "right" gift in the Vaymassa Stone Gifting?

It was rather different, in terms of gifts, than the regular giftings... But even as the impossibility of getting the "right" gift haunted her thoughts, Linn couldn't deny the thunder in her mind that echoed that of her heart, but had nothing to do with physical labour.

She had to slow down as she came to Great Flower Square though, as there was, as usual, quite a crowd milling about.

The air was filled with a buzz that almost felt real, like the faintest of breezes and the light from the great fire stone lamps around the Square was supplemented by torches using firewood, so the air smelled of pine and something indefinably fresh and sharp.

Winter and happiness.

Linn stopped and had to lean over, taking a few heavy breaths to calm down, feeling her cheek burn from the nippy air. She also became aware of the cold draft around her legs, but decided, with a grimace, to not turn around home and change.

It'd take too much time.

Straightening, Linn dove into the crowd, immediately being covered with the chatter, laughter and leashed anticipation vibrating between the bodies.

She saw quite a few people she recognized, especially Dana and her other friends, standing by one of the torches and leaning close to each other for warmth and to be able to actually hear what the others in the group were saying.

Linn hesitated for a moment, but continued to where the crowd was thickest; towards the center and the great, shallow basin that had been carted out here five days ago, in anticipation of the Stone Gifting the city held each year.

"Hey, Linn! You're here too? I was wondering if you were gonna show up, or what!" Issa called out as she suddenly appeared out of the crowd, tall and blond and sporting a wide, eager smile, and Linn laughed, shaking her head.

"I was going to come! Something came up, though, so I was pretty distracted the whole night." Linn shrugged as she looked around, frowning as it seemed the people in front of her would never end.

What if there were no stones left...

Though, of course, someone else could already have picked the "right" one.

"Well, you're here now! I wonder who has the match to the stone I pick up," Issa clapped her hands eagerly, and, apparently tired of waiting, used elbows and height to barge past the group talking in front of them.

One could never accuse Issa of being particularly polite when she got excited.

Quickly trailing after in Issa's wake, Linn smiled apologetically to those having fallen victim to Issa's determination, she was now, though, however it had happened, at the basin much earlier than she would otherwise have managed.

Staring into the clear, slightly steaming water, Linn let her hand wander over the surface, hesitating between the coloured and symbol-decorated stones.

She had to choose one of them, but which was right..?

A burst of bright laughter to her left startled her, but made her grin and shake her head, finally just plunging her hand into the water and coming up with a clear blue stone carved with a simple stylized flower with five petals.

"You got a stone, Linn? Good, come on then!" Issa appeared again, grinning as she waved her own tightly fisted hand.

Linn shook her head again, jerking her head out over the crowd and away from where she knew her friends were collected.

"I think I'll just go wander the crowd a bit, until it's time," Linn said with a grin and wave, and Issa laughed as she shrugged and disappeared into the press again.

Despite the heavy reality of her chosen stone, whether it was the "right" gift or not, Linn got swept up by the atmosphere again. Ever since she had first been big enough to actually understand the whole thing of the city-given Stone Gifting, she'd loved it.

Pick a stone out of the basin, just like at the Stone Gifting you had at home, and then after they'd said you could, go look for the stone matching yours, and when you found your match, you exchanged "gifts", in this case a kiss however the participants wanted to kiss.

Of course, at home you just picked a stone and then got a gift, but it was all the same. And it didn't actually matter if you got to kiss someone of your own age...

The excitement at trying to find your match, and then to share in the giddy cheerfulness of the whole event was what mattered, so who cared if you kissed a five-year old or sixty-five year old on the cheek, or someone closer to your own age a little less innocently?

"Well, everybody!" Up by the basin, standing on a bench wearing too much fur and a wide smile, her cheeks ruddy in the cold, was the chairholder of Vaymassa's Unified Council.

She waved a hand showing the unpainted stone she was holding in her hand and the crowd cheered, several whistling, though a few of the younger children looked rather confused by the noise and reaction of the crowd.

"Yes, yes, I did get saddled with the lot of you this year. Anyone who can't find your match because somehow no one picked up your special stone, come up to me! I'll share a bit of cheer and warmth!" Bavayi shouted to a choir of laughter and not quite a few entreaties asking if they couldn't get up and "share with her" anyway.

"Now, now, you unruly flock of feathers! Get to it! Joyful Birth Day and may all beginnings flourish, everybody!" Laughing, Bavayi disappeared from view as she jumped down from the bench, her heavy cloak billowing around her like a cloud.

Laughing quietly at the chairholder's antics, Linn tugged on the braids framing her face and looked around the crowd, seeing a lot of people she knew more or less well.

Anyone of these could have the matching stone to hers, but now that she was almost completely certain this was what the Sessan had meant, there was really only *one* person she wanted to have the other stone.

Linn wandered around somewhat aimlessly, showing her stone to those who asked, and secretly relieved each time it was shown the stones didn't match.

Only a few years had she wanted someone particular to have her match, and that was mostly when she was younger and too shy to directly ask for a kiss of the one who held her affections.

Though there was undeniably a sort of fluttering excitement and romance attending the possibility of somehow having been able to pick the stone the one you liked also had chosen. Linn was once again struck, though, with the seeming impossibility of that outcome.

There were always so many people at the Stone Gifting each year, though even more stones, so it was more probable someone hadn't picked your match before that the one to hold your affections had chosen the twin to your own stone...

"Hi. Want to show me if you've got the right gift?" Spicy breath brushing past her ear as the Sessan seemed to simply materialize out of thin air behind Linn, and Linn's heart suddenly made double-time.

"... Sure," Linn whispered, and she had to swallow before she was able to get that single word out, and the stone in her hand felt like it burned.

Inky, pinky finger-wide braids spilled over Linn's shoulders as the Sessan leaned up against Linn's back and stretched out her arm around Linn to show her fisted, strangely bare hand that gleamed like smoked diamond-wood in the light from a nearby torch.

"My name is Sesl, and this... was the gift I picked," Sesl murmured as she slowly unfolded her fingers, the blue stone with it's five-petalled flower bright against Sesl's hand.

"I'm Linn."

And then she couldn't continue, just has to show her own stone, opening her hand beside Sesl's.

"And why all the chance and the cryptic words to this?" Linn frowned down at their hands, side by side, first now able to voice anything more than the bare necessities. Sesl was quiet for a few moments, before she laid her hand over Linn's, lacing their fingers together as the stones fit uncomfortably between them.

"I... It brings excitement, doesn't it? Though, the bite of a lost possibility due to my chances aren't all that exciting, of course," Sesl muttered as Linn turned around, tilting her head back and raising an eyebrow.

"Well, it was fun to figure out your words... Do I have to wait until tomorrow to find out your 'country secret'?" Linn wasn't sure if she just liked to torture herself, or if it was just the simple burn on her face and the flutter in her stomach that made her prolong the waiting for the "inevitable".

She raised her other hand, hesitantly, but when Sesl made no move to stop her, grasped it in the heavy folds of Sesl's cloak.

"No, you don't have to wait..." Sesl smiled, again the heavy-lidded smile and Linn's hand tightened convulsively at the tone in Sesl's voice.

"Common consensus has it that it's an aphrodisiac," Sesl murmured into Linn's ear, leaning forward and down to be able to do so, her free hand going around Linn's back to catch the long, thin braid growing from the base of Linn's neck; the three braids being the only long hair Linn possessed at all.

Blinking, Linn suppressed the delighted shiver that rushed down her spine at Sesl's tone of voice, and laughed as she suddenly found all the strength in the world to lean forward, gripping the cloak firmly in her hand to keep Sesl still, and fit their lips together.

Around them, laughter and calls wishing "Joyful Birth Day" echoed in the still night air, and the great Square was lit up by circles of warm, freshly-smelling light.

"Seems impossible things can happen on this day, after all..." Linn murmured and Sesl shook her head and, laughing, gently tugged on Linn's braid to have her tilt her head backwards, their breath mingling as they almost, but not really, kissed again.

"Darkness rejoices over all Beginnings this day, after all," Sesl murmured, and Linn could feel the words on her lips, taste them on her tongue, and it was just half a breath away from the sweet softness of lips.

From the darkness of the winter night sky, something small and white fluttered down slowly, getting stuck, unnoticed, in Sesl's hair like a brief and perfect natural jewel. Soon, many more white shapes followed the first one, and it snowed for the first time this winter in Vaymassa.

"Joyful Birth Day." It didn't matter who said it, as the words got lost in the excited screaming of children trying to catch the falling snowflakes.

What the hell is lesbianism?

2007-12-14T18:42:41Z

Well? Can someone inform me what this "lesbianism" is? -Isms are arts, politics. Not desire/sex/attraction/love. I've never heard of gayism, or straightism/heterosexualism (or homosexualism), have you? My attraction/desire for other women is not art, is not politics. It's not a fucking (haha) -ism!

-Isms are movements, trends, states... descriptives of some sort of social (political/cultural) movement/trend that can be defined by certain characteristics. An -ism is a lot of things, but it's not love/attraction/desire/sex. For while being a lesbian certainly can be caught with a descriptive "characteristic" (that of feeling attraction to other women), it's not political/cultural.

You can't feel a movement/trend for someone. There may be lesbians that are such for political reasons, and that, since they actively choose to have sex/relationships with women, but could also choose and want to have sex/relationships with men, could possibly be termed "lesbianism" since it's part of a conscious political-feminist/social choice.

But me, I didn't choose this for any political-feminist reason. This is what I feel, and my attraction/love/desire/sex is not an -ism. How can it be? I want this "lesbianism" done and over with. Stop describing my attraction/love/sex as a movement/trend/state!

Because it's not. There's no "gayism, and there's no "straightism". Why is there then a "lesbianism"? Shoot it, hang it, kill it, make away with it, for it's not mine.

For all that, use it when it comes to the lesbians that are such for political-feminist reasons, but not/never to describe my love/sex/attraction.

Fucking never.

I am a lesbian, but I don't engage in "lesbianism", for love/attraction are not -isms.

I am a lesbian, and I feel (for you cannot feel a movement/trend). My feelings aren't an -ism.

Literary safe spaces?

2007-12-13T21:59:24Z

Where's my safe space?

Admittedly, I don't have a very good general view of lesbian/lesbian-feminist non-fiction, but I've looked around some for the fiction. And these feminist (lesbian) utopia/dystopia are rather... boring? There's no... going "far enough"? The sci-fi (because they're always sci-fi, never fantasy) all still have males somewhere in there, or if they aren't from the beginning, they get "invited", appearing in the story line even though the alien race itself might lack males.

But where's the dreaming? Why is no one going further, where's the all-female races/societies, in sci-fi as well as fantasy? I know Nicola Griffith's Ammonite, which I want to read, but that seems to be the only one. Does no one else go that far (without some soul-crushing dystopia being the ending)? Is it too much to ask for a space where there are no males, where they never have been, and never will be?

Because I won't believe you can't make a story without the sort of tension (whatever flavour of the tension you want to bring forth) that a male presence would bring into a story about lesbians, I mean, otherwise... If we have to have men in the story, what does that say about us? As females-loving-females, aren't we able to do without the males? Especially in fiction, where only imagination is the limit?

I'm working on my own "safe space" (no men, no reality of "males" as an opposite, nothing), but I want to see that reflected elsewhere, too. Is that too much to ask? I'm not interested in men. I don't want to read about them, at least in some of the fiction I'd want to read, but instead they're everywhere in fiction one could think could (should?) be able to do without them.

So where's my safe space, reflected in others?

(Bit unfocused, maybe, but for now it reflects at least somewhat what I want to say about this...)

electrainverted @ 2007-12-03T22:32:00

2007-12-03T21:48:05Z

This is... something. A science fiction something, perhaps brought on by some amorphous anger at women's general situation and lives today. I don't know. This is just a sci-fi piece, and if you feel offended by it, please fuck off and die.

Night of Midwinter Eve.

This is the beginning of an end, and the continuation of a beginning that began innumerable ages ago.

A teen-aged girl is raped at a Christmas party, a five year old girl sees her father hit her mother, and another young woman, who had thought she was just going on vacation, is told she's going to marry her second cousin.

Everyday reality for untold numbers of women, with slight variations on the theme, and the ages of those involved.

This night, however, something changes.

Something... whatever it is, stirs.

Tonga.
"She sees." This teenager has nothing to do with the raped girl half a world away, but they could still be sisters. Not in any discernible way, but in all that matters, this teenager shares, to an extent, the raped young woman's fate. In some others still, it would only take a few words, a "bad" decision and at least one male to have the two share the exact same fate.

The words are soft, muttered to the sea.

This is the first verdict.

Kenya.
"She knows." This little girl has nothing to do with the other five-year old girl, either, for she knows nothing of the cruelty many men visit upon their female relatives. Her father is a great person. Nonetheless, they are sisters. They could, at any moment, share the same fate.

These words are said with wonder as the girl stares up at the ceiling, and said quietly, so quietly.

No one can be allowed hear.

This is the second verdict.

Iceland.
"She moves." This young woman is heavy with a wanted child, though long had she deliberated on whether to have one now. She knows nothing of the fear and forced life-path of the other young woman, despite being about to marry someone too. For her impeding marriage and pregnancy is her own choice and so is different.

Yet they, too, are sisters.

The words here are said with fear, the young woman's hands fisting at her sides, and not because the baby just shifted.

For this...

This is the third and final verdict.

***

This night, three human females disappear off the face of the Earth. One was a little girl who had seen her father abuse her mother one time too many. One was a teen-aged girl who got to know the reality of an event where once is one too many.

And one was a young woman forced into a life she had thought she'd never know, since they all lived not in the original homeland, but in a new land. A land that she considered her home. They were all sisters, like they were sisters with all other women on Earth.

All of which share a reality and possible fate of pain, fear, abuse and humiliation.

And now Mother is coming to soothe her daughters' wounds.

***

Eve of the New Year.

There's always a sense of renewal, of energetic hope and expectancy at the cusp of a new year, whenever that New Year is celebrated. One thinks that this year... this year will be different.

And this year, it really will be.

Three... Two... One... Happy New Year! As the fireworks exploded out over the water, Mari laughed and cheered with the rest of the crowd as the colourful lights and sound heralded the beginning of the new year and death of the old. Breathing in the cold nigh air, Mari smiled as her breath hung white and cloudy in front of her mouth.

Maybe this year really would, somehow, be different and better than the last one...

Shrugging in the cold, Mari resolved to try and beat the crowd to the train, by leaving now instead of waiting until the fireworks were over, despite her dread over having to walk home alone in the dark.

She didn't like to feel nervous about such a simple thing, over feeling like she had to keep an eye out all the time, not for ordinary robbers or anything, but for anyone... (male) who would get into their head to attack a lone woman in the dark and rape her.

Burying her hands deep in her pockets as she quickly got herself over to the metro station, Mari frowned as the train was a few minutes late. It finally came though, and she could sit down in a window seat, pop the buds into her ears and let music stream through them from her mobile phone, ignoring everyone else in the wagon and staring at her reflection in the window.

Later, Mari couldn't, exactly, point out when it started, but she remembered the slight hitch in the current song, a moment of strange white noise and then the next song came on. Pat Benatar. Invincible.

In the other group of seats opposite of her own, an old man sagged down, clutching at chest and head as a thin trickle of blood ran down his face from his nose, eyes and ears.

Staggering upright and whirling around, Mari froze as the same happened in the rest of the wagon.

To the strains of Invincible, a group of young men several seat groups down collapsed in slight spasms as did two casually dressed middle-aged men standing by the closest doors, all of them clutching their heads and chests.

Breathing rapidly, Mari hardly heard the screams and cries of the women in this wagon as they either bent down to make sure the men were all right, or retreated in uncomprehending horror, minds unable to handle what seemed to be going on.

***

Mari could hear someone crying.

Just small, whistle-breath rapid sniffles and tears burning as they made their trails down the cheeks.

Oh.

It's her that's crying.

Biting the knuckle of one finger as she sped up to get home, she wondered, and was at the same time amazed she was thinking at all, if this was happening everywhere.

She'd called her mother, who was in quiet shock and tears as she'd looked on as her fiancé died. For there was no doubt that the men thus collapsing were dying.

Hiccuping, Mari slammed the hand holding her keys into the door, trying to make the shaking stop long enough for her to get the key into the lock.

Finally inside and while there was some burning, ugly need to know what was going on, to know if everything was the same everywhere, Mari just threw her clothes off and dove into bed, then got out again and fetched all the pillows and blankets she could find, piling them all on the bed and then hiding in the resultant nest.

She'd deal tomorrow.

She'd go see her mother tomorrow.

She'd listen to the news... if there would be any... tomorrow.

She'd... just do everything tomorrow.

Even though it technically was tomorrow, what with being three in the morning on the first day of the new year. Mari fell sleep shaking as if the room was deathly cold, and not as if it was toasty hot under all the pillows and blankets.

***

Mari woke to being drenched in sweat and blood. It was unbearably hot under her pile of all things soft and covering, and her thighs and the sheet beneath were stained and sticky with blood.

"What the..." Staring blearily at the mess before swearing, Mari staggered up and towards the shower. She'd had her period a bare two weeks ago! It wasn't time yet! A cloud of billowing vapour followed Mari out of the shower and first then, clothed in a thick bathrobe, did she dare turn on the TV.

Nothing.

Well, that wasn't true; there were flickers of what obviously was some sort of news report, but that was mostly broken up by static and white noise. Staring, Mari tried the radio. The same. Turning on the computer brought the same result, and her apartment was then filled with white noise.

Grimacing, she turned the TV off... or at least tried to.

No matter how many times she pressed the buttons, it didn't turn off. Shaken, and hands shaking, she tugged out the contact stick.

The TV quietened.

The same happened, or didn't happen, to the radio and the computer. She had to tug out the sticks for them to turn off and the white noise, drilling, caressing, all-encompassing, to stop. Staring around her quiet apartment, Mari tried the lights.

They lit up, flickered, and then died.

Biting her lower lip, Mari threw on some clothes and ran out, meeting other women by the elevator, the stairs down, out on the streets. Everywhere confused and distraught women. Hugging herself, Mari wished she was with her mother.

The sky turned bright, like a white silk sheet lit up from behind by some sort of light, a pale, soft honey colour that blotted out the weak sun, other colours, like a rainbow, flickering briefly in the honeyed-white.

The morning on the first day of the year, all the women disappeared from Earth.

Left behind were all the dead men, and all the edifices to human life. Life that didn't exist on Earth anymore.

In the years to come, the Earth reclaimed all what humanity had taken.

electrainverted @ 2007-11-21T22:48:00

2007-11-21T21:50:31Z

http://jezebel.com/gossip/clips/sexist-czech-beer-commercial-gives-us-rage-324898.php?autoplay=true

I... I... I don't know what to say. My stomach just crawled in on itself and died. I got this kinda breathless ohmygoddrowning feeling when looking at that. I just...

What?

Reboot universe.exe Y/N

HOW ABOUT YES? *YYYYY*

electrainverted @ 2007-11-16T23:14:00

2007-11-16T22:17:17Z

What the hell is a "lesbo stunt", people? Come on, hit me with your thoughts! :D

My thoughts... Stunts made by lesbians concerning either lesbian porn movies, or just for some reason you had to have a lesbian to perform a... sexual? stunt?

What, what?

:O

unique and brilliant =P

2007-09-29T15:23:54Z

*gives in to memeness* P=

1. Pick the month of your birth.
2. Bold the 5-10 things that most apply to you
3. Strike out everything that doesn't apply to you.
4. Place the list of all the months under a cut
5. Tag 6 people from your friends list to do the same.

NOVEMBER:
Has a lot of ideas. Difficult to fathom. Thinks forward. Unique and brilliant. Extraordinary ideas. Sharp thinking. Fine and strong clairvoyance. ~~Can become good doctors.~~ Dynamic in personality. Secretive. Inquisitive. Knows how to dig secrets. Always thinking. Less talkative but amiable. Brave and generous. Patient. Stubborn and hard-hearted. If there is a will, there is a way. Determined. Never give up. ~~Hardly becomes angry unless provoked.~~ Loves to be alone. Thinks differently from others. Sharp-minded. Motivates oneself. ~~Does not appreciate praises.~~ High-spirited. ~~Well-built and tough.~~ Deep love and emotions. Romantic. Uncertain in relationships. ~~Homely.~~ Hardworking. High abilities. Trustworthy. Honest and keeps secrets. Not able to control emotions. Unpredictable.

*is vaguely amused by the "hardly becomes angry unless provoked"* My anger is quick and explosive. Like a volcano. And I want to be unique and brilliant. P= And there'll be no tagging. Bah, I say. =P

JANUARY:
Stubborn and hard-hearted. Ambitious and serious. Loves to teach and be taught. Always looking at people's flaws and weaknesses. Likes to criticize. Hardworking and productive. Smart, neat and organized. Sensitive and has deep thoughts. Knows how to make others happy. Quiet unless excited or tensed. Rather reserved. Highly attentive. Resistant to illnesses but prone to colds. Romantic but has difficulties expressing love. Loves children. Loyal. Has great social abilities yet easily jealous. Very stubborn (I'm seeing a trend here) and money cautious.

FEBRUARY:
Abstract thoughts. Loves reality and abstract. Intelligent and clever. Changing personality. Attractive. Sexy. (well, kinda!) Temperamental. Quiet, shy and humble. Honest and loyal. Determined to reach goals. Loves freedom. Rebellious when restricted. Loves aggressiveness. Too sensitive and easily hurt. Gets angry really easily but does not show it. Dislikes unnecessary things. Loves making friends but rarely shows it. Daring and stubborn. Ambitious. Realizes dreams and hopes. Sharp. Loves entertainment and leisure. Romantic on the inside not outside. Superstitious and ludicrous. Spendthrift. Tries to learn to show emotions.

MARCH:
Attractive personality. Sexy. Affectionate. Shy and reserved. Secretive. Naturally honest, generous and sympathetic. Loves peace and serenity. Sensitive to others. Loves to serve others. Easily angered. Trustworthy. Appreciative and returns kindness. Observant and assesses others. Revengeful. Loves to dream and fantasize. Loves traveling. Loves attention. Hasty decisions in choosing partners. Loves home decors. Musically talented. Loves special things. Moody.

APRIL:
Active and dynamic. Decisive and hasty but tends to regret. Attractive and affectionate to oneself. Strong mentality. Loves attention. Diplomatic. Consoling, friendly and solves people's problems. Brave and fearless. Adventurous. Loving and caring. Suave and generous. Emotional. Aggressive. Hasty. Good memory. Moving. Motivates oneself and others. Sickness usually of the head and chest. Sexy in a way that only their lover can see.

MAY:
Stubborn and hard-hearted. Strong-willed and highly motivated. Sharp thoughts. Easily angered. Attracts others and loves attention. Deep feelings. Beautiful physically and mentally. Firm Standpoint. Needs no motivation. Easily consoled. Systematic (left brain). Loves to dream. Strong clairvoyance. Understanding. Sickness usually in the ear and neck. Good imagination. Good physical. Weak breathing. Loves literature and the arts. Loves traveling. Dislike being at home. Restless. Not having many children. Hardworking. High spirited. Spendthrift.

JUNE:
Thinks far with vision. Easily influenced by kindness. Polite and soft-spoken. Having ideas. Sensitive. Active mind. Hesitating, tends to delay. Choosy and always wants the best. Temperamental. Funny and humorous. Loves to joke. Good debating skills. Talkative. Daydreamer. Friendly. Knows how to make friends. Able to show character. Easily hurt. Prone to getting colds. Loves to dress up. Easily bored. Fussy. Seldom shows emotions. Takes time to recover when hurt. Brand conscious. Executive. Stubborn.

JULY:
Fun to be with. Secretive. Difficult to fathom and to be understood. Quiet unless excited or tensed. Takes pride in oneself. Has reputation. Easily consoled. Honest. Concerned about people's feelings. Tactful. Friendly. Approachable. Emotional temperamental and unpredictable. Moody and easily hurt. Witty and sparkly. Not revengeful. Forgiving but never forgets. Dislikes nonsensical and unnecessary things. Guides others physically and mentally. Sensitive and forms impressions carefully. Caring and loving. Treats others equally. Strong sense of sympathy. Wary and sharp. Judges people through observations. Hardworking. No difficulties in studying. Loves to be alone. Always broods about the past and the old friends. Likes to be quiet. Homely person. Waits for friends. Never looks for friends. Not aggressive unless provoked. Prone to having stomach and dieting problems. Loves to be loved. Easily hurt but takes long to recover.

AUGUST:
Loves to joke. Attractive. Suave and caring. Brave and fearless. Firm and has leadership qualities. Knows how to console others. Too generous and egoistic. Takes high pride in oneself. Thirsty for praises. Extraordinary spirit. Easily angered. Angry when provoked. Easily jealous. Observant. Careful and cautious. Thinks quickly. Independent thoughts. Loves to lead and to be led. Loves to dream. Talented in the arts, music and defense. Sensitive but not petty. Poor resistance against illnesses. Learns to relax. Hasty and trusty. Romantic. Loving and caring. Loves to make friends.

SEPTEMBER:
Suave and compromising. Careful, cautious and organized. Likes to point out people's mistakes. Likes to criticize. Stubborn. Quiet but able to talk well. Calm and cool. Kind and sympathetic. Concerned and detailed. Loyal but not always honest. Does work well. Very confident. Sensitive. Good memory. Clever and knowledgeable. Loves to look for information. Must control oneself when criticizing. Able to motivate oneself. Understanding. Fun to be around. Secretive. Loves leisure and traveling. Hardly shows emotions. Tends to bottle up feelings. Very choosy, especially in relationships. Systematic.

OCTOBER:
Loves to chat. Loves those who loves them. Loves to take things at the center. Inner and physical beauty. Lies but doesn't pretend. Gets angry often. Treats friends importantly. Always making friends. Easily hurt but recovers easily. Daydreamer. Opinionated. Does not care what others think. Emotional. Decisive. Strong clairvoyance. Loves to travel, the arts and literature. Touchy and easily jealous. Concerned. Loves outdoors. Just and fair. Spendthrift. Easily influenced. Easily loses confidence. Loves children.

NOVEMBER:
Has a lot of ideas. Difficult to fathom. Thinks forward. Unique and brilliant. Extraordinary ideas. Sharp thinking. Fine and strong clairvoyance. Can become good doctors. Dynamic in personality. Secretive. Inquisitive. Knows how to dig secrets. Always thinking. Less talkative but amiable. Brave and generous. Patient. Stubborn and hard-hearted. If there is a will, there is a way. Determined. Never give up. Hardly becomes angry unless provoked. Loves to be alone. Thinks differently from others. Sharp-minded. Motivates oneself. Does not appreciate praises. High-spirited. Well-built and tough. Deep love and emotions. Romantic. Uncertain in relationships. Homely. Hardworking. High abilities. Trustworthy. Honest and keeps secrets. Not able to control emotions. Unpredictable.

DECEMBER:
Loyal and generous. Sexy. Patriotic. Active in games and interactions. Impatient and hasty. Ambitious. Influential in organizations. Fun to be with. Loves to socialize. Loves praises. Loves attention. Loves to be loved. Honest and trustworthy. Not pretending. Short tempered. Changing personality. Not egotistic. Take high pride in oneself. Hates restrictions. Loves to joke. Good sense of humor. Logical.

sigh

2007-09-02T15:12:57Z

I fear each moment I get inspired and want to read some original lesbian fic.

I fear, because, if I'm not looking for fanfiction, using terms like "femmeslash", "yuri", "shoujo ai", or whatever, what I'm mostly going to be faced with after having pressed the enter key is porn on a level I'm not interested in looking at (that is, male-oriented, "regular" porn of the "lesbian" persuation).
Of course, I'm going to be faced with "hot, hentai, naked 'femmeslash/yuri'" if I search for the terms more used in fanfiction, so I can't win either way, but it's way more obvious is I try for "lesbian".

It gets even worse if I try to use some keywords more blatantly "porny" than just searching for, say femmeslash/lesbian fic. Like trying to search for bondage. Forget serious/fun/sexual original fic with two women, what I'll get is the regular, male-oriented porn.
But how am I going to find anything with sex that I want to read otherwise? There's so little out there anyway (easy to find original slash fiction), and narrowing that down... then I'm just, obviously, not going to find anything anyway.

That was the possibly TMI (depending on where your threshold for that is) whining for today. Carry on. Nothing to see here. :D

(I was almost gonna use my sad kitty icon, but, you know... that's just wrong! XD I couldn't do it.)

Read it.

2007-08-21T09:13:44Z

People. Read that link. For the love of all things you hold precious, fucking READ IT.

http://shoiryu.livejournal.com/492507.html

Some parts of USA and some Christians there are FUCKING INSANE.

(If this is what some people think is "thinking of the children", they better never, ever, EVER think of the children. Children don't need this sort of thinking of them. Or "doing for them", either. NEVER.)

I've already cried.

Sweet, bleeding stars, now I'm pissed.

And sick to my stomach.

electrainverted @ 2007-08-18T00:33:00

2007-08-17T22:44:06Z

Right, uhh... how's about that crack, huh? I bring some Kingdom Hearts for entertainment.

Title: The King and Queen of Hearts
Rating: Uh... G-PG for reference to death?
Summary: This was the beginning...

The King of Hearts
ripped them all out
locked them up in
Darkness
The Queen of Hearts
left bleeding scars
and hid the key in
Light
Serenely cold,
above it all
the heart-shaped moon
bled red and baleful light

The King of Hearts
caressed the chest
his mind bent to
such heartless conquest
The Queen of Hearts
with tears and fury cold
left to ensure
his eternal fall
And silently,
above it all
the heart-shaped moon
hid behind a veil of clouds

The King of Hearts
proclaimed his rule
wielding dark obsession
against his love and light
The Queen of Hearts
with love unending
turned against her
other half
And witnessing
this tragedy
the heart-shaped moon
burst into a silver rain

The King and Queen of Hearts
are dead
The heart-shaped moon
gone forever
The key of hearts,
Queen's stalwart weapon
fell from her hands and
into Light
The chest with stolen,
loving hearts
was still opened before the end
But Darkness slipped
right out with them

***

Uh, yeah. Poetry! A KH rant in fanficrants somehow sparked the beginning lines and then it all... turned into this. At first I had half a mind to keep it from being KH-proper, but then I decided to keep it such and... well... My mind then fell upon the "things brought full circle". Think reincarnation.

Much, much later, the King and Queen of Hearts meet again (because obviously someone didn't learn the first time around), though rather... changed.

("And the Light separated from the Darkness...")

Pretty finished picture, yay. I am satisfied with it. XD
(And substitute silver for the King's blond, and shorter and browner for the Queen's longer and sandly-light brown, and I hope it's clear?)

electrainverted @ 2007-08-13T17:24:00

2007-08-13T15:36:36Z

Story time! Fairy tales, this time~

Title: Trollgild
Summary: One of a few tasks set before a marriage puts Mala in a bit of trouble. An elf queen, a troll and a miller's daughter are all involved.

Soft, hiccuping sounds, muffled by the mounds of straw, could be heard in the round room, the pale stone and the faint globes of light making the space light enough to not be depressing, despite being underground.

The room could have been oppressively dark, however, and it would have been just the same for the little girl, barely fifteen years old, who sat in the middle of the soft, dry mounds of straw that dominated the room.

Beside her, the only other "furniture" in the room besides a thick pile of blankets and pillows, stood a spinning wheel. The wheel itself had a few spindly straws sticking out from it, a gamely attempt at doing what had been wished of her, but Mala was no spinner, and could even less turn straw into gold than she could spin a clump of wool or flax into decent thread.

"Why're you crying, little girl?"
Mala's muffled crying stopped with a last, surprised hiccup as her head whipped up, scared that it somehow was already morning and she'd now die.

Standing there framed by softly glowing straw, however, wasn't the smoothly pale, white-blonde and devastatingly beautiful elf queen that had demanded Mala spin straw into gold, but rather a softer, darker girl that glimmered with gold in the lamplight. The elf queen hadn't been the tallest of women, she needn't be to be utterly terrifying, anyway, but this female was a good head shorter, round and soft where the elf queen had been narrow and slim.

The tuft of hair at the end of her pointy ears and the tail with its cow-like tuft of hair suddenly made it clear what she was.

"B-because I was told to spin the straw into gold before morning, and I can't do that! It's been two generations since anyone in the family could!" Mala's voice rose into a desperate wail, her work-roughened hands shaking in her lap. A small, tanned hand rubbed Mala's shoulder and back, slowly placating the hiccups and tears into dry sobs.

"Oh, don't worry about it, little girl. Help is closer than you think! You're lucky I was wandering the corridors tonight," the troll girl smiled, her tanned face flushed with a natural glee that Mala couldn't help but resent at the moment, even while she was being offered help.

"You... you'd spin the straw to gold? You can do that?" Mala's breath caught in her throat, and while it was horribly rude to jump someone she didn't know, her body moved as if by its own volition, turning around and throwing her arms around the slim waist and hips flaring out beneath.

"Indeed, I'll help you beat that mean old hag. She doesn't know when to stop." The troll girl's smile was sharp now, her amber eyes glowing queerly.

Mala let go of her and rubbed her face, peeking up at the wild-haired troll through her eyelashes.

"I'm Mala," she offered, wondering what she'd be told, if anything, in return. The troll girl suddenly grimaced, dragging a hand over her face.

"Redtip, but you can't say that, understand? If the queen asks who did it, and she, for whatever reason, don't believe you did it, then you say her old childhood friend did. You can't say my name. It's important you don't."
Mala nodded, sitting back in the pile of blankets that would be her bed, and looked on fascinated as Redtip twined straw together into longer strands, put them into the spinning wheel and set it all spinning. Impossibly, fantastically, the straw wasn't just churned around and around and tangled into a mess, but rather a gleaming thread came out as the result, catching the lamplight in the most wondrous way.

Gold.

Redtip was really spinning gold from the straw.

Mala felt as if she should sit up and keep Redtip company, at the least, for doing what Mala should be doing but couldn't. But Redtip's sweet humming, like leaves ruffled by wind, gravel tumbling over each other, lulled her mind and charmed her eyes closed.

Redtip's short, unevenly cut hair, glittering like gold dust had been strewn into it and the one lock, two fingers thick of neatly braided hair that fell down her back was the last thing Mala saw before morning woke her with the elf queen's coldly furious arrival.

***

"Who managed this? Who twined the straw, who turned the wheel, who spun the gold?" Eyes like a summer sky bored into Mala's brown, gently pleading for an answer as to the pile of gold thread. It wasn't the whole mass of straw that had been turned into gold, but an impressive amount of it had still been alchemized.

The elf queen's voice was singing water and sweet like honeyed milk, her breath-light dress casting a pale blue shadow on the white stone floor. Mala shook her head. She couldn't lie. She tried to form the words, but her mouth refused to voice them.

In a brief panic, she wondered if she would even be able to say what had been asked of her.

"Not I. An old childhood friends of yours, my queen, did," Mala said, and secretly she was so relieved at how easily the words came. The clear features of the elfin lady twisted into a brief grimace and her fathomless eyes narrowed.

"You will not be able to use the same excuse come morning, sweet maiden. We will see who spun the straw then," the elf queen said, then whirled around in a flutter of pale blue spider-silk cloth and sunlight hair.

Three silent, willow-slender elf maidens, their long pale hair piled high on their heads and then spilling down like waterfalls came in and gathered up the gold thread in baskets before leaving Mala alone again.

At least she had been given food.

***

Night could not be told from day underground, and so Mala had no way of knowing how far she had until her doom next morning; she couldn't think Redtip would happen to wander into her cell again.

Mala was so confused about the whole thing, as the elf queen had appeared in a patch of lilacs when Mala spilled water drawn from their well on a circle of stones, demanding Mala spin straw to gold for her transgression on the circle of "elf stones".

If it was proven she could not even do that to make up for her faux pas, she would be turned into a fountain centerpiece come morning. Mala, biting her lower lip, couldn't see how that fate had changed from earlier, and she could still not weave straw into gold. Gritting her teeth, she slapped the stone beneath her and tried to keep back the tears prickling the corners of her eyes.

"Why so upset, little Mala? The night isn't over yet. You really got to have more patience!" Redtip's voice sung through the chamber and not even the elf queen's voice had ever sounded so sweet. Mala felt her cheeks redden at the playful chastisement.

"I didn't think you'd be back to repeat your kind deed. You have no reason to," Mala said with a shake of her head, nervously tugging on her braid, which wasn't so neat as it had been last morning. She'd been too distracted to take care of that even earlier today when she'd had nothing to do.

Redtip shook her head, a narrow frown cast back into the shadows where the door of golden oak stood in gloom, locked with a golden key that hung from the chain around the elf queen's hips.

"I wouldn't let an innocent fall victim for something she unjustly has become involved in," Redtip muttered, sitting down in front of the spinning wheel again, fingers quick like curious birds. Mala shook her head, attention once again caught by the procedure, amazed by the gold that somehow was spun from the straw.

"But I did spill water, drawn from our well, on the elf stones. No man-made thing has right to touch those stones, I know." And while water drawn from a well might be some of the most thinnest definitions of "man-made" Mala had ever heard of, it could still so be claimed and was within the elf queen's right to demand a price.

Redtip snorted, and while Mala wasn't looking at her face, she was sure those warm, strange eyes had just rolled heavenwards.

"And however you stumbled, she does have right to demand reparations to be done. She's a right nasty, diseased-breathed whore to ask this of you, though. What a way to get around it..."

"Redtip!" Mala cried, blushing at the insult just delivered to the absent queen. The insult wasn't the worst - even though that was crude enough on its own - but that the elfin lady couldn't defend herself, that was what Mala had to protest against the most.

"Oh, shush! She knows my mouth, especially against her. Besides, you know elves send diseases. That was the reason you accepted, wasn't it, even though you knew you couldn't spin straw into gold?"
Mala shrugged, looking to the side as her fingers played with the skirt of her dress. There was no need to confirm it, as it was true enough, besides Mala's transgression. Better only she be, rightly, punished for not managing to fulfill her task than her family and village be beset by disease for Mala refusing to even attempt reparations.

"Oh! Redtip, I can't use the phrase you told me to tell the queen come this morning. I think she spelled me unable to use it," Mala said, frowning as she stared at the spinning wheel, the gold catching the soft light again and again, sending spatters of reflected light all over the low ceiling, walls and floor.

"Ah, that nasty, tricky elf," Redtip muttered, working even more fiercely for a moment, making Mala wonder if the wheel would spin right off its legs. "Well, then tell her, her most ardent enemy spun the straw into gold this night," Redtip said after a while, tail swinging gently from side to side, the hoops decorating it clinking together with each sweep.

Mala nodded and yawned, laying down on the soft, slick blankets that somehow made the floor as soft as if she was sleeping on the thickest down-filled mattress in the world, and not on a stone floor with only a bare few blankets to cover it.

Once again, Mala was lured to sleep by humming and the glitter of gold thread upon a spinning wheel.

***

"Who managed this? Who twined the straw, who turned the wheel, who spun the gold?"
Mala wondered if the flicker of gentle hope, of the elf queen's face softening and her lips pursing as if just anticipating a chance to smile was only her imagination, drowned beneath the frozen planes of a cold sneer as it had been.

Swallowing, Mala straightened as well as she could under that gaze while the elf maidens collected the newly spun gold thread in their woven baskets; almost all the straw was gone now.

"Not I, my queen. Your most ardent enemy did, though," Mala couldn't keep her eyes trained onto the elf queen's face, knowing she had seen them turn flat and darken at what she had said, drowning the lighter gleam in them.

What was it the elf queen was hoping so for, that Mala's continued denial of a name brought such reaction? A brief flush tinted the elf queen's cheeks a charming rose, though it wasn't from any sweet happiness or even pleased embarrassment, but rather anger.

"You will not be able to use the same excuse come morning, sweet maiden. We will see who spun the straw then," the elf queen snapped and whirled around, the mint green dress frothing about her ankles like green spray on a breaking wave.

***

The day, seen or not, went slowly, and Mala amused herself with comparing the elf queen and Redtip. The troll was soft and short and round, curved where the elf was tall and slim, sharp and flat. The difference was, Mala was sure, if they stood beside each other, both amusing and charmingly sweet.

Mala wondered why Redtip didn't want her name to be mentioned to the queen, what was between them? It had to be something important that had went on for a long time, for Mala was sure the elf queen knew it was Redtip doing the spinning, but she couldn't do... whatever... until it was admitted.

Looking around, Mala refused to acknowledge the tingling of nervousness in the pit of her stomach. She was sure it had gone much more time now, than it had done yesterday, or the day before that, until Redtip had appeared. What if she didn't have any more phrases to use as a stand-in for Mala to say, and so she wouldn't appear, and Mala would... would have to take her punishment, for there were still straw to be spun, and Mala had still not found that lost talent, for no lack of trying during the two days she'd been here.

Though then, she really had no right to hope, or even expect Redtip to appear to help her. It was all Redtip's generosity, after all...

"I'm sorry for being late."
Mala tried to tell herself her heart hadn't skipped a beat out of joyful relief at Redtip's voice, but she wasn't prone to lying to herself.

"No, I should ask your forgiveness, for your need to do this for me. I'm sorry if it's putting you in a hard spot with whatever you and her majesty are contending over. If you'd like to leave without finishing for you to win, I'll take my punishment as I would have had to do had you not been generous enough to offer your help," Mala said, straightening her back and gripping her hands in her lap, astonished she was even saying this.

Who was stupid enough to take a death-sentence punishment when she was being offered a way out of it?!

Mala, apparently.

Redtip stared at her, her eyes widening and face flushing until she burst out laughing, shaking her head.

"No, no, Mala. No need to apologize. Ildrea is in her full rights... if with usual elven trickiness, to do as she's doing. I don't think she knew you couldn't spin straw to gold before she roped you into this, but when you couldn't... it wasn't as if I wasn't going to notice and not help. So in the end, the result would most probably have been the same, anyway," Redtip said with a shrug, smiling briefly over her shoulder at Mala.

Mala frowned, and considered, for a moment, to not ask, but then curiosity and a nagging insistence saying she had a right to know overcame her hesitance.

"What, exactly, is going on?"
Redtip's hands stilled, as did her tail, and the air in the room took on such a muffled, bound quality Mala wondered if she'd come out alive out of this, whether or not the elf queen turned her into a fountain centerpiece or not. Then Redtip shook her head, muttering something too quiet for Mala to hear and started the spinning up again.

"It's a... bit of a bet, you could say. She can only use her own talents and person to execute and finish a few tasks I've set for her... and, strictly speaking, using her status as queen to invoke reparations against a transgression of an elf stone circle is within those terms." Redtip shrugged again, but said nothing else, instead started to sing in a language Mala felt she should know, but didn't.

"What should I tell the queen?" Mala didn't like interrupting, but she knew she would soon fall asleep, if Redtip was going to continue to sing, and thus needed to know.

"Tell her... that her beloved has been spinning the straw into gold."

"Isn't that the same as admitting your name?" Mala yawned, though tried to keep her frown, and Redtip giggled.

"No, technically, it isn't. This is all a bunch of technicalities, as you can see. We're lucky this is the last night, otherwise there'd be a bit of trouble to have kept this up..." Redtip mumbled the last, and then started up her singing again, and Mala, tired despite having done nothing, really, fell asleep.

***

All the straw had been spun into gold, and Mala felt her heart flutter as the door opened again and the queen entered and her two maids followed behind her to gather up the accumulated gold thread.

"Who managed this? Who twined the straw, who turned the wheel, who spun the gold?" Ildrea's voice was brittle, and Mala was confused over the strain, hadn't Redtip said that the queen would get as she wanted most probably however things went, now?

But maybe, whatever the bet involved, since Mala wasn't the one spinning, Ildrea *needed* to have Mala admit the name for her to win the bet.

But Mala could hardly give up Redtip's name when she'd been so nice as to help her, however angry or upset it'd make the elf queen to lose.

"Not I, my queen. Your beloved spun the straw to gold," Mala said softly, glancing up at Ildrea from under her lashes. The queen was as composed as ever, but Mala knew she saw the twitch under the right eye that in any other human would have been a spasm.

"You will not be able to use the same excuse come morning, sweet maiden. We will see who spun the straw then."

Mala's head whipped up, and her eyes widened.

"But..! The straw's all gone--!" Mala protested, words coming out half-mangled from her throat closing up. Ildrea pursed her lips briefly.

"There's a feast tonight, so I don't have time to finish up this business right now; and anyway, as someone else spun the straw, that question would have to be answered for things to be cleared. It's a bit unorthodox, I know, but a three-night limit wasn't set, by either you or me," Ildrea said with a lopsided smile that looked more predatory than ethereally threatening, which she had been all before.

Mala was left staring at a closing and then locked door, dismay bubbling up from her stomach and into her throat, forming a scream she didn't care to reign in.

***

Frustrated, as the hours went by on the fourth night, Mala knotted the corners of her blankets, paced from one end of the chamber to the other as she could do so now and regularly gritted her teeth and fisted her hands against the bubbling heat in her stomach.

She even tried tugging on the doorknob, but it stayed, unsurprisingly, locked. She wasn't really afraid of dying, anymore, if anything she was free of that as all the straw was gone, and the elf queen could hardly punish her on that ground.

Time and again she caught herself staring at the door, as if willing Redtip to appear. While Mala didn't need the troll's help anymore, if Redtip didn't give her something, Mala'd be forced to use Redtip's name.

She could do that, of course.

But Redtip had selflessly helped Mala, even working a task that would mean Redtip's own hands would have worked towards winning the bet for Ildrea. There was irony in that, surely, but Mala was more concerned with trying to come up with some alternative if Redtip didn't appear.

She couldn't lie, and even if she could, was that the right thing to do? Redtip's avoidances had all, Mala had to assume, been true for Mala to be able to say them, but without Redtip there to give an acceptable work-around, Mala would have to utter Redtip's name.

"What do I do?" Mala muttered as she stared down at the floor, scratching at the pale floor, which was glowing faintly with a buttery lustre in the lamplight. Mala wanted to repay Redtip's help, but, even if the compulsion didn't, against all expectation, force her to not lie, would it be right to lie to help Redtip?

Should the troll's genuine help be repaid by lying to a person who had only used her own cunning and talents, however sneakily, to fulfill a bet, and probably ongoing contest Mala simply had been caught up in?

Sighing in frustration, Mala frowned down at the floor with a fierce grimace.

"Where is she, anyway?" Mala wasn't really *accusing* Redtip, since the troll had simply, and logically, assumed that since all the straw was gone, her presence wouldn't be further needed. Besides, Mala remembered Redtip mentioning that it was lucky yesterday had been the last night... Did the elf queen's feast has something to do with Redtip's absence?

Yawning, Mala laid down to just rest her eyes before continuing to worry her problem. Just a little nap...

***

The metallic clatter of keys in the lock had Mala jerking upright fast enough to give her a moment of disorienting vertigo. Blinking against the reflected light that made the room almost light enough to appear to be lit up by windows, Mala watched the door open and the elf queen enter without much comprehension first.

Morning!

It was morning, fourth morning, and the morning the queen had vowed to get the real spinner's name from Mala. That it also was the morning she'd be freed for having fulfilled the reparations for her transgression, her mind tacked on almost belatedly, for somehow it seemed much more important that she was about to have to give up Redtip's name.

Apprehension clawed at Mala's inner lining, then, as Ildrea slowly walked in with her bright eyes hooded and a dress like froth-lined ice swirling over the floor. She seemed to be floating forward.

"Who managed the task set for you? Who twined the straw, who turned the wheel, who spun the gold? Who offered help to one in need?" Ildrea's voice was soft, her face distant and relaxed. But not, Mala though, after she got over her surprise at the changed lines, in a good way.

The elf queen seemed tired, and, if Mala would dare an interpretation on such a blank canvas, disappointed.

In herself, the situation, or the result of it all, Mala didn't know.

"Not..." Trailing off, Mala's mouth slacked. Two things struck her; firstly, there was no pressure, like there had been the previous mornings, to answer with the truth. Secondly, in the shadow of the doorway, points and lines glimmering with every slight shift, Redtip stood hidden.

Tearing her eyes away from the troll's shadowed figure, she turned it back to the elf queen, who gave her a blank stare.

Mala could lie.

Could choose not to tell the truth and give back something for the help she'd been given. The frozen expression on the even-planed, regal face told Mala that the queen had probably known this would happen.

While they had not agreed on a three-day limit, that was the "magic" number, and after the three days, maybe the queen could just not rightly demand the truth for the task set, especially as it had been fulfilled.

Mala stood up slowly, brushing off her skirt to try and delay what was inevitable to have this business finished and over with. Glancing from the pale, closed-off face towards the hidden amber in the shadows and then back again, Mala was all too aware of the double stare.

Would Redtip want her to lie for the help given, now that she had the chance to do so? Would it, whether or not said help be taken into consideration, be right to out and out lie, even if she'd been held a night longer than was customary for things to be settled?

Shaking her head, hands clutching cloth at her sides, Mala straightened and took a breath.

"Not I, my queen. Your childhood friend, most ardent enemy and most beloved did. The troll Redtip spun the straw to gold in my stead, fulfilled a task I couldn't and gave help when I was in need," Mala said clearly, her voice firm, not sure where the fancy turns of phrase were coming from.

While she had a rather nice vocabulary and could make pretty enough turns with it from all the reading she'd done, she didn't know much of sounding pretty when it came to magical tasks being fulfilled.

The books she'd read had been long winded, flowery-phrased expositions on history, and rather boring sometimes, to boot, not treaties on magic and how to behave in its presence. Ildrea sucked a breath in, and she turned half around to stare at the doorway with narrowed eyes that suddenly were deep and warm like summer again.

From the doorway, Redtip laughed.

"You're lucky she paid her whole reparation with grace and integrity, despite not needing to, as you went over the time for demanding magic-forced truth in this matter," Redtip said as she came out from the shadows, smirk wide upon her dark lips and eyes dancing in the lamplight. "Truth has been given, as it should be." Redtip looked over at Mala with a raised eyebrow, and despite the fact that it was a compliment, Mala blushed and turned her face away briefly from that stare, because she could hear the admonition.

That she had even considered not telling the truth, even as a way to repay the help given, had been stupid. At least she hadn't compromised herself or Redtip's generous help by lying.

"I suppose so, my beloved. But if you didn't keep your nails so insistently dirty, I wouldn't even have had to go through outside sources," Ildrea murmured as she snatched one tanned little hand and kissed the fingertips, and Mala could easily spot the smile curving those pale rose lips upwards at the corners. Redtip rolled her eyes and flicked her fingertips gently against the lips pressed up against her skin.

"If you weren't such a diseased-breathed, nasty trickster, I might not feel the need to put such demands on this whole thing."

"If neither I nor you carried the sparks in our eyes as we do, we wouldn't be here at all," Ildrea raised a pale eyebrow up towards the wreath of flax flowers that encircled her forehead, and Redtip snorted.

And Mala realized now what seemed so strange - besides feeling as if she were intruding in the rudest of ways - Redtip was clothed in gold. The other three nights her clothes had been a well-worn and torn at hem, leather dress without sleeves and a high collar, the only other piece of garment fur wrapped and tied around her lower legs, from under her knees to her ankles, feet bare.

The dress she now wore still possessed no sleeves, but it fell in a gleaming waterfall in folds and complicated drape down to the floor, with strings of rubies and golden-brown coloured diamonds nested in the folds being revealed or hidden with each shift and step. The difference was striking, and made Redtip both stand out that much more against Ildrea, but at the same time seem so much more obviously fitting, standing there beside the elf queen.

And Mala had no idea what they were talking about.

"Um, I'm sorry... I... Are you finished with me?" Mala ventured out to ask, when it seemed Ildrea was about to start devouring Redtip's fingers with a devious smile, and the troll only quirked an eyebrow and pushed her ample chest forward in clear invitation-challenge.

"Oh, yes. Apologies for keeping you here after things have been settled, as it were," Redtip said with a lopsided smile, sticking her tongue out when Ildrea swatted her over the head.

"What she is trying to say, gracious maiden, is thank you for being patient and long-suffering with this business." Ildrea bowed, just slightly, from the waist, and while she had turned from facing Redtip to Mala, she was still holding the troll's fingers, as if afraid of attempted escape. Redtip snorted and grinned at Mala.

"Would you like to attend a wedding, Mala? I'd love to have you there. As a thank you and apology for becoming involved in this," Redtip said with a chuckle and waved a hand around, presumably indicating both the physical room and the state of things.

Mala, while sorely wishing to not see this room for another moment longer, couldn't help but answer with a smile and a nod.

"Yes, absolutely." After all, it was a little hard to say 'no' with how charming Redtip was, and so Mala thoroughly ignored all the warnings she'd ever heard of not becoming involved with the magical side of nature and its inhabitants.

It was already too late anyway, and who didn't like feasts?

Sweet as Sugar, Honey Lips...

2007-07-26T18:04:45Z

I'm now going to present to the world this (possibly TMI-flavoured) silliness of as over-the-top names for the female (outer) sexual organs as I can. I'm going to place them behind a cut though, because, well, while they'll probably be innconous enough, some might not want to start to associate these words with what I will now attach them to.

We'll start off with the "food names" first, to get into form. These'll be easier than anything else and will obviously get yummy... if not disgusting, first. :D

Plum delight (Colour. Of course, colour varies (I wanted to go with strawberry, but at the best, the labia are pink, not strawberry red...), but I think it works. Doesn't it just screa, "eat me!"?)
Almond joy (The shape! The hole is shaped like an almond! Isn't that just nasty and fun? You didn't want to associate sexual organs with a dessert? Sorry, my bad.)
Candied rose(bud) (The colour, the folds, hmm... Doesn't that just sound very tasty? Of course, any ejaculation would obviously be "rosewater". *snerk*)
Pink tart (This is loosing connection with the shape and whatnot, but, eh... I like it!)

A bit romanticized, obviously, but I think the dessert names makes it funnier. The next will be harder, because I'm simply having trouble finding objects and whatnot that could work as descriptors...

Honey lips (I'm not sure whether to place it up with the desserts or not, because while there's something "sweet" in that, the rest of the description isn't as obscure as the "dessert sexual organs" are...)
(Maple Tree)sap tap hole (About as pretty as a... hole for tapping sap. But! Ejaculation could be "maple syrup"! Back to the sweet, again.)
Origami swallow (Don't ask me, honestly, I have no idea. But, uh, maybe it's got kinda that look, if you looked at an origami swallow from the front? No? Bah.)
Rosebud (No sweet to it this time... does that count? I say it does! (I'm writing it, after all...))
Lucky hole (Yeah. Inspired. Really!)
Labyrinth (And no, the vagina isn't the "core" of the labyrinth, that's the clitoris! What with it seemingly so hard to find or little known about by some people, even in this day and age... Or should it be the g-spot? Either works, I suppose.)

This is hard, really... Anyone else wants to try? :D

You know you missed something you wanted to look at (really!) if you didn't click the cut!

And One Day I'm Gonna... Bleed All Over You (and your religion)

2007-07-17T16:50:33Z

I think (or believe, if you want to use that word) that nature, in itself is not magical. A plant is a plant and an animal is an animal. They can, however, gain magic, or (spiritual) power, really, by being associated with and used as symbols, gaining a spiritual meaning or counterpart as it were.

From this follows that a human, or woman, as that's the one I'm writing about, as part of nature, also isn't magical, in herself. An animal is an animal and a woman is one, and she isn't magical/doesn't have spiritual power. Her body isn't magical/doesn't have spiritual power.

Her bodily functions are not magical/have no spiritual power, in themselves.

See, I've been going about my business as usual, and then, at one place on the internet, the question of bleeding and doing religious ceremony came up. And then menstruation was asked about. And, as in the world religions, a woman shouldn't do religious ritual while menstruating, because she is impure.

Because of a bodily function, which has no spiritual power/magic by and in itself, a woman is unfit for performing religious ceremony while discharging uterine tissue. What I wrote up there I came up with presently, as the (first) result of my thought process of why I think such a stance is complete, utter, bullshit.
Menstruation has numerous spiritual meanings attached to it, in various cultures and religious systems/practices/beliefs, and whether positive or negative, whatever practices are proscribed or celebrated, it never just is. My body is discharging uterine wall tissue and a former potential seed cell for a new human being while I'm menstruating, nothing more, nothing less; in itself that's all menstruating is.

It is a natural bodily function present in primates; those other animals going through some sort of oestrus simply reabsorb all that stuff. If I am of the view that my menstruation has no power, no meaning, no special effects beyond it being a natural function and solution of the reproductive cycle of a woman, for the human race and for primates, and that my spiritual being is the same as it was before it happened for this month, is the same during it and will be the same after it, why can I not perform religious ceremony in certain religious beliefs?
I can understand the view that if you're feeling scummy, uncomfortable and in an unpleasant mood, that you might not want to perform any religious ceremony since that would bleed over into your spiritual self and view, and you might not want to, because of this feeling of (spiritual) "scumminess" present yourself to whatever Power you otherwise address.

But being of the view that simply because your body is performing a natural function of a human female's life, you're "unfit"; "impure" (which, in two meanings, means morally not pure, "sinful", or regarded by religion as unclean/not purified by religious rite) to perform what might be a daily, or important, or otherwise cornerstone of religious life?
I cannot see it.

A natural bodily function, appearing in other mammals, is regarded as impure, in itself. I hope some of my frustration and disgust with this idea is getting across as, well, somewhat reasonable, or at least understandable, either for you, or just for the thought I gave in the beginning.

But, look at this, I think it's interesting;
im·pure (ĭm-pyŏŏr') Pronunciation Key
adj. im·pur·er, im·pur·est

1. Not pure or clean; contaminated.
2. Not purified by religious rite; unclean.
3. Immoral or sinful: impure thoughts.

That's from the American Heritage Dictionary (via dictionary.com).

So, theoretically, if there was a religious rite to purify the woman's body, if only for the duration of the ceremony/rite she wants to perform which she otherwise would be barred from, wouldn't that step around the problem?
Could I perform a ritual to purify my body in religious eyes (if only for the coming ceremony/rite) to match the purity of my spiritual being to be fit enough to perform what other ritual I wish that I'd be otherwise barred from?

I don't see how that could be impossible or unthinkable, but that, of course is obviously not all right. Though then, in my view, this shouldn't be needed since my spiritual being, which is the important thing when performing religious ritual, is still as clean as it always is. My spirit does not get "contaminated", isn't rendered "impure" by a perfectly natural bodily function which has no magical/spiritual power attached to it by itself.

A wound or injury comes to the body either by accident, or by ill will. I could see why one possibly shouldn't perform religious rites while a wound inflicted by ill will is bleeding or whatever. That ill will got to have done something to one's spiritual being. I can see that. But not a natural bodily function.

Though, there are of course still all these magical/spiritual meanings that have been tacked on to menstruation and its result. But as any other symbols, wouldn't you need to use/invoke those conciously for them to be relevant? Of course the symbol/meaning is still attached to whatever in the physical world, but for something like that to influence you and your life you have to invoke/use it conciously.
And I don't see how just bleeding all over the place is using the symbols/meanings </i>conciously</i>.

Though, I suppose, if you see your menstruation as something dirty or the like, instead of a simple, though admittedly rather/very often troublesome natural function of your body as a human/primate female, that such a view, being concious and probably keeping you from performing any religious ceremony because you are banned from it by your religious because menstruation being bad, would be conciously drawing on said meanings. (Hope the many turns in that sentence weren't too much.)

*** ETA
More ponderings... I've seen menstruation equated into the same "wrongness" of being sick or, as earlier mentioned, bleeding from injuries, and so signs or symptoms of something being Wrong with the body.

But... Menstruation is a sign that Everything Is As It Should Be! It's part of the natural bodily cycle(s) of a human female! There's nothing "sick/diseased" or "wrong" on the level of a maliciously meant wound with menstruation.
I'd think my being in the Right Order of Things for a human female, would be the greatest glory I could offer to whatever deity I worship? My body is natural, given by and comes from (ultimately) Deity, so my body expressing its... naturalness? confirming Everything Is As It Should Be, should be a natural part of my devotion, and not disturb any direct and hallowed/sanctioned communion with Deity, but rather add to it!

Yet more; I can understand why cuts or abrasions of various sorts leaking blood would be "impure", as normally blood is supposed to stay inside the body. That's where it belongs, being the origin and vessel of life for a great many beings.
But menstrual "blood" (fluids, rather, maybe?) should leave the body. This is not a sign of something being wrong, of something that should be in my body leaving my body, but rather something leaving my body that should leave my body. Hm.
(Thus the thoughts for today.)

So, that's how I see it.

electrainverted @ 2007-07-13T19:09:00

2007-07-13T17:09:29Z

Title: Thieves and Queens
Rating: G? (PG, at the very, extreme, most)
Summary: Alderan's a petty pickpocket in the capital of the Sessanid Empire, though she takes special "assignments" to get back things which are "lost". This time, the client is quite a shock, and an important ring is in the possession of someone who shouldn't have it...
Notes: Original fic, a romp in a world of my own where I don't have to worry about the male characters. Unbetaed, so it's not as polished as it could be...

The low-roofed room smelled of baked yama, meat, nuts and alcohol, and the light mainly came from the pottery bowls on the tables and rare bowl hanging from the ceiling by a chain, filled with pebbles of fire stone.

Smoke had long since the initial construction of the tavern stained the ceiling a rather sickly grayish-yellow, which could probably partly explain the bad light.

On the other hand, the stones that gave light also gave heat, and in the hot, humid climate of Sessa, light could be sacrificed for a slightly less oppressive air to breathe, especially in a building people wouldn't spend a lot of time in.

Ducking under the door post and taking the few steps down from street to floor level, Alderan looked around the talking, laughing crowd, relaxing as the sound levels, incredibly, dropped. The Black Swan laid in an alley, and a bit under street-level, immediately insulating it from some of the cacophony from the main streets, and the tavern was usually frequented by a crowd used to being quiet... it just stuck with you, after a while.

"Monkey Fingers! Over here!" Lelima's bright, loud voice speared through the general, low din like an elephant in a pottery shop, making Alderan wince as several other patrons looked up with frowns or brief stares, singling her and her sister out more than she'd have liked.

Following the eagerly waving hand to a table remarkably close to the counter, Alderan grimaced at her sister.

"Quiet down, would you? This isn't exactly the place for being loud," Alderan snapped as she slumped down in the chair, muttering "the usual and a pitcher of giva, thanks" to the waitress that had appeared like a spirit beside their table.

Alderan had to wonder if it had been at all that smart to allow her sister to meet with her here, of all places. But Lelima had batted her eyelashes and pleaded sweetly and with hidden cunning that she wanted to "meet you on your home turf, for once. Pleasee, Al?" It had obviously been a mistake, and really...

"I noticed. People are so quiet here, it's rather scary. Are they all thieves and murderers?"
Taking that voice in consideration, it wasn't all that strange how Lelima had managed to appropriate a table so close to the counter, Alderan finished her thought with a wince at the bright, unconcerned voice barging ahead.

"Could you show yourself as more of an outsider, Lima? This isn't even funny. I only agreed to this if you would behave, and you aren't. And while there could be quite a few thieves in this group, of which you're looking at one, as you well now, sister dearest, the rest is more likely to be smugglers than killers." Alderan drummed her fingers on the worn tabletop, frowning at her older, if one could believe that, sister.

Lelima had the grace to slump down a bit and smile sheepishly at Alderan, staying quiet, thankfully, as the waitress came back with a platter of leaf-packed baked yama, slices of roasted meat and nuts, and, thankfully, the giva.

Lelima's pretty nose scrunched up as she sniffed the alcohol and shook her head.

"I don't see how you can drink that, Al. It's nasty," Lelima said fiercely, but she kept her voice low and controlled this time, melding into the rest of the voices instead of breaking away from them and singling herself out.

Rolling her eyes, Alderan scratched her scalp under the puffy pony-tail her short hair had been caught in, and took a deep, demonstrative gulp of the freshly green beverage, slight froth clinging to the corners of her mouth before being wiped away with a rag Alderan usually carried with her.

"So? Just because you prefer the honey-based ones doesn't mean everybody do."
Lelima stole a few of the nuts on her plate, after having eyed them as if she wondered if they'd jump up and bite her upwards-pointing nose tip, as Alderan indifferently wet her rag with the giva from the pitcher and 'washed' her hands with that, before unwrapping the leaf-packet of yama.

"You always had disgusting table habits, Al," Lelima said with a frown, but her red eyes glittered, and the corner of her plump lips were hard-pressed to stop twitching as Alderan smirked at her sister from under her lashes.

"Just be glad I have the manners not to use them in front of our mamas, bossy tongue," Alderan said with a raised eyebrow before she took a bite of the yama and cut away some meat to spear it on the end of her knife.

"They'd kill you!" Lelima laughed and shook her head, then did her nose-wrinkling grimace again. "Why can't you use a proper table knife, Al? Where has that thing been, anyway? Not buried in someone, I hope!"

Alderan ignored her sister for a few moments, just so she could finish eating. She wasn't sure why, by all blessed ancestors, she continued to meet her sister as often as every other week; she met with the family every other month, for dinner, never mind other chance meetings and visits, and with Lelima's constant nagging and disapproval of how she acted, and what she did...

"If you really want to know, I used it to pry open a window the other day, but otherwise this is my table knife. And I don't kill people, Lima. I steal things, sure, but people's lives aren't included in that!" Alderan's voice was still low enough to draw no attention, but it had sharpened with irritation, and her heart-shaped face twisted into a brief full-face grimace for a moment, ending with another pointed, and rather noisy, gulp of the sharp, nutty giva.

"... I'm sorry, Al. I just... can't see it. We've had problems with money, I know, but I still can't see turning into a thief for it." Lelima's face, much like Alderan's, but a bit more oval, was contorted in mild confusion.

Despite this being a fairly regular conversation between the two sisters, if not the rest of the family, who was more of the line of ignoring it, Alderan's narrow, red-eyed stare softened and she shrugged.

"It pays. And besides, I just pick pockets," Alderan said with a breezy smile, showing off surprisingly white teeth against dark lips. Lelima frowned at her sister with a tensing of the muscles around her eyes that Alderan was well-used to, and just held her light, open grin.

"You just said you used your knife to break up a window the other day," said in a soft, quiet voice that nonetheless was like steel, and accompanied by Lelima's lips being pressed into a narrow line; here was the coolly demanding older sister that, at times, seemingly held shades of danger. They always only came into the light, though, when she thought someone was lying to her.

"I didn't say whose window it was, now did I? Could be mine, couldn't it? You're so suspicious," Alderan said, still smiling, before ducking her head to take a few more bites of yama and meat.

"... I suppose so." Lelima's face slowly softened and she shrugged, stretching across the table to grab Alderan's hand around the back and palm, avoiding her greasy fingers. "I hope you don't think I'm too snappy with you, Al. I just don't want you to think bringing down your dignity and person into the mud is the only way to go through life." Soft and insistent, Lelima stared into her sister's face for a long while, before she shook her head and stood up.

"I suppose I should go, Mantana and Ndaliss are waiting for me. Don't get into trouble, Al." Lelima bowed to kiss Alderan on her forehead and embraced her sister's shoulders before disappearing in a flutter of bold red sheat dress with green and white circles and zigzags on it, the slam of the door loud in only the way an outsider would close the door.

Alderan winced.

***

The paved streets were still hot with residual sunlight when Alderan left the Black Swan, having taken her time with the pitcher of giva after Lelima had gone. She had, though, given the last to an associate, the gesture acknowledged with a nod and a flick of finger against nose tip that recognized and accepted the gesture for what it was; a negotiation of future deals.

Not that Alderan had any need, at the moment, of debt and trust owed, but it was a good thing to hoard, and then be able to pick it out and use it as circumstances warranted.

The large, stone-bottomed glass bowls suspended from their chains and poles at a regular distance from each other along the main roads left distinctive, dark-holed shadows surrounded with warm, yellow pools of light now that they had been lit. Some of the light even falling into the mouths of the smaller streets and then alleys that lined the larger roads.

Sure-footed, Alderan started on her way home through the dimmer, but still lit, side roads, not needing to take the unlit alleys yet, where the houses pressed up close enough in places that even "alley" was a dubious description as one needed to walk sideways.

Even now, the streets of the capital were threaded with sound; the clattering of carriages, the near-constant slap of feet against stone, and a deep, underlying hum that at a distance throbbed in the bones, but close enough to the city resolved itself into thousands of voices, seemingly forever reverberating between the walls and along the streets of Tetsisudinante.

"Let the bells ring for the grace of the Lady, let the voices be raised in song... If only in soul, if only in thought, forever shall She be praised by uncounted hearts..." Alderan hummed as she went, snatches of popular songs, festival hymns, prayers, and impromptu ditties that no one else had sung, and probably would never again, as they were forgotten as soon as the next string of melody took its place.

She enjoyed her life as it was.

She might not have much approval from her family because of the pickpocketing, but the money she gave every now and then was hardly refused, if frowned upon because of suspicions of where it might have originated.

The firmer slap of sandals against stone brought Alderan out of her musings about her family and made her freeze in the middle of the narrow street she'd been walking down, wondering if she'd been stupid.

Slowly sliding back to the side and up against the shadowed wall of the long, three-story building where several families would live together in the apartments inside, she hoped that whoever they were, they passed her.

Not because they were wearing sandals, because they weren't exactly unusual in any but the poorest parts of the city, but because of the steady, concerted thrumming that echoed down the empty street.

Such discipline spoke of training, of danger, at least to one such as Alderan.

"Monkey Fingers?" The subdued, but definitely not soft or giving, voice rolled down the street from the hulking wall of four dark figures. Alderan's thoughts were a momentary jumble of gibbering panic; guards!

What had she done to warrant guards, in the late evening, to come looking for her? She was just a pickpocket!

Then the words of what had been said, not just the tone of which it had been said in, registered and Alderan breathed softly, but didn't leave her spot in the shadows.

"Yes? Has one of you fine guardians of state and civilization lost something, perhaps?" Alderan drawled loud enough to easily be heard, knowing it might not be the best idea to tease the city guard, but, like with her rather crude table habits, it was another lamentable thing about her.

Fear always had to be assuaged by more or less mocking teasing. One of these days her mouth was going to get her in trouble, whether the fear was well-placed or not.

"Would you consent to meet your client?" The stony ignoring of Alderan's tease was both a relief and infuriating, because the guard that had spoken sounded as if Alderan had said nothing at all... or been speaking unintelligible nonsense.

Slapping a hand against her thigh, Alderan considered refusing, just for the attitude the guard that had spoken sported.

But she needed the money.

She always did.

"I suppose that would be acceptable, yes." Alderan smiled brightly as she stepped out of the shadows, relieved they weren't here for Alderan the pickpocket, but Monkey Fingers of the Finders.

***

While the name might be unassuming at best, and perhaps seen as childish at worst, it hid behind it able mana who would get you what you paid for... whether it was yours from the beginning or not.

From the belt around Alderan's hips hung the small brass figure of a hand and on the palm the letter 'F' was placed, and from its underside an amulet with a monkey whose fingers were rather grossly exaggerated; anyone who had the knowledge would be able to recognize a member of the Finders, if not the name of the agent herself, though usually it wasn't that much of a problem to figure out what each agent's amulet might stand for.

"Well and good. Do you have time right now?" The four guards came closer, their steps still synchronized, and if Alderan wasn't busy (mentally) gaping, she'd be busy thinking how creepy that was.

Not just city guard; palace guard.

"Uh, no, not at all, of course. Show the way!" If her voice ended on a squeak, she could surely be forgiven; though possessing enough skill with her fingers and sneaking to have landed her a place with the Finders, she was no one special.

She had, as of yet, only gotten "low-profile" jobs; simple forgetful losses of items, demands of bringing back money or items from a deal gone bad, such things.

Never had she been so much as approached by even any of Tetsisudinante's finer population, and here she was being asked by four palace guards to come with her in her capacity as a Finder.

The thought made her mind reel.

They weren't, in truth, clad much differently than Alderan; the cat suit-like sleeveless outfit might have been fastened around the throat with a collar of gold instead of brass, their sandals were undoubtedly of the finest, most carefully treated leather that could be bought and the arm guards they wore were of finely polished steel, but otherwise the biggest difference (besides in that, that Alderan was hardly sporting either arm guards or a gleaming spear) was in the sobriety of the colour of the just past knee-lenght clothes.

Where Alderan sported a dark purple with white stylized flowers; a large bold pattern like any other Sessanid mana, the guards were clothed in solid, dark blue, only lightened up by the gold around the hem of the legs of the outfit and the collar.

The difference wasn't only stark, but so different it felt like she was being escorted by the grim spirit guards of the Eastern Faïedin Queen, instead of normal mana.

Feeling like a baby koribii next to the tall guards, Alderan was of half a mind to refuse this assignment. Who by the pits of damnation that could command palace guards could have "lost" something that not sending said guards after wouldn't fix?

Shaking her head, Alderan knew she wouldn't refuse; not out of fear for any reprisal due to such a refusal, because any mistreatment of an agent would have the whole Finders organization refuse the one who abused an agent any further service, but because she was curious.

Who wouldn't be, after all, with palace guards coming to ask help... "assistance" for whoever had sent them out?

Out on the main street a saddled koribii waited beside a chariot drawn by two dnera, their large, black-and-white striped slender bodies nothing beside the impressively massive, though still graceful koribii.

The large bird clattered its meat hook-like beak softly and the green stare sent at the group was decidedly irritated.

"Sorry," Alderan mouthed to the bird before she was hustled up on the carriage with the group's leader taking to the koribii's back, one of the three guards taking the dnera's reins and the two left arranging themselves around Alderan in a way so that she felt as if she really was being taken in for breaking the law, and not to lend her "expertise".

But then, that was probably partly because they were guards and she was a thief, if of another sort than just a Finder - which was only ignored by authority because they were useful, anyway - and partly because she was very short for a Sessan, while the guards perfect pictures of the glories of the population of the Sessanid Empire, and she felt crowded.

***

The building they went to, however, wasn't the palace, and Alderan was secretly both relieved and disappointed; who wouldn't want to be able to say they had been in the Palace of Grace and Glory at some other time than the special Public Hearing Ceremony, when anyone in the population of Sessa had a right to be heard by the Empress herself?

The chariot, following the koribii and its rider, was steered inside an open portal set in a wall, and parked in the shadow of the awning that stretched along the stable, clearly marked by the sharp smell of animal manure, hay, seed and the sounds of koribii and dnera.

The main entrance of the building that the stable belonged to was brightly lit and had garlands of flowers wound around the pillars supporting a ceiling for the wide stairs leading up to the house, which was classically elevated on pillars.

Buildings in the present time were usually set directly on the ground, when they were in any settlement more crowded than a village or small town.

They didn't enter through the main door, though, but rather three of the guards - the fourth left behind with the koribii - led Alderan around the back and up a narrower, though still wide enough for three people to walk side by side, stairs, which led to the kitchen.

Not even there they stopped, however, and Alderan continued to be led, by the tight-lipped and expressionless guards through the inner corridors and even a gallery of a particularly lavishly appointed inn, it seemed.

Alderan was getting impatient and frustrated at being herded around like a stupid goat, but refusing now and stalking out would be beyond rude; it would also be against the Finders' rules as she had verbally accepted, and then not refused within the initial minute.

She could now not refuse the assignment until she had heard what it was all about, and so she let herself be, almost imperceptibly, pushed around until they got to what apparently was their destination.

The door looked like any of the others they had passed, but the guard that had spoken to her before knocked on the door, then opened without waiting for an answer and let Alderan follow her in, with the two other guards remaining outside.

Alderan was just about finished with patience when the person who supposedly must be the one to have set the palace guards after a Finder stood up from the chair by the window, the lamplight streaming in from it behind her having smudged out her features in shadow.

***

"Thank you for accepting the assignment, dignified mana," the crown princess' voice was low as she spoke, though there was no softness in it; instead it rasped slightly, dragging the voice down to a hum that was as comfortable as it was intimidating.

Or at least it could be intimidating, because any nervousness was only on Alderan's part for standing in front of such a person, not because Ndagi nal'Bnaiva was exerting herself to be particularly intimidating.

"I have accepted to hear the assignment, your highness, not accepted the assignment itself," Alderan snapped out, her voice breathy but steady, and she was sure the roar of her heart beating could be heard by all.

She also, suddenly, felt very, very conscious of her bare feet, the dust on the soles making them slide over the smooth wooden floor instead of stick with nervous sweat.

That she'd dared to make the usual input of distance to a client that erroneously thought that just because she was here meant that she had accepted the whole thing, surprised her.

It also, despite the slight babbling panic about insolence, made her heart swell for herself.

She could obviously do her job, even if the potential client (nothing potential about her really, Alderan couldn't see herself refusing a job from the crown princess despite her earlier words) was the nal'Bnaiva.

"Ah, of course. I shouldn't assume," Ndagi smiled slightly, face relaxed and open, though the guard beside her was staring narrowly. Somehow, Alderan couldn't help but want to straighten her back and cross her arms over her chest, thrusting it up against the two staring at her.

It was a childish response, but while she couldn't see any incredulity at her stature, and the age it implied, however wrong, she had become well versed in feeling it.

And the slight tilt of that smooth-featured, fine face and minute narrowing of the eyes, despite the rest being a picture of relaxation, told Alderan all she needed to know about that.

Instead, she only straightened her back and raised an eyebrow, used to tilting her head back to be able to look those she talked to in the face.

"Since the night won't be getting any younger, blessed nal'Bnaiva..?" She wasn't going to demand, or even ask, indeed, for an explanation of what needed to be taken back. It was both a question of policy in letting the client getting to it in her own time, and a very important question of having manners.

You didn't demand anything of sorts from the imperial family.

You just didn't.

Ndagi nodded, the diamonds on her necklace and on the hoops in her ears sparkling in the light with the movement, loosing her relaxed expression for a tighter, flatter one that sent a shiver down Alderan's spine.

The princess' presence had been in the room from the moment she came in, a caged lioness pacing her confines; now, though, part of that control slipped, and Alderan stood in front of a person that seemed to be able to bowl her over with nothing more than the most briefest of glances.

"You are familiar with the state rings as exchange of negotiation and trust?" Ndagi gestured with a hand, the coloured diamonds decorating the rings she wore grabbing light and casting mad reflexes around the room.

Alderan had a bad feeling about this.

"Of course. Greeting the Empress, anyone has the possibility to slip one of those rings. The exchange of trust would be to give it back, later," Alderan said with a frown, trying to ignore the bubbling pit in her stomach.

Had this been someone other than one of the imperial family, she would have been much snappier in her reply; who didn't know of the state rings?

And phrasing it in a way that it had been a question, as if Alderan was ignorant of all just because she led a life slightly less glorious than that of the princess... it grated.

Of course, Alderan could be thinking on it too much, and the only reason for the question could have been a way to introduce the explanation for the assignment.

"Just so. A person now has one of the state rings, and by tradition she has already had her exchange of negotiation, though she has not returned the ring. There has been demands for more; this is going beyond tradition and into severe loss of dignity for the possessor of the state ring.

"My dignified mother has declined in demanding the ring back; bound by more dignity than most of us would ever have in nine lifetimes, blessed be her soul."
Alderan was now really trying to ignore the protests going off like the colourful sparkles that were imported from Janjin for feasts in her stomach.

The princess couldn't really be suggesting what she seemed to be suggesting, right? To simply take back an exchange of negotiation broke all sorts of unwritten rules and traditions it made Alderan's mind fold in on itself in denial of the act.

But the nal'Bnaiva's face was set in stone, her red eyes cold with a sort of determination Alderan wouldn't want turned on her... at least not in a bad way.

It wasn't as easy as all that, though; the possessor of the state ring had, if she had already received her exchange of negotiation and not given back the ring, herself broken tradition, gone beyond rudeness into blackmail, as Ndagi was so delicately explaining, and into severe loss of dignity from such an act.

There really was nothing bad to be had from taking the ring back, besides Alderan's clamoring thoughts. And the fact, unfortunately, that such a thing just wasn't done.

Especially not by the Empress of Sessa.

No wonder then that the nal'Bnaiva, possessing a place of freer act and a streak of cold practicality to her personality, had gone to the Finders.

"I think you can understand the need to act delicately in this, honoured mana. You absolutely can not be found by the possessor of the ring until it's in the hands of the imperial family again. While, were you to be found out in your position as an agent of the Finders, she cannot accuse my mother directly of the act, there would still be loss of dignity and trust. I won't allow that to happen to the blessed Empress," Ndagi's rough, warning voice made the hairs at the back of Alderan's neck stand up.

Fiercely, she hoped to never have those flat, expressionless eyes turned on her; Ndagi looked much more pleasant when smiling.

Though the idea that she'd have anything to do with the crown princess after this assignment was finished was ridiculous.

"Of course, dignified nal'Bnaiva. I understand completely." That didn't lessen her desire to run away as quickly as possible, though, because to take back an exchange of negotiation, however right it may be, just screamed "wrong" in Alderan's mind.

That didn't mean, however, that she'd show the princess to any other agent of the Finders.

She had been asked, after all, and letting a chance like this go, even if she might never be able to tell anyone she had done it, was too much to ask.

"I am blessed to be dealing with such able and dignified persons that understand where true power lies," Ndagi said with a smile and sat down in the chair again, the guard bringing a small, glazed lamp bowl to the table. Alderan smiled back, just briefly and held up her hands in an open-palmed gesture.

She was hardly a priestess blessed with grace and dhima, but, frankly, a rather simple person.

While her upbringing might insist taking an exchange of negotiation was wrong, she could see it was right, and she figured she had the power to bring it back.

And while the nal'Bnaiva's mother, may the ancestors hold her name forever, might have dignity in amounts that was impressive, the nal'Bnaiva rather held another virtue, just as important for a ruler as well as a person; the power to act, speak and do right. And Alderan was just a mortal creature, and the power and dignity, besides the selfish pride, to be gained from helping the imperial family directly?

Couldn't be denied.

***

Tugging on, and then tightening the thick fluff of springy hair caught in her ponytail, Alderan wondered if she was insane.

Maybe she should have directed the crown princess to another agent, if only because of the obstacle she was facing right now; breaking and entering.

Shaking her head, Alderan grinned at herself.

As if.

She wouldn't have given this up if she so would have had to sneak into the palace itself, whatever her initial thoughts had been on stealing an exchange of negotiation.

"Right then. This shouldn't be too hard," Alderan murmured, taking a breath and darted from the shadows of the garden up to and under the pillars the house she was going to break into stood on.

Nowadays, one had to have more money in general - at least in the cities - to have a house built in the old way if there was no immediate need (like, say, the town being built in a flood area) for all houses to be built on pillars.

Closing her eyes, Alderan tried to calm her racing heart and suppress the mad grin on her face; the exhilaration of the situation was hard to resist, but she needed her mind cool and clear for this.

At least she hadn't had to get over the wall by herself; she'd sneaked in with the contingent of guards - led by the person she'd met last night who'd done all the talking for the guards, apparently a captain of the imperial family's guard - who'd tried to, once again, make the adviser of state give the ring back, as was fitting.

The attempt had obviously been unsuccessful, the proof supplied by the grimmer than usual look on the captain's face, and the sour expressions on the faces of those who had accompanied her inside.

"Some people are unbelievable..." Alderan breathed as she slid from pillar to pillar, clothes and skin all melting into the darkness cast by the floor above her.

She hardly had to worry about being found out under here; there was no party going on in the house, so the garden was empty, the owner herself had left on some errand or other - Alderan would hardly hazard a guess what an adviser of state would do in the evenings - and the servants hardly had any reason to be walking under the house, especially as the cold stores and the cellar where the alcohol was stored were hidden beyond the back of the house, on the the other end of the garden.

This part of the breaking and entering was, frankly, underwhelming.

But well inside she'd had to look out for servants and what possible security, if the adviser had any, that was, that could be inside.

Pausing for a moment in the shadow of the kitchen stairs, Alderan's breath caught as a window was flung open two floors up, the bright, snappy voices of two servants... probably maids, wafted out.

Some argument about one of the stable tenders, apparently.

Alderan tilted her head and listened, smirking as they seemed to, reluctantly, agree that they could not only share, but should, at least once, try it all three together. Love, or at least lustful attraction, made most people rather possessive, despite the fact that they had all the right and possibility by law and culture to share among each other.

The argument was concluded when a thunk and soft moan floated out over the quiet air; the comment from one of them about being uncertain if she actually would stand being close to the other sexually had apparently prompted the second maid to show her that she well could.

"Good luck to you, I suppose. Just don't look out the window." Alderan rolled her eyes; with any luck, they'd be too busy to look out the window due to some mutual "proving" that they could indeed stand to be together sexually, and not just with their stable tender as a middle hand.

With a careful gaze up at the open window, Alderan ascended the stairs with not even a scrape of feet against stone; she might be a pickpocket normally, but sneaking around was a specialty of hers.

On the other hand, she might have some trouble with the breaking in part.

Staring at the door, flicking a quick glance surrounded by a frown at the masks hanging on each side of it, Alderan bowed down over the lock and fished out the lock picks.

One of the other Finders had spent the day with her giving Alderan a crash course in how to pick locks; her fingertips were still sore from the handling of the thin, metal items, and her results had left something to desire, but the agent had declared her passable enough to break into a normal house by the time the evening meal had rolled around.

Hands shaking slightly, enough to make the metal clatter softly as she handled the metal ring from which the professional items of breaking and entering hung, Alderan grimaced at the slight sound.

She was able to keep the giant loops of bracelets she wore quiet in almost all that she did, but give her something new and she obviously had some trouble.

***

The still-open window remained empty of curious maids, however, and the faint moans that were coming from it suggested it'd stay so for a while longer. Alderan could work in peace; she knew the sounds had been negligible, but her thundering heart made it hard to judge, and her fluttering thoughts made her jumpy.

The kitchen door opened with a soft click and no whine of joints, though, and the room beyond was empty, only faintly lit by two bowls on the tables used to prepare the food, along with one still-glowing stove.

Carefully closing the door behind her, Alderan quickly darted over the clean-swept floor to the large, obvious door; there were at least two others, but she was not interested in roaming around the servants' corridors or what storage rooms the kitchen might be connected to.

She'd take a route that went through the rest of the house.

Beyond the kitchen and its short corridor came a large, open room with several long, low tables and a few round, smaller ones, the floor covered by rugs and strewn with pillows; banquet room. This also had a few doors leading into other parts, but she again chanced on the larger, more conspicuous door; another corridor, this one wide and lined with a few decorative story masks and two classic bark-cloth tapestries.

Alderan shook her head, feet breath-light on the cool floors. She really was lucky she didn't have to try her luck in a larger, more complicated building, like one of the government ones by the palace, or the palace itself.

She'd get lost in moment.

The entrance hall covered the length of the front of the building, with broad stairs at the back of the room leading exactly to where Alderan wanted to go; the upper floors of the front.

That would be where the family lived, and where the owner would sleep.

There was a slight possibility that the adviser carried the ring with her; but only slight. She was sure of her control over the ring, but couldn't show it off as tradition stated she should already have given it back, so why not leave it at home?

It wasn't as if someone would come to steal it...

At the top of the stairs, Alderan paused, confused over which door to take. The sound of one of the doors being opened, however, startled Alderan into fear-spurred action; the one to the right was mindlessly opened and closed behind her, before the other person had gotten the door she was coming through open so much as a hand span.

It seemed to have been the right choice, if the homier decoration of the corridor was any sign.

"I'm not made for this..." the whisper slipped out unbidden, and Alderan froze, staring around as she pressed into the shadow of a pillar with a potted plant crowning it.

Nothing happened, and she slowly started down the corridor, carefully opening the doors until she found a bedroom that looked like it might belong to the owner of the house; usually belongings weren't kept in the bedroom when one had place, but this was a ring of state, held as an exchange of negotiation, and on top of that past the time it should have been given back; Alderan didn't think it would be lying around with the rest of the jewellery.

"Where would I hide it..?" Breath-soft whisper as Alderan slipped around the room, doing her best to avoid the large windows in the front of the room.

There weren't many places to look, and in the end she was left standing in front of the low platform with its mattress and abundance of blankets and pillows on and surrounding it.

As more time slid by, Alderan's heart raced faster, though she forced her breath to come steady and calmly; the longer she stayed here, the bigger the chance of being found out.

And she couldn't find it!

The fact that she was rummaging around someone's bed wasn't making anything better, either.

Finally, after having shaken and let her hands run over some of the ornamental pillows, she got down on her knees and pushed blankets and the bottom rugs away to feel along the base of the platform. She'd almost worked her way around when her fingers met an irregularity.

Hoping it wasn't locked, Alderan used her knife to pry the little box out.

"Thank you." Alderan's mutter was threaded with a giggle; this was getting to her. Things were just so much easier with pickpocketing!

Putting the box, now empty, back in its place and clutching the heavy gold ring with its perfect, round-cut diamond and attendant amethysts, Alderan breathed a sigh of relief.

This part done.

There were two doors, besides the one she'd come through in the room; one yielded what was a closet, if one large enough to house a family in on all its own, while the other had *things* in it.

Shelves of books, artwork, a table with papers and other few curiosities, and another, smaller table with several rings, necklaces, armlets and other jewellery.

She'd left the bedroom in disarray, roughened up the closet a bit for show, and now took a select few of the items on the small table; if no one was supposed to think she'd been here only for the state ring, it'd have to look like a burglary, like someone had gone through the places in search for some few valuables to steal.

Her mouth tasted sour for having to do what she was doing; it just wasn't right, looking through a person's personal places like this.

It was definitely one of the reasons she stayed with something as "petty" as pickpocketing, besides it being infinitely more easy than this.

Slipping out the door in this room and back into the corridor, she was met with the door out into the entrance hall opening just as she went to open it.

Her only thought as she was met with a body and an exclamation was "Bleeding spirits and blessed ancestors!".

Then she pushed her way past the two mana, and hurtled down the stairs among cries of "Thief!", her few stolen items glittering in her grasp.

Into the back of the house, desperately retracing her footsteps Alderan took a swing at the sleepy, startled servant that stumbled into the kitchen, and then slammed the back door open with pursuers at her heels.

Down the stairs, feet slipping for a moment and her breath caught in her throat with the possibility of falling down and getting caught.

She caught herself though with only stubbed toes and a brief flare of pain in her ankle, and then out into the garden.

There was a door at the back, leading into an alley; she hoped it would be easy to get open.

"Please, please, please..!" Stopping in time to only gently slam against the door instead of running headlong into it, it screeched in protest as it was forced open and then there was hard stone under her feet instead of soft, lush grass.

***

"The Empire is grateful for your assistance," Ndagi nal'Bnaiva's voice was warm as she bent down and kissed Alderan between her eyebrows, though her face only held a hint of thanks or relief, coolly distant as she bestowed the honours of gratitude.

It didn't surprise Alderan; this was the crown princess, and she could hardly behave as if this had been a personal favour done. This was for the Empire, and as such an official situation, however unofficially it had been carried out.

As she was showed out of the inn, the same one used as two nights earlier, Alderan wondered over her denial of mentioning the jewellery she'd taken.

She felt bad about it, but the amount of money they were worth...

Ndagi had also declined asking about the theft that had been trumpeted out that morning, and Alderan wasn't sure if she'd prefer having been called on it or not.

On one hand, anything done in the course of getting an asked item back by the Finders, short of torture, murder and any acts that might be unnecessary in the course of the assignment, was null and void after the item had been returned; they simply hadn't happened.

On the other hand... Alderan just didn't feel good about being in possession of the jewels.

Not because she'd stolen them, because when pickpocketing, she took what she could, but because they'd been in someone's house, at the moment not worn on the person she was stealing from...

Rubbing her face, Alderan knew it didn't matter any longer anyway; she'd already hawked the items in question, and portioned the money out among her family.

"Over and done with. Though I'd certainly prefer to not do such a thing again... My poor heart can't take it," Alderan grimaced, trying for a bit of levity and shaded her face with one hand as she stepped out on the street outside the inn, the guards having left at the door and turned back.

While she could say she didn't want to do it, as long as she was part of the Finders, it would come up again.

At least the breaking and entering, if not necessarily the stealing of non-designated items.

***

The air was filled with the scent of spices, bread and sun warmed stone as Alderan wandered the streets in the glaring sunlight towards home, relieved that that assignment was over and done with now.

The pouch hanging from her belt was filled with her payment; Alderan hadn't looked, so she didn't know if there was any amount of money beyond the standard fee, though she couldn't imagine why it wouldn't be.

She hadn't wanted to show herself for the poor, unmannered in courtly ways person that she was, and had so refrained from opening the pouch in the princess' presence.

Alderan fancied that she'd gotten a glance of approval for that, but who knew with that smooth face, looking soft for it's features but carved from stone for its expressions.

"Hmm..." Alderan was briefly distracted from her thoughts of the money pouch as she caught sight of a foreign mana, probably a merchant as there was no train of servants or a bodyguard following her.

The pale skin and loose shirt and pants clearly marked her for the outsider she was, a pale lily in a sea of black roses, though not an unusual sight in Tetsisudinante.

A perfect target.

Shaking her head, Alderan decided that she wouldn't relieve her of her money.

Not today, anyway.

Alderan had the pouch at her side, and it should be enough for a good celebration today, at the least, which Alderan thought she definitely deserved.

Then she couldn't hold it any longer, and, retreating to stand against the wall of a bakery with one last, fleeting glance at the lost opportunity for money as the merchant disappeared into the crowd again, Alderan opened the pouch.

"Sweet, merciful..."

It was indeed a fair amount "more" than the standard fee.

Even taking away part of it for a serious celebration left her with a week of feeding herself with her usual fare.

But that wasn't what had prompted the faint, breathless mutter.

In among the oval, wooden chips threaded with gold and silver wire in their particular shapes, lay a ring.

The gold band was slender, but wide enough to not let the few-faceted, brilliantly golden-brown diamond overtake it.

It wasn't a state ring, which the nal'Bnaiva had two of, to signify her status and responsibility, but one of her personal rings.

The princess must have been *very* grateful; Alderan had been given an exchange of trust.

***
(My own personal playground! No males in this race, if you might not have picked up on that. Yay. 83 Hope someone was amused by it!)

Vanilla, vanilla, vanilla... What's with this, anyway?

2007-07-05T12:25:21Z

Wait.

Wait a moment.

Where is all the chocolate?

I've been reading fantasy since I was twelve, or thereabouts. At least that's when I actually remember having read a fantasy book. (Did you think this would actually be about chocolate? Sorry :D)
But now that I think about it, I can't remember one single book (that I have read) with a dark-skinned main character. Hell, you know, asking for them to be in the group surrounding the main characters and bearing the title of side-main-character has also been too much to ask, it seems!

Now, I'm not all that altruistic about this. I think dark skin is sexy. It's just as sexy as pale skin, the same goes for fascial features. I only want to read something where things I find sexy appears (not as in "I only read books where characters I think sexy appears", but rather "this is what I'd like to find, where is it?"), and with one part, I'm well set (kinda... where's my lesbian fantasy!?). But the other?

Now, I just can't remember reading about a dark skinned main character (or side-main-character).
I randomly thought of a few of my fave fantasy series/authors; David Eddings, both the Belgariad and the Elenium... I can't remember any. I mean, in especially the Elenium I'm having trouble remembering if there even were dark skinned people in that world! Both the continents that appeared in the two series were laid up along the same "line".
Deverry; Uh, there's Bardek, with features some. No main characters though, really. And they seem to have a greater penchant in theor population for the child lovins, if we're supposed to believe what's said about them. Lovely.

Maybe I'm reading all the "wrong" books; aka, books by white people. You know what I'm going to say about that? This is FANTASY. Not Earth. You don't have to deal with real-Earth issues in fantasy if you don't want to.

Culture? Go make up your own. I mean, hello? Fantasy. Draw on from where it fits in real-Earth, as is usual in fantasy, but in general; these are not Earth-people you're going to write. You don't have to treat them as such either. If you don't introduce the sort of ugly racial "problems" that exist on Earth into your own fantasy world, then they don't exist there, and you don't have to take them into consideration of your characters and characterization.

Weather? Usually dark skinned people are found in climates with different weather than what some writers are used to, I suppose... Either you ignore that, or otherwise... It can't be so hard! Weather's just weather, after all.

Or am I completely naive and stupid for wishing for more... dare I say it? diversity in the role of main characters? Am I being disrespectful to say that real-Earth and its history doesn't figure in in the fantasy setting and you can do whatever you want to with your fantasy people?

Should I shut the fuck up because I don't know what I'm talking about, for whatever reason?

Sorry, I don't feel like it.

Should I write it myself? Yeah, I am, actually. But, as anyone knows, it's just not the same to only write and read your own stories, so I'd like to read someone else's too. If anyone finds something to reccomend, go ahead... But I'm picky. I have no patience for the ever-present heterosexual romance, anymore.

At least my selfish demand about skin colour diversity serves to show that (at least from what I've read) we're missing a bit of it, eh?

But where has the YURI gone?!

2007-06-03T18:22:54Z

You know what I would like? A place like Y!Gallery, but with women, with yuri. I've tried looking, but that seems like to ask of wine to run like a river in a desert, or something. It makes me frustrated.

But then, I get frustrated each time I try to find yuri in any possible fandom among the Japanese fansites. There was that "wine river in this desert" kind of thing. And every little success just brings an ass-load of disappointment; sites? alright, here, but only a small, small handful, often with very few pictures.
It's like the wine river I just found turned out to be sour wine, vinegar, or something. Great.

And then you more or less have to give up asking for an OTP sort of site when it comes to yuri; just be happy you found ANYTHING AT ALL. Blah. (Of course, I'm lucky when it comes to the Tifa/Aerth pairing, but so little, so little...)

Though then, of course my fear of an Y!Gallery where the "Y" stands for yuri, instead of yaoi? I have a folder on my computer. DLed yuri. MY GOD MY EYES. THEY BLEED. Finding women who... you know, look like women, is nigh impossible. Do I seem a bit stereotyping if I say "most of these yuri-artists must be male, and they just have no interest in real (female) anatomy"?

I have a flickering fear that's what would happen on a Y!gallery-like place for women/yuri. My sweet and tender heart, she quakes.

And yet, you know... yet I can't help but wish for it. It'd make me happy, even if I'd have to go to my eye doctor needing help for my bleeding eyes.

Eurovision; How Europe Maintains Political Relations

2007-05-12T22:44:26Z

RAGE. Complete and utter (if stupid and ineffectual) rage.

Sure, there's neighbour-voting in the Eurovision, have always been. But it can usually be waved away with a "predictable and cute" sort of reaction, because nonetheless, there's good songs that win, regardless of neighbour-voting.

This year, though? Excuse my language and bluntness, but; The spirit of friendly competition wasn't just mutilated, she was raped, anally and vaginally, then gangraped and hung in a tree. By politics. That's all.

Fuckers.

I can usually say that a "good" song won. This year? Was it the lesbians? Do they want Serbia to go bankrupt? It was probably the lesbians. We lesbians aren't THAT awesome, you know. FUCKING HELL.
THIS WAS NOT A WINNING SONG.

It was an "alright" song. I even LIKED it, sure, but it wasn't winning material. And lets NOT talk about the top ten (and even below the top ten). There was nothing fun there, because the only "good" song that was among one of the ones that should have won (among the eastern countries), was Georgia.

Fucking politics on a piece of steaming crap. Or, as we'd say in Swedish; SKITSNACK.

Usually, Eurovision is fun. There's predictable 12's handed out, but a good, winning song always wins, even if it mightn't be my personal favourite(s). This year? I don't count this as FUN. And this will most probably/obviously continue like this for the next few years; whether good or bad, the eastern countries' will not just be in the top FIVE, but in the top ten.

If that doesn't happen next year, I'll repost this and laugh at myself, but does anyone want to bet on it?
Piece of steaming crap, and next year, I'm just listening to the songs and will after that turn off the TV, to avoid getting angry when bad songs dominate the upper parts of the list because of politics.

But to cap off with something more fun, the songs that I thought should have either been the winning song, or among the top five (in no particular order); Georgia, Finland, Sweden and France. Yay.