Tiny Tarts For Mice

I'll pour you some tea, take a seat. I've got lots of stories to tell.

[abbeykitchenmouse]

Some years are harder than others, this one stands to be one of the most difficult on record. The memory of it is unlikely to pass.

[desdemonical]

inspired by @prokopetz‘s post here

[abbeykitchenmouse]

Folk always ask me, Nutmeg, how do you maintain such a wonderful kitchen? It certainly doesn't hurt to have other abbey beasts to help, am I right?

And to that I say, no. You're wrong. There are no other abbey beasts helping me. They're all too busy chasing vermin and bandits around the wood for the wee little kitchen mouse! The only reason this kitchen stays functional is because I clean, and I sweep, and I scrub, and I terrorize. Then I'm ready to cook a delicious dinner, but wait, the kitchen is destroyed again before I can even start!

It's my own personal circle of hell. Someone get Dante down here to write about it! Who just put a dirty butter knife in this pot?! Aghhhhhhh!

[forestcrittervillains]

Sometimes there's just nothing like a big iron pot of gulyás. What? Yes, it's the middle of summer but culture is sometimes eating hot stew while sweat pours off your face.

[abbeykitchenmouse]

You took my galuska! What kind of vermin raids for dumplings!

[abbeykitchenmouse]

Met the dumbest weasel in all of the wood today. Just an absolute buffoon who couldn't even perceive why he was such a mess. There were literally no thoughts betwixt this creature's ears, just violent big goon energy and a desire to eat raw ingredients from the larder. He couldn't understand why the guards kept throwing him in jail for commiting petty crimes, and when I suggested not committing crimes he just tilted his head and stared.

I'm sure someday he'll make a villainous vermin lord irrationally frustrated. But I honestly think he might be too daft to throw out a window. It just wouldn't be satisfying.

[bloomedwings]

Ugh, was having a great time mocking my recently imprisoned rival when I noticed the camera positioning makes it so that I appear behind the bars, thus framing me as trapped in a metaphorical prison of the narrative, now my whole day is ruined. Fuck.

[sileomaolduin]

@forestcrittervillains

[abbeykitchenmouse]

Nothing like a touch of blood curdling ego death to start a villainous day. Kitchen work is a similar cycle.

[baesileaf]

One of the first piece's I've made in a style that's become my trademark, it's gonna be three years old this summer. Inspired by the works of Ivan Bilibin, I've tried to portray a stylized slavic sable spearman (love me some aliteration). The shield they're holding is an authentic find from Szczecin, it's dated to around the 12th century. It seems quite wide, because it was deposited in the ground and subsequently squished, but originally it would've been aggresively curved, almost to a semi-cylinder. I tried to build a reproduction at home but it's still very much a work in progress for now

[abbeykitchenmouse]

Those vermin slay in battle and fashion in equal measures.

[abbeykitchenmouse]

I'd like to start by saying I don't really care for the Doors or Jim Morrison.

So with that said I'm incredibly sensitive about this... thing. This bit of writhing poetry and delusional music that I fell in love with in my teens. The last person I tried to share it with refused to listen to it, and that's okay, it is a lot and I understand. That was a long time ago. But I really feel this one; in my dysphoria and my ups and downs, in its morbidity and maddened sleeplessness, in the way I write my poetry and play my characters, in the way it casts its rabidness over everything like a shadow.

So I listened to it again and decided that I'd share this bit of madness that's so precious to me with whoever else wants to hear it. There's gotta be someone.

"Once I had, a little game

I liked to crawl back into my brain

I think you know the game I mean

I mean the game called 'go insane"

[rabosa-al-forn]

🐦‍⬛ Hello?

🦝 Hum?

🐦‍⬛ What are you doing there?

🦝 I'm waiting for someone.

🐦‍⬛ What a coincidence. I have to meet with someone here too.

🦝 There's no one else but me here for now.

🐦‍⬛ I'll have to wait for that someone here too then.

🦝 We can wait together.

[abbeykitchenmouse]

Sometimes you just need to get kissed by a god and Know.

Midnight Noon, entropy scarcely creeps under your Ion Moon

A god! A god, says I as time stumbles to a fearful plod

Your crown wreathed in flame, oh now we play the Yuletide game

How odd, that I a crooked beast, a sullen sod

Should be what you caught in the woods; and be yours, understood

That I should exchange my mishaps? It seems so strange

Oh Midnight Noon what a kiss, though all I can know, 'tis but a curse

'Tis but a kiss, a kiss is a kiss, the trees pop and sizzle, lake waters hiss

How can I return this? This sword tap metaphor from a deific tryst?

This Yuletide game is a shame, and I'm to blame

For one year hence I'll have to formally dispense

And make the journey to your plane and return your entropic kiss profane

I was just a low kitchen beast and now I Know

That I Know that I Knew, across time's surging rivers I must row

Woodland Midnight is once again night, and now I'm doomed to set this right

Such is the name of the Yuletide game

[captain-lovelace-deactivated202]

It’s always “revenge won’t give you back what you lost” and “murder is wrong” and never how was the bloody violent revenge the bloody violent revenge looked fun was it fun

[abbeykitchenmouse]

Those vermin do seem like they're having fun...

[abbeykitchenmouse]

I am breathin', chitterin', skitterin', and scurrying. I am gnawin', clawin', chewin' at the World Tree's rotten, rancid roots in the midnight daydream's dark. In the dark, in the dark, oh see how my eyes shine in the torch light!

I'm such a fright! We're such a fright!

We bandit mouses, we bonnie does and frisky bucks! Ye rapscallion rats and scurrilous squirrels! Why's a bandit wit' buck teeth beheld so low by their vulpine kin? To wit, I'm in a fit, a tizzy that has me rattlin' my tin!

Haven't we ashen blackened our blades and our buckles? Haven't we earned our pay in the fray! Haven't we prayed midst our glades 'neath the light of our Night Father's moon? Prattlin', saddlin' some great distant nothin' with our grievin'?

You know what I believe in?

The sound of our scurryin' din! The bloodwrath and fire coursin' within! It ain't a sin! We are not demure abbey murine that at the slightest sight of a ferret douse our trousers in urine! Fearin' nah; I've got nothin' but fury'n and my folk here in this clearin'.

I swear here on the fire'n me that I'll not be cowed! Not by a fox that's proud or a council knight bellowing loud! I'm a bandit! I'm the salt of the Earth! The fire in the Hearth and the Oppressor's curse! If I must chew the World Tree to death then I'll aim to be so much worse!

@forestcrittervillains

[abbeykitchenmouse]

I am breathin', chitterin', skitterin', and scurrying. I am gnawin', clawin', chewin' at the World Tree's rotten, rancid roots in the midnight daydream's dark. In the dark, in the dark, oh see how my eyes shine in the torch light!

I'm such a fright! We're such a fright!

We bandit mouses, we bonnie does and frisky bucks! Ye rapscallion rats and scurrilous squirrels! Why's a bandit wit' buck teeth beheld so low by their vulpine kin?

To wit, I'm in a fit, a tizzy that has me rattlin' my tin!

Haven't we ashen blackened our blades and our buckles? Haven't we earned our pay in the fray! Haven't we prayed midst our glades 'neath the light of our Night Father's moon? Prattlin', saddlin' some great distant nothin' with our grievin'?

You know what I believe in?

The sound of our scurryin' din! The bloodwrath and fire coursin' within! It ain't a sin! We are not demure abbey murine that at the slightest sight of a ferret douse our trousers in urine! Fearin' nah; I've got nothin' but fury'n and my folk here in this clearin'.

I swear here on the fire'n me that I'll not be cowed! Not by a fox that's proud or a council knight bellowing loud! I'm a bandit! I'm the salt of the Earth! The fire in the Hearth and the Oppressor's curse! If I must chew the World Tree to death then I'll aim to be so much worse!

@forestcrittervillains

[forestcrittervillains]

This might be a tad heavy but one of the feelings I try to capture with Bandits is this idea that it feels like the world doesn't have room for us anymore. That all the greatness and sanctity (said with as much or as little sarcasm as you desire) of the past, the great expectations, the standards other people hold us to, sometimes the very way of the world isn't for us. That people from before used to leave art on rocks and now there's no room for us to leave art on other rocks because what once was art is now vandalism.

It's a feeling I've had for awhile, but one especially compounded by my recent health episodes. Because of dietary changes I had to make for my health, it really does sometimes feel like society's really not made to be habitable, and I'm left basically unable to safely eat anything unless it's cooked at home with consideration to my issues (I love cooking, so luckily I was able to make the changes, but jeez). And that's before even getting into race and income level stuff, which I shall not, ahaha.

So when I think about Bandits, the little forest creatures that live in a hard world but a beautiful world, where they're fighting for their home and their culture and their way of life, I relate to how it feels like the world is trying to stomp them out, and many wish they would simply and conveniently go away.

However, they will not go away.

They're here to stay. I'm here to stay. As long as I can. As long as they can. They were here! They were beautiful! They did good things, they did bad things, they loved and lived and hated and killed and died! They had special things, and saw amazing things, they gazed upon skies and played in forests that are no longer here. If they have to be remembered as the bad guys, as Bandits, then so be it, as long as they're remembered.

[abbeykitchenmouse]

Less in thematic today. An out of character tribute. My little promise to keep singing along.

Weary, bleary, and drunken Van Zandt

I know that sometimes a poet just fucking can't

Or even for all their ardor; hardly stand

Rest now; I know it was the laces of your Flying Shoes

That went and tied your musing lyrical noose

You never could choose

Never really got the payback, only parcels of misery

Ain't that the way of ancient history

Leaves you muddied and blistery

Pancho and Lefty are best left in the ground

It just keeps going round and round and round

Lean into the wind, hear its unchained sound

I hope you can at least smile on those who charge and sally

Grimly forth from the stairways of Tecumseh Valley

Lend your lungs to me and you'll see

Fare thee well, Tecumseh Valley!

[abbeykitchenmouse]

Alas for a bonnie Lass

I'll pass, alas, alas, I'll have to pass

Lovely though they are, oh for a Lass

Atop green grass, mirthful and beauteous

Their siren songs harmonious, perfumed by foreign sassafras

To know a maiden or a wife; it seems a tad crass

I'd sooner ask her what's her husband's name

And who's the betrothed of this lucky dame

If you've ever been held by a badger boar, you'd know a dame's not quite the same

Out of my way ye toothy jills, I'm dancing with your jacks

Pardon me, sweet chattering does, I'm here to sweep up your bucks

I've no time for hens; let your roosters show me your nests

Ever been flipped on your back by a gander knight and you'd understand

[abbeykitchenmouse]

I know I should pace myself and that I've already had one this morning, but I really need another cup of kahve to get me going. I'll regret it later when I tire and grow ill before noon. Yesterday was a day of rest for me and sometimes it's very hard to leap into business afterwards.

Damn those invaders from the south, introducing such an energizing habit to this particular Wood!