Queer Thoughts in a Queer world

"Don't think the summer is over, even when roses droop
and turn brown and the stars shift position in the sky.
Never presume August is a safe or reliable time of the year."- Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic

Help Your neighborhood homo

Right now, my writing career is in its infancy,
but as I grow I will need your support along the way.
It can be helping me acquire equipment or decor
that can aid me in setting up my gaming and writing area,
or just sharing a few dollars to buy me a coffee or lunch
every now and then.Here are some ways to help out if you feel so moved:

• Venmo
• Amazon Wishlist
• Throne

The creative muse can be fickle,
and when they're present they tend to run amok within the mind,
flitting from idea to idea without allowing for a moment's respite.
The pieces found here are the products of moments
where I managed to calm the muse for a few precious moments
and found kernels of stories that needed to be told.

Most pieces published on this site should be considered working drafts, so please be kind.

As the door slowly cracked open, a sliver of light slid along the floor toward the grand bed across the room. The languorous figure reclining on the pillows didn't shift or budge, not resembling the prestigious personage they were so much as a corpse lying in repose.The servant crept within the chamber, feeling like an invader in enemy territory. She had heard whispers of the mistress's temperament, and was not looking forward to experiencing it firsthand. She approached the divan as quietly as she could. The chill from the cold marble felt like tiny needles against the soft under-flesh of her feet, making her wince with every other step.Breathing softly, her body laid out with limbs akimbo upon the downy cushions, the lady remained deep asleep. The servant stood beside the bed for a few moments in silence, trying to find her courage but failing. She closed her eyes, stifling a few gulps."M-madam? Umm...madam?"No response from the prone form before her. The servant glanced back at the entry door, wondering if she could just quickly make her escape and concoct an excuse for her failure to rouse her mistress to the head steward. No, she thinks. They'll have my head if I can't even manage this. Another deep breath, and she reached out and laid her hand gently on the woman's bare shoulder."Madam? I'm s-sorry, but I'm here to..."A hand snapped into place on her wrist, holding her with an iron grip she did not expect. She gasped in surprise and not a small amount of pain. The servant looked up to see a steely pair of green eyes boring directly into her own."You'd do well to take your hand off me, girl," said the fair lady. Her tone was calm and even, but there was an implicit threat in the words. The servant wrenched her hand back as the woman released her grasp. She slipped the limb behind her back, not wishing to allow the lady to see her rubbing the bruised skin.The woman, deep auburn locks flowing across her shoulders and chest, slowly rose to a seat upon the tussled sheets and pillows, face in her hands and lightly rubbing sleep from her eyes. "Curtains," she muttered through her fingers, "get the curtains.""Ah, umm, yes ma'am...," the servant stuttered as she quickly padded around the bed.As the gossamer draperies were pulled back, the woman grimaced and turned her face from the light flooding the room. "Damn it all...," she cursed under her breath. "What time is it?"The servant spun back to her mistress, her figure illuminated from behind by the brilliance streaming through the glass. "Umm...well, ah, breakfast has been served for at least an hour now, I believe. ...Ma'am." Her hands clung to each other behind her back, her fingers nervously twitching. "Someone was...umm...someone was meant to wake you earlier, but were unsuccessful and so I was..."A hand came up from the reclining woman, indicating she was done with the answer. "I don't need all of that." Turning a squinting glance to the young girl, the woman tilted her head. "...You're not the normal girl. What's your name?"My name...? The servant found herself baffled by the question. She knew that she had possessed one but she no longer could recall it. Her mind raced to find it, but it was like running through a fog with no clear destination. "My name... I'm, umm, I'm afraid I don't...I'm sorry I don't..." She fumbled over her words. Scared to disappoint her mistress, and distressed at such a hole in her memory.The woman waved her hand in dismissal at the girl. "Forget it. Just go find Minthe and send her to me."Still dumbfounded, it took a moment for the lady's words to register. "I...I apologize, ma'am, but I assure you, I c-can help you with your morning rituals."The woman had swung her legs around the edge of the bed, and she slowly stood to her full height. Her flesh was warm and pink despite the persistent chill in the chamber, and the young servant averted her eyes. To look on one of the Most High in their nakedness would be a sign of great disrespect."I'm capable of dressing myself, girl. Minthe. Go and fetch her to me." The woman spared another glance for the poor creature. "You can tell the steward you performed your duty admirably. Let him know Persephone said so.""I...but..." The girl turned her face to meet Persephone's gaze, still confused at this sudden dismissal. To continue to refuse such a command would spell a worse fate for her, though, so she gave a small bow and, with head facing down, she quickly padded across the room. She slid back through the door, closing it behind her, and the great lady was left to her own thoughts.Persephone stretched her arms above her head, feeling her muscles and joints finally waking up within her flesh. The day they finally send me help-mates worth a damn is the day Olympus falls into the sea, she mused to herself. Crossing the room to a lavish dressing table, a flowing gown of moss green materialized upon her frame. Trimmed with thread of gold and swirled with veins of black and red throughout the fabric, the dress formed to her figure effortlessly as she approached her toilette and seated herself. She ran her fingers through her falling curls, shaking the final vestiges of sleep from her head with a tussle of her locks. Meeting her own gaze in the mirror before her, a small circlet of burnished gold took shape upon her head, nestling itself among her ruddy hair.Staring at her reflected visage, Persephone held herself motionless as she inspected her appearance. After moments of silence, a soft sigh escaped her lips and her eyes closed as her shoulders slumped. The same as yesterday and the day before, she thinks to herself. And yet I still can't see her anymore...Her wordless reverie was broken as the door to her rooms was flung open. A busty woman carrying an urn and two chalices strode into the room, closing the door shut behind her with a sway of her hips."I believe I was sent for, and here I am with sustenance, my lady," said Minthe as she set the jug and cups down upon a nearby table already laden with various breads and fruits for Persephone's consumption. She leaned against the table with one hand while the other rested upon her hip, turning to face her mistress with a wry smile on her lips. "Can't manage without me still, I see?""One day that tongue of yours will get you in trouble, Minthe," remarked Persephone as she rose with a small smile to meet Minthe's own. "Is that what I hope it is?"Minthe shrugged her shoulders flippantly at her mistress's words, picking up the urn and beginning to pour the vermillion liquid into the cups. "Only the best vintage for the start of the day, as usual." She handed one of the chalices to Persephone as she approached the table, raising one of her eyebrows at her in an admonishing glance only she was seemingly permitted. "You knew I would be bringing this by sooner or later, Persephone. There was no reason to send that poor girl's head spinning."Persephone's eyes rolled for a moment, and she turned from Minthe to drift over to the windows with her cup pressed to her lips as she drank deep. "The girl couldn't even give me her name. Are they teaching the new arrivals nothing anymore?"Picking up her own cup and finding her way to the unmade divan, Minthe plopped herself down among the cushions. Her robes were the same undyed shade as the other servants' were, but the cut and fitting were more in line with finery found amongst nobility. Her dark black curls, tinged with a verdant green which denoted her naiad blood, rested atop her prominent cleavage which she never restrained. Persephone mused on Minthe's familiar style with her, an attitude which she had maintained since her earliest days in the palace. It was somehow refreshing for one of my maids and servants to not treat me so delicately and reverently. I might be letting her go too far, though..."You know very well their names no longer exist once they come to work within these halls," Minthe spoke as Persephone was lost in thought. "Who they were before doesn't matter when they enter your service. I'm sure the steward will remind her, although I'm not certain she'll want to return anytime soon." She gave a merry giggle as she sipped on her wine.Persephone shook her head as she took another swig from the chalice. *I'm not some trial to overcome for those freshly landed, and if those in our employ see me so I'll have some choice words for them." She turned to look upon Minthe in repose. "...Am I truly so dreaded?" She wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer, but she asked the question anyway."Oh, my sweet Spring love..." Minthe returned Persephone's gaze with a look of pity which kindled a small flame of resentment within the regal woman's chest. "I wouldn't say you're dreaded, per se, but you have a certain...reputation among your adoring citizens.""Minthe...""I'm saying you're both loved and feared, Persephone. That's something any ruler worth their salt would consider ideal! A healthy amount of awe in the populace helps you and your husband maintain order, and gives you the adoration a woman of your lineage deserves. Don't overthink it."Minthe returned to her cup, and Persephone returned to the window view behind her. Outside the hustle and bustle of another day in her kingdom continued unabated. The light which streamed through the paned glass of her rooms was not that of the sun, which she had grown up taking for granted. Instead it was artificial luminescence which lit her face now; countless neon lanterns and signs were strewn across the city landscape before her, all powered by the countless mines just out of sight on the horizon. The lands of the Underworld were varied, but here at it's heart the Electric City - so named by her husband - almost buzzed with energy in an enormous cavern which normally would have encased all within in darkness. The denizens here worked the quarries and pits for precious metals and jewels so coveted by those in the Lands Above, and their toil fueled the instruments which so illuminated the surrounding environment.Not even a queen of the dead so much as a leader of a troupe of mummers, seeking to emulate life, Persephone thought to herself. Such a person should be feared. This is wrong. It's all wrong. Always wrong..."Are you seriously brooding on that poor thing? My lady, you have much bigger problems than some fresh girl in your chambers ruining your morning." Minthe had risen from the bed while Persephone meditated by the window, refilling her goblet and leaning back against the table as she drank deep of the wine. "One of them would be your husband."Persephone turned away from the glaring light, crossing around the divan and seating herself back among the cushions. She raised her cup and waited for Minthe to fill it once again."My lord Hades has issue with me? Color me surprised," she remarked caustically."Be flippant about it all you want, but I wouldn't want to be on his bad side today..." said Minthe as she poured for her mistress, setting the urn down and coming to alight next to her on the bed."And what has crawled up His Royal Highness' ass today?" Persephone snorted as she took a sip from her chalice."You. You have...ahem...crawled up his ass today.""I certainly have not! I would definitely remember such a request from him, among the many he's levied from me in this chamber." Now Persephone giggled, her goblet shaking and threatening to upend itself on her gown. Minthe joined her in the laughter at her master's expense."As much as I'd love to delve into Hades' proclivities in the boudoir, let's return to the matter at hand. The grievance du jour apparently stems from your noted absence during the last few arrival audiences. You're failing in your divine duties, I believe those were his words.""My divine duties," Persephone scoffed. "What a joke. The gall he has to scold me about my duties, divine or otherwise." Another deep drink and her second cup was drained. "He's ruled over this decrepit kingdom long before me, and he did just fine on his own. Let him perform his duties and I'll perform mine."Minthe smirked behind her goblet. "I would just love to see you actually tell him that to his face.""You've seen me do just that." She gave the other woman a healthy dose of side eye. "Just wanting to see me in trouble, no doubt.""What? My lady, I only ever want the best for you!" Minthe adopted a truly admirable facsimile of astonishment and wounded pride. "I'm just saying, witnessing you defying today's thundercloud would be quite a sight to..."Her words were cut short as the door to Persephone's chambers was thrown open, banging against the wall behind with thunderous force. From the hallway strode the imposing figure of Hades, robes of deepest black and purple adorned with gold and amethyst. His regal attire couldn't shine enough to mask his furrowed brow and glare, directed at Persephone and seeming to suck the very air from the room."My lord!" Minthe exclaimed and rushed to her feet, taking a few steps forward and bowing low with a hand to her chest."Minthe. I would like a word with my wife." The words rumbled low, and the very marble stone beneath them seemed to shudder at them."A thousand pardons, my lord," mewled Minthe as she rose, her hand still dawdling at the center of her breasts. Persephone had been keenly aware of Minthe's preening before her husband for some time now, despite their friendship. No matter the naiad's words with her behind closed doors, Minthe became quite the coquette in Hades' presence, and under better circumstances he would have received her advances warmly. Now, however, the stone-faced man had no eyes but for Persephone."My dear husband, you know Minthe is one of my closest confidantes within these halls. Anything you wish to share with me can be shared with her." Persephone dared the brooding cloud that was her husband to overrule her.His glare not once leaving Persephone's face, Hades again rumbled low and menacingly. "Minthe. Out. Now.""Oh of course, my lord. As you wish." Bowing low once again, chest expertly angled as usual but to no avail, Minthe slowly backed around Hades and out of the room, sparing one pitying glance for Persephone before she disappeared down the hallway.With another great shove, Hades flung the door shut. He crossed his arms and stared at his wife across the room, silent as a statue."...Well? You've made quite a show and now have nothing to say? What is that phrase about sound and fury..." Persephone taunted him, seeming to lose herself in a literary quandary of her own making.In a swift, smooth motion, Hades broke from his frozen stance and brought his hand down upon the nearby table, shattering it easily and sending the contents flying across the room. The wine urn soared past Persephone's head and smashed against the window, leaving the panes dyed scarlet as the liquid dripped down to the floor.She turned her head toward the window, then returned her gaze to his furious face. "Now you're just wasting good wine.""Why do you refuse to do your duty as queen? Five audiences now - five - with your throne sitting empty next to me. We are to sit in judgment of souls as they enter these domains, to ensure they are placed justly and equitably. We both are to do this, and yet you refuse. Why?" Hades' words were calm and measured on the surface but his ire beneath was palpable. The veins on his arms pulsed with it.Crossing her arms and sliding one of her legs over the other, Persephone only glared back at him. "You owe me a new table now, you know.""Persephone, answer me, damn it!" Hades bellowed this time, and the very foundations of the palace shook with his rage. "I deserve an answer!""...I don't want to do it," she replied."You don't...you don't want to do it? That's all you have?""Yes." She stood from her bed, her arms remaining crossed in front of her. "I don't want to sit and sort ghosts of humanity. Neither do you, by the way.""Serving as the shepherd of the dead is my divine duty and I take it seriously, Persephone. You are my wife, you are my queen, and that means you now share in that with me.""I didn't ask for this, my lord," she threw back at him, her use of his tile dripping with venom.

"Neither did I but I do it nonetheless!" Hades threw up his hands in exasperation, pacing back and forth. "We are of the Most High, and therefore we are charged with...""I was never charged with death and decay! You let your own brother dictate your lot in life and now I'm expected to share in that misery with you. It's laughable!" Persephone flung her disdain at him. She knew that he harbored a deep resentment toward Zeus for his guardianship of the dead and the deep places, even if he had eventually found some joy amongst the shining stones he found down there.He halted his steps, forcing a deep breath with his hands on his hips. "We have had this fight too many times before to revisit it now, love. I took your life from you, yes. I stole you away from the sun and the fields of your mother, yes. If that is the version of history you wish to inhabit so be it."Having crossed to her toilette, Persephone sat and took up a gilded brush, gliding it through her curls while pretending to a state of unbothered she rarely knew. "That's not some fable, that's what happened. You do seem to have trouble recalling the past.""Persephone, enough!" Hades swung fully back to her, his voice now tinged with both exasperation and notes of pleading. "You barely live under this roof for half of the year and yet I still hear others speaking of the monster I've installed within my walls."Her genteel motions with the brush stopped abruptly. Her eyes went wide in the mirrored glass. Dropping the brush she whirled on Hades, lunging up from her seat. "Monster? I'm a monster?! How dare you? How dare they? You just let others call me such vicious things? I am a daughter of the earth, the bringer of new life! I was loved and adored! I was the holder of mysteries you couldn't even fathom down here in your dank hole, but I am the monster?! You would call me a..."Her unleashed fury led her across the room towards Hades, but in the middle of her tirade her foot landed on something lying on the floor, and a gentle crunch underneath her foot brought her to a pause. Looking down, Persephone spied the source of the sound: a vine, a tendril of growth that had crawled across the marble stone beneath it. No longer vibrant and green, it was ashen and devoid of life. It had easily crumbled as her weight came down on it, turning it to dust.Her eyes traveled along the remainder of the flora, and revealed around the room were similar creeping arms with bushels and bouquets of blossoms sprouted in various nooks and crannies. From within her memory came rushing images of her first days in these chambers: lighter, more joyful days where she sought to bring her past into her present by encouraging this growth within these walls and beyond in the palace. Now, this verdant greenery barely hung to life; most was, indeed, dead. At some point, Persephone had begun to forget it was there. An ever present reminder of her current state. A glaring admonition of her failure she had chosen to ignore.She stood there in front of Hades who joined her in the silence, afraid to speak for fear of disturbing whatever trance had taken hold of his wife. Persephone seemed to stare off into the distance, and after a few moments one tear slid down her cheek, followed by another."So," she said softly. "So I am a monster within your house. I am what you made me."The words struck deeper than she realized, and Hades staggered back a step. His mouth opened and closed without a sound as he sought words for his wound."...I have crafted many a monstrous creature in my time, love. You are not of my make." A façade of stone seemed come over him as he looked at Persephone, more tears traveling down her face. He turned his back to her, opening the door to the hallway. "You will be at the next audience, Persephone. We have to do our duty." Once more, the door closed and she was left alone.The tears flowed unimpeded. Turning her face to the window behind her, Persephone released a soft sob from her lips. She reached up and took the circlet from her head, looking at it, holding it in her hands and turning it this way and that."My duty...," she murmured to herself. "What duty does a monster have?"Still clinging to the crown in her hands, she crossed to the other side of the bed, sitting once more on the cushions. She stared out through the glass, letting the artificial light bathe her tear-stained face. The false day took her in, in all her sorrow and pain. It didn't make fun of her or yell at her. Those damned lights may be the only things in this hell which don't care what I am, she thinks. She glanced back down at the circlet, then slowly raised it back up and placed it back among her amber curls. She wiped one side of her face, then the other. Felt the wet tears on her fingertips before wiping them on her gown.Persephone sighed into the silence. "The same as yesterday and the day before", she said to the light.

The candle’s wax dripped onto his fingers and he winced, a hissing sound as his breath recoiled between his teeth. His grip remained firm on the votive but he released the injured hand for just a few moments, shaking the digits to try and dull the pain.This is ridiculous, he thought to himself as he brought the poor finger to his lips, now trying to suck the burning sensation away. How much longer am I meant to wait?A cold breeze wound its way around his kneeling figure there in the chapel’s innermost sanctum. The dozens of other candles arranged around him, large and small, flickered their tiny flames as the gust blew through the room and back out from whence it came. The lights appeared to dance in front of his eyes, casting wavering shadows back and forth across the carved marble icons staring down upon his lonely form. Their eyes seemed to bore down into his very being, and he set his own upon the candle held in his lap to keep from meeting their foreboding gaze.Hours had flown by since he first knelt here for the vigil. The abbey was deathly silent at this hour but the holy brothers who inhabited its halls had decreed that one of their number must always sit in quiet prayer to the Three, whether or not the sun’s rays warmed the stone floors of the sanctum. He had drawn the unlucky straw and dutifully fulfilled the task, even if he grumbled to himself all the while.If Father Petrus wishes for the Three to have constant company, he should be the one to sit with them, he had thought while preparing for his lone watch. A novice member of the cloistered order, he was still adjusting to the stringent rules which governed life in the hallowed halls of the abbey. Life dedicated to mindful prayer and divine contemplation: these had not been the highest aims of his existence, but being the fourth-born scion of a noble house left a man like him with few other options in the eyes of his family. His brothers and sister had been obediently married off and were even now propagating the good name of their illustrious house with fresh blood. He, however, being disinclined toward marital bliss with the fairer sex, had chosen the raucous salons of the city’s learned elite instead. Nights spent in clouded back rooms with the other younger sons of the nobility would never stand with his prestigious parents, and ultimatum followed quickly upon his most recent indiscreet liaison.Now he wore the plain robes of an aspiring ascetic with the Church of the Holy Triad, hidden away from the prying eyes of the gossiping friends and neighbors of House Ravenhold. He imagined his comrades mourning his absence from the capital’s most high profile soirees while he donned the simple cloth raiments of the brotherhood in seclusion. There was no feasible means of escaping this holy imprisonment, and so sullenly he tried to accustom himself to his new life. Thus far success with such an endeavor was slow and torturous. This vigil with the Three and their gilded iconography was but the latest in a string of novel, mundane routines which weighed his spirit down more and more with each passing day.Far behind him, across the empty nave and through the nearest archway he could hear rain beginning to fall in the garden courtyard. The hour was still late, with the moon hiding itself away behind banks of ominous clouds. Even without means to track the passing intervals, he knew that his replacement should already have arrived to relieve him of his sacred task and he was fast growing restless. Maurius is going to get an earful from me when he finally deigns to grace me with his presence, he brooded in the silence. His fellow novice, meant to take up the sanctum’s revered watch after him, was a bland-looking dolt who thought much of himself due to his fervor for faith. Some of these blessed buffoons are worse than the debutantes back home, he thought. At least with those twittering birds I could escape when I wanted a respite from their company. I don’t think I’ll be so lucky here, or ever again.The rain outside fell harder upon the varied verdance in the courtyard, and he sighed. Such weather, especially at this time of night, would only make any others with nocturnal duties slow to action and he knew his confinement within the chapel’s most holy rotunda would stretch on longer. He set the dwindling taper he had been cradling upon the floor in front of him, extending and moving the cramped muscles of his hands so unused to the labors they’d so recently been assigned. His tired eyes closed and he sighed a second time, letting his head fall backwards in order to work the stiff muscles of his neck. While he raised a hand to massage the tension from his nape’s flesh, he opened his eyes and gazed upward at the statues standing half in and half out of the twilight shadows.The Three - the Holy Triad around whom the entire Church was based - stood stoically, returning his scrutiny in spades. These were the gods said to have crafted the very earth beneath him, the air which he breathed and the sparkling orbs of the night sky which were now tucked away behind the curtain of the covetous clouds. Said to be the divine children of the All-Father from whom all life flowed, these Three had chosen to descend from the high heavens and create new life in the midst of the cosmos. Children of the Light and guardians of its brilliance, Noarus of the sun, Gholena of the moon , and Ehemis of the stars stood immortalized in cold marble here in the sanctum, ever sitting in judgment of the penitent who came to worship at their feet.

He had never given much thought to gods and their musings before coming to his newfound jail, and he found he still didn’t much care to think long on them now. A monastic life now stretched before him but he couldn’t bring himself to feel anything close to the reverence the other men held so dear. There’s no divine presence inhabiting those stones, he thought as he glanced over the worn but expert craftsmanship before him. I might as well be humming some of those bawdy lyrics Leone used to crow in the bathhouses for all the good prayers will do me with these cold faces. Often would these sacrilegious thoughts come to mind for him. He’d keep them to himself to stave off harsh glares from the other brothers, but he couldn’t stop the intrusive thoughts from forming.Wind and rain now lashed harshly against the abbey’s walls, and a much stronger gust came bellowing through the nave and into the sanctum, chilling what flesh of his lay exposed beyond his robes. The candles placed directly at the base of the holy icons sputtered at the intrusion and flickered out, small trails of smoke rising to obscure the chiseled visages of the gods. An exasperated sigh fell from his lips.“Oh, for fuck’s sake…,” he muttered as he took back up his tiny votive and leaned forward to rekindle the Three’s now extinguished lights.“Now, now, brother… I doubt such language would meet with approval from those esteemed Three.”He whirled around at the unknown voice, his momentum sending him tumbling to his rump. His little candle rolled away into the shadows behind the statues and he was left in what scant illumination remained to identify the intruder.Standing centered in the entryway with the storm’s gales blustering somewhere beyond was a towering figure in similar penitent robes, and yet what features the paltry light revealed were unfamiliar. Dark, curling hair threatened to tumble down and obscure his eyes which almost seemed to glow in the candle light, a deep amber color that seemed to be radiating a sensuous heat of their own. A chiseled mien stared down at him with something approaching a mixture of amusement and hunger. It was hard, for such an admirer as he was of the male form, to miss how this stranger’s attire fit on the well-proportioned form beneath it. In all the days and weeks he’d spent now within the cloistered walls, he could find no recollection of such a becoming man among the small fraternity.A small chuckle, low and keen, rumbled from the intruder’s throat. “Apologies, friend. I had no idea I could have such an effect on men.”“W-who… I mean, I don’t…,” he fumbled over word after word as he tried to pull himself together, splayed unseemly as he was below the other man.“Here. Let’s set you upright before we make introductions,” the stranger said. He reached out a hand, his eerie eyes peering down expectantly.The gaze wouldn’t brook a refusal, and he took the outstretched hand and felt himself pulled gently but firmly to his feet. He almost didn’t want to let go of the palm; it was like some inner warmth from the strange newcomer flowed from beneath his flesh, a pleasant and almost arousing sensation. Reluctantly he released the man’s hand, holding his own in front of him.“Thank…thank you for that. You just startled me, is all. I’ve, umm…I’ve been expecting one of my peers to arrive and relieve me but I was accustomed to the silence, you see, and you…well, you…”“...Startled you. Yes, sending you on to the floor was a sure sign you didn’t suspect my presence. It was a charming reaction, though, I have to tell you.” The other man laughed from deep within his chest again and smiled, an eager gesture which sent currents of arousal once more shooting throughout his body. I have no idea who this person is and yet it feels as if he’s toying with me. That’s a thing I thought out of reach for me here, but from this total stranger it’s…unsettling, he thought to himself.

“I… Look, my apologies, but Maurius was meant to be my replacement for the vigil and I don’t…well, I don’t have any memory of you among our number. Are you a new arrival?”The man gave a small bow of his head. “How rude of me! Yes, yes I just arrived today. You must have been busy with other duties which kept our paths from crossing until this clandestine moment. I am Kieran,” he announced, spreading his hands out in a gesture of presentation.“Kieran…,” he muttered.“Yes, that’s me. And it’s a true pleasure to make your acquaintance, brother.” Kieran gave another avid grin, which again sent shivers up his spine in a most pleasant way.“W-well it’s…umm, it’s a pleasure to meet you as well, Kieran,” he said. He started to reach out a hand in greeting, wanting to feel that oddly enchanting energy in the man’s fingertips again. He paused, however, feeling somewhat awkward and shy suddenly. His past life had seen him carouse with and entrance the most beautiful beaus, both young and old, with vigor and ease, and yet this dark, alluring stranger caused all that bravado to retreat. He withdrew his hand, again wringing both his palms together to assuage his nervousness.“I’m so glad to hear that, brother,” said Kieran as he slowly stepped forward, approaching him almost like a predator stalking his next meal. His eyes widened as the beguiling figure seemed to float toward him; his heart beat began to throb so heavily he could hear it in his own ears. As Kieran neared, with only a few breaths between the two men, he was met with a sweet and musky aroma which surrounded him like an aura of animality which felt absolutely otherworldly.Kieran closed in, their two bodies so close that he could physically feel the man’s magnetism on his skin, raising the hairs on his arm. The handsome stranger’s eyes were hooded as they held him in thrall, the smirking lips so inviting in the shadowed sanctum. He felt for sure that he meant to embrace him there and then, an utterly surprising sensation but not an unwelcome one. Indeed, he was like a man dying of thirst with a cool, enticing lake mere inches from his parched lips. Is this really happening, he wondered somewhere in the back of his mind. It’s madness…this is absolute madness. And yet I…I think I want it…In the space of a heartbeat, Kieran slipped right by his shoulder, passing around him while managing to give the merest of brushes to his arm with his own. Even that minute moment of touch caused him to shudder involuntarily, and he gave an audible gasp tinged with denied passion. Fuck, fuck, fuck…please tell me he didn’t hear that, he screamed internally.Dark and tempting Kieran stood now contemplating the Three in their marble greatness, but he thought he heard him give a soft chuckle of amusement even with his back now to him.“It must have been incredibly tedious, sitting here deep in prayer to such unforgiving faces,” Kieran remarked, tenderly tracing the right-most visage of Gholena. He seemed reverent in his study of her countenance, although his words clashed with such caring motions. “Have you really lifted up silent psalms to them all this time, or have you slowly been slipping into ennui as the night’s passed?”He blinked once, then again. His mind was still clouded by the heady sensations Kieran’s close proximity had induced in him, and he was struggling to claw himself back to sense. “I…well, I do admit it’s a dull exercise. One wants to…to be faithful and dutiful…” The words were strung together haphazardly; he knew he didn’t mean a word of them, but he felt as if he had to keep up this new facade he’d been ordered to follow. The sentiment was entirely hollow, however, and his false faith combined now with Kieran’s disquieting presence made him trip over the common language itself.Why am I even explaining myself to a stranger, his inner voice struggled to cry out in the midst of his confusion. I don’t even know this man and yet I’m trying to bare my soul to him as if we’re intimate confidantes. This is insane! The rational thoughts fought to come to the forefront of his mind, but couldn’t find purchase.

To grasp at anything concrete in the midst of his fog, he turned to the far corner and bent to his knees, searching for the lost candle which had been sent flying at Kieran’s arrival. “Uh, well in any case, you’re up awfully late on your first night with us. Did the storm wake you?”“Oh not at all. The sound of driving rain, that thrumming beat against stone and earth…it’s like a sweet lullaby for me,” Kieran said, slowly pacing back and forth before the stone idols. “I just happened to be up and about. The night holds many wonders if one knows where to find them. Wouldn’t you agree?”The question seemed innocent but he felt himself blush as he crawled on all fours in search of the missing votive. “I…I’m sure I don’t know what you mean…,” he managed to say just as his fingers found purchase on the tiny candle. “Ah, here you are, you little shit.” Barely had the words come out but he slammed his eyes shut and cursed much louder in his private thoughts. Damn it, you know better than to let that slip again. Who knows how much this one will report back?He stood back on his feet, brushing the front of his robes as he turned back to the center of the room. “Apologies for such language, Kieran. Even after all this time old habits tend to die…hard…”His words dissolved into the air as he glanced up to find Kieran once more standing within just a finger’s breadth of him. The man’s odd relationship with personal space had his nerves on edge. From a rising sense of arousal, some misplaced fear perhaps. Even a combination of the two.In his hands Kieran held one of the candles from the feet of the Three, its tiny flame barely flickering in the space between them. “Come now, no apologies needed. Here. Let me rekindle your light.” He reached out and took the hand holding his small taper and, cradling it gently, brought it to his own and touched wick to wick. Their eyes held fast to each other as the flame found its way over, both seeming not to breathe as the one became two.“Brother…your hands are absolutely freezing. You poor thing! You must’ve been so cold in here all by yourself, with only the wind and these grim gargoyles for company.” Kieran gripped his hand more firmly in his own, and in a far too familiar gesture brought it to his lips and pressed the fingers to his mouth. He gently kissed the skin, a solemn motion and yet incredibly sensuous at the same time. He was sure he shuddered once again, and there was no way the handsome stranger would be able to miss the stirring.He snatched his hand back, the tiny candle threatening to fall once more from his grip as he reclaimed his fingers. A few steps backward followed, the recently attended digit held to his chest like a small bird. His head swam with confused emotions, and he felt as if he was balancing on a string above some terrifying pit below.“Did I do something to offend?” Kieran seemed not concerned for him but rather happy with himself.“N-no, I… I just…,” he stuttered. “Maurius could be here any moment to take up the vigil from me, and if…if he were to see such a thing, he…”“Oh, Maurius again. You shouldn’t worry, he won’t be coming anytime soon, I can assure you.”He had been forming more words of protest but they now caught in his throat. “W-what do you mean? He’s my relief for the night.”“Oh, friend… I’m more than enough relief for you.” That same wicked grin crept back to Kieran’s face, which had thrilled him so carnally before but now tended a growing sense of dread within him. “I should have said so the moment you mentioned him earlier. I found him in the hallway and he was in no shape to maintain holy contemplation, so I volunteered to take his place.”He knew that made no sense. Maurius had been seen performing strenuous acts of manual labor while fever raged in his head multiple times, all for the sake of the Three which he so loved. The vigil was an especially sacred time for the unbearable man; he was certain nothing could have kept him from it.“I didn’t…I didn’t know. Perhaps I should just go and make sure he’s not in need of anything if that’s the case…” His feet began to take more faltering steps backward, in an estimation of where the nave would be behind him, but this time Kieran matched his pace and followed, again closing the distance between them.“So thoughtful a gesture… A friend and brother such as you he surely doesn’t deserve. I can guarantee he won’t be needing any assistance, though. You could instead remain here…with me. It’s my first time for such an act, and I’ll need a steady hand to guide me.” The words dripped with honey, and despite the rising ride of fear he felt they plucked chords within him he had sorely missed in the lonesome days behind these walls. Kieran reached up a hand and his fingers gently caressed his cheek, his thumb rubbing itself gently over his bottom lip. “Come now. Won’t you stay with me?”

Even in this tremendous apprehension the temptation to take his thumb into his mouth and taste the salt upon his flesh was tantalizing beyond reason. In spite of himself he allowed the other man to slip past his lips, and for a moment he used them and his tongue to worship Kieran’s extremity with abandon. Thought left him entirely and instinct, pure hedonistic instinct, took control. His gaze was held by the dark and glowing eyes before him as he gave himself over.A flash of nearby lightning suddenly filled the sanctum from behind him, and Kieran’s face was starkly illuminated for just a brief moment. The deeply chiseled lines of his jaw and cheekbones suddenly took on a ghastly skeletal grimace, and his warm eyes were not amber pots of honey but vats of darkest blood. As the burst of light vanished, the shadows crashed back in, and a booming clap of thunder slammed against the abbey walls, his senses returned in a rushing wave and he stumbled back from the other man’s grasp. The poor tiny votive once again fell to the floor, its flame extinguished.His breath came ragged now, unable to find the familiar rhythm anymore. And a strange taste now filled his mouth. He knew it, and yet its presence was baffling. Iron. The taste was the same as when he had held nails between his lips as he worked to mend part of the fencing around the vegetable garden just the previous week. It was the unmistakable taste of iron on his tongue. Why in the world he would taste that…A low, rapacious chuckle floated in the air, and he looked up to see Kieran smiling as the laugh bubbled up from within him. The hand that had held him so tenderly and needy still hovered there, as if reaching out to him. It was the first moment he had given the limb any kind of examination, and even in the scant candle light the sanctum threw from behind his figure, he could now see the ruddy tinge to the skin of his palm, his fingers.Blood clearly stained the skin of his hand, was still somewhat wet with it in fact.He lifted a trembling hand of his own to his lips, and wiping the corner of his mouth he drew back his fingers and found the same blood now painted on his face.“Oh, you sweet thing,” cooed Kieran as he tilted his head, grin widening at him. “This would have been so much easier had you given yourself willingly.”From where he found the strength to move he didn’t know, but as Kieran began to cackle to the sanctum’s small ceiling he bolted for the nave. Running by the pews, barely able to keep upright as he sped towards the courtyard. Out into the driving rain, looking behind him and frightened to think Kieran would be following close behind.Only darkness could be seen from whence he’d come, but the laughter seemed to slowly be growing louder, and he glanced left and right as he tried to think of what to do.Maurius, he suddenly thought. I have to find Maurius.Turning on his heel, he raced out the opposite arch and into the hall which connected to the brothers’ cells. He pounded down the lightless hall with only distant spikes of lightning casting any glow through the windows. He almost fell as he came to the door of Maurius’ room, and he banged loudly on the wood. “Maurius! Maurius, damn it, open up!”As he took his fist one final time to the door it swung open and he found himself falling to the floor of the cell. He glanced up and saw only shadows where furniture and odds and ends should have been. Scrambling to shut the door behind him, he trembled as he turned and held his hands out, scouring the darkness for the small desk he knew should reside somewhere close by. Eventually his fingers found the soft wood, and he threw his hands across the surface, trying to find a candlestick or even just a small taper to light the room.“Maurius, I-I need you to get up. There’s something…there’s something unholy in the abbey. Fuck’s sake, Maurius, I think it’s killed someone! Get your ass out of the bed and help me!”A small candle finally met with his searching fingers, and a tiny match just within reach of it. “Fucking finally,” he cursed freely as he struck the match and brought the flame to the wick, casting light upon the wall in front of him. “Gods be damned, Maurius, I need you to…”

As he turned to face the bed, his voice caught and his next words instead became gasping sobs. Lying there upon the mattress was indeed Maurius, or at least the mutilated vestige of the man he had once been. If it were not for the bloody blonde hair atop his head he would be unrecognizable. The corpse lay mangled with limbs all akimbo, the sheets and floor beneath soaked with wine-red blood. The same substance had been smeared across the walls behind and beside the bed, making it appear as if Maurius had dug his fingers into them, trying to scale them with his bare hands to escape whatever had delivered his demise.Falling to his knees, he felt his sobs become hot and raw, and soon his stomach upended itself upon the wooden floor. Tears fell coarsely down his face and his vision blurred for a moment as he felt the room spin rapidly around him. Oh gods! Oh fucking gods… Some tiny part of him found it hilarious that now, of all times, he was calling upon the deities he scarcely believed in.What do I do now? Oh fuck, what do I do? He stood back up slowly onto his shaking legs and braced himself against the desk behind him, the candle remaining on the floor to cast fluttering shadows across the mangled mess on the bed. I’ve got to…I’ve got to warn the others. Right? Yes, yes that’s it. The abbey bell, at the gatehouse. That thing could raise the dead. Nodding to himself to keep himself from sobbing anew, he turned and came to the cell’s door.Placing his ear to the portal’s material, he stood stock still and listened for any motion or noise from without. Hearing nothing but the pounding rain on the roof, he took a deep breath and slowly opened the door.“Fuck, the candle!” He turned and retreated back into the room, pointedly avoiding letting his gaze fall on the bed again as he bent to retrieve the small light from the floor. He spun round with a shout as the door slammed against the wall, but no form or figure appeared in the entry. Instead he felt a powerful gust of wind and the smell of the rain, and knew the storm was moving through the building just as surely as…whatever demon Kieran was moved as well.Again he approached the door and stepped into the hall. His breath caught for a moment and then began to come in waves of trembling, stifled gasps. The previously barren hall was now strewn with fresh bodies: this one slumped half in and half out of another cell door, another further along propped against the wall with barely enough flesh left at its nape to keep the head from falling to the floor. These were more of the abbey’s clerics. Familiar faces now frozen in twisted masks of terror.“I told you, sweetling…this would have been so much easier…”The voice floated ominously from shadows down the hall, opposite the direction of the courtyard. He turned and saw two floating amber orbs in the darkness and released the scream which had been building inside of him as he turned and fled toward the sound of the wind and the rain. Back through the torrential downpour among the greenery of the open air courtyard, where more bodies lay among the former flowers and shrubbery. Smudged bloodstains in the dirt, mixing into the rainwater to make dark, dank puddles among the foliage. He sloshed his robes through the detritus and the red sea of corpses, his body shaking with sobs as he threw himself through the far archway and back into the nave.His deep cries turned back to horrified shrieks as he encountered abundant illumination where formerly only shadows had lain in this holy place. All of the various candles and votives around the room had been gathered up and lit, and in the middle of the pews and the altar back in the sanctum stood a macabre scene of mutilation and gore. More dead bodies had been set on their knees as if in solemn prayer, some with hands missing, others without other extremities. Set kneeling upon the altar, to his dismay, was Father Petrus, seated upon his knees and holding his own head in his lap as the grisly onlookers made mock prayer before him.His mind was tearing itself apart to make sense of all he was seeing. They weren’t here just a few moments ago, nor those others from the hall… He couldn’t have taken them all in mere minutes, they…they must’ve been murdered hours ago. How is he doing this? Who the hell is he?Tearing his eyes from the profane image, he turned to take himself through the main doors to the entry yard and the gatehouse, but his eyes widened as he saw his way barred. More bodies lay strewn haphazardly in front of the great doors, some were even affixed to the wood of the mighty entryway with broken stakes from the smashed rear pews to his left and right. Despite them he ran up and pulled as hard as he could, trying to pry open the doors. “Please! Please let me out! This can’t be happening!” He cried out to the air as he kept up his attempt in vain.“Oh, I assure you it is, my friend,” said a familiar voice from behind which made him freeze to the spot.Slowly he turned to find Kieran, robes pristine but hands dripping with ruby, viscous claret. That same devilish smile was plastered upon his face; that same hungry gaze locking him in place against the door behind him.He managed to swallow the huge lump in his throat before speaking. “...Who…who are you?”

“Well, I already made my introduction earlier. I’m Kieran.” He again tilted his head at him, as if confused by the question.“No… W-what are you?”“Oh! Oh, well that’s quite a different thing, now isn’t it?” The dark-haired man raised one of his hands in front of his face, rubbing thumb and forefinger together as if inspecting the liquid coating them. “In the highlands up north I’m called one thing, whereas in the marshes and bogs of the south I’m something else entirely. And in the east, where those hot, dry winds toss the sand in your eyes and blind you just as sure as the sun, well there I’m…”“Gods be damned, tell me what you are!” He yelled out, both in terror and exasperation.Kieran paused his sentence, mouth still open to speak but he locked his gaze upon him. Slowly he closed his lips and smiled grimly.“My sentiments exactly, actually. Gods be damned. You and I, my little sweeting, have so much in common.”“No! No we are not! You’re…y-you’re some kind of demon!”Kieran’s smile widened and he laughed, a merry sound tinged with amusement. “Well maybe I am and maybe I’m not. In the end it doesn’t matter, friend. Not for you, at least.”His face began to crumple on itself as sobs began anew, and he sank to the floor with the sturdy, barred doors against his back. The man’s words confirmed what he already knew in his pounding heart: he wasn’t leaving here alive.“You poor thing… You weren’t meant to endure this.” Slow steps brought Kieran closer to him there on the ground, a hue of legitimate pity in his voice as he spoke. “Truly a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Such a sad thing to witness.”“W-why? Why are you doing this?”“Why?” The question seemed to give the handsome creature pause. “Would you ask the scorpion why it stings? Would you question the motives of the snake when it bites? It’s simply what we do. It’s our nature.”His sobs softened even as the hot tears flowed across his cheeks. “That…that doesn’t make sense… They didn’t deserve this.”Kieran’s eyes snapped back onto his tear-stained face, narrowing in disapproval. “They didn’t deserve this? I think we both know that isn’t true, my sweetness. You saw through the bullshit from the moment you arrived, didn’t you?” He slowly knelt before him, his stare seeming to pierce into his very soul. “You were in that dank room for hours and felt not one ounce of the divine. Don’t tell me you think these self-righteous charlatans didn’t deserve this and much worse for their hypocrisy.”“No…,” he muttered weakly.Again Kieran’s hand reached out to cup his face, and although he flinched the fingers caressed his flesh tenderly. “Yes, friend. Yes. Their rank idolatry offended my senses so that I could smell the stink miles from here. It had to be done. The master I serve wouldn’t allow them to continue to offend the heavens, and neither would I. I’m just sorry you had to get caught in the middle. Such a beautiful specimen…”The thumb, stained a deeper red and reeking of death, once more slid across his mouth, gently tugging the bottom lip in a repeat of the sensual moment from earlier. How such a vile creature - whatever creature he might be - could elicit such torrid sensations at this juncture was beyond him, but he couldn’t help it as his body responded to the touch in spite of his horror and despair.That chuckle came again, washing over him. “And so responsive to me. It would be such a pity to throw you in amongst the tableau with the rest of them.” Kieran glanced over his shoulder, indicating the grotesque set up at the altar. He returned his amber gaze and smiled warmly. “I’ll ask one final time, sweet: won’t you make this easy on yourself?”“I…I don’t know what you mean.”“It’s simple enough. Forego their fate. Let everything that came before remain in the past. Join me.”“Join you? I-In what?”“In pleasure, of course.” Kieran stood to his full height, dark curls moving sensuously in the candlelight, his muscled frame somehow perfectly etched in the folds of the penitent robes he still wore. He reached his hand down, still a dark vermillion color on his palm and fingertips. “You weren’t made for this, you were subjected to it. Return to the life you were destined for, and so much more. Join me.”He stared at that outstretched hand for what seemed like ages as the flickering votives began to dwindle and lose their flame to the howling winds that were sweeping into the nave from the courtyard. The shadows were growing around Kieran, and he looked from the hand up toward the comely face above. This is ridiculous, he thought amidst the swirling, screaming notes battling inside his head. This is completely ridiculous…Slowly he reached out and took Kieran’s hand, and felt the man pull him up to his feet. He felt the warmth radiating from him as had an arm slipped around his waist, hauling him close to the dark, dangerous man’s chest. He could feel a steady heart beat, and the hot breath as Kieran nuzzled his cheek against his own.“You’ve made a very, very wise choice, my friend. My love. You won’t live to regret this, I swear it.”As Kieran’s lips planted themselves on his own in a hungry kiss, he could feel the man’s nails dig into the flesh of his side and his back. The same warm energy he had sensed before came rushing inside of him now, filling him up and threatening to drown him, overwhelm him. His eyelids fluttered; his senses went slack and he would’ve crumpled to the floor had the unholy beauty not held him firmly in his arms. His consciousness was receding, retreating in the face of this wicked passion. He closed his eyes and returned the kiss fully, eagerly.Kieran briefly pulled his lips back his and grinned, speaking softly to him and the darkness around them. “A very, very wise choice…”

The morning sun was stretching its arms as it rose in the sky, and its palette seemed to smear as the hazy oranges and pinks of dawn gave way to blazing blues and yellows. Phillippe sat with his back against the low stone retaining wall which held his little patch of farmland together, his pitchfork lying still by his side and the nearby bales of hay sitting haphazardly finished. His head reclined easily against the worn stones, and he stared upwards, eyes squinting against the growing day around him.The clouds above moved as they always had, sometimes as still as a painting and other times racing by as if being chased by some unseen predator. How often had they glanced down upon him and his tiny kingdom, toiling day after day with rake and shovel, with scythe and sickle? Did clouds envy the minute specks below them, or were they content to float above it all?"Papa! Papa!" He blinked, his reverie interrupted by the plaintive clamor. Phillippe lowered his gaze from the sky above and looked out over the fields of dahlias from which the call had come, the rows of flowers stretching away south over the rounded horizon.His eyes fell upon a blue mop of hair bobbing and weaving amongst the sea of warmer petal hues, and a few moments later a small girl burst forth from the flora, her cerulean curls fluttering around her face not so much like strands of hair but more a frame of butterfly wings.Odile, his one and only daughter, turned this way and that before she finally caught sight of her father, a smile breaking upon her face. She was a beautiful child, Odile, with large amber eyes which resembled pots of honey. Inquisitive, adventurous, and perpetually gay and glad: she was the apple of Phillippe's eye and had been since her mother had first placed her in his arms. The cornflower and moss tones in her hair were a gift from her mother, along with her merry disposition. A dowry which Dominique, his beloved wife, had made and laid with her own blood: even nine, ten years on it was hard for him to remember that she was no longer back at the house as he worked in the fields. Somewhere beyond those clouds in the sky she existed, now. There, and in Odile's face."Papa! Papa, I've been looking for you everywhere! Look, look at this!" The small girl bounded to his side, plopping down next to his bent legs. One of her hands was clutched in a tight fist, and she held it out toward Phillippe."Sweetheart, what have you found out on your journey today?" He held his hand out for whatever treasure she had come across, but she pulled her hand back, clutching the fist to her chest and furrowing her brow solemnly."This is special. Really special! You have to be very careful, Papa. Do you promise?""I will be as delicate as lace, Odie," he said, using his special pet name to unknit her brow and restore the smile to her face. "Let me see what you've found."Slowly, Odile stretched her fist out once more to him, and he cupped her smaller hand in his as she unclenched her fingers gently one by one. As the last digit curled back, Phillippe's eyes widened and Odile giggled in satisfaction.Within the girl's palm sat a small creature, azure scales lining it's lean and lithe form. Small wings, no bigger than a hummingbird's, sat folded against its back, and a tail, barbed but armed only with soft, newborn talons. The beryl-colored scales caught the sunlight, and the hues seemed to shimmer and transform to green, then gold, then red, before returning to their original deep blue. A small head, with budding horns, raised itself with a thin, sinuous neck, looking round at its surroundings with trepidation. Its green eyes, deep like lichen one moment and bright as limes the next, fixed upon his face, and its tongue darted out toward him.A dragon. A small, baby dragon."Odile... Odile, where did you find this?" Phillippe tried his best to maintain a calm demeanor. He didn't wish to startle the girl, especially with the creature perched in the palm of her hand."He was in the flowers, Papa!" She showed no fear of the tiny dragon, using the fingers of her other hand to gently slide her fingertips across the back length of the thing's neck. It closed its eyes and began emitting small gurgling noises that Phillippe took to be similar to a cat's purr, which was astonishing and odd to witness."I was looking for the flower fairies again. I wanted to see them as they help the dahlias grow big and pretty." She drew her hand and the dragon back toward her, continuing to pet the creature which seemed so comfortable in her presence. "They're being very secretive today, though, and I couldn't find any. Then I spotted something shiny on one of the blossoms, and when I pulled it down I found Mazarine among the petals!" She glanced up and beamed at her father. "Isn't he just so beautiful, Papa?"Phillippe said nothing, his mouth slightly agape as he stared at the creature easily curling up in his daughter's hands. His jaw worked but he couldn't form words for a few moments. A dragon. A dragon, sitting in Odile's palm. The thoughts blazed in his mind like brilliant light from the heavens, all else burning away as he tried to make sense of it.Dragons were creatures from the pages of myth, long thought to have left the world behind for realms beyond the reach of man ages ago. Phillippe could recall the stories of knights and sorcerers who battled them as ferocious enemies, as well as those who bonded with them and soared high above the mountaintops between their massive wings. The fairy tales, for that's what they had always been, had enchanted him as a little boy.Those were innocent days, however; as he grew, he learned that the fanciful tales of his youth had more fact than fiction in them. The dragons had indeed once roamed the skies, and retreated from them ages past, but the Church, which governed so much of the world of men, told a different version of the story. The dragons were creatures of chaos, abominations, and the forces of Light had driven them away at the behest of their just and righteous god; the dragons' mortal compatriots hunted down or sent into hiding. The holy brothers and sisters preached words of warning to those who might envision the winged creatures favorably - lay down with the corruption and become corrupt yourself.No dragons had been seen in years, not one sighting within mortal memory. And yet here, cradled in Odile's hand, sat a blazing blue fable. Phillippe could feel his heart pounding in his chest. A small part of him thrilled to see this tiny wonder. The rest of him was terrified."Odie, it seems... Mazarine seems very nice, but I'm not sure..."A snap, as of a twig, resounded in the quiet tension, and Phillippe turned his head toward the nearby copse of ancient oak trees. The dark green leaves bounced softly in the breeze that swirled around the mighty sentinels. He could've sworn that he saw a fleeting, flitting shadow behind one of the thick trunks, but he shook his head and returned his attention to Odile and the creature."I can keep him, can't I Papa?" Odile released the plea before Phillippe could returned to his thought."Keep him? My sweet girl, I don't think you understand. This is...this is a wild animal."She began to frown. "Mazarine's not a wild animal. He's my friend.""Odie, that thing is...beautiful, and very special. You're right," he said cautiously. "It could also become very dangerous, sweetheart. Who knows what it could be capable of when it gets bigger?""He wouldn't hurt me, Papa! He wouldn't hurt anyone..." Odile pouted, looking down at Mazarine curled within her palm. The small dragon turned its head upward to return her gaze, as if it understood her words."You don't know that, Odie. It isn't like a puppy or a kitten. This is...different."Her frown deepened and she looked back up at Phillippe. "Papa...I have to keep him. He needs me."Rarely did Odile act with such seriousness, and its appearance rattled him. "Sweetheart, he'll be just fine on his own. He doesn't need help." Gently reaching out and squeezing her knee, Phillippe smiled at her. "You need to let him go, alright?"The small head bowed once again, her frowning visage focused on the winged fairy tale in her hand. A small tear appeared in the corner of her eye. "You don't understand...," she uttered as the tear trailed down her face.He felt it before he saw it manifest around her. An energy that almost felt like heat but seemed to jolt the skin instead of singe it. Phillippe's smile faltered as he felt the familiar sensation, then dropped away entirely as the aura appeared around her fingers. An aurora of blues, greens, and white began to materialize between her extremities, threatening to travel up her wrists.His grip on her knee grew firmer, and he leaned forward to try and meet her eyes. "Odile. Come now, there's no reason for that. Calm down."She shook her head stubbornly, her muted blue locks shaking back and forth in front of her face. He heard her sniffle. "Why don't you understand? He needs me, I know he does." The aura emanating from her fingertips now began to appear among her tussled tresses, almost like flames flickering inside of the latticed grate of a hearth.Phillippe closed his eyes and sighed. This was a dangerous situation but one he had managed many times before now. Dominique had gifted Odile with many traits, but she had left one other boon which he could only see as a curse. Magic - the arcane art of manipulating the flows of aether which flowed all around, invisible yet ever present - was an inherent legacy that had been passed down, generation to generation, in his wife's family. That same power had appeared in Odile years earlier, and he had done his best since then to manage her magical outbursts the best he could. Such arcane arts were forbidden by the Church, as access to such otherworldly conjuring were seen as the purview of the divine, not the occult. Any practicing magic or exhibiting any level of affinity for it were either taken for holy training or simply disappeared.He would not see either happen to Odile. Either option meant losing her, and he knew he would never survive the loss."Just breathe, sweetheart. There's no need for crying, no need for dramatics." Gentle words and quiet pressure, quiet presence, had proven effective at calming the magical manifestations in the past. He had to protect her from retribution, as well as herself. There was no telling what she might do, wielding such power with no knowledge of what it was or training in how to handle it."We just can't keep him. Mazarine has to go back. Don't you see?"Odile made no reply. The sniffling continued as her head hung low. The dragon, Mazarine, seemed to sense some disturbance in her, though, and had uncurled itself and now stretched its small but lanky body toward her chest, front claws pressed to her chest as its rear feet remained on her palm. The small, iridescent wings were unfurled, fluttering softly."Odie..." He gently squeezed her knee again, but he could see the shifting aura growing across her skin and around her curls. "My love, it's...it's just too dangerous. You don't see it now, but some day you'll understand. I promise."Again, she made no reply. Mazarine made soft, worried snorts against her chest, but otherwise all was silent but for the breeze still whipping around them.Suddenly, the tiny dragon was snatched up in her hand, and Odile squirmed from Phillippe's hand, returning to her feet beside him."No, Papa. You don't understand. I have to keep him. I have to stay with him. Why don't you see that?" Although more tear tracks could be seen on her cheeks, she gazed at her father with something that approached pity. Phillippe had never seen her so serious, so somber. She took a few steps away from him, clutching the dragon to her breast."Odile, that's enough. I know it must mean much to you now, but you'll see. I promise." He reached out to her, wanting to take her to in his arms and hold her until reason somehow took hold within her mind.She shook her head, retreating still further. "You just don't see... Why don't you see?!" The words were flung with a profound sadness as she bolted away from him, running around a bend in the wall which would lead to the stairs and the path back to the house.Phillippe sighed, exasperation mixing with real worry. What had come over his sweet little girl he could not fathom. He turned to look after her path.He froze. Standing amongst the oak trees was the shadow from before, no longer fleeting but solid and real. A hooded figure, a cloak billowing behind them with the breeze; the fitted clothes on their body belying a female figure. Her features were shaded and he couldn't get a good look at her, but the light brown eyes, almost golden, stared off after Odile in a curious and sad way."Hey. Hey! Who goes there?" Phillippe started to rise to his feet, but a sharp pain in his thigh caught him short, and he collapsed back against the retaining wall. Must've been sitting too long, now the damned leg's gone asleep. Why now?The dark figure turned its head in his direction, remaining still among the dappled light through the branches above them. Her arms were crossed in front of her chest, her weight leaned against the closest tree trunk. She made no move but uttered no reply to him.Unclenching his grimaced face from the sudden pain, he frowned at her. "Listen, I don't know who you are; you certainly aren't one of the neighbors. Who in blazes are you, and what are you doing spying on me and mine?"She tilted her head, then looked away across the fields of flowers waving in the wind."Damn it, answer me!" His words rang out in the quiet."I'm no one. No one that you'd know, anyway..." The reply was quiet and low, and yet Phillippe heard her every word. Slowly the women unfolded her limbs and began to walk out of the shadows towards Phillippe. The wind was picking up a bit, the clouds overhead gathering up and darkening as if arguing with each other, and the occasional rogue gusts tussled with her hood: a plaited braid lay across her shoulder with the remainder still hidden beneath the dusty-colored fabric. Those golden eyes revealed themselves to be more amber than gilded orbs. They stared at him unflinchingly as she approached."Alright, well, No One...that answers one question, but you still haven't told me why the hells you're on my farm." Again Phillippe tried to rise to his feet, but another pain joined the first, a stitch in his side this time. He must've been overexerting himself in his earlier work, he guessed, although this was a horrible time for his body to balk against him. And Odile... He had to get to her, get between this stranger and her.The woman look off behind him, beyond the wall, and Phillippe's fear grew. Did she see where Odile had run off to? "I'm here to finish something," she said, both to herself and to him."Finish...? What's that supposed to mean?"Her head turned back to him, and those light amber eyes again fixed on his face, making the hairs on his arm rise."Yes. ...I promised I would."He narrowed his eyes at her, glancing to his wayward pitchfork. There were no obvious weapons on her body that he could spy, but even if there was some hidden implement he might be able to grab his tool if the need arose. "Whatever promise you made, it doesn't involve me. It doesn't involve us. Leave."Softly she shook her head, and her braid tumbled back and forth underneath her hood as she did. "You're wrong. You don't understand. You never understood..."He could feel the blood run cold underneath his skin. You never understood... Words so familiar, so recent. Why would she say those particular words? Although the wind, whipping a bit harder now, kept blowing, Phillippe felt as if everything had just come to a complete stop. The tree branches halted their bobbing, the dahlias paused their waving to and fro. The clouds stood still, watching intently.

A brilliant flash of light illuminated the air, and it seemed as if the world exploded. With a deafening crack, jagged lightning arced down from the sky, striking the ground behind the hooded woman, and everything in Philippe's vision went white. He fell back against the wall, slumped against the stones and holding his hands out in front of him defensively.Trying to open his eyes, he glimpsed nothing but distortion, his vision refusing to adjust. There was heat all around him now, he could feel it rippling from somewhere nearby: maybe the lightning had struck the oak copse and set them alight. He could smell burning on the air, fragrant and frightening."It's alright. Open your eyes." The woman, she was still there. Wincing, Phillippe once again tried to pry his eyes open.The hooded woman remained where she had been, apparently unmoved and unchanged, but everything else had been transformed. Behind her, the great oaks had been toppled, jagged and bent and aflame. The sea of fragrant flowers burned as well, and the sky which loomed over them was dark and threatening, as if the heavens would break open at any moment and release a deluge but refused to do so."What...in blazes..." he uttered. His voice sounded and felt raspy, as if smoke had snuck in his lungs unawares. The ache in his leg and his side were somehow worse now, and he felt other new pains now as well."Don't try and move. It won't help." The woman was kneeling beside him now, a tender hand on his shoulder softly pushing him back against the wall, holding him steady.He glanced down, and felt his singed breath begin to quicken in confusion. Wounds, bloody and weeping, dotted his body: his thigh, his side, his stomach. Cuts and slices along his arms. He now could taste iron on his lips, and knew there was blood there as well. I'm...I'm dying. How am I dying? His mind and his heart began racing, not able to make sense of this scene."Just breathe. Be calm." Again the woman spoke gently to him, attempting to reassure him. It felt so familiar, but with his mind threatening to fracture he couldn't focus on the thought."What is...w-what is this?""Your wounds are fatal." She said it so easily, so simply. "Moving too much will only hasten...the end. So just breathe for now."Bewildered, Phillippe turned his head toward the woman, trying to fix on her honey-colored eyes even as she attempted to avert his gaze. "W-why...is this happening?"She stared at the ground, silent for a few moments. "...It happened this way before, so it must repeat the same way again. It can't be changed." Her voice was tinged with a sadness he had only heard himself use. He had heard it in his own words when he'd tell himself that this was all somehow the plan of the divine, even as his sweet Dominique lay on her pyre in front of him."Who...? Who are you, No One?"Her eyes squeezed shut, and the stoic facade she had been maintaining broke. Turning her face he thought he heard her sniffle, even as the sounds of the raging flames around them threatened to drown out all else. Slowly she released his shoulder, and with both hands she took hold of her hood and slid it back, revealing her bared hair.The hair, though braided tightly and slung over one shoulder, still remained that enchanting cornflower blue hue mixed with hints of moss and fern greens. She turned back to face him, a tear sliding down her cheek from eyes more alike to pots of honey."It's me. It's me, Papa."He didn't begin to sob, but his chest heaved, somehow unable to find his breath. She laid her hand on his chest. "Please, Papa. Just breathe. There's...there's no need for theatrics..." A dark and sad chuckle came from her breast."O-Odie?"She nodded. "Yes, Papa.""Odie..." He hisses and grimaces, one of the myriad wounds suddenly sending sharp pains throughout his frame. She presses firm against his chest, and in a few moments he feels the pain recede somewhat. His eyes crack back open, taking in this unfamiliar view of someone he holds so dear. "Odie, what...w-what is this?"She sighs, deep and tired. "This...this is the moment of your death, Papa. I told you. You're dying.""How? You were just here...but not this you, you were...you were Odie, not some grown woman...""I know, I...know. I shouldn't have come, I've already altered too much."Phillippe reaches up and grips her wrist, her hand still pressed to his chest. He can feel that familiar heat which isn't heat, and knows she's the reason his pain ebbed. "Odile...what is going on?"She looks at him, suddenly resembling the little girl who had only moments earlier ran from his outstretched arms. "Oh, Papa...I only wanted to keep my promise.""What promise?"Odile shifts her hand on his chest, taking his hand in hers and squeezing. "I promised you that I'd come back. Somehow, I would come back to you. And this was the...this was the only way I could."Little bits of blackened debris, looking like dark petals, float by in the singed-smelling air, and for a moment Phillippe can't seem to focus on anything but them. He blinks once, again, then turns back to his daughter."Odie...tell me what's happened."She stares at him for a moment, then turns to gaze beyond the wall at the house - or whatever may remain of it, considering the fiery fields in his vision. "I remember that day I found him. You were so adamant that I couldn't keep him, and somehow I couldn't make you understand that I had to stay with him.""You mean that...that creature?"Odile turns her eyes back to him. "Dragon, Papa. Mazarine is a dragon."As if on cue, a great screech echoes across the burning fields, and as Phillippe turns his eyes upward he can see a large, dark shadow seeming to flit between the looming clouds above. It dips and dives, calling out again and again, and even with the fiery illumination from below he can clearly see the azure scales glinting along its body."I was so mad at you then...," she says, following his eyes skyward. "I kept him against your wishes. You didn't make it easy, but I hid him and kept him close. I knew me finding him - him finding me - wasn't some random gift from the Fates. We were meant for something. And I know that now."Phillippe turns his eyes to his daughter's face, so much more mature than the fresh face he had been following among the flowers for years. It was clear she had seen much between the girl she once was and the woman she was now, and it haunted her."Odie..." He squeezed her hand, fighting back more winces and whimpers as the pain grew once more."He grew bigger, though. I couldn't be everywhere at once. Someone...someone spotted him, which lead back to me, and I...I could never hide what I am that well." She continued watching the dragon on the wing high above, but she shook her head sadly. "You were right to worry. You were always right. And I couldn't see the danger right there when I was always thinking of what lay ahead."Odile turned her face back to Phillippe. "They came. This is the day that they came for me and for Mazarine. The inquisitors with their staves, their lances, their judgment... You realized all too late what I had done. So you...so you told me to run."His brows furrowed, confused. "I would never tell you to run without me, no matter what happened."Again her cerulean-tinted hair shook back and forth. "You weren't going to let them touch me. I remember the way you said it. It was so...final." Another tear slides across her cheek. "You told me to run and not to stop. I cried, I screamed...but you just told me to run, that you'd put a stop to them. You and your pitchfork..."She looks beyond him, and he turns to spy his pitchfork, laying in the singed grass where he had left it. Now it was broken, the tines caked in blood."Well...I must have given them at least some trouble, huh?" Phillippe laughs darkly but begins to cough, a deep rasping sound which amplifies the pain already wracking his body. Odile presses her hand back to his chest but he shakes his head at her. "No, no... Just tell me how we've come to this, Odie.""I...," she starts then stops, seeming to want to object but resigning herself to obey. "Fine. I finally listened to you, and I ran. I ran away while I heard you trying to fight the knights with your pitchfork." She takes his hand again, squeezing hard. "But I promised you, before I started running, that I'd come back. I was going to come back to you."She sniffles, wiping her face with her free hand. "And now I have. Just...not the way I wanted.""What does that mean, Odie?""I...I found magic. This ancient weaving that could let the caster step backwards or forwards through time itself." She frowns, almost seems to blush as if ashamed, and turns her head aside. "It's incredibly dangerous, all the writings said so. To tamper with the past, let alone the future, is to undo creation itself, and that's..." She shakes her head, mad at herself. "I'll pay for that later. But I had to... I had to come back to you.""Oh, Odie...," he whispers. He can't imagine what she's been through without him, and the thought threatens to break his heart as his body falls apart against the retaining wall. "I'm...I'm so sorry, Odie.""No, Papa. I'm sorry. I was so stupid back then, I should have listened but...but you couldn't see what I did." Mazarine shrieks again somewhere above them, and they both look upwards as he darts lower, floating and flapping through the billowing smoke in the air. "He and I have to do something, together. There's no other way.""Odie, I don't understand..."She sighs and almost laughs. "I know, Papa. I don't think I can make you understand. I had to return anyway, to let you know - to show you - that I'm fine. That I'll be fine." Her eyes, so sad, return to his own."I'm going to make you proud. I'm going to make Mama proud." She squeezes his hand, raising it to her lips and kissing his fingers. "I - we - are going to make it all better. For everyone."He couldn't make sense of what she meant: there was so much unspoken behind her eyes. The trials and tribulations she had endured and would soon encounter he couldn't conceptualize...but seeing her there, amidst this fire and destruction whether real or foretold illusion, assured him that she meant what she said. More than that, he had this overwhelming sense that she was correct: she was destined for something bigger than he could envision. Somehow he'd always known that."Odie...Odie, I love you to the moons and back, sweetheart." He smiled despite the excruciating pain. "You're right: I don't understand. But I think what I do understand is...you don't belong here. You should go back. You...you have something to do. You and that..." He glances up and smiles at the circling dragon. "You and Mazarine both."Her face breaks once again, and Odile slides her arms around Phillippe, gently embracing him as she quietly cries against his shoulder.He hugs her back, one hand gently brushing her hair as he holds her in his arms."I love you, Odile. Now...go on."He closes his eyes and presses his face against her hair. He breathes slowly, and as the moments pass by he feels the pain receding slowly but surely. The burnt smell of fire and woe drains away and he's left with the sweet floral smell he remembers so well; a scent which clings to his daughter like her very flesh to her bones.As he opens his eyes, the adult Odile has vanished. Not only that, but the fiery scene has reverted to the natural order: the ancient oaks nearby stand tall and proud in the breeze, and the fields of dahlias across the way sway back and forth.Phillippe stares off into the distance, wondering for a moment if he's been asleep all this time and experienced the most bizarre dream of his life. Then he catches hint of an odor, and he lifts his shirt to his nose and the singed smell assaults him.It was real. He had been visited by his future daughter, told how he'd meet his end, and saw how it all would look. Odile...his little girl was somehow very important. And, apparently, so was the little dragon she had just found a little while ago."Papa!" He heard the familiar cry from behind him, beyond the cool stones of the wall he lay against. "Papa, I'm hungry!"A tear formed in his eye and made its way down his cheek, but he smiled as it did. Slowly he shuffled to his knees, then to his feet. No pain occurred, no sudden twinge or ache, yet he could somehow still feel where the wounds had been.How long would it be until that fateful day, he wondered. Odile had said something about changing the past: was he not to use this visitation to alter his ending? Perhaps not..., he thought. Maybe the gods know better."Papa!" Again the plaintive cry rang out, and he smiled bigger. "On my way, sweetheart," he shouted in reply. He bent to pick up his pitchfork, and took one last look over the flower fields. The dahlias, with their pinks, their yellows, their oranges, bobbed their heads again and again.Things would never be the same again, he knew, and yet they remained the same for now. Using the farm tool as a walking stick, Phillippe turned and slowly made his way beyond the wall: toward the house; toward his daughter; toward a dragon; towards destiny. Another tear fell onto his cheek, but he smiled nonetheless.

Why do my feet find themselves back on this path
Time and time again
Walking back and forth across these stones
Worn smooth by the pacing
Feels as familiar as the breath in my chest
Hands brushing rows of poppies and marigolds
To either side of me
I sowed them after the roses failed
I had planted them for you, for me, for us
And you said "how nice"
And you said "thank you"
And you said "I love you too"
As soon as your back turned away
They wilted, and I mourned them
As I placed the new seeds in their place
This path, this garden I cultivated is beautiful
And full of pain
But I keep returning to it and to you
With posies in my hand

How is it we've come to such a place
Where my insides have migrated
And live on the surface of my skin
Where my shield has to be raised
Within my own domicile
For fear of slings and arrows
Piercing my heart by accident
My love may be a pin cushion
I will let you puncture my defenses
To keep you safe and sound
But that doesn't stop the blood from flowing
It doesn't stop the pain from growing
Maybe this is what it means to love
To be a stalwart defender
With open wounds aplenty
You can't help the injuries
And I can't help the hurt

The crashing of the waves against lone Tintagel's stones
Weathered and worn by salt and by seconds
Echoes 'round Ygrainne, the high lady enthroned,
Like a siren's call to her ears does it beckon
At this perch she has stood gazing out o'er the waves
While her lord and her love away plays at war
Clashing with kings over kingdoms of knaves
As his wife walks the barren and cold corridors
To this daughter of fae gifts of foresight have come
Amaranthine visions of gold and of myrrh
Love lost and love won to which she will succumb
Giving rise to a dragon, both awesome and fair
These haunting dreams follow her every move
So to the ocean's embrace she does look
The briny deep so dark and so smooth
A pit she could hide in, her destiny forsook
The tales will speak of her betrayal, lustful and sordid
And the child she will bear, the dream built and lost
Thus she looks to the sea for a solace afforded
To few by Fate's fortunes tossed

Each star holds a smile for you
A grin, a laugh that echoes 'cross the cosmos
Its light a gentle reminder
That laughter remains just out of sight
That love endures in the darknessWe are made of starlight
And the laughter rings out within us
An echo of joy resounding
Each of us a jewel, a temple
Dedicated to that warmth
To the love that calls from the shadowsA simple flower
Its petals bedazzled with dew
It is a piece of that laughter
Within each blossom a smile
A reminder that we house a greater love
Both terrestrial and etherealEach star holds a smile for you
No one else has them as you do
It is me within, laughing with you
My love a lasting memory
Starlight is the memory of love
Given, to give, to be given

Once upon a childhood
I floated in place of steps
Magic 'round every corner
But the cards were shuffled and redealt
The suits rearranged
The Queen trumped the King
Cups ran the table
Spilling over everything
Now I can't break free
The quandary, in chains it keeps me
Heartstrings tied to shirtsleeves
Just one raw nerve
Perpetually seeking definition
Transformation, reinvention
The Emperor and his Empress
At war within one vessel
Sun and Moon
Midnight and high noon
But...once upon a childhood
I floated in place of steps

Am I your tasty treat?
Salty and sweet on your tongue
I'm good enough to eat
Swallow too fast, I'm in your lungs
You love my prickly heat
Send you on a trip - Far East, Taichung
Spread me between the sheets
With me on your lips I'll leave you sprungLay me down and open me wide
I'm the lock and you're my key
Wet as a whistle, I'm your slip 'n' slide
All roads converge inside of me
Pick me up, baby boy, take me for a ride
End our flight in Djibouti
Grocery trip: grab the mains, all the sides
Made you a pie - Key Lime, sticky

Used to be these roads took me back
To innocence, to inexperience
An epoch of endless possibility
Overgrowth served as a curtain
To the shadows off the beaten path
Full of mystery and wonder
Now the curtain has been pulled down
Tossed on the pyre to modernity and maturity
The roads don't go back, they move forwardUsed to be these roads took me back
To simpler times, slower and soothing
Boredom was a luxury in disguise
Wide open spaces were a jail
Burdens of ease and warmth
I did not appreciate until behind me
Now the prison is worn with age
The memories made within harder to find
The roads don't go back, they move forwardUsed to be these roads took me back
To love both endless and ephemeral
Fleeting even then, unrecognized
Your arms were so strong and stable
Your eyes everywhere, for good or ill
Your presence steadfast and reassuring
Now time seeks to plunder your bounty
Divest you and I both in a rush toward the end
The roads don't go back, they move forward

How many times have I reached for you
And my arms have closed on empty air
Maybe I should be a tree
My branches ever stretching towards the sun
Only to wave and bend in the breeze
With nothing but a verdant blouse
To show for my efforts
My leaves would change their hue
Begging for your attention
And then fall to the ground
Deprived of your love and affection
How could I go through such torture
And still grow my roots in the love of you
What kind of arboreal sentinel would I be, then
Subsisting on your rare rain showers

There were many a time
I ran the length of the world
For a chance to see you smile
An honorary mention
In the gambit for your love
Sweetheart, I am tired
My legs are weary
And my breath is used up
Am I not worthy of the chase?
Why can't you take up the mantle
Of Atalanta, or Diana of the Hunt
I am a prize of the highest honor
Pursue me, strive for me
As I have done for you
I have run my race
Is it too much to ask
For you to do the same

Did you know me when the mirror spoke to you?
We were once a one, now a distant denominator one from the other
Your stained glass mosaic shattered long ago
From the scattered shards I emerged: your jagged reflection
Hopeful hues now streaked with veins of jade
Jarring yet holding the image strong and fast
Somewhere in our hero's tale the plot got lost
The narrator fumbling his cadence
And we went from fool, to victim, to villain
Now something betwixt a sinner and a saint
The potter has taken our red clay legacy
And spun out an urn filled with ashes
Burnt offering of dreams conceived in greener days
Maybe you imagine a phoenix slumbering within
Awaiting a rebirth, a rejoining of the vision
Or perhaps these alms of a youthful stage
Are the building blocks of a new masterpiece
A novel work whose edges are rough but sturdy
A glorious echo of the stars we came from
Etched in the dirt and mud experience has left behind
The one still looks out from the looking glass
Evaluating me, its whole remainder
Do you know me now? Your refracted reflection
In my imperfections your flame endures
I am the hearth where your dreams settled to glowing embers

Does the hummingbird know
It shares a tempo with my heart
When you walk in the room?
A butterfly's wings
Can birth a hurricane a world away
It is so within me
When your hand falls upon my hips
Such a delicate thing
Your touch with me, mine with you
Yet mortal realms have not now
Nor will ever know
The full force our union can create
A throbbing drumbeat
Exists behind our quiet words
Threatening thunderous passion
At our fingers entwined

This doesn't feel like I thought it would
I give and I give and I give some more
You take the effort and shove it in a drawer
With your socks, your underwear, and your patience
Late at night I try to match every inch of my body to yours
You take my love, then close the drawbridge tight
The walls are manned and inhospitable
Yet I attempt to scale them day after day
Crafted you a pedestal in my naivete
With adoration and unshakeable faith in us, in this
You casually topple all I built
Because it doesn't fit your narrative
This was your catastrophe in the making
You set the charge and waited for the blast
But you made me press the button
You wanted my fingerprints on the order
Named me demolitionist of my own fairy tale
Now I'm no longer a damsel
But a villain, scorned and strong
You're a weary hero, shining in the sun
This doesn't feel like I thought it would

Let me be your holy land
God promised one day it would be yours
My body is that oath fulfilled
Sweet mana does exist
My curves come together
And from those hills the honey flows
Flesh fresh to the touch
Like rain in the desert
An oasis to quench your thirst
Take a taste
Drink deep
From cooling waters to divine heat
Within me is that sacred flame
My touch is your answered prayers
Hushed and warm
If God can take His time
Then so can we
The meeting of my legs
The way my hips fit in your hands
My private treasure
Your immaculate revelation
I shall guide you there
Let me be your holy land
God promised one day it would be yours

Cracked open my ribs and let love crawl within
Only it didn't nest, it didn't rest
It carved out my insides
Left me raw and bleeding
The wound is angry to this day
And yet I continue to seek love againWatched love walk away with the best of me
Wearing my generosity like the latest trend
I was still mending
Sifting through my broken pieces
Trying to fit myself back together
And yet I continue to seek love againSought someone to fill the hole love left behind
Never quite fit, just not the same
I'm cold where love once was
But I still ache for it
It destroyed, it tortured
And yet I continue to seek love again

Our bodies make music
when the hair on your arm brushes against mine
Beautiful and soft
Hard and needy
A melody that yearns to beginOur bodies make music
when your lips come close to mine
Near but so incredibly far
A quiet wave
Surfing above the violent crescendo beneathOur bodies make music
when your eyes connect with mine
Unsung notes
Waiting to be played in concert
The song plays between us in silenceI complete your heart’s refrain
You are the object of my soul’s hymn
even as the distance remains
My love has belonged to you
Since this ballad commenced,
though we’ve yet to see it through
to its conclusionOur bodies make music
when the hair on your arm brushes against mine
Beautiful and soft
Hard and needy
A melody that yearns to begin

This is the space where I'll lay out my thoughts on the various media I, and you, consume each and every day. I'm looking at the latest, the trendiest items as well as the pieces which just strike a chord within me.Just A Reminder: these are solely my opinions on the individual pieces,
and whether you agree with me or not
remember that I'm not stating fact but a perspective.

How do you solve a problem like Nimona?You don't - you embrace it.Before I sat down to watch Nimona, the sci-fi/fantasy hybrid animated film directed by Nick Bruno and Troy Quane, I had already seen some clips here and there on social media and had a cursory sense of what I could expect from the movie. Even with those images coloring my view, I was absolutely blown away by this adventure which doesn't take itself seriously at all and yet still manages to be profound.In this modern kingdom which retains its medieval roots even as flying cars and lasers abound within it, Gloreth reigns supreme. A majestic knight who rose up to defend the realm from a "great black monster" 1,000 years prior, this woman and her descendants are the ideal for all citizens: paragons of justice and heroism. They maintain order within the kingdom's great ringed wall, making sure the monsters who surely roam the mysterious wilds stay on the outside. Into this illustrious order comes Ballister Boldheart, a lowly commoner who seeks to be a righteous defender alongside the scions of the nobility who all descend from previous knights. A confidant and lover of Ambrosius Goldenloin (that name got me, I giggled every time I heard it or thought about it), a direct relation to Gloreth herself, he's the first of the common people ever to rise to knighthood, ushered in by Queen Valerin herself.His knighting ceremony...does not go well. As the queen invests him, his sword - the symbol of his rank and mission - opens, and a deadly laser shoots forth and slays the monarch where she stands. In the ensuing chaos, Ambrosius' training kicks in and he disarms Ballister: literally disarms him. The disgraced knight retreats to the shadows of the kingdom, cobbling together enough scrap for a prosthetic limb replacement. Reviled, hated, and a newly minted symbol for why the status quo should not be altered (we see you, writers...), he's visited by a strange fan: a young girl calling herself Nimona. She's brash, she's brazen...she sometimes appears to have sharp, pointy teeth and has a penchant for destruction. And she wants to be his sidekick in mayhem and revenge. What's not to trust there, really?

Despite his repeated misgivings, Ballister lets the odd Nimona - "What are you?" "I'm Nimona." - tag along as he tries to unravel the mystery of the queen-slaying of which he's been accused. He's soon introduced to her peculiar power of shapeshifting, deftly able to transform from one creature to another with barely the blink of an eye. The duo use this skill, much to Ballister's chagrin in the majority of the time, to uncover an insidious twist: the Director of the Institute, the elite organization which trains and directs the knighthood, was the culprit who switched Ballister's sword with the twin harboring murderous technology.Their entreaties to Ambrosius and the other knights fall on deaf ears, although we constantly see the golden knight wage an internal war between his righteous beliefs and his love and trust for Ballister. Even when they manage to digitally capture the Director admitting to the crime, the truth is subverted and twisted back upon the wanted pair, and the kingdom begins to descend into a paranoid crisis.When Ballister accuses Nimona of attempting to use him for nefarious means all along, thereby betraying her trust, we're given a glimpse into the real past behind the shapeshifting delinquent. Nimona is, indeed, the creature from the kingdom's storied fairytale past: a being able to change their form at will, but never finding companionship because of their otherness. Finally befriending a young girl - the lauded Gloreth, as a child - Nimona finds a kindred spirit at last. The rest of the populace see her powers and fear her, however, and Nimona is cursed at, attacked, and watches as the villagers convince Gloreth that the child in front of her is not a friend but a monster.Back in the modern moment, all these betrayals and years of torment and loneliness break Nimona, and she morphs into a gigantic monster straight out of the tomes of antiquity. As the monstrous Nimona lumbers towards the center of the city and the great statue of Gloreth at its center, Ballister tries desperately to reach her. Reviled as she makes her way through the streets, Nimona approaches the statue, broken inside and out, and with a great cry exposes her magical heart and makes as if to spear herself on the statue's sword. Only Ballister's hand - his love and acceptance - stays her. On the brink of destroying the city in order to stop Nimona, the Director turns the great wall's mounted turret inward, and Nimona, in a moment of dramatic heroism, hurtles herself as a majestic, monstrous bird directly into the blast. The threat is eliminated; the wall is broken and the citizens can see the serene wilderness beyond. A peace settles into the kingdom, and Ballister and Ambrosius can happily be together at its heart.There is a ton of metaphor in this movie, and despite it feeling ever so slightly heavy handed at times for me, I'm here for every moment.First and foremost, one of the main characters - Ballister - is a gay main character where the central conceit isn't about his being homosexual. His love for Ambrosius, and Ambrosius' love for him, plays a vital role within the story but their relationship isn't the focus. I wonder if straight people can understand how revolutionary that is for those of us who have so rarely seen ourselves depicted in that way on screen, even as we're approaching 25 years into the 21st century. Their love isn't seen as anything outside the ordinary.Nimona herself, however, is extraordinary.

We're never given a true backstory as to where Nimona comes from or why she is this shapeshifting being. A part of me cries out for that, but then again I don't really think it matters. Whatever her origins, we're given a window into her life: an existence of loneliness and hurt, where she's constantly misunderstood and mistreated because she's different. We see her constantly change her form in order to fit in, to find companionship, only to still be regarded as an "other" and somehow dangerous because of it.Even as Ballister develops a friendship with her, he constantly questions Nimona as to what she is, and she only ever has one answer: "I'm Nimona." She doesn't understand the conceit of the question, and in that is this deeper question of why it should matter what classification she falls under. A person can - and will - be defined by their form, their shape, their appearance...their gender, their sexual preference, their color...but at the end of the day those things are constructs we place upon ourselves and others. Nimona dares to live outside of that, at first innocently searching for connection in spite of it, and later rebelling against it intentionally due to years of abuse and neglect because of it.It's hard not to see Nimona herself as a central metaphor for queerness and transness, especially with her constant shapeshifting and defiance of societal norms. Its intentional, and although, again, I find it heavy handed on face value, the metaphor wields power nonetheless. Thinking of Nimona with that context, the ending where she sacrifices herself to protect the kingdom from, arguably, the consequences of its own bigotry and repression leaves a very bitter taste in the mouth. The ending moments include a wall of remembrance for Nimona, who until those final fateful moments was absolutely denounced by the same people now leaving flowers for her memory. Why should her death, however valiant and heroic, be the only way to gain acceptance and love?Even her relationship with Ballister is tinted with the same harsh reality. The two develop a friendship that looks genuine and fun, but its clear when Ambrosius (through the Director) plants seeds of doubt within the fugitive that he does so in very fertile ground. Ballister doubts her even when they are seemingly victorious because despite her abilities giving them an edge over their adversaries, she's still different and other-ly and dangerous. I hate that its only seeing how his own words wound her and cause her to aim for self-harm as an escape - something she has alluded to thinking about in prior conversations - that cause him to rush to her defense in a very real way.I guess my feelings on the story and its message are deeply complicated. I both love this story of acceptance, of breaking down barriers (literally and figuratively), of structural change for the better, and I despise that martyrdom is the seemingly only acceptable means of achieving it.The film itself - the artwork, the musical score, the animation - are really spectacular, by the way. It's so exciting to see these new methods of animation proliferating the industry, and exhilarating to see the film complex as a whole start to see animation as more than vehicles for children's stories and as rich tapestries for all ages. They're baby steps toward accepting animation as a genuine and deserving artform, but they're steps nonetheless.The style, both artistically and musically, give gravity to the action and also allow the characters within - and the audience viewing it - to have so much fun along the way. Nimona tells a very current story in this magical mix that stays with you long after you finish with the fantastic graphic art of the credits. An anti-hero story that both plays to trope and also flips it on its head. A gay old time that is both loud, flamboyant, and deeply normal.

You can watch Nimona now on Netflix.

I am not one to willingly give my time, money, or energy to projects birthed by Chip and Joanna Gaines (of Fixer Upper fame). Recently, however, I've found myself drawn to the various television shows they've produced on Magnolia Network, their cable brainchild that they share with Warner Bros. and Discovery. They've got a knack for making these programs, including home renovation and food shows, which play on your heart strings in a very pure, unique way. ...When I put it like that I feel a bit icky because I know that's a strategic move, but no matter my qualms with the pair and their business partners I know that there are real creatives associated with all of it who just want to showcase their passion, and entertain and educate in equal turns.Finding myself discovering La Pitchoune: Cooking in France was the purest happenstance. I'm a cooking show fanatic: perfect example is the binge I've been going down lately with Food Network's The Kitchen. When I'm not gaming or anything else, I have had that on in the background, salivating over the various dishes and jotting down the ones I want to attempt. (The latest was a spinach and artichoke pasta bake, if you were wondering.)La Pitchoune is not that kind of show. You do gain some culinary knowledge through the seven episodes, but there's so much more to it.

Let's discuss La Pitchoune itself. The name describes this little cottage in the southwest of France, in Provence, and was once the home of the one and only Julia Child. The culinary maven is a revered icon for many, and being able to step into a piece of history such as "La Peetch" is almost a religious pilgrimage for some.The current owners, Makenna and Chris Nylund, are very aware of the responsibility and honor of maintaining this shrine, and yet they make it their own by establishing the Courageous Cooking School within the humble, hallowed walls. Makenna herself studied at La Cordon Bleu, but found herself noticing the stress and anxiety recipes induced on people, both professional chefs and home cooks. Thus the philosophy of and the idea for Courageous Cooking was born: the notion that experimentation with a basic foundation to follow could lead to life-changing experiences in and from the kitchen.Makenna and Julia actually share many similarities. The two amazing women stand heads taller than most people; they both graduated from Smith College; and probably most important, they love French food and have a "to hell with boundaries" approach to cooking. Just watching Makenna sharing her life tending to "La Peetch", running the school, and balancing everything in between, you can't help but note this air, this vibe that radiates from her that I automatically associate with Julia Child. She may never have gotten a chance to know the culinary icon, but she certainly carries on her flame in my opinion.After taking the leap on "La Peetch" and the notion for Courageous Cooking, Makenna looked to an old friend to come and collaborate, coordinate, and make magic in Julia Child's one time Provencal home. Kendall Lane, a fellow La Cordon Bleu alum and professional chef for well over a decade, left the very regimented world of restaurant cooking for Makenna's vision of recipe-free living and artistry. Both she and Makenna take on 5-6 guests for a week of classes covering ever-shifting topics which are based on guests' preferences, local produce, and the entrepreneurial women's whims.Kendall brings alone her husband, Ross, who brings his professional welding talents, general handyman know-how, and a burgeoning love for wine (both the drinking of it and the knowledge and history of it) to the school's small but dedicated team. Rounding them out is Makenna's husband, Chris, who takes a love of regional history and the story of Julia both and acts as visitors' guide through the province and the majesty that is La Pitchoune.

You cannot help but be drawn in to the show by the joy and enthusiasm which this quartet, helmed by Makenna and Kendall, brings to running this unique cooking school and stewarding this historic home. There are plenty of perils and pitfalls to owning and maintaining an old home - ancient electrical lines and plumbing fixtures, a menagerie of domesticated and wild animals who may or may not want to devour gardens - which must be such nightmares for them to deal with in the moment but are so entertaining to witness as viewers. I love those human moments that connect those watching to those "performing", and La Pitchoune is full to the brim with such instances.The philosophy of recipe-free cooking doesn't necessarily seem so revolutionary at face value, but watching the various guests experience their weeks in this little provincial paradise is honestly glorious. You can see the relationship between freeing yourself from regiment and rules in the kitchen to releasing yourself in almost every other aspect of your life.For someone who's struggled with attempting to break from a routine of safety and routine and reach for what I love, thus creating a new career from that new foundation, it almost felt like something moved me to find this show at this moment. A higher power? Kismet? Some alien intelligence who's latest task is monitoring me? Whatever or whoever it was, I'm glad.

The philosophy of ditching the cookbook definitely isn't for anyone, and Makenna et al are the first to note that you can absolutely follow recipes if it feels more comfortable. It's a way, just not the only way. Their method is simply about taking educated risks: exploring and learning about foods and ingredients that excite you, and just playing with them. It's amazing to watch the guests be encouraged to choose whatever produce and spices they are feeling in the moment and then seeing beautiful, delicious meals and sides come out of them.I can't talk about the show and not mention just how beautiful and idyllic "La Peetch" and it's environs are, and how much of a character they are in their own right. The home is this precious moment of history preserved for others to enjoy, as both a cooking school and even a luxury vacation rental. The rolling green hills, the gorgeous small towns surrounding them, even the bigger ones such as Nice which are only a brief drive away: I'm a lover of European vistas, and it just makes my soul happy to see the teachers and students traipsing through ancient villages and airy open markets.If I could expatriate and live in a similar medieval town in the middle of Provence, I would in a heartbeat. I aspire to the level of living that the Nylunds and the Lanes experience on the daily. Give me a blue dress and an apron and I would twirl all through that small provincial life.

La Pitchoune: Cooking in France advocates for a paradigm shift that can be applied no matter where you live or how you live, but watching the show itself is a wonderful, gentle moment of escape from your troubles. It encourages you to be bold while simultaneously telling you to be easy on yourself, to not take yourself so seriously. It's just a wonderful getaway that you can take from the ease of your living room. A warning, however: you will become incredibly hungry if you watch it. If you're like me, you watch an episode, get inspired and go make something in the kitchen, then eat your creation while you hit play on the next episode. It's a vicious cycle but I highly recommend it.

The hell I can’t! I’m a captain.In the beginning…well, in the beginning was a little guy from Brooklyn, apparently.Did you know that Captain America, the beloved icon and bearer of America’s Ass, started out as this gangly guy whose sole dream was to enlist in the army and kill some Nazis? It’s a bit of an oversimplification but that’s basically the gist of how he started out. Steve Rogers, a native twink of one of New York City’s boroughs and portrayed by the best Hollywood Chris of them all, Chris Evans. (You can fight me all you want, Evans truly is the best Chris. Once upon a time I would have been a Pratt supporter but we all grow and we all evolve…)Now…now Chris Evans has never once in his cinematic career been a scrawny little lightweight, at least not that I’m aware of at the moment. So he obviously bulked up and worked himself to the bone to be able to fill out the tights once he was Captain America, but he couldn’t just shed those pounds en masse to also portray underdog Steve Rogers, trying to enlist in the army for the umpteenth time and getting rejected for a myriad of health issues. So what did the creative team turn to? If you guessed CGI that would make you cringe then you are correct! In order to mold Evans into the pre-transformation Rogers, they ended up creating this bobble head of a human being that just made me feel incredibly uncomfortable, especially when seeing badass, beautiful bitch MI6 Agent Peggy Carter (played wonderfully by Hayley Atwell) start to fall for him. People can have different body type preferences, and sometimes attraction can have nothing to do with that (as we’re led to believe, in this instance), but I’m sorry, she basically starts making heart eyes over a Gumby doll in uniform. It’s just difficult to take seriously.Then, we see Rogers get his clandestine date with destiny, or in this case the inventor of the super soldier serum, Dr. Erskine, and he goes from ugly duckling to big bara tiddies swan. I mean, there’s literally a beat in the immediate aftermath of his body revelation where Agent Carter barely manages to stop herself from feeling up his bare pectorals. And I cannot blame her for I, too, love some big man tiddies. Of course, this isn’t just a superficial face lift for Rogers: this is him realizing a longstanding dream, where he’ll now be able to successfully fight for those who can’t fight back against the bullies of the world, which is how he basically views all bad guys who have ever been or will be. For being such a nationalistic symbol, the man who goes on to become Captain America tends to be incredibly naive most of the time, which I can see as a criticism of the nation he symbolically represents.

You simply cannot have a superhero without a super villain as their foil, and for Cap’s first foray we get his classic nemesis: Johann Schmidtt, or as he’s better known, Red Skull. Played just brilliantly nefarious by Hugo Weaving, Red Skull gets his moniker from his own encounter with Erskine’s super soldier serum. He’s the head of Hydra, the scientific order of the Third Reich, and he basically bullies the doctor into taking the serum before it’s had all the kinks worked out. Nothing bad can happen because of that, right? I guess having all the skin on your head slough away to reveal a bloody, skull-like visage beneath is to be expected? Yeah, he gains the super strength and endurance and some of the other perks, but he now looks like a walking blood clot. He even attempts to cover it with a flesh mask, but I much prefer when he dramatically removes it to inspire fear in his opponent(s). Be true to yourself! Good for you, Red Skull!Now, onto the meat of the story: Red Skull and his sidekick, Dr. Zola (here played by Toby Jones), has all these weapons and gadgets of mass destruction but nothing to power them. Luckily, Schmidtt happens to be an avid believer in the occult and the arcane, and he has stumbled onto the Tesseract: a square-shaped lava lamp with cosmic powers beyond the knowledge of mortal men. He and the good doctor are able to squeeze out its energy and turn on all the dastardly technology. It’s then up to Captain America and some plucky soldiers, including his best buddy Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), to put a stop to their scheming. That’s the story in a very basic nutshell.

Something that caught my attention was this seamless way the filmmaking team was able to create a sensation of reading comic book panels in this movie. Each theatrical beat felt like it could be mirrored in the pages of the graphic novels they took inspiration from. Small montages showing grinning or grimacing images of Red Skull with occult symbols swimming behind him, or flashy explosions with Rogers and the gang in front of them in heroic poses. Those and other moments made it feel very authentic to the source material where Captain America got his start.Speaking of his origins, I loved seeing the attention given to the Captain and his relationship with war propaganda during World War II, seeing as he was and is a direct creation of that propaganda. The Captain America comics had their debut in 1941 as a means of galvanizing support for US involvement in the conflict, which often involved the purchase of war bonds and other items to further the government’s aims. In the film, we see Rogers get placed between a rock and a hard place when Erskine dies from a Hydra assassin’s bullet and his last remaining dose of serum is destroyed. The military wants to stick him in a lab for poking and prodding, while the government enlists him to busk for bonds on stage with dancing girls and catchy songs. (I’m not being facetious about the catchy songs. They brought in Alan Menken - of Broadway and Disney fame - to craft the ditty that would play during this portion, and the stage spectacle montage they put together with it is some next level movie musical magic.)Obviously, our heroic protagonist wants to be where the action is, so he forgoes the lab rat treatment and opts for the road show, but we get to witness that take a toll on him. Yeah, he plays to enthusiastic home crowds across the nation, but as soon as he’s sent to entertain the boys overseas he’s met with the reality of his situation: he’s nothing more than a stage monkey in tights play acting as a heroic symbol. It’s sad to watch someone with such good intentions, and with such power at his disposal now, be sidelined into the propaganda machine and sacrificed on the altar of consumerism and nationalism. There’s a deeper critique of our military complex somewhere in there.One of my other favorite elements to the movie was the futuristic detail which was reminiscent of the vision of the yet to come which was prevalent in the early decades of the 20th century. Think of other such depictions, like The Rocketeer (1991) or others where the future involves images of jetpacks and hover cars which have elements of an almost neo-steampunk aesthetic. You can see this style plastered all over the Hydra installations and weaponry, and even in their outfits as well as Captain America’s evolved costume towards the later scenes of the film. I think it’s such a cool note to take something that would have been in the zeitgeist of the era and utilize it to create the otherworldly or superhuman moments that exist in this time period. I mean look at the flying machines, planes, and even the Cruella DeVille-looking car Red Skull drives! They all come from that futuristic style and I love seeing it throughout the movie.Knowing what I know from my limited comic lore and from the other films and TV shows, I can’t ignore Bucky and his fate in the movie. Bucky, the suave sergeant that Steve is obviously jealous of in the beginning switches fates with the soon-to-be superhero after his transformation: now he is the second banana, or the sidekick, to Captain America’s dashing profile, and you can tell that he resents it on some level that’s beneath all of the trauma he’s experienced at the hands of Red Skull and Hydra. Despite moments of jealousy on both their parts, the bond of friendship and loyalty between Bucky and Steve remains steadfast even after he dons the star-spangled costume and shield. We love seeing a committed couple.This makes his apparent demise - a tragic fall from a moving train during the capture of Dr. Zola - all the more painful for us and for Steve, who then adds revenge to his driving motivations. His death makes Captain America receive some much needed humanity, to me. He’s far too goody two shoes up until that point, but losing his best friend has him experience some irrational anger and hatred which I think makes him grow as a character. He doesn’t need them added to the mix for this growth, but it’s seeing him work through those emotions that leads to it.I’ll also touch on Colonel Chester Phillips, played by none other than Tommy Lee Jones. He’s a gruff, no nonsense man who is a loveable curmudgeon of a character and a great supporting role for the Captain throughout the film. He voices all of our doubts about skinny Steve’s ability to take on the super soldier role in the early days of his training, and we can see our own growing admiration for Rogers in his own. He’s also just a great straight man (in a comedic sense, not sexual preference) and delivers some fantastically funny one-liners. As Cap is preparing to leap onto Red Skull's escaping plane from a moving car piloted by Phillips, he gives his now girlfriend Agent Carter a kiss, then turns to Phillips. “I’m not kissing you,” is his response and it is a small bit of perfection. It’s almost got this Indiana Jones quality of banter to it, the exchanges between Phillips and Rogers.The entire story is storybooked by present day action, with the audience seeing an excavation team in the arctic discover the famous star-emblazoned shield frozen in some icy remains of a plane as the movie begins. Once we watch Captain America crash the plane into those same icy waters some 70 years in the past, we see our hero wake up in a strange room which he susses out to be a forgery. He breaks out of it and straight into modern day Manhattan, where the enigmatic Nick Fury greets him with news of his long winter’s nap and an offer to save the world once again. I thought it was a nice device to take him back to his origins but keep him grounded in the modern era for future endeavors.Of course there are tantalizing loose ends to pick up in later films, I’m sure. The Tesseract, glowing cube of mysterious origin, ends up taking out the bad guy for Captain America: seemingly pulling Red Skull kicking and screaming, literally, through a cosmic portal to parts unknown when he has the temerity to pick it up with his bare hands. Then, after burning itself through the former villain’s plane and falling to the ocean below, we last see it in the mechanical hands of Howard Stark (played by Dominic Cooper) as he searches for Captain America’s remains. This alien object has caused no end of trouble, and we can only assume it has more of a story to tell. We also can’t forget the fate of Bucky. Yes, we and Cap all witnessed him lose his grip and fall down into that incredibly steep ravine from which we cannot imagine survival is possible. And yet we never really get confirmation of his death, now do we? If I’ve learned anything from the comics I have read, it is never safe to assume anyone is really and truly dead.Overall I really enjoyed the sometimes campy and sometimes cartoonishly futuristic debut of Captain America. I think that, again, harkens back to his comic book roots in an awesome way that many fans, myself included, find really enjoyable.

There's no such thing as witches, but there used to be.The world is not the one that we know. It is a few steps back and slanted to the side, with the frames the same and yet the bits around the edges vastly different. Witches were once very real and very powerful here, but now, in this alternate version of 1893, the act of witching is illegal, especially in New Salem, Connecticut. In the streets and homes of this new hub, just a few miles from the ancient site of witching history and witching tragedy, women congregate and strive to secure the right to the vote and all the while their true power lies locked away, inaccessible and forgotten.Three sisters will irrevocably change that status quo. The Eastwood sisters: studious Beatrice Belladonna, stoic Agnes Amaranth, and savage James Juniper. Daughters of a dwindling magical heritage who have been broken and blown to the four winds by an abusive past which haunts their every step. Witches in a world without witchcraft; women who, by their very existences, go against the grain in a culture which "binds and bridles" wayward women. A chance bit of magic-making, or "witch ways", sees them reunited by a mysterious force which holds secrets to unleashing magic back into the world. Here, where the specter of how wrong magic can go remains visceral in the minds of man, these sisters and the other women they encounter will challenge the very pillars of society in a quest to regain lost power.The glaring parallels of the suffragist movement and the witching crusade are given a delicate yet passionate treatment in Harrow's hands in this sweeping tale. The three Eastwood sisters are beset with challenges both past, present, and future, and yet somehow even the more arcane and occult issues become vital and recognizable for the reader when entwined so intimately with issues from our very own history, our very own reality.There's a call that goes out from the pages, saying: "look at what happens when women talk to each other." A power exists within connection and alliance; one can be easily broken but many can stand firm. Beatrice, Agnes, and James are all intrinsically different to each other but when their talents and wills are combined they possess the power to shake the very foundations of the world. What a metaphor for the suffragist movement, or any group's shift toward justice and equity: that there is strength in a commonality and in numbers.A girl is such an easy thing to break; weak and fragile, all alone, all yours...but they aren't girls anymore, and they don't belong to anyone. And they aren't alone.Within such movements, both mundane and arcane, there are dark underbellies which remind us that even progress can leave out those considered "others." The denizens of New Cairo, and the Daughters of Tituba, are a thrumming wound which is surprisingly easy to ignore for the Women's Association and the Sisters of Avalon. Darker-skinned men and women descended from the black witches of Old Salem, they are overlooked and demeaned in equal measure: demanding a seat at the table and reminding the righteous of their glaring blind spots.Aside from themes that connect with our senses of righteousness, however flawed it can be, Harrow's story is also an amazing fairy tale which draws you in with their amazing deftness and skill with figurative language (of which I am a huge fan and frequent user). The weaving of this magical story enchants you, welcoming you in, and then grips you fast and firm as it takes you through the riveting highs and harrowing lows that the Eastwood sisters enjoy and endure, respectively. The beats of the story ebb and flow so satisfyingly, with climaxes that are the perfect pay offs.The alternate history and reality of this world which is our own and yet not is so enticing for someone who considers themselves a lover of and a nerd for history. This is an America on the very cusp of the twentieth century, but there are small details everywhere which denote a very different world than the one we inhabit. Places are slightly changed; familiar names ever so slightly but importantly altered - Charlotte Perault, or the Sisters Grimm. It's so thrilling to pick out these variances and realize their implications, revel in them, even.Most importantly, Harrow makes us feel for the Eastwood women as if they are us. Beatrice with her silent desire for her own voice; Agnes and her longing for meaningful connection in a world where most all of those have been harshly severed; and James Juniper, with her fierce and fiery fervor for justice after being a victim of its twisted and warped aberrations. Yes, they're individuals who have untapped reservoirs of magical power, but they're also, all of them, inescapably human, and in that fact we identify with them as their desires are subverted and evolve.There is whimsy and there are fanciful acts that will dazzle, birthed from trial and tribulation. There is heartbreak and happiness in equal measure. It really is as if a magical spell is cast upon you as you read of the Eastwoods and their feats of witching: I come back to this book time and time again since I first picked it up, and I don't doubt for one minute that you, too, will find yourself enscorceled just the same.

Wuthering Heights.
Frankenstein.
Rebecca.Whenever someone says the word "gothic" in relation to literature, these are some of the names that will pop into my head. All classics of a genre that is defined by elements from the past intruding on the present in suspenseful and supernatural ways. Fear, in the guise of the unknown, lurks around every corner. Somehow the threat is both alarming and seductive. A mysterious force that you know means you harm and yet "I found myself being seduced by him!" (If you get the reference then I'm super glad you're here. If you don't it's all good, just keep going.)It's a set formula that can be applied and reapplied in so many inventive ways, and the approach that Silvia Moreno-Garcia takes in "Mexican Gothic" had me mesmerized from the start. The fundamental figures are removed from the traditional European or American environments and set in Mexico during the 1950s, and this causes both the characters and the scenarios they inhabit to take on this sort of film noir filter in my mind. The "otherness" in this story also gets a major, satisfying twist: the long-standing "normal" from classic gothic fiction has always been traditional whiteness, but in this tale it's that exact culture that is the unfamiliar, the intrusive unknown that brings terror along with it.Our heroine, Noemi Taboada, floats through a privileged existence in Mexico City. She's a socialite blessed with youth and beauty and knows how to wield them as tools to get what she wants. You can perfectly visualize her designer outfits and vibrant red lips; her heels flitting in and out of cabs as she's carried from soiree to soiree. Despite the appearance of an air-headed debutante Noemi is possessed of an iron will and incredibly intelligence, even seeking to earn a master's degree in anthropology. She's an unlikely but incredibly fascinating protagonist: traces of vanity and pride combined with a strength of will and self-assurance that will be tested to the extreme.The macabre tale is sparked by a letter from Noemi's cousin, Catalina, describing no small amounts of despair and suspicion. The girl had recently married into a wealthy European family, the Doyles, who had made themselves transplants in the mountainous regions near El Triunfo. Seeking to mine silver within the looming cliffs and crags, the family enlisted locals to work the quarries while they reaped the benefits. Now Catalina pleads with her cousin via pen and paper, begging her to come and save her from some form of shadowed treachery.As Noemi arrives and begins her stay at High Place, the Doyle family manse, confusion and alarm grow by the day. A frail, befuddled and bedridden cousin is watched over by a cast of eccentric, almost unnatural characters: Virgil, the menacing but provocative husband; Florence, the suspicious and overbearing sister-in-law; Francis, a gentle soul whose shy demeanor belies a rebellious soul; and the mysterious family patriarch, Howard, who rules his household with a decrepit but iron fist.Even the house, High Place, is an ominous character in its own right. An edifice that seems to be holding itself together out of spite and generating a perfume of decay regardless of the outdated relics within. The days and nights turn to terror for Noemi the longer she remains with the Doyles, with nightmares refusing to remain within the realm of dreams and invading her waking hours as well. It becomes clear that prolonged exposure to this family of frights, and the unearthing of long buried secrets, will be fatal for these two blue bloods. Escaping the tendrils seeking to constrain them will be much easier said than done.I'm not about spoiling the story for people, and in the case of "Mexican Gothic" I want each and everyone to enjoy the thrills and chills for themselves. The escalating tension really is intoxicating, and you want to know what awaits beyond the next page. For me, there's an added note of complexity that's added when you think of how this fable turns the traditional structure on it's head simply by transforming the usual victims into the perpetrators of terror. This white European family is the source of unsettling intrigue and horror, whereas in classic gothic titles you'd see people of color or those who don't fit the accepted mold of society as the source of the disturbances. It's a poignant commentary to see those who have traditionally held power as the origin of fear.Even without that satisfying and ingenious wrinkle, the story of Noemi and her chilling experience with the Doyles will fascinate to no end. Moreno-Garcia stands proudly alongside du Maurier, Stoker, and Shelley with this incredible work. Terrible twists and eerie escapades? Helmed by a fabulous and fierce heroine? Much like her, the enigma that is High Place will draw you in and never let you go.