#twelve tones

[ozkar-krapo]

Arnold SCHOENBERG [dir. Pierre BOULEZ]

"Pierrot lunaire, op.21"

(LP. CBS rcds. 1978 / rec. 1977) [AT]

[kagrena]

Dear a curious onlooker,

I'm surprised by your regards. I don't know what to think of your admiration either. I didn't think many people were looking, especially not on-looking. What does it mean, to be on-looking, I wonder, against looking? On what does one look?

I didn't think what I said to the court that bold, either. Even if the The Great Scarab disagrees. The Scarab – he tells me I no longer need to say 'Great', though his name feels strange and naked without it – talked plenty of change before I arrived. At least, that's what I'd heard, back in the silk caverns in the 'neath, before I ventured out to him. It was that talk – that we could someday transform – that brought me to his court. But maybe it was an open secret that I stumbled into. I wasn't to know then.

I am not a being made from light, not a light-spinner, so I am not sure what light I can shed on your rumours. I shed dust and misshapen tones, if that helps. I suppose I could collect a whisper and tune it into a truth or two in the tone-garden, with the right tools. I will think on it, and write again once I have results.

The Scarab has not directly told me the answer you seek. Maybe he is, as you say, 'fond' of me, but I am not his Architect (if you want light shed, I hear the Architect is a six-legged light-spinner). Though I would very much like to be an architect of some kind one day, I am not privy to the exact details. But what I do know is that change lies at the heart of his plans. That the world we know will transform into something we don't know. He has told me it will allow me and others like me to transform too.

You might ask why I want us to change. Aren't some people happy with who they are? Well, sometimes I think the world we're brought into is awfully unfair. You are brought in as you are: and that's good if you're a scale-bird up in the Dragon's pecking order, but most of us are just a louse or slip of a silk-moth or a burrower born into the dark and not a whit makes that any different.

I know when the Scarab has finished, that won't be the case. It feels so freeing to say that – will and won't! (Did you notice my will earlier? Will – just a bit of volition, something of my own, that pushes on with me). I think it will be very exciting. What kind of world will we wake up into? What will happen, in a world that will have a rhythm, where its heart beats to changing tones? I find it very exciting to think about.

That is the best answer to your question I have.

From,

K.

[eteroutsider]

a commission I really enjoyed and had a lot of fun with! Bthemetz (my beloved) that belongs to @profanetools and is a protagonist of hir story "A Thesis: On Twelve Tones plucked from a still-beating heart" (that I also love and reread several times)!

[profanetools]

domino meme beginning with 'mephala sends a lost servant of auri-el to lorkhan's court, just to stir the pot :)' and ending with 'disappearance of the dwarves'

[kagrena]

Exciting news! I have wanted to edit A Thesis: On Twelve Tones since I finished it in late March last year, but have not had the will to get through it until recently. I have now updated chapters 1 & 3, for you to enjoy :)

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

The next chapter that I will probably overhaul is chapter 2. I have planned adjustments for later chapters as well to accommodate more politicking.

Please read and let me know your thoughts either in comments or simply in the tags. There's a whole new section in the intro that I think is very atmospheric. I appreciate all your input and feedback 💜

[kagrena]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Shor begins to speak. It is rich, her voice. It is soft, resonant, it carries a great weight with each syllable, and it sends a ripple down her throat. It is, above all, deeply familiar.  

“Then show me,” Shor says, in her voice. “Show me who you are,” she says, in her voice, in the voice of Kagrenac.

The epilogue of A Thesis: Twelve Tones plucked from a still-beating heart is online now.

Thank you all, sincerely, to everyone who has been with me on this journey that was writing this.

[kagrena]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

You dream you are a creature of many faces. You dream you are a king who wears lightning as a crown; you are a captain of not a ship but a nation; you are a knight forged from stars. You dream of all kinds of fanciful, fleeting things that barely last a blink beneath a god’s eyelid, including this:

You are not a god. You are not a king or a saint or a knight or a soldier, but a girl with lots of curly hair. A girl with lots of curly hair, who is not really a girl, who wants to imagine themselves as something with far more rough edges and sharp corners.

======================

Chapter 12 of Twelve Tones is online now.

In which the dreams of a god begin to bleed into the minds of others; in which past collides into future; in which Bthemetz makes a decision that will either save or destroy the Dwemer.

[kagrena]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

… There were two words, stuck in her throat, as heavy as the funeral bells she had to carry and string up and ring until her arms were sore yesterday. 

Two words, stuck in her throat, as she remembered what a rotten body looked like. 

Two words, stuck in her throat, as his heartbeat raced beneath her.

His fingers danced at her throat, two words, it would take two words.

“I cannot,” Koht said, at last, her hand cradling a god’s cheek. “It would not be right.”

===========================

Chapter 11 of Twelve Tones is online now.

In which Bthemetz faces Kagrenac in the first round of a Grand Debate, and a bold spirit, a tool-carrier turned melody-gardener turned tool-carrier again, challenges Lorkhan directly, as past and present begin to blend.

Warning for self-harm in the final scene.