Sparrow Grace

self-published writer | irish | anarchist postcolonial fantasy is my jam lover of all things | don't be afraid to say hi :3 peace✌️ writing account of riotwizard

[sparrowgrace]

Ralidya seems like a desolate place.

Underneath the surface, it is a place of collisions.

In the palace, a cunning green General clashes with a power-drunk priestess, while in the city, a ruthless colonising force clashes with indigenous stories of survival and violent hope.

And in the desert beyond, Ralidya's princess clashes with the stories told about her, with a curse darkening her lineage, a madness dwelling within her.

There is a monster in Ralidya, and they're all a part of it. Princess Eadahmisa will do whatever it takes to protect her sister from the violence of their city - she made her choice, and she now clashes with the cost of her compliance.

The balance is fragile. The arrival of their warmongering enemies and a mysterious monsterslayer threatens the balance, and the city lies ready to crumble.

universal link to most vendors <3

print copies on barnes & noble <3

ebook on bookshop.org <3

Now on Hoopla <3

print copies in UK <3

print copies in Australia <3

[sparrowgrace]

✨she✨

[riotwizard]

she omelas my hole til i walk away from society and all the privilege and comfort it offers because i cant stomach the cost of it even if i never have to see the suffering

[sparrowgrace]

here

[pastperfectcontinuous]

I want you to write for pleasure—to play. Just listen to the sounds and rhythms of the sentences you write and play with them, like a kid with a kazoo. This isn’t “free writing,” but it’s similar in that you’re relaxing control: you’re encouraging the words themselves—the sounds of them, the beats and echoes—to lead you on. For the moment, forget all the good advice that says good style is invisible, good art conceals art. Show off! Use the whole orchestra our wonderful language offers us! Write it for children, if that’s the way you can give yourself permission to do it. Write it for your ancestors. Use any narrating voice you like. If you’re familiar with a dialect or accent, use it instead of vanilla English. Be very noisy, or be hushed. Try to reproduce the action in the jerky or flowing movement of the words. Make what happens happen in the sounds of the words, the rhythms of the sentences. Have fun, cut loose, play around, repeat, invent, feel free.

Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering The Craft

[blumineck]

Huge thanks to Richard of the Order of the Blade for throwing me around!

(If you’re in the UK, consider checking them out! The order are a combat school with a really fun and welcoming ethos)

And as always, more bows, swords, and nonesense on Patreon

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

[luna-azzurra]

Ways to Show a Character is Angry but Trying Not to Show It

✮ ⋆ ˚｡ Their jaw flexes while their smile stays plastered on.

✮ ⋆ ˚｡ Responses get shorter, clipped: "Fine." "Sure." "Whatever."

✮ ⋆ ˚｡ They stop blinking as often, eyes fixed a little too long.

✮ ⋆ ˚｡ Their body gets still, unnaturally still, like every muscle is on lock.

✮ ⋆ ˚｡ They press their tongue to their teeth before answering.

✮ ⋆ ˚｡ They set things down a little too hard, the glass, the pen, the keys. Not enough to break, just enough to say something.

✮ ⋆ ˚｡ They keep asking, "Why would you say that?" but never raise their voice.

✮ ⋆ ˚｡ Their politeness sharpens into something cutting, brittle.

✮ ⋆ ˚｡ They laugh, but it's one note too sharp, too short.

✮ ⋆ ˚｡ The moment they're alone, they let out a breath like they've been holding back an explosion.

[unheardoracle]

If Your Scene Feels Lifeless, Someone Is Being Too Polite

Stories stall when everyone behaves. Real tension appears when someone:

• asks the wrong question • says something they shouldn’t • notices something uncomfortable • refuses to drop the topic • misunderstands something important • interrupts at the worst moment

Conflict doesn’t always look like shouting.

[ariaste]

Couple more options for tension:

They want something REALLY REALLY REALLY bad, but for some reason they can't ask for it -- or can't have it even if they did ask.

They don't notice something that the audience HAS noticed (like in a horror movie when the monster is sneaking up behind the protagonist, or if someone drinks a glass of unboiled water during a cholera outbreak because they don't know about germ theory)

Takes a risk (or otherwise does something they "shouldn't" do) which the audience has to sit through for a prolongued period of time (e.g. slips away from the party to go into the host's private office and rifle through their papers before the guards catch them)

Loses when they thought they were going to win

[pastperfectcontinuous]

I want you to write for pleasure—to play. Just listen to the sounds and rhythms of the sentences you write and play with them, like a kid with a kazoo. This isn’t “free writing,” but it’s similar in that you’re relaxing control: you’re encouraging the words themselves—the sounds of them, the beats and echoes—to lead you on. For the moment, forget all the good advice that says good style is invisible, good art conceals art. Show off! Use the whole orchestra our wonderful language offers us! Write it for children, if that’s the way you can give yourself permission to do it. Write it for your ancestors. Use any narrating voice you like. If you’re familiar with a dialect or accent, use it instead of vanilla English. Be very noisy, or be hushed. Try to reproduce the action in the jerky or flowing movement of the words. Make what happens happen in the sounds of the words, the rhythms of the sentences. Have fun, cut loose, play around, repeat, invent, feel free.

Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering The Craft

[sparrowgrace]

mwah

[fatmasc]

Sometimes ur fat bc u were born that way. Ur parents are fat, ur cousins are fat, u always have been fat.

And sometimes, you become fat. Something happened (puberty, change in diet, change in ability, anything) and someone who was once skinny is now fat. This doesnt make you a failure. It just means ur fat now. Its okay. You didnt do something wrong.

No matter how you are fat, its okay to be fat

[meadow-of-daisies-and-lavender]

That anything also includes trauma and stressors.

[prinnay]

[ PrismColor ]

[prinnay]

process pics, salvaged the first version from an abandoned wip :p

[sparrowgrace]

being sooo brave and nonchalant about this freak ass thing

[sparrowgrace]

This is not your life.

But it shrouds and smothers you, encasing you like an inescapable coffin. Like a smooth coffin carved from ivory, measured to your exact height, the width of your ribs, the length of each of your fingers.

You watched them craft that ivory coffin. Meticulous and careful, pieced together to fit around you like a second skin. A shining beacon of wealth in this time of hunger, savage tusks turned into a display worthy of the king in whose name they carved.

Why were you chosen? You do not rememember. You were the victim of a random lot. You were chosen as a despised criminal. You were a willing sacrifice, laying yourself bare for your king.

[sparrowgrace]

Your king came to you, as your days of freedom waned. He approached and knelt before you upon the altar, lowering himself to your level. Were you shackled to that stone? Did a river of magic course through your veins, bidding your compliance? Or did you sit patient in that arenose room, awaiting your king?

Your king, he knelt before you. In those days, this kingdom was still dark and dusty and small, your king had shadowed eyes and bruised knuckles, tired lines criss-crossing his face, his only weapon close at his side always.

He spoke to you, when you still had ears with which to listen. He chuckled, swept a dry, cracked hand over his face. He apologised. It seemed your impending imprisonment freed him to speak his mind, truly, as with no one else. He apologised, again, and again.

[sparrowgrace]

He hoped your sacrifice was not in vain. He hoped these hours of carving tough ivory truly held the power promised to deliver this kingdom from suffocation. He hoped you would live on in the fruitful lives of those who came after you, who lived because of your breath and blood that fed the foundations of this kingdom.

He told you he hoped, and he told you he prayed. He told you he believed in no god. He told you this was nothing more than meaningless barbarianism.

He apologised. Was this the first time

[sparrowgrace]

you felt a prick of uncertainty, a stab of fear? Did you notice a gleam of unfalling tears in the eyes of your king? Did you spy his shaking hands, bloodless around his axe? Your king was terrified. He believed you should be terrified. He wanted you terrified.

But of course, you cursed yourself for these thoughts. Your king, for whom you knelt waiting upon the altar, for whom these miners carved your end; your king, who owned your life and your body without a word of command; your king, he loved you.

More, your king was the will of God upon this earth, under this earth, in this salted cavern, and his will had manifested

[sparrowgrace]

this ivory coffin and these burning candles, these endless ceaseless humming chants that wove magic into the air of this chamber, whispering across your skin, itching as it bound you to this palace, your lifeblood to the very foundations that sheltered your king.

Of course, as ever, you couldn't stop unforgivably twisting your king's whispered confessions with your own fear and uncertainty, treasonous. The shadows and hunger played tricks on your addled mind, as your days of freedom waned, your days of curling fingers and nails in your skin, joints cracking and creaking as you moved and writhed, savouring, savouring.

Savour it, your king had whispered to you.

[sparrowgrace]

Your life is more precious than they would have you believe.

Priests and spellcasters and carvers and guards, they spoke to you not as you waited upon the altar, and they ignored you curling your fists into your hair to feel the pull on your scalp, digging under your nails to feel your edges, to prove the boundaries of yourself with pain.

Your body, your king's body. Savour it, he had commanded, and as you pondered the meaning of his words and his urgent eyes, you pulled your nails through your fragile, hungry skin, drawing blood and watching it drip to the sand under your knees. Your blood fed the palace, you remembered. You chuckled to yourself, and he apologised, and you pulled locks of hair from your treasonous head, and you let them fall, scattering lightly across this room. Your treasonous eyes had beheld the saint. Your treasonous ears had heard the king's words. With your treasonous nose you had smelled him, smoke and musk and desperation.

You may be ignored but your king had spoken to you.

[sparrowgrace]

You may be buried and forgotten, but your blood in these foundations would live on.

Live on, your king had commanded you. In the blood drying upon the sand, in the scattered hair that would rot slower than your ghastly body, in that ivory coffin. Live on, live on. He apologised? He spoke to you. Had you no story, no confession for your king? Did he pause to hear the last words you could have spoken

[sparrowgrace]

if you had had any. He walked away, all apologies.

In his name they finished this ivory monument, and he did not pause to behold the celebration, if there had been any. No, the only fanfare was dry coughs and mutters to continue, hands worn and cracked, eyes blurred with exhaustion, lips dry and peeling in this salt cavern. Hunger spurred them on, and did any single one of them pause to hear your final words? Speak not, they commanded you, whispering their itching magic, yanking taught the chains at your wrists. They worked as one to press you down, holding tight to your shoulders and your back, your head and your jaw. They pried your mouth open. Speak not.

[sparrowgrace]

Did you cry out? Could you have begged and pleaded? Did their magic bind even that final scream to silence? Or did you, even then, watch the dark entryway, awaiting your king? Did you close your eyes, surrendering in silence to him?

One by one they pulled your treasonous treacherous teeth from your skull, binding them to the face of the ivory coffin, meticulously carved with their command, lie silent, die silent, deliver your king from suffocation.

What had your final words been? Had you whispered them to your king, kneeling at your side as always, urgent eyes but soft hands? You bid me die, you must have told him. For you I die.

Would you have said more? Could you have

[sparrowgrace]

spoken a deeper truth before the ivory coffin was sealed, and you disappeared into darkness, and your king did not sit at your side, did not join you in this endless darkness, he did not hear your hissed final words, blood pouring over your chin in the dark, in that smothering coffin. He walked away.

This is not your life.

[sparrowgrace]

But this is your death, suffocating in the dark, pressed under the weight of a cavern of salt, fingernails curling into your skin, jagged and dirty and digging through your veins. Your teeth fixed in a crooked grin, binding you to silence, your final words trapped in your toothless maw, a silent scream.

[sparrowgrace]

L I S T E N T O M E

[straycatj]

ボクはそれなりに、いいねこなのです

I am a good cat, perhaps

[nobonzo]

Abolish Ice

[mismedleym]

visitation by an angel (revisited)

[littlestpersimmon]

Free Ornamentation III. This work is dedicated to the public domain ♡

[digital-collage-materials]

transparent!