One Nice Bug Per Day
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Fai_Ryy
The Stonewall Inn
art blog(derogatory)
KIROKAZE
trying on a metaphor
EXPECTATIONS
noise dept.
@theartofmadeline
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
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Cosmic Funnies
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TVSTRANGERTHINGS
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@thesphinxisoverrated-blog
//Hiatus announcement
Between my vacay ending and just not sure what direction to take this blog, I’m going to be taking a hiatus for a while, not sure how long. I just need to figure out what I actually want to DO with this thing, since right now all my threads kind of end up the same. Apologies to those whose threads will be on hold while I’m gone.
One of a pair of Sphinxes - Rides d'Amours.
France, late nineteenth century. limestone. Sotheby’s Nov.2014.
http://hadrian6.tumblr.com
//I’m going out of town tomorrow. I’ll have internet access but will be out and doing stuff so replies will be super spotty. Please do not nudge me for anything until I return on Sunday.
Get Wet
Shallow:
1. Favorite color
2. Height
3. Eye color
4. Hair color
5. Age
6. Piercings?
7. Tattoos?
8. Favorite animal/pet
9. Favorite scent
10. What time is it?
Wading:
11. Favorite time of day
12.First pet
13. Siblings
14. First car
15. On a day like today you would...?
16. The last book you read
17. The last text message you sent/received
18. Are you usually hot or cold
19. Pick one thing to your left, what does it mean to you
20. Day or night and why
Knee Deep:
21. When was the last time you told someone you loved them?
22. When was the last time someone told you they loved you
23. Who is your best friend and how did you meet
24. Would you rather...
25. Do you get sick often
26. Do you live alone or with other people
27. When was the last time you saw your family
28. What do you want to achieve in the next year
29. Do you believe in true love
30. Have you ever been hurt by someone you thought cared about you
To the Waist:
31. When was the last time you got hurt
32. Have you ever hurt yourself
33. What was the last fight you had about
34. Has anyone told you they hated you
35. Have you seen anyone die
36. What would you tell your younger self
37. Would you skip the bad parts of your life to be successful
38. What do you want to do with the rest of your life
39. Have you left behind/ were you left behind in a friendship
40. What is more important ___ or ___
Neck Deep:
41. Who would you want to meet again in your life
42. Why did you choose your career path
43. What is something you regret from your past
44. How much time is left at the end of your day
45. What was your last dream about
46. Have you ever hated someone and why
47. Talk about your favorite family member
48. What is one thing you want to confess
49. Have you ever tried to take away your problems instead of deal with them
50. Who would you save- yourself or a stranger?
Head Under Water:
51. Have you been in love
52. Talk about someone in your life who has died
53. Describe your first ____
54. When was the last time you thought you were beautiful
55. Have you ever had to recover after something
56. What do you hate about ____
57. Top ten life values
58. How do you fall asleep
59. When was the last time you smiled and the last time you cried
60. Would you give up everything for ____
Drowning:
61. Ask your own question
Rembrandt - Daniel and Cyrus before the Idol Bel (detail). 1633
Step Right Up ||
She was not a siren, nor was she a fairy queen, but she certainly was not human. She sat behind a low table draped in dark velvet, set about with a crystal ball, incense, and a deck of cards, looking very much the part of a fortune teller. The tent was lit by small oil lamps, casting flickering shadows on the canvas and granting a look of burnished metal to her dark skin. The air inside the tent was heavy, exotic, like something out of Arabian Nights, helped in no small part by the fact the female creature was nude but for a great amount of gold jewelry that weighed her head down and clinked like bells whenever she moved. Earrings, nose ring, necklaces, a headdress of metal flowers, a silk veil decorated with golden discs, bracelets… A perfect vision of luxury, except for that iron shackle and chain.
The whole affair was carefully designed for maximum eroticism, yet there was something cold and clinical behind all of it. The creature herself was hardly erotic, though she did not slouch or growl. Rather she seemed patently asexual in everything from attitude to movement. Titillation was not what she was here for, no matter what the barker may have promised.
She spread her massive paws out on the table, pads up, flexing to display great golden claws. She smiled, and the smile was a tease, but not in a romantic sense. A tease of knowing more than others.
“Of course,” she said in a deep voice, like dropping a stone into a great deep pool. “This is, after all, a fortune telling booth.”
His smile grows from a faint line to a restrained grin. A fist comes up to his mouth to give his teeth something to bite against. Ohoh. He clears his throat, and offers a quick nod. A finger is brought up in a silent request for a moment to spare.
Mius’ eyes drift shut. He breathes in the air, breathes it deep. The environment is near intoxicating – he could keep here for days… (That would be rude, though. (Probably.))
A shiver passes through him, and he shakes his head to come back to the world of the waking. “R-right, pardon that…”
“Atmosphere changes, you know…?” He regains his harelipped smile, touched with sheepish nervousness. He steps forth and cautiously pulls his chair up to sit. “What a shock and change, from out there to in…”
Faced with a creature nude as she is, most would be expecting the masquerading hare to balk and stutter. But no, while he is perhaps a little flushed in his face, his eyes are distinctly ignoring the Demi-Goddess’ body.
They keep dotting between her open palm, her eyes, the position of her third eye, and back again.
Information is his eroticism. His long-fingered hand is delicately offered out to settle within the exposed claws, either in an act of trust or pure naivety. “One never knows, I admit … Memory problems of mine, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a medical tent or fortune telling…!” His laugh lilts. “Ahh…”
“… Although, I will admit, it is rather warm here.” He clears his throat, with the vague hope that this comes across as plainly an innocent observation. “Very … um.”
He searches for the right word. “Inviting, hah. Have you done this for long…?”
There was a tinkling of metal as the demi-god tilted her head to the side, all the bits of gold clanging up against each other. She seemed to be trying to get a better look at the person before her, though she somehow managed to do so without opening her eyes. She would so rarely do such a thing. The lives of humans were far too mundane to actually warrant using her gift.
Curious, though. He was not human, not at all. The circus was made up of fae and demi-gods, she knew the smell of them by now. Though she was certainly interested in her fellow performers, she was only interested in as much as she wanted to know their secrets, what made them tick. The man in front of her now incited a different kind of interest. She knew fae still walked free and open in some places, but what on earth was he doing attended a circus that kept their kind in captivity?
“For all of my life,” she said, and it was technically both truth and a lie at the same time. She had always had the ability to look into the future. She had not always been conning foolish humans into thinking cards could tell their fate.
Haggling
The creature thrust her shoulders forward, a kind of shrug. “She knew her choices would lead to her end. I do not mourn for her or anyone else.” A cold thing to say, but a common sentiment among prophets.
“Just as you made your own choice. There is little point in saying what you would have done; you did not do it. That is the fact of the matter. Save your apologies.” A slightly less cold thing to say – if anything, there was a slight bite, a slight bitterness, in those words. She had no sympathy for those that made their choices, but knowing every outcome to a choice, she could feel frustration over a poor choice being made. The feeling contradicted what she knew about destiny, and the cognitive dissonance was not something she liked to dwell on.
“Ah, one of the young religions,” she said with a small smile. “That explains it, then. You Abrahamic lot have too many morals on your mind. Too much Heaven.” She did not offer any answer to his request.
Jack winced “Please…do not associate me with Catholicism. I am a warrior of Justice and Light. Humanity were the ones to spin these legends and stories of deities and grand deeds. We were wrapping up a battle during that time after all.”
He leaned forwards, with a soft sigh, elbows resting on knees looking and feeling more tired than he had let on to earlier. “I’ll ask again, could you please direct me towards the heart of the Sahara desert? I need extreme isolation to meditate. I do not mean to rush or be rude. This form is high maintenance.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Associations are all we lot have left. Besides, your wars have no significance to me, nor do your lofty ideas of ‘justice’.” Such a human term, justice. There was no justice to an oracle. Only actions and consequences.
The demi-god snorted, rolling over onto her back, wriggling about to scratch that one spot just between her shoulders on the Oriental carpet. That was the one nice thing about the humanoid form. Proper arms.
“Why should I?” She said bluntly. “What do I have to gain from assisting you?”
Should’ve Seen This Coming || Pre-Circus AU
Normally, the demi-goddess would have felt that yowling and spitting were far beneath her, having far too much dignity to engage in such animalistic displays. Her sisters were a proud breed, stoic and unflappable, even when subjected to the disgusting whims of human men who slapped irons on them. Those that had murdered their husbands had done so in a calculating, methodical fashion, rarely crimes of passion.
But this was so much worse than those human men. A forced marriage came with an unbearable blow to dignity, but this situation was above and beyond the realms of mere dignity. It was a threat to her very life. Yes, she could be hard to kill, but she had little doubts as to the intent of her captors.
A human child approached her – or at least, something wearing the visage of a human child. In a panic, the creature opened her eyes for just a moment, then screeched and clamped them shut again. Not knowing her fate was more of a comfort than what she had just seen, and panic was setting into her heart.
She hissed and swiped at the bars of the cage, and the girl beyond, unable to think clearly enough to do anything else.
Sophia kept calm, knowing very well that the demi-god was very afraid. The unicorn had been caught quite a few times, and each time was very unpleasant and left her fearing for her life.
She ran around to a spot hidden from the view of the people in the town square, and with a bit of her magic, created a big enough distraction up in the sky for the locals to gawk at. As their attention was drawn to the mysterious lights in the sky, Sophia popped open the lock and opened the cage, motioning for Eshal to come out.
“Come on! I know you’re scared, but follow me! I know a place where we will be safe! My magic won’t hold up much longer!” she hissed.
The lights in the sky, though not thunder, had a similar effect on the demi-god as a thunderstorm would have on a dog. She backed herself into the corner of the cage, hissing, a ridge of fur along her back standing on end. Again her eyes briefly flickered open, blinking rapidly, displaying a honeycomb of pupils, before squeezing shut once more. She hesitated, then, with little time to prepare for it, pounced out of the cage, claws splayed on the dirt. She did not wait for the girl before bounding forward. The few seconds her eyes were open had revealed to her at least the direction the girl was going to go in. At this point, she found herself being pushed forward by a very strange feeling -- faith.
Haggling
There was a moment after the removal of the shackle that the demi-goddess was still, and the air incredibly still. Then, slowly, she rotated her neck, the vertebrae popping – and her skin stretching. Fine hairs began pushing their way out of her pores, her skin stretched and then sagged, her limbs shrank, her spine elongating at both her neck and tailbone.
After a moment of groaning joints and writhing skin, what had once looked very much like a human woman now looked much more like a great cat. Stretched out on the cushions was a large creature, her only human aspect her face, while her body was that of the front end of a lion and the back end of a giant goat. Her tail swished slightly, and she fully extended her enormous neck, cracking the tendons before retracting the entire thing into a mass of rolls of skin. She did not take back the shackle – not because she was being rude, but simply because rules dictated that she could not, and she was ever bound by rules.
“A horrible, bloody business, those crusades. I lost a sister during those.”
Jack set the shackle on the table when she didn’t take it, taking no rudeness from it. A somber look did come over his face “That they were. I’m sorry for your loss. And everyone’s. I just can’t understand how humans can perform such acts and still think they’re doing anything good.”
A shake of the head was given. “Would’ve stepped in myself with a platoon if I wasn’t on the far planes. Demons were quite active during that time and I was needed.” Jack set his coat across his lap and wiped his forehead of sweat, with little success.
“If you haven’t gathered already, I’m an Angel. Of the Justice division specifically. I’m not here to pass judgement, I just need assistance in my meditations is all. If you could point me in the correct direction of the heart of the Sahara Desert, I would be grateful for your help.”
The creature thrust her shoulders forward, a kind of shrug. “She knew her choices would lead to her end. I do not mourn for her or anyone else.” A cold thing to say, but a common sentiment among prophets.
“Just as you made your own choice. There is little point in saying what you would have done; you did not do it. That is the fact of the matter. Save your apologies.” A slightly less cold thing to say -- if anything, there was a slight bite, a slight bitterness, in those words. She had no sympathy for those that made their choices, but knowing every outcome to a choice, she could feel frustration over a poor choice being made. The feeling contradicted what she knew about destiny, and the cognitive dissonance was not something she liked to dwell on.
“Ah, one of the young religions,” she said with a small smile. “That explains it, then. You Abrahamic lot have too many morals on your mind. Too much Heaven.” She did not offer any answer to his request.
Sideshow
Eshal could not help but to laugh. It was a deep, clear sound, melodic but lacking in sincerity, like her normal speech. “That is right,” she said with a grin. “I forget that our Northerly cousins have so many rules.” Of course, her own kind had rules, but rules seemed to be an oddly Northern, Fae thing. The mediterranean fair folk followed their rules much more loosely. While it lying was generally difficult, there was nothing preventing them from speaking in such vague terms as to utterly confound all answers.
However, this was not a time to do so. Purely because she would gain nothing from playing guessing games with the waterlogged fae.
“My mother was a sphinx, my father was a chimera. My family does not have a name.”
Nettle rolled her blood-orange eyes, feathered ears flattening. Not as Eshal, but the rather unfair limitations Fae kind was forced to deal with. “It’s not so clear-cut and literal. We can worm our way around the rules. Dance around the truth, only tell half the truth, refuse ta answer at all -stuff like that.” The Northern mare was less versed with the rules of her Southern cousins. She assume all Fae followed the same regulations.
“Ah, that makes sense…” She nodded, her curiosity about her unusual neighbor finally slaked. Nettle assumed the demi-god was sphinx like, though the chimera half of her ancestry was a surprise.
“…I’m not entirely kelpie…I have some xanthus blood on my sire’s side.”
“Hm,” she hummed, her voice resonating oddly, causing her cage to vibrate ever so slightly. Yes, of course the Northerly fae could break their rules. Still, they seemed much more interested in them than the gods and monsters of the South; and even further South there were even less rules, or so she had heard from the others in the circus.
“I am not so familiar with the xanthu,” she admitted -- a rare gesture for her -- “we were much less organized in the Southeast than you lot up North. We had no courts.”
Step Right Up ||
“Step right up, step right up!” The carnival barker was a strange looking little man with far too much body hair and pointed ears. “See! The beautiful sirens, yes, the very sirens that bewitched Odysseus’ crew and nearly dashed them against the rocks! Do you have the moral strength to resist these lovely ladies’ charms?”
He swept his hand, directing viewers towards a curtain.
“Step right up! See! The famed queen of fairies, the very one that Shakespeare wrote about, on that mid-summer night! See! The noble and beautiful…”
He went on and on like that. The demi-goddess tuned him out, knowing that soon he would reach her introduction, and start all over again, and keep going on like that until the night was over.
She sat at her table in her little tent, an iron shackle around her wrist, chain leading to the floor. The chain was hardly necessary, but it added to the allure, was a small threat to any gentleman that may have entered the tent and tried to get handsy. Beware the sphinx-like woman, though she may be in a state of undress, can’t you see she is shackled for your own protection?
So she sat and waited for a customer to arrive.
A harelipped smile sips from a straw, struck in a wax-paper capped cup.
He’s a man that gained entry without a ticket, a young and feminine-standing fellow that no one paid heed. Mint-blond curls are finely tussled for optimal vain amusement, and his amber-gold eyes stare past the blurring crowd around him, piercing-set towards the tent’s inviting curtains.
Queen of fairies. He grins a bucktoothed grin with teeth pinning the straw shut.
Now wouldn’t that be something. Surely it’s a lie. Still …
It would be a shame not to look. It’s not every day one runs into the (however false) Queen of Fairies.
And it’s not every day that the (Potentially false?) Queen of Fairies gets a visit from the betrayer of the Fae Kingdom. Oh no, not every day indeed.
And so the masquerading twenty-something human steps forth, gives the barker a nondescript ticket of entry (gained from some poor sot that’s already lost theirs), and with a push of the curtains, he invites himself in.
Mius smiles to the one within, and offers a tilt of his head. “Do you tell fortunes?” It’s a gentle question. Polite, honest.
It’s difficult to say, but as the seconds pass, his calculated smile fades to a softer, curious, partially concerned indented line. The dangerous burn in his gaze has all but faded to a soft warmth.
“I, ah, have a bit of trouble, at times, and I would like a second opinion…”
She was not a siren, nor was she a fairy queen, but she certainly was not human. She sat behind a low table draped in dark velvet, set about with a crystal ball, incense, and a deck of cards, looking very much the part of a fortune teller. The tent was lit by small oil lamps, casting flickering shadows on the canvas and granting a look of burnished metal to her dark skin. The air inside the tent was heavy, exotic, like something out of Arabian Nights, helped in no small part by the fact the female creature was nude but for a great amount of gold jewelry that weighed her head down and clinked like bells whenever she moved. Earrings, nose ring, necklaces, a headdress of metal flowers, a silk veil decorated with golden discs, bracelets... A perfect vision of luxury, except for that iron shackle and chain.
The whole affair was carefully designed for maximum eroticism, yet there was something cold and clinical behind all of it. The creature herself was hardly erotic, though she did not slouch or growl. Rather she seemed patently asexual in everything from attitude to movement. Titillation was not what she was here for, no matter what the barker may have promised.
She spread her massive paws out on the table, pads up, flexing to display great golden claws. She smiled, and the smile was a tease, but not in a romantic sense. A tease of knowing more than others.
“Of course,” she said in a deep voice, like dropping a stone into a great deep pool. “This is, after all, a fortune telling booth.”
//Still around, a little stuck on threads, will try to reply to stuff later today.
send me ‘ hc ’ + a word and i’ll write a headcanon about it regarding my character.
Circus Tickets
//Hello friends I am experiencing joint pain and will be gone the rest of the evening because I cannot type. Cheers.
Should’ve Seen This Coming || Pre-Circus AU
Being a prophet can be a great gift, but it also has its downsides. Even when visions are clear, prophets delight in being vague, sometimes ensuring that a vision of the future will never change because its key members do not know how to avoid it. Prophets also tend to get cocky; they know what is coming, so they are lazy and lack caution.
Such was the case for the demi-goddess. She could see all possible futures, so she assumed she was safe, she did not bother to check what the path had in store for her. She did not foresee the snare, did not realize she was in danger until she was dangling by her hoof from a tree.
So now she found herself dragged into the middle of the town square, the locals jabbering on about how they had captured a great beast. She yowled like an animal, in a rare moment afraid of what her future held for her.
A small, pale girl, about sixteen years of age, stood in the town square amidst all the yammering locals. They were going on and on about having caught a marvelous beast, and that it sat in the center of the square for all to see. She wore a white linen dress, fitted at the waist, and it flowed out above her knees. She looked normal to just about anybody, save for her light lavender hair, which she kept well-groomed, and she attributed its odd color to a near-poisoning by some chemical.
She had heard them go on about capturing beasts out in the forest many times before. Once, it was a dragon, only for her to discover later on that it was really just an oversized lizard. Another time, it was a sea monster of sorts, when it was really just a large dog covered in matted fur and seaweed. So this time, she really didn’t expect much, until she got closer to the cage. The creature in the cage was definitely the real thing, and for a brief moment, she was surprised. It looked like a sphinx, but it had hooves on its lower half. She thought it odd for a sphinx to have hooves, as she had only ever read about them having the paws of a lion. And she briefly remembered the one sphinx she had met, and how it looked more like its own kind than this one. The poor thing yowled in fright, and Sophia walked up to her, with an empathetic look on her face.
“Shhh, it’s okay. I’m going to get you out of here, but you have to listen to me closely, okay?” she said, loud enough for Eshal to hear.
Normally, the demi-goddess would have felt that yowling and spitting were far beneath her, having far too much dignity to engage in such animalistic displays. Her sisters were a proud breed, stoic and unflappable, even when subjected to the disgusting whims of human men who slapped irons on them. Those that had murdered their husbands had done so in a calculating, methodical fashion, rarely crimes of passion.
But this was so much worse than those human men. A forced marriage came with an unbearable blow to dignity, but this situation was above and beyond the realms of mere dignity. It was a threat to her very life. Yes, she could be hard to kill, but she had little doubts as to the intent of her captors.
A human child approached her -- or at least, something wearing the visage of a human child. In a panic, the creature opened her eyes for just a moment, then screeched and clamped them shut again. Not knowing her fate was more of a comfort than what she had just seen, and panic was setting into her heart.
She hissed and swiped at the bars of the cage, and the girl beyond, unable to think clearly enough to do anything else.
