The Phoenix's Fall

"I fell down today.

It was swift and it kicked me in the face like a blow from an elephant. I couldn't control myself as my heart convulsed. Desire, raw need, flooded me, and the swift pain of its denial was like a hand clamping around my soul and squeezing. I could barely breathe...

This doesn't happen to me. I'm smarter with my feelings. A voice inside whispered "she doesn't want you," and the echo that came down through my soul was as sharp and practical as any thirteen year old could be. This is why you don't do this. You don't touch those things, don't go near them, don't look at them, do not listen to them.

Don't fall for them.

Some things, you have to work against every day. You know this. You've done it before, you can do it again. Remember who you are. Remember what you are. Strip back that veil until you are nothing. Until that raw and bleeding heart of yours has nothing left in it. Crush it inside you until it is dust. And do it over and over and over until you don't know why you do it. Until you can't feel a single speck of that life, that hope, that love.

Until you die.

Dust and ash are all you are. Dust and ash are all you need to be. Ticking over in the hourglass of time until that person moves on. Until that blazing sun in the sky leaves you alone to your crying madness.

For madness is what it is. Sanity doesn't strike you in the dead of night like this. It doesn't attack you where you're most vulnerable. It doesn't take everything that is best in you and turn it like a knife in your hand.

Sanity isn't what you use against yourself.

Spinning in my mind, the wheels click back and forth. Don't do this. You know what's coming. She's moving and you are static. She is fire and you are earth. She will flit to another star just like the wind, and you don't have the soul to be that friend. Standing by. Watching the emotion fall off your face and into someone else's embrace. You were never that person, not then, not now.

And swiftly, draw that circle around you. Gather those ashes about you. You are nothing, from nothing, to nothing. That means you can be anything, from all to everything.

There's only so many times you can break me.

And break me.

...and break me.

Until I fall down.

But don't be surprised when I get up again. This cloak of flame is my soul, and those ashes are embers of my heart. In them I burn and flicker and hunger for life. Like a coiled serpent those fragments will sweep around me, biting through the skin and into the soul beneath. With every pinprick of pain my stance is firmer, my step surer, my heart lighter.

My soul brighter.

If there is no sun but you in my heart, I will put your blaze to shame. I will take that other life and lay it down gently as a babe and say goodbye. It shouldn't have been, but it was beautiful, and I don't hate it. It shouldn't have snapped me in a moment, it shouldn't. But I can only marvel at a world with such things in it.

Such people as you."

- Serestra Cain; Deserter, Outcast, Saviour.

Gallifrag Nevit

So I made a new character for a rpg we're going to play through discord or roll20 or...something. And I was supposed to write a character background for once...so typical me, I went a little overboard. If you're in the game in question...you're probably not supposed to see this, though :P

Bright-eyed and Bushy-tailed was a phrase made for (or by, as he was prone to saying) Gallifrag Nevit, or Newt as he was known. As a youth he displayed a strength of arm that was only surpassed by his talent for tale-telling and penchant for scandal. Falling in and out of love seemed to be his most favoured skill, and when the Mayor's daughter took a liking to our honey-tongued hero, he knew it was time to leave. There may also have been a fire.

Newt took to life on the road with glorious flair, quickly finding and befriending like minded individuals and eventually joining The Salamander's Tongue, a troupe known for their bawdy tunes, tumblers, and fire-eaters of great skill. Newt became something of a fixture, his tale-telling centre stage as the patrons ate, offset and jibed by the bawdy crew.

And then there was Ellania. The bouncer and sometime poet of their group. A high elf of low and cutting wit, she entranced Gallifrag from the first insult. They bandied words, duels of wit and, Newt dreamed, love. Moon elf, she called herself, and moon eyes, she called him. For the long years that passed so swiftly, the days and nights of ribaldry and passions cloaked by duelling tongues. The act that they were, together, on stage and off, each enjoying the teasing delights of courtship.

And then in one night, it was all over.

The muddy village they came to could scarce afford to put them up. The tired and weary troupe, buoyed by spirits alone, set about lifting the poor villagers as they could. Food they shared, drink they overpaid for, and laughter was gold they spilt into the souls of the downtrodden. It was more than a lifetime of passion that was spun that day, and something more lit within Newt as he followed Ellania up the half-rotten stairs. The glances they exchanged that night said more than a hundred years could have, and though dirty and insect-ridden his bough was, Newt's heart was lighter than the heavens.

He awoke to harsh sounds in the night. The clash of metal and the crackle of something else. And then a voice crying out in the dark. Dagger in hand, Newt flung open his door to the scene of a nightmare. The inn on fire, Ellania's room locked and blazing from within.

With ferocious kicks he burst into her room, the wounded Ellania left dazed and bleeding on the floor, while the fire raged all around.

And for the first time, he prayed. The ancient halfling words spilled from his soul and into the night, a tale of fire and wounds so deep they would not be quenched. As the words rang out, he slashed at his palm, the blood hissing into the flames that licked at his tumbler's legs. He fell to his knees, his voice booming to the sky, strident and proud and broken.

And a ringing call was his answer. The flames gathered into his palm and thrust into his soul, scorching away what he was and filling him with a power he had never known. His hands became the instruments of the divine, and as he laid them upon his dying love's body, he felt his life join with hers, the fires sweeping away the poison in her blood, and making her whole.

In that moment their souls co-existed, and the overpowering joy he felt as they regarded each other was tinged by a bright sorrow. For he knew then that there was a price, that there is always a price. And he felt the weight around his soul, not only of the duty that now befell him, but of the difference between them. The enemy Ellania had faced was far more powerful than he knew, than he could understand, and he would be cut down in a heartbeat if he stayed by her side.

The compulsion settled within him, and as he carried her from the charred but otherwise miraculously unharmed inn to the troupe's caravan, he knew he had to leave. The whispered blessing he laid upon her cheek had the love of all the years they had seen together behind it, and as he stepped away he left the one thing he treasured most - his prized flute - and took the one thing he knew meant nothing to her, a small silver ring she had won at a fair.

With clasped hands and hugs, Newt walked away to pursue his newfound destiny. A voyage of long years, but with love always in his heart.

Post Snippet; The Flower in Your Embrace

(Another post snippet. I do this from time to time, just take my posts from elsewhere and save them here. The height of ego, eh?)

Oh the guilt! "Everything in my life is great, why can't I even do this one thing?"  I know that feeling well...and it doesn't get better as you age, until you realise a few things.

Writing under pressure is hard. It's like trying to contort and squeeze in on something that's as precious as a flower, trying not to crush it to pieces, but to somehow make it bloom by will alone. And then it's as if you're pushing in both directions, pressing down on yourself while gasping for air and pushing back to leave that little breathing room. You're wrung out and crying, taut and beaten ragged, and that's even before you try to write.

Sometimes your story reaches out to you, like a golden sun extending its warm rays to you. In those cases, if you're pushed to put your hand out, it'll simply settle in your palm, flowing over you and filling you with that beautiful feeling. Sometimes it's inside a glass case, and you need to smash through to grasp that trophy, but when you do, you're filled with elation. Sometimes it's behind rock, and you need to come equipped with mining gear, and if you're lucky, some well placed dynamite might get you through to those gems.

But...all of these cases are different, and all of them live inside of you. If you're crushing that flower that is your soul, it's not because you're not a writer or that you can't write that it's not coming out, it's because you're not in the right place for it to flower. Nothing works if you're screaming at yourself, telling yourself that the conditions are all right, why isn't it working. The most beautiful flowers don't always bloom in paradise, some bloom in the desert, some bloom in the winter, some surprise you in the middle of desolation and pain.

As any kind of artist, it behooves thee to know thyself. To not crush that tenuous link between your muse and yourself by ripping yourself to shreds when it's just not working. Sit back, breathe, relax. The proof of your writing isn't in whether you can crush out a novel in thirty days, or thirty years, that's just the validation from the rest of the world. The proof is that your soul speaks in the written word. All those little snippets, pieces of prose, long forgotten words of wisdom, snatches of shining story...are not worthless. They may not be something you can earn money from, but that means nothing. Artists don't 'art' for money, we do it to send a message, to communicate, to touch people. That alone has value in a world such as this.

The fact that you want to reflect on your life doesn't mean that you're not a writer. It means the opposite. It means writing is so crucial to your soul that you can't see another way to live. Welcome to the club. Now stop punishing yourself and realise that if you turned your gaze to anything other than your story right now, words would flow out of you. Passion would flow out of you. Life would flow right out of you.

So do something else. Live, and let the story wait for another day.

A Note on the Sentai

I wrote a little bit of history to my story yesterday, trying to get the kinks worked out. Thought I'd share it.

The inhabitants of Nova Sentai were a race of traders and explorers that were one of the first to investigate wormhole technology. Eventually abandoned in favour of hyper-light travel, wormholes or darkgates as they became known, would eventually form part of the reason the Sentai have become one of the most scattered peoples in the galaxy.

In 22-24, the Arthannan opened negotiations with the Sentai in a bid to garner darkgate technology. Negotiations fell through, and soon tensions escalated towards open war, lasting several years. Darkgates were used on both sides, though the Arthannan could only utilise drives from captured vessels, and the Sentai's weaponry was sub-standard compared to their foe.

Eventually a decisive strike for the Sentai was rendered into an abject failure, ultimately culminating in defeat for the species, when their fleet tried to utilise newly found Hyper-Light technology for the first time. Many of the ships were destroyed upon stardrive use, others were disabled on re-entry, right next to the Arthannan fleet. The flagship, however, fared both better and worse. Their prototype drive landing them within striking distance of the Arthannan home world, the Sentai opened a barrage of darkgate missiles upon their foe. The missiles malfunctioned, opening up a rift in space and hurtling hundreds of undetonated warheads along with the ship through to an unknown destination.

The Sentai home world soon faced the wrath of the Arthannan fleet. Unprotected and at their wits end, they took to the stars, abandoning the planet and its civilisation to the Arthannan. Harried though they were, they still managed to escape, eventually settling amongst other peoples, integrating but never forgetting their roots through the ages. 

The Arthannan eventually obtained their darkgate technology, but as the Sentai had found to their detriment, it was unstable and ineffective at best. In a cataclysm borne of hubris and greed, the Arthannan homeworld was torn asunder, rendered into a million asteroids, soon sucked into orbit around their sun. The off-worlders of that time were left adrift, having to find their own way in the galaxy as the Sentai had done, forming colonies and raiding the stars in an impotent rage at the foes that had escaped them.

Through the ages Sentai and Arthannan fought, their grudges settling into grim hatred. And to a few, the lost flagship began to take on a kind of mythical quality. A treasure hunt in the depths of space, a race between two enemies for a glowing prize and one final, solid victory.

Disconnect

Context: I'm on Discord a lot, it's a chat program with multiple servers, a bit like IRC but with a nice interface, gifs, and voice chat. I was posting this to someone but then moved it here.

A server I've recently joined there has some fun people in it, and a few are fairly young women, smart, cool, witty, etc. Over the last few weeks I've gotten to know them and I quite like them. And it's an interesting dynamic for me, because they're funny and interesting and single. Anyway...sometimes when I say I'm old people don't really understand the meaning behind that, but it's days like this that kind of highlight not my age, but the difference in my lifestyle. These people go out on the weekend and during the week, and live it up. They date and have relationships and friends, and that's all cool.

At least, it is for them. The problem with being around people that you're interested in, is when they go out and do things you're reminded that you're not really in their lives. Moreso when you realise they're living a lifestyle that you've never had and feel like is in the past for you. And tonight I felt the strangest feeling as they went off. Not a little jealousy, which I'm generally used to by now, but that more and more I've started to miss a life like that. One I've never had, and also been somewhat scared to have.

I want a lot of things in my life, but I deal with what I don't have because I know it has been my choices and my fear, and perhaps my laziness also, that has caused them. But one thing that makes me not feel somewhat disconsolate about is when I know people are out there having a ball and I'm just sitting around at home. I wouldn't rather they be home too, I'd rather be out there, living it up. And sometimes I feel a little like I'd like to be with them as well.

It just reminds me, sometimes, of all I don't have and all I want. And sometimes it reminds me of the gap between myself and younger people, people my own age, and even people older than I.

It gets to me a little. Because I'm reminded that I'm a little lonely and I want love, too. And even if they're not out there finding soul mates and whatnot, I still think "hey these are cool people I like, why aren't I with one of them?" Of course it's not anything like that easy, or advisable, it just makes me think of everything I wish was true for myself.

Even though I know wishes don't make anything...

Feather

Hot, flushed, and wet,
the skein peeled away to reveal flesh and bone,
supply as midnight, smooth in silk,
the flowing rivers of your chest,
peaks and valleys of your neck,
"Surrender," she whispered in tender tones,
an angel's breath away.

Falling stars,
my stars, I'm falling.

The Heart of Adventure

You know what's wild? That we know the universe is expanding. That we actually pretty much know that it started at some point, and that we know that the fabric of the plane we exist on is changing. Not just the earth, not just the solar system, not just the galaxy, but every single thing that is even slightly possible to know.

That we can actually understand that there was something that smacked the universe into existence and while we're living it's still in the momentum of that movement. It's still flying as we go about our lives and will continue to fly long before we burn out, in the wake of that event that caused everything that we can possibly perceive to be.

Sometimes I forget, until I read something random...and then I realise again that somehow, everything we could ever possibly try to understand is undergoing massive flux constantly. The most powerful and amazing thing possibly conceived is happening all the time.

 

Why then, would it be so impossible to think of something that could transcend all that we know, to think of things happening that we don't yet understand, to live in a world where all things are possible because everything is possible?

Sometimes I wonder about the future. I love science because it tells us what we know now, not what we know tomorrow or in two hundred years from now, but right now, today. And the reason it does that isn't just so we can use it, but to teach us how much we don't know, so that we can have our ideas and realise that nothing is done, nothing is finished, nothing is over. This universe still needs explorers and adventurers, willing to delve into the depths of space and the mysteries of a grain of sand with equal fervour, not so one day we will have all the answers, but because there are so many answers out there, and so many things we could know.

How could this life ever be boring, knowing that?

 

And when I think of how the world is today, I just want to send that message everywhere, so people think again just how much is possible in life. How much life contains within that simple word, on that simple breath. How much this life means...that even the thought of that, moves me and fills me with passion and raw desire to just go out there and see it. To find out more. To be in that journey, that adventure, with everyone.

Inspiration is a strange thing. It lives within anything and everything, if you just tilt your view a little. And I think that's just one of things that lets me know life is beautiful, even if it's terrible for some, even when it's not great for me. Life contains all the things you could ever want or dream of. We just have to get there, that's all.

I don't know if a me has ever existed before, I tend not to think about reincarnation because I like the idea of having a definite existence. I like feeling that this is the only chance for me to put a block down for someone else to stand on. I like the idea that my life has one true purpose, that my soul has a destiny, and that the afterlife doesn't really change that. But if there is reincarnation, I hope one day I can come back, and maybe get a chance to see how much of it we've discovered.

I hope one day I get to see it all made right.

I hope one day to see us amongst the stars.

Someone once said; to love is to be vulnerable.

That person did not go on to say how to do that when you're scared. When you're bound and bloodied by emotion and the consequences of your actions. When you're not ready in the slightest but someone holds their hand out to you.

You're not supposed to push that hand away, to fill it only with the sand of troubles, to let it sit, and wait. For love to be - any love, be that familial, platonic, passionate, you have to grasp that hand, and accept what may come.

You may be low, they may be high. You may be up and they down. You might both need each other more than you realise, because that warmth spreads both ways.

I'm not very good at not being afraid. Yes, I don't mind rollercoasters so much now, and maybe I can deal with going to a party on my own, and sometimes even spiders get dealt with. But the big things, the things that would make me a man, a person I could be proud of, well...they're not always so easy.

This place is where I put parts of myself that often reflect what I want to be, not what I yet am. They are struggles and reminders of the path I want to always be in front of me, and whether I like it or not, sometimes I falter on that path.

Today I was reminded to not be a coward. To take the hand proffered and dive into that abyss, that unknown, and simply live. Regrettably I realised this only as the tide began to recede, but this fool is nothing if not hopeful, and one hopes that boat is not yet far from shore.

I have, somehow have always known, that I must pursue my own goals with diligence and purpose in order to truly be happy, to be able to reciprocate the love I am given in the way it deserves to be returned. I need to be that man to truly be worthy of the one I'm with. To feel like someone who has accomplished, who has achieved at least some of his goals, who can really make a difference.

My friends have all moved on, my peers left me far behind, and any thoughts of competition fled me long ago. My desire to be good at something twisted in on itself like a warped sculpture, whispering over and over that I can't ever succeed because I'm so far behind I can barely reach their legacy. Telling me I'm the one left behind, while by night I dream of running faster than the wind.

But that's a lie. I'm better at what I do now than I ever was. And just because I haven't come as far as I've wanted, doesn't mean I'm not worthy in some way. Yes, I don't have a job. Yes, I don't have any money left. Yes, I live at home with my family. But being an artist, being a writer, isn't always the straightest path, and it's certainly not the traditional one. I'm not going to pretend it's easy going against society, I'm not going to pretend I don't feel like a waste of a life sometimes.

And I'm not going to pretend I'm no good at what I am anymore.

I might not be a real writer yet. But I am far from being nothing.

And maybe if I can find the strength to not worry of shattering someone else's soul, I might be able to find companionship on this road again.