#waveringbriar

[gothiccharmschool]

If it's not too late you can tell the lil' bi/pan kids that I, their official bisexual-absinthe-great-grand-maiden-aunt wants to remind them that bi folks fucking started pride. Of fucking course we belong there.

It is never too late to tell the kids that. 

[elsewhereuniversity]

Hey there nerd, Hope all’s going well Connecticut. I still can’t believe you’re so far. I don’t think we’ve ever lived this far apart. I’m out here in the North Dorms, my room looks down to the forest and at night I can see these faint lights in the trees. It reminds me of looking out of my old bedroom window and seeing your light on through the trees. Sometimes I feel like if I just walked out into the woods I’d find myself back at your doorstep.

Do you remember last time when I sent you that sketch of the school crest? You remember that weird girl with the glasses who invited me to the bonfire party? Well I went out and met them there. It was Friday and my roommate-Whisper-they were acting really weird when I said I wanted to go out. They actually tried to stop me, even more when I said I was heading down to the bonfire. Something about there being no moon? As if that makes a difference. I told them they could come but they just kept going on and on about a “dark harvest.” Man, my roommate is so weird. At least they don’t snore.

So I head out. It’s cold, but no so much as the dorms. I swear, the heating is so crappy here. I’ve been piling blankets by the window and under the door but it always seems like a draft. But once I went out into the night air I felt warm again, weirdly warm. Well, I was pregaming. I had some trouble finding the bonfire. Elsewhere’s campus is pretty large and I still have trouble navigating the place. I know where Glasses told me to go, but damn, I just can’t remember where. All I recall is their voice saying to find them “where the Oaks all Silver” whatever the fuck that means. I just remember their voice. They sounded beautiful, wistful, and a little sad, like the roundtheroundthereelingroundofshatterin Huh. I’m sorry I kinda drifted off there. Maybe I need a snack. I just start wandering around the edge of the woods. I mean, it’s a bonfire in the dark, it’s gotta stand out right? The woods are huge. You could probably throw, like, five raves at once in there and no one would notice. It can get a little disconcerting. But I really wanted to meet Glasses so in I go. And wouldn’t you know it, just a few steps in and I see something glimmering in the leaves. Like it was waiting for me. Lucky break or what? The music was so weird. Well, it is the music majors, probably trying to be avant garde. The air smelled heavily of smoke and something really sweet. Maybe a strain I haven’t tried? In any case it was rich and floral and made my head spin.

The party was right in the trees, barely even a cleaning. I really wish Glasses had told me this was a costume party. Most everyone was dressed in these really incredible outfits. There was this dude with an incredible Elizabethan costume all done up with roses. And a lady with silvery hair who had painted all these scales all over her body. Someone else had huge light-up antlers on. And there was another woman was wearing a really nice evening gown and a super-realistic fox mask. She had weirdly small hands. I think she was juggling something. But I just want to find a drink and Glasses. I head over to the bonfire, took a weirdly long time, seems it was farther into the trees than I thought. There were all these kegs (wooden if you can believe that) and dancing. Really strange swirling dancing. Some odd trends over here at Elsewhere, then again you know I’ve never been much of a dancer so what do I know? I was just getting a drink when suddenly, there’s Glasses. They were wearing this wild getup, huge faceted goggles, this gauzy dress…thing, and they’d done something to their hair. Looked like a bunch of tiny fluttery wings. They saw me looking and came running in for a hug. I think someone must have had trouble with boundaries because I’m sure I felt an extra set of arms. Now they wanted to go dancing, but I hadn’t had a single drink. But then they pouted and well, I can’t resist a good pout. They were shivering a lot, almost like their skin was moving so I lent them my jacket. They seemed disappointed somehow. Not sure what to make of that. Glasses leads me back to the fire and that weird music. The music, it starts getting to me now. I’m completely forgotten about my drink, the other people, all I’m thinking about is Glasses. Something about their eyeseyeseyeseyeseyes Oof, still hungover. Anyway, they pulls me into the dance and well, I don’t remember much after that. There was fire and eyeseyeseyes and chitteringthechitteringchitteri Where was I? And then suddenly everything stopped. The fire went down and we were standing there in the dark woods. Some people were walking about in uniforms. I think they were groundskeepers or rangers of something. I saw one talking to this really weird dude with like, a wild sequined robe on. She was going on about some treaty and poaching or whatever. I guess there’s wild animals in the woods or something. And then next thing I know I’m on the lawn outside the North Dorm, the one that looks over the quad and the sun’s rising. I’m all alone, I left my jacket with Glasses. That said I was feeling really warm, I guess all the dancing got to me, I don’t really remember. Must have gotten a really bad contact high or something. Anyway when I got in Whisper had set all these nails around the door. They are super into the most bizarre school traditions. Like, weirdly into them. But that’s a legacy for you. And they keep spilling their seasoning around me, it’s getting annoying, I keep finding salt in my clothes. If I didn’t know any better I’d say they were doing it on purpose. In any case they haven’t been spending as much time in the dorms so at least I get a little privacy. Might be helpful if I hit it off with Glasses. Anyway that’s how things are going now. I gotta run, I have Intro to Psychology in ten minutes and I’m still having trouble finding my way around. Oh and let me know if you ever figure out what’s up with your email address. Otherwise we’re just gonna have to keep the postal service alive all by our lonesome.

Later, Firefly

P.S. I couldn’t stop thinking about Glasses so I doodled them during psych. Here they are sans goggles.

x

[essayofthoughts]

I was tagged by @waveringbriar... kind of a while ago. Sorry dear. I’m bad at tag games.

Rules: put your music on shuffle and post the first ten that pop up.

Meet You At The End - Aviators

Fortune Days - The Glitch Mob

I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That) - Meatloaf

No Death - Mirel Wagner

Obsession - Animotion

Melody - Aviators

Rainbow Factory - Glaze

It’s What You Need - Cloud Cult

Alejandro - Vitamin String Quartet

Walk With Noise - IAMX

As I am where tag games go to die, I tag no one.

[r-f-a-scenarios]

Who are you: Look that is way too heavy a question for a cute lil' getting to know you meme. Let's just go with a hot mess. Whats your favorite color: black Favorite ship: in general? Morticia/Gomez Addams, Carlos/Cecil and Willow/Tara. In Mystic Messenger (excluding any MC ships): Yoosung/Seven. Favorite ice cream flavor: Cookie dough Do you have a cat: I wish

HELL YES, I love Morticia/Gomez so much omg. Listen, I don’t think I want to get married any time soon, but if I ever do, I want to have a relationship like these two and nothing else. Also, Willow/Tara… my poor heart. Buffy is my favorite TV show, I just recently thought about rewatching it (for the 500th time)

[blackbird-brewster]

[Reply to this post]

@waveringbriar Ummm…yeeeess!!!! Is that the excuse I needed to have y'all visit?? I def need a tall, beautiful, and intimidating witch to come yell at my doctor.

Or at least distract her with your cuteness so I can steal a prescription pad! 😘

[gothiccharmschool]

I only read the first three books of the Vampire Chronicles (and that was a very long time ago) and I don't really know what's happening to everyone's favorite Brat Prince. So when you say space birds you mean...what exactly?

Whoooo. So the Big Revelation of PLatRoA is that Amel, the spirit who went into Queen Akasha and turned her into a blood-drinking creature, thus creating vampires, is a ghost of a genetically engineered life-form sent to Earth to destroy the mammals and their squishy icky feelings. Amel rebells against his creators (aliens), and founds Atlantis. His creators engineer similar life-forms (Replimoids), and send them to Earth to destroy Amel, Atlantis, and the mammals.

The creator aliens are described by the Replimoids as having bright black eyes. And wings. And feathers. And beaks. The creator aliens are space birds. (The book never refers to them as that, but with those descriptors, what else can they be?)

SPAAAAAAAAACE BIIIIIIIIIRDS. 

[elsewhereuniversity]

            There are some parts of the library to which one simply does go. There are cool, dark recesses where the stacks twist unnaturally and lead to strange new halls. There are ragged alcoves where the books are locked behind bars of iron or of silver. There are shelves where language folds into itself and becomes the script of dreams. These are the places where secrets live and grow, far from the sun, far from the eyes of both the students and the Gentry.

            It is best to avoid these parts of the library, yet you will find them eventually (or they will find you, depending on your perspective). You stayed at the library late, late, late into the long winter nights. You went looking for a particular edition of a particularly esoteric tome. You were just looking for someplace quiet to study.

            You can tell when you’re at the borders. At the places where Known world fades away and the edges of reality grow blurry and indistinct. You will feel the walls of the library stretch away from you. You will look out into the stacks and see only shadows where there should be structure. You will listen as the soft sounds of turning pages and calm breathing fade away into silence, silence almost pulsing with some unknown heartbeat. You will grow dizzy as the scent of paper and pulp turns to sweet incense and fills your lungs. You will feel as though you are drowning.

            Most of the time (though-and this is critical-not always) you will spin away from the dark and find yourself back in the library. Perhaps it will be in a different section, perhaps it will even be a different day, but you will return more-or-less unchanged. You may find yourself hesitant to return at night or on those silvery days when the sun comes from the sky like water damaged silk and the wind sinks through your skin and into your bones. Days that you feel as if you could be cast away on a particularly strong breeze.

            But that’s the trick of the library, you can never really escape it, after all, you are a scholar. Eventually you will return, eventually though every nerve will scream at you to stay on solid ground, to stay in the bright light, you will return. You will need that book, that phrase, that secret. After all the University is known for its vast library. And in all likelihood you will never go farther then those borders. You may shiver as you pass a particularly dark shadow lurking between the shelves, you may rush in and then out with equal speed, you may be unable to escape the lingering feeling of being observed, but still, you will return.

            And perhaps you will find some reason to search out those strange sections. It has happened before. Perhaps you will go stalking through the stacks looking for some words that are just a little off, some symbols unknown to Dewey or the Library of Congress, some book that written by inhuman hands. Should that occur you may try to talk to the librarians. They are, after all, the most knowledgeable of the library’s particular idiosyncrasies.

            Be careful, the librarians aren’t entirely part of your world. Oh they can touch iron and be trusted with a name (at least, as far as anyone can be trusted with a name), but that doesn’t mean they are safe. Those who have dedicated themselves to the library have been changed, how could they not? You can tell in the way their voices carry a slight echo, a slight edge. You will notice in the way their eyes glint like broken glass at the edge of a fire. You will sense in the way you can feel their gaze regardless of whether or not they are actually looking at you. They are creatures of the library just as much as their books.

            So approach them with caution and respect. Don’t expect accommodation. Depending on which one you ask and how you word your request they may help you. There’s the young woman with honey colored hair and wormwood eyes, she will smile (a not altogether comforting expression) and simply steer you towards a different part of the library, try to help you find a book that is of this world. There is the severe woman in black who, nine times out of ten, will simply raise her brows, sigh, and send you on your way. That one time out of ten she will ask you if you know what it is you’re asking (you will reply yes-you will be wrong) and then lead you up and down the stacks, twisting this way and that through sections you didn’t even know existed, that you didn’t even know could exist before depositing you in that shadow realm and looking at you with an expression of such profound pity your heart will break. Then there is the silver haired man with the thickest glasses you have ever seen, whose eyes peer out at you through that heavy glass, liquid and deep and beautiful as the moon reflected in still water. He will take a magnifying glass (reading through layer upon layer of glass) and softly and with kindness help you get to where you need. He is rarely seen.

            After you have found your way (through whatever means) to those fluid sections of the library you will need to find your books. Not a simple task. The sections and organization are rather more eccentric than is standard. The scripts twisting in and out of legibility, the layout flickering as if the shelves were about to gutter and shutter and fade from existence at any second, even the books are liable to change, you will rarely find the same one in exactly the same condition, with exactly the same contents as when first read.

            When it is time to leave you will have to rely on luck and your status as a creature of the material world. These hidden places are so different from you and yours they will work to spit you out. That is if you don’t stay too long, if you don’t fall too deep, if you don’t travel to far, that is if you don’t let the dusk and air and darkness sink through you and into you to settle on your bones. For there are places not even the Gentry know, there are creatures that live in homes of parchment and thought, in gardens of ink and memory, in palaces of whispers and dust and they are not to be disturbed. You will hear them breathing from a few shelves down, you will hear their irregular footfalls echoing through the thick stillness, you will feel them lingering at the edges of understanding. If you are wise you will ignore them.

            Eventually when you return, if you return, you will be able to take your prize with you. You will walk in relative safety back to your dorms and you will find if not what you were looking for than at least something of interest. You will find things that seep into your dreams and echo about through your heart. You will find yourself changed. You will find that you have lost something, or perhaps gained something. Regardless you must remember that you only have two weeks. These books belong to the hidden parts of the library and the late fees are rather more extravagant than most.

x

[elsewhereuniversity]

            Professor Michael Meriweather was not known for whimsy. He would arrive to class in a suit as silvery gray as her hair with lines clean and crisp as her as stride. He spoke in short sharp sentences like the ticking of a particularly accurate clock and asked questions with all the precision of a surgeon. He was, in short, a very grounded man. Except for one small quirk.

            It was a peculiar eccentricity hidden away in the final question of the final exam. After a steady stream of detailed questions and at least two hours of pens scratching there would be that last question, and those students who had never taken one of Meriweather’s classes would pause, looking up, around, as if to make sure that they were in the right reality. For her final question was always a little…different.

            The trouble was that none of his students could ever quite remember that final question, or their answers. They would file out into the halls, their quiet chatter lingering behind them like water disturbed by a passing ship, and they would begin to compare answers.

            “What did you get for sixteen?”

            “Hemingway?”

            “1821, not 1281, holy fuck Gogurt what were you thinking?”

            “Oh god I thought it was about the Beagle-”

            “Zinc and uranium-”

            “On the southern slopes-”

            And of course, eventually some student, someone who had never taken one of Professor Meriweather’s classes would ask about that last question.

            “What was that about anyway? I had no idea what to put down.”

            “Well, did you end up going with?”

            And then they would pause, raise a hand to their brows and reply, “I said…I mean…I don’t…I think it was something about the Battle of the Northern Heath.” And then their eyes would clear, “Wait, no, that’s not right, I-What did you get?”

            Then their friend would smile warily and-if they had taken one of Meriweather’s classes before just laugh a little uneasily. And the questions would fade as the class stepped out into the fresh bright air. The funny thing was that even after Professor Meriweather returned their exams they were never able to read the final question. Students would flip through their exams looking for notes and points and penalties and when the reached the end they would wonder how their handwriting ever was so poor and assume it was just due to the hours writing. The question itself was always cloudy and illegible, well Professor Meriweather did like to have a cup of coffee on hand when grading, the odd spill was only to be expected.

            And so in the excitement of another semester gone they would forget their exams and any unusual answers they might have provided.

                                                      *   *   *

            At the end of every year Professor Meriweather would sit at his desk long after office hours and poor two glasses. One would be full to the brim in whole milk and baileys; the other had a generous portion of whiskey. He would sit with his glasses and wait, a single light on the window, now curiously bare of his collection of iron nails, swept clear of salt, washed clean of rowan oil. It was just Professor Meriweather, his drink and a pile of freshly graded exams sitting on the table before him. And he would wait.

            Sometimes, always between midnight and dawn, in the softly beating heart of the night, he would stir to the sound of his office door opening and they would enter. Meriweather tried very hard not to look at them, but there was something that would draw his gaze, something about those all many eyes, all glinting like shards of glass, like a shattered mirror, something about all that long dark hair, as if the night itself had settled about their brow, something about that too sharp smile, like the curve of the sea rising to meet the sky, the threat of darkness and alien depths beneath the bright foam and flickering waves. He would not easily forget that smile.

            They moved through the office with something resembling hesitation and the air seemed to warp about those too-smooth limbs, that too sweet perfume and then they would sit across from Meriweather, take a long drink and ask, “So what do you have for me this year?”

            Meriweather would shuffle the papers and leaning forward push them to his guest.

            His guest would reach out with their delicate, too long, too twisted fingers and flutter through the pages. “Seems they get more and more incautious every year doesn’t it?” Meriweather would not respond, “Still I suppose that’s something with which you are familiar.”

            Meriweather leaned forward, his head in his hands and whispered, “I can’t keep doing this.”

            “Hmmm?” His guest looked up lazily, “You do enjoy tenure don’t you?”

            “They’ll find out. They’ll realize what this…what this is…”

            He felt a chill on his wrist and looked down at that all too thin hand resting upon his wrist. He looked up and met their smile. “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of you.”

            Meriweather was not comforted.

            But all he could do was sit and wait while his guest drank their milk and read their papers and wait for a dawn that was definitely taking too long to arrive. Eventually his guest would let out something whispering, twittering, twistering sound that Meriweather still had trouble recognizing as laughter and say “Yes, here. This is the one.”

            Meriweather would always look to see which of his student his guest had chosen. He owned them that much at least.

            And then his guest would leave with that all too bright smile of theirs and his office would smell of cedar and heather and hawthorn smoke for days.

            He would try not to watch then, try not to see what happened to their chosen favorite, but it was difficult not to wonder. Sometimes the student would simply disappear and Professor Meriweather would try (and fail) to convince himself they had only transferred. Sometimes they would be replaced by those…things, things that looked and acted more-or-less human but were somehow wrong. These things would typically avoid him or else sneak him strange smiles from the corner of their mouths. Sometimes the student would remain but they would act differently, as if they had lost (or even more terrifyingly gained) something. Other times they would seem washed out and faded, while still some would burn feverishly, like stars. And then there were some who seemed completely unchanged. There was no pattern as far as he could make out.

            Occasionally Meriweather would try to find out about those students who had graduated years ago. Some quietly faded, others would go about their lives normally for a few years or so but then they too would fade. That was he single constant, they always disappeared, as if washed away by the tide. He never spent too much energy trying to find where exactly they went. He did not want to think about it.

            But there are some types of knowledge, some questions that settle on the mind like the crows upon the ink dark trees. So Professor Meriweather would find himself standing and gazing across the lawns trying to avoid a particular thought. So Professor Meriweather would wake in the stillness of the night and shake of unsettling dreams, dreams of wind and rain and too long, too twisted hands. So Professor Meriweather would try and fail to forget about what would happen when he would finally be unable to teach, when he would finally lose access to his tributes. For the Patron would still hunger and Meriweather knew that when he could no longer bring them students it would be his turn to follow, his turn to fade away to wherever it was that existed beyond the trees and the mists, his turn to leave for Elsewhere.

x