The Heartwood Inside

Queer Irish historical fantasy trilogy, book 1 currently being written. Current word count milestone: 110k ○☆°• Find me at my personal tumblr @kaiscove

[theheartwoodinside]

Hello! This is a blog for my historical fantasy romance trilogy work in progress. I post writing excerpts, lore, character sketches, and reblog story-aesthetic photography and art, writing memes tagged with character stuff, and archeological, historical, Gaeilge/Irish language and cultural references. Check out my featured tags to find excerpts and stuff organized by character!

The world is first century BCE, Iron Age Ireland. Fey both live together and apart from humans, such as the elusive sidhe (pron. "shee") of the forests and wild places of Inis Fáil (pron. "inish fall"), or the sii at the helm of the sprawling Solarii Empire.

Four souls are on a collision course that will split the foundations of their worlds. The unlikely ties between them bend and break everything they thought they knew. Reviving an ancient resonance with the ancestors from the distant dawn of civilization illuminates a path towards a new future. A better one, when their worlds need it most.

The story explores our links both tenuous and unbreakable to our past and our land. Curiosity and bravery in the face of fear and the unknown are powerful, double-edged tools. Authenticity to yourself is radical and powerful, and the characters explore what it means to be themselves with either your whole world supporting you, or your whole world ripping you apart to remold into something not-You. Gender and attraction - the architecture of the heart, and what it wants - don't always fit the Solarii binary, but has room to be explored in sidhe culture.

Currently +110k into book 1 of 3. All books are outlined and I'm so pumped to keep writing! I won't be publishing whole chapters of the story online, but I do post excerpts. I'm also open to interested betareaders through BetaBooks.

Message my main blog at @kaiscove or submit asks here! Always ready to infodump on lore and characters so don't be shy ♡

[queerasfact]

Today is National Handwriting Day, celebrating self-expression through handwriting!

Here’s one of the oldest pieces of handwriting we’ve talked about on this podcast: this piece of graffiti was scratched into the wall of a hallway in Pompeii in around 79CE. It may be the only surviving piece of love poetry from ancient Roman society written by a woman, to a woman.

Oh, would that it were permitted to grasp with my neck your little arms as they entwine [it] and to give kisses to your delicate little lips. Come now, my little darling, entrust your pleasures to the winds. (En)trust me, the nature of men is insubstantial. Often as I have been awake, lovesick, at midnight, you think on these things with me: many are they whom Fortune lifted high; these, suddenly thrown down headlong, she now oppresses. Thus, just as Venus suddenly joined the bodies of lovers, daylight divides them…

It’s not so clear in the English, but in the Latin it is clear that both the author and the subject are described with feminine words.

Check out our podcast on women's sexuality in Rome if you'd like to learn more

Image and translation from Kristina Milnor’s Graffiti and the Literary Landscape in Roman Pompeii

[cloudmancy]

unreasonably charmed by Pendant in the shape of a ram's head, Eastern Mediterranean, 5th–4th century BC, made of glass

[jennievalentine]

[terebelli]

Roman mosaic, House of the Tetrastyle, Pula Archaeological Park, Nora, Sardinia.

[blueiscoool]

A 2,000-Year-Old Pompeii Garden Springs Back to Life

The Pompeii Archaeological Park has recreated an ancient perfume garden—right down to its antique roses.

A garden once flourished in Pompeii. There, alongside a typical row house, olive trees, roses, and vines blossomed, nourished by hand-carved irrigation channels. The entrance to the site bore the Latin inscription “Cras Credo,” translated to “Credit will be offered tomorrow,” a touch of Pompeiian humor. The Vesuvius eruption in 79 C.E. wiped out the grounds—but preserved hints of its purpose.

Now, a new garden is taking root the same spot. The Pompeii Archaeological Park has just unveiled the restored Garden of Hercules (so named for a statue of the mythical hero uncovered at the site), freshly planted with 1,200 violets, 1,000 ruscus plants, and 800 antique roses, as well as vines and cherry and cotton apple trees. The botanical display is intended to mirror how the garden appeared 2,000 years ago, based on the findings of botanist Wilhelmina Jashemski, who identified pollen, spores, and plant fossils in the area in the 1950s.

“In Pompeii, the natural and archaeological landscape are one,” Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the park’s director, said in a statement. “The green of Pompeii, which was once perceived as a management and maintenance problem, an element almost separate from archaeological structures, is now recognized as an essential component of archaeological areas, as well as of the largest agricultural project of the Park.”

Located on Regio VIII, Insula 2 of the archaeological park, the house joining the garden was uncovered in 1953 before the rest of its grounds was excavated in 1971–72, with further studies carried out in the ’80s. Researchers found that the house was rebuilt following a 62 C.E. earthquake, with its owner buying surrounding land to plant the garden.

In the garden, archaeologists discovered holes in the earth that once held the roots of olive trees, impressions left in the soil by vine trellises, and biological traces of roses. Numerous perfume bottles found on the site indicate the garden was once involved in the commercial production of perfume. Flowers would be pressed with olive oil or grape juice, researchers found, before the concoction was bottled and sold.

Also significant was the discovery of an ancient irrigation system, which allowed gardeners to water the plants through a hole in the wall, without having to enter the site. The water would then flow through channels that wound their way around flower beds, or pool in reservoirs created by earthenware pots, or dolia, situated around the grounds.

“If a gardener needed to give extra water to a plant, they could take it from a dolia,” historian Maurizio Bartolini told the London Times.

Bartolini, who worked on the replanted garden, believes that the garden’s owner might have been experimenting with scents at the site, as opposed to running a full-scale operation. The garden, he noted, measures a mere 98 by 98 feet, while creating 5cc of perfume takes some 2,000 roses.

The irrigation system has been recreated for the Garden of Hercules, its troughs meandering across the new beds. A terracotta statue of the Greek legend has also been reproduced, installed in a small nook next to an outdoor dining space.

“This was a productive place,” Zuchtriegel told the Times of the space, “but also really beautiful.”

The recreated garden is part of Pompeii Archaeological Park’s efforts to shed light on daily life in the ancient Roman city before its destruction. Also currently on view at the site is “Being a Woman in Ancient Pompeii,” an exhibition that delves into the lives, roles, and activities of Pompeiian women.

By Min Chen.

[thewinterotter]

Posted by Steven Payne to Facebook group British Medieval History:

People in the Middle Ages valued sweet smelling breath and bodies, seeing them as desirable, so there is a great deal of evidence from the period of tooth pastes, powders and deodorants. Contrary to the typical Hollywood depiction of medieval peasants with blackened and rotting teeth, the average person had teeth which were in fairly good condition, mainly due to the rarity of sugar in the diet. Most medieval people could not afford sugar and those who could used it sparingly. Archaeological data shows that only 20% of teeth had signs of decay, as opposed to 90% in the early twentieth century. The main dental problem for medieval people was not decay but wear, due to a high content of grit in the main staple, bread. For deodorants, soap was available for the wealthy, but a variety of herbs and other preparations were also used. Soapwort is a plant native to Europe and Asia which, when soaked in water, produces an effective liquid soap. Mint, cloves and thyme were also extensively used by simply rubbing into the skin, and alum (hydrated potassium aluminium sulphate) was an effective deodorant. I am trying to keep to 14th century technology on my pilgrimage to Canterbury, which gives me various options when looking at hygiene. In the middle ages people generally cleaned their teeth by rubbing them and their gums with a rough linen cloth, or the chewed end of a stick. There are various recipes for pastes and powders that could be put on the cloth to help clean the teeth, but I have chosen simple salt to whiten them and to aid fresh breath. I will also be using the stick method, and will be taking along a supply of liquorice root sticks for that purpose. I also have a few blocks of alum, which when rubbed into wet skin has a deodorising effect. Alum, like beeswax, was used extensively in the middle ages for a variety of purposes, also being useful: * in the purification of drinking water as a flocculant * as a styptic to stop bleeding from minor cuts * as a pickling agent to help keep pickles crisp * as a flame retardant * as an ingredient in modelling clay * as an ingredient in cosmetics and skin whiteners * as an ingredient in some brands of toothpaste The photograph shows my wash kit including home made olive oil soap, salt for the teeth, a block of deodorising alum, cloves, a boxwood comb made for me by Peter Crossman of Crossman Crafts and some liquorice root sticks, all on a woollen ‘towel’. Note that the cloves are kept in a ventilated box….this is because insects hate the smell of cloves and so a perforated box will keep them out of my kit and food bag when I am sleeping rough. TIP: If you steep some cloves to obtain the oil and put the liquid around the doors and windows of your house, it keeps spiders and insects out.

[rosslynpaladin]

Pay attention medieval-ish fantasy authors-  filthy people without any cleaning or self care is Not Historical.

[torn-by-dreams]

Fantasize about your dashing medieval man with confidence! Lo, how he does not smell like a bag of dead hamsters!

[vivialic-deactivated20160626]

[hijodeporos]

Do not unsheath me without reason. Do not wield me without valor.

[the-haiku-bot]

Do not unsheath me

without reason. Do not wield

me without valor.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[uncleclaudius]

Fruits commonly eaten in the ancient Mediterranean in Roman frescoes and mosaics. How many can you recognize?

[rosieandthemoon]

Isle of Skye

[probuccalfat]

be sincere and true to yourself or suffer soul death you don’t have any other choices

[birdsofrhiannon]

Dian Cécht by Ksenia Kru

[homeric-hymnist]

Oh, okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your mythology and you select out, oh I don’t know, the rape of persephone, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you think maturation and sexual development are a kind of death and rebirth. But what you don’t know is that that narrative is not from claudian, it's not from ovid, it's not from callimachus, it’s actually from the oral tradition. You’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in the sixth century BC, Hesiod the rhapsode composed "Αὐτὰρ ὁ Δήμητρος πολυφόρβης ἐς λέχος ἦλθεν, ἣ τέκε Περσεφόνην λευκώλενον, ἣν Ἀιδωνεὺς ἥρπασε ἧς παρὰ μητρός· ἔδωκε δὲ μητίετα Ζεύς." And then I think it was a certain homeric hymnist, wasn’t it, who elaborated on it with an added narrative of Demeter's wrath? And then demeter's sorrow showed up in the choral odes of several different greek tragedies. Then it filtered down through the Alexandrians and then trickled on down into some tragic augustan vates where you, no doubt, fished it out of some georgic. However, that myth represents thousands of years and countless poets and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from poetry when, in fact, you’re rehashing the "subversions" that were selected for you by the people in that poetic tradition. From a pile of “mythology”.

[xphaiea]

Kilmartin Glen neolithic rock art

[gallusrostromegalus]

Concentric Circles in Varied Colors Clive Watts, 2022

[weltenwellen]

Joy Sullivan, from “These Days People Are Really Selling Me On California”, Instructions for Traveling West

[weltenwellen]

Tracy K. Smith, from “Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes?”, Life on Mars

[maureen2musings]

Slater's Bridge, Little Langdale

a.tt_photography

[singing-not-sleeping-beauty]

I love you shows with planned & definitive endings, I love you epilogues that prove the happy ending lasts, I love you finales that feature direct parallels to earlier seasons, I love you cast members that left years ago but came back to say goodbye, I love you well crafted & impactful final lines, I love you fitting send offs for the characters I love