dark!lu feng/xiao chen | d e pr a v ed
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dark!lu feng/xiao chen | d e pr a v ed
A CONCLAVE MUSICAL PARODY: "God I Hope (I Don't) Get It"
If you want to read the second page with Vincent Benítez's verses, read it on AO3.
Thoughts & Reactions on s3 ep01 TSITP
Spoilers ahead for episode 1 "Last Season". Text only; spoiler images/gifs will be posted separately. I will be focusing on Bellyere and Belly and Jere in these posts.
Can write a quick drabble of Deliah meeting Lefty for the first time
A late night walk was always demanded and Lefty was happy to oblige, walking at night gave him a chance to think and relax.
The Autumn Meeting (Part 1/4)
Six suns peer down from perching clouds, leaving heavy, gilded dents on the heavens. They watch with amused, greedy eyes, their eyelids soft and rusted. They sit and wait for a hymn to be sung.
The city of tomorrow arrives in the early morning, on a thousand dying legs. The crow is beginning its call as the sun sets in the east, and the queen begins to cross the old town bridge just as the sky turns pitch black. The queen is young and full of life. Her hair is dark and wild. Her eyes are electric green. Naturally, the shadows clamber over each other, desperate to touch her skin. They claw at her footprints, grasp desperately at her diadem. The Queen places a shawl, a piece of midnight, careworn and devoid of stars, around her shoulders. She places galoshes on her feet. They snap against the cobblestones. The shadows attempt to bash her brain in. The queen pulls the shawl tighter around her neck and carries on. She must begin her quest before it's too late, before she misses her window. She pulls apart the ghoulish bonds restraining her and slips into the forest, the heavy frame of her home balancing on stilts behind her.
When the clock strikes the right time, three pilgrims meet deep inside the bowels of the forest to tell stories they stole off of wanderers backs. One is skull and bones, the second is more shark than man, the last is cast in iron and gilded armour, kept together with unsteady bolts and springs. The three are old, dear friends with different destinies that lead them to separate for months on end. Still, now they gather for a night in. They gather for the stories and for listening.
The forest is a protective shield, swarming with thistles, brambles and decaying pieces of junk. Years before, during the days of the dust, a king set up booby traps in the forest, hoping to capture some kind of beast. Now spikes and barbed wire festered among the moss, weary of a world full of colour beyond the tree trunks. The queen notices flashes of silver as she races through the trees; simply shadows against the bruised sunset and the sad oaks. Her feet dance around the puddles and quicksands. She flies through the grass and the rock until she comes across the meeting place from her stories. In a clearing stands a roaring fireplace and three men, huddled together like three fates. One stands up and hurls wood onto the fire, his back muscles tensing. He is a fish-man, with silver scales framing his brow and giant saucers for eyes. He wears the same strange uniform the Queen had seen him wear in an engraving once, all frills and ridiculous trimmings. The second man sits watching the third as they recite a poem. His body is masked by a suit of metal armour. Atop his helmet sits a boar’s head, its eyes closed, bored. The final man shakes their bones and clacks their teeth. He disguises his lack of skins with a cloak, similar to the Queen’s. He is standing by the fire, whistling a strange sonnet:
“-so the little girl set off to win back her foot. But the ogre’s own pair of feet were large and heavy. He was quicker than the little girl and it took her months and months of travelling to catch up-”
“Didn’t her parents worry about her?” Interrupts the fish man from his space at the mantle-piece, “Poor girl out on her lonesome.”
His friend groans and stamps his foot.
“She had no parents Abram. She was all on her lonesome to begin with and that’s how she lost her foot. Haven’t you been listening, you knucklehead?”
“Surely she has friends who would wanna know where she is...right? I mean, surely one of you guys would wanna know about my fins being cut up? Or my scales being punctured-”
“Enough! I have a story to finish Abram. Leave questions ‘till after the workshop.”
Abram lets out a tiny squeak but speaks no more. The skeleton grins in the firelight and begins again:
“The little girl carried on, always searching for her missing foot. She asked everyone she came across and slaughtered the many who tried to take her for their own, with their nets and their traps and their cages. By the time she finally found her foot she was covered in blood and guts and body parts. Still, she had found her foot and that’s what truly matters-”
“Where’d she find it Emil?” Abram asks, his eyes widening.
“I’m getting to that! Now where was I- oh right! The little girl, all alone and bloody in middle of a winter wood, found her foot on the low branch of a great oak much like these-” The skeleton waves his arms at the trees encasing the three storytellers, “The bone was still brand new, like a new pair of shoes elastic new. It had been left there many, many moons before by someone very tall.”
“What did she do then?”
“Well, she grabbed her foot from the oak tree and put it back, snapping it into place so to speak. Then she began the journey back home. As she did she thought to herself, “The ogre must have not needed the foot as much as I did.” The End.” Emil raises his skull to the sky, grinning proudly.
His friends give awkward coughs.
“What happened to the ogre?” Abram asks, frowning, “Surely something interesting happened to him.”
“Unimportant.” Emil growls.
The suit of armour gives a squeak and stretches his wiry arms. Emil rolls his head to the side in annoyance.
“What the girl did once she got home does not matter Gus. Not in the slightest. Don’t you understand what I was trying to get across? What I was trying to convey?”
“Not really.” Abram says, poking at the fire with a stick.
“The moral of the story, of the stanzas, was that quests of revenge, of bloodshed, are simply pointless. The journey is important and needed. All the other benign details are just...unnecessary!”
“It was good ‘till the ending. You just need to rework the ending.”
Emil scoffs, “Amateurs! Both of you! And Francis, Boris and Johnson and…all of the folding folk at the board up in the mountains! I cannot compromise my masterpiece with...amateurs!”
“I enjoyed it.”
The three men turn to see a young girl approaching their campground, her eyes an electric green, her pupils dancing. She has an amused smirk on her face. Her hair is a dangerous dark brown. Abram just stands there, blinking, confused. Emil turns his back on the visitor, muttering some obscenities about damned fairy folk under his musty breath. Gus on the other hand, recognises the queen immediately and falls to the ground in a bow, his chest plate and helmet clinking. The queen’s smirk grows into a grin and she pats the knight on the shoulder.
“I enjoyed the blood and the guts...and the body parts.”
“Yeah you would,” Emil growls, “You and your tasteless, tasteless people.”
Gus gasps and places himself in front of the queen, as if Emil’s words can pierce her skin. Emil simply laughs.
“Look at this old fool! This old, old fool! She doesn't care for you at all my boy! She looks at you as she looks at the bugs swarming around her feet. Learn that Gus! Learn these young girls only want to look at you in amusement and never want to settle down!”
“I want to settle down,” The queen replies, and she strides towards a chair the men have manufactured from fallen Autumn leaves, “I am going to settle down.”
“Ah see! I knew it! I knew you were that queen I’ve heard gossip about!”
“Gossip?” The queen’s eyebrows raise, “Gossip about me?”
“Oh yes. I’ve heard quite a lot of tall tales about you. Stories about you eating babies, stabbing your own knights with their own swords-” At that, Gus swallows and sits back down on the forest floor, shaking, “-stories of you charming snakes and cobras. Stories of you sleeping in their coils.” Emil stares at the queen, goading her to respond. The queen tuts and stretches her short, stubby legs. They were tired from hours of running as their owner searched the dark places. Her skin stretches and shifts in the firelight.
“I only ate one baby. The rest is just nonsense.”
“Hmmm. All the gossip came from your kind so I never took any of it seriously. Seeing you now makes me think it wasn’t so far fetched.”
The queen furrows her brow and rolls her eyes.
“Are you all telling stories?” She asks, focusing on the dirt beneath her leaf throne instead of the man in front of her, “ When I was little I read stories about you telling stories together. In an endless loop.”
The men fall silent. The queen sighs.
“I would like to join you all. For just one night.”
Emil growls. Abram roasts a marshmallow. Gus shivers in an invisible wind. His legs make a strange croaking sound and detach themselves from his waist, stumbling about on the rocky terrain.
“What are you queen of, exactly?” Emil asks.
“All sorts of things really.”
“Like what? What do you do? What are your day-to-day ac-tiv-teees?”
“I look after the lost ones most of the time.”
“The lost ones?”
“Folks made of time and sand. They come to us, my husband and I, full of regrets and sorrows. They lose themselves in our corridors and become our subjects. We transform their troubled minds into something sweet.”
“Sweet for the monarchy, one supposes, but not for everyone else,” murmurs Emil, picking at his cloak,“ I heard you two aren’t married already.”
“We will be soon.”
“Once your quest is complete, I’m guessing.”
“Yes. Once I return.”
“Do you take babies?” Abram asks, sitting cross-legged on the milkwood grass, “I heard you take babies.”
“Sometimes.”
Emil clears his throat, which makes his bones rattle in a very unattractive way. He then nods to Abram, who nods back. He turns to Gus, who by now is just a bunch of scraps flailing about in the mud. Gus’ head, however, has enough time to tilt his head back in agreement.
“Very well. You may join the club for a night. A single solitary night-”
“No baby eating!” Abram shouts from his corner. The Queen tuts and crosses her heart with a wicked finger.
“I promise. No baby eating.” She grins.
“-And you’ll be the last to go. No cuts!” Emil growls.
“Very well.” The Queen sighs and closes her eyes, listening to the whispers in the breeze.
Emil looks to his companions, sitting by the campfire as they always do, and shrugs.
“Now that…compromise has been met I suppose we can continue with the workshop.”
“Finally,” Abram mutters.
And as the four take their places in the storyteller’s guild, the woods begin to shiver with excitement.
The annual Autumn meeting was only beginning.
Me? Finishing a pack before I get distracted and start something else? I don’t think so.
"A Rough Draft" matte paintings by Alisher Mirzoev https://www.artstation.com/artwork/RRvkO
a draft of a poem based on this painting, written as part of a class exercise (sharing because i had fun but also have no clue what to do with it)
more urgent & unforeseen reasons to love myself
would i rather hold your fan or fold myself into it? gathered in & out again at my hidden parts where dust/powder collects & your fingers press down who dares look at me so? who paints the sky such violet & raw pink in early mornings? who pinned a bow to my chest? is this your dog left to my hands, shaking? must i hold him while you dress? must i bite my lip when you ask? baby i don’t have knees -- you gave me hard edges & you wonder why i keep my distance. a hairpin on the carpet mascara pox on glass cold dog kisses for my mouth the night outside & in / fuzzy walls of charcoal grey & black & a starless sky, a canopy bed i won’t lie down for you no fucking tonight. & whose dog is this anyhow your kisses blue / where have you been a small box, very far away. tissue paper. a few lines, scratched. your puppy on his knees crying for you, somewhere in the back. me, too.