Toadfish Monastery

It is here! The semi-finished always-gonna-be-in-progress Cyclopedia of Comparative Mythology.

Happy "inspire your heart with art day."

http://www.mediafire.com/view/kz4dv41ud9fcbdk/Brother%20G's%20Cyclopedia%20of%20Comparative%20Mythology.pdf

Out of curiosity: The Great Schism. What was it?

What it says on the tin, folks.

Just go here to look at it: http://www.mediafire.com/view/w7rsvpx46i47uz0/Brother%20G's%20myth%20draft.pdf

By the time that I'm done with it (hopefully sometime at the end of the month) it'll serve rather well as an introduction to comparative mythology. The main text is like a TVtropes or Tough Guide to Fantasyland for mythology and religious, with the idea being that you can't intentionally do anything with the building blocks of myth if you don't know that they're there. You can't avoid or subvert them on purpose, and you definitely can't decide to intentionally play them straight if you don't even know that they're there.

So for the benefit of writers everywhere, and also for anybody who's interested in mythology, I decided to cook this up.

World knows that the internet has given me enough goodness over the years. It's time that I give something back besides some story ideas and bad fiction.

Thanks!

I was worried that there was too much implying, not enough letting the reader figure out what was actually going on. Like, "show, don't tell," and "less is more," but when you've turned on a fog generator and thrown somebody into the cornfield without any explanation of why they're there or what country they're in, well, maybe that's a little too far.

So I'm working on a novel now, a couple of days out of the week (still have to work on short stories, after all), and while I won't be able to post the actual text of it (too many companies will consider it to have been already published... grumble grumble) I'm wondering if anyone would still like for me to put up plot and character outlines and other random notes as I develop it.

Barring so much conversation about the stories that it's too hard to keep track of who's talking about what, I'm going to keep all of my short stories in this topic in order to avoid spamming the Art Gallery.

Since I returned from my mission I tried to move away from the sadcore. It turned into horror. I tried to move away from horror (it feels wrong to put too much sadcore and horror up on such a bubbly place like the Toadfish) and waltzed into this. It's a humor/horror piece with a side of d'aww. How much humor, how much horror, and how much d'aww is probably going to depend on how you're feeling that day.

---

Bubblegum Peculiarity

Was it a peculiar home? A peculiar family? Oh, indeed.

"If you continue to fight me about your vegetables then I can assure you that you won't be happy."

But some things are part of every family, no matter how peculiar.

Miss Taylor could hear the mother from the other side of the door. And the girl responded. Too quietly for Miss Taylor to make out the words, but the tone that she used conveyed the impression that she wasn't worried.

That was good. That was very good.

Miss Taylor knocked on the door.

It meant that she probably wasn't afraid of her mother.

"Elizabeth Taylor," she announced as soon as the door opened- which was very, very quickly. Miss Taylor held up her identification. "Child Protective Services."

Miss Taylor hoped that this would be a false alarm. But the problem that had been brought to their attention had nothing to do with whether or not the woman was doing anything that might make her daughter afraid of her.

Still, it didn't seem that the woman was afraid of CPS. That was either a sign that everything was alright or... or that she was such an unfit parent that she couldn't even begin to conceive of what she might have done wrong. Which would mean that they probably wouldn't be able to get her to fix the situation.

The apartment that Miss Taylor walked into was a modest one. There was a kitchen but the living room was doubling as the dining room. The girl- Nancy, according to their reports- was eating dinner on a TV folding tray. The woman... did not appear to be eating dinner.

"Not hungry?" Miss Taylor asked.

The woman laughed. "Oh no. I'll be eating later. I have a very restrictive diet."

Nancy appeared to be nine. Her mother couldn't have been older than twenty-five, and that was pushing it. At most, she couldn't have been older than sixteen when she had given birth to Nancy.

"I apologize," the woman suddenly said. "I'm Autumn Frase." She shook Miss Taylor's hand energetically, then gestured for Miss Taylor to take a seat beside Nancy.

The couch was leather. Probably older than Nancy.

There didn't seem to be more than two people living here, just as the report said- Hell, there seemed in some ways to be only one person living here.

Which, actually, gave weight to the unfortunate side of the report.

But definitely no father in the home. That was something that she could confirm right away.

Autumn pulled up a seat in front of the two of them. She sat with grace, and gave a stern look at her daughter. "Green beans. You. Now." Something peculiar came into her eyes. "Or you won't grow up to be like me."

Whatever was behind those words- and there had to be something- it got Nancy to resume eating.

"I'm sure that you didn't come here to make a social call," Autumn said, "social worker though you may be. If you'll forgive the pun." She paused just long enough for the silence to become awkward and for Miss Taylor to wonder if perhaps she was expected to respond. But as soon as she opened her mouth to do so, Autumn went on. "So if you'll get down to the business of, well, your business..."

"To cut to the chase, we've gotten reports that your daughter has been left at home alone."

"Well, that happens here and there, doesn't it?" Autumn replied.

"Not for days on end, it shouldn't. And not repeatedly." Miss Taylor smiled, and hoped that it reached up to her eyes. "But I'm sure that we can get to the bottom of this and discover that it was all just a big, big misunderstanding." She hoped. She couldn't figure out why she was in this line of work sometimes. Always hoping so desperately that she was wrong. Sometimes it was so, and she stressed for nothing. Sometimes it wasn't so, and the stress was added to by horror.

Autumn practically stared into her soul, her gaze was so intent. Beside her, Miss Taylor noticed, Nancy had stopped eating again.

Not out of curiosity- no, it was out of curiosity. But not only. There was stress there as well. Who the fear was for, or exactly what part of this meeting was triggering it, Miss Taylor couldn't determine, but it was there. That had the potential to not be good- or to be very good, because day-to-day life was always so peaceful that she was hypersensitive to stress. With as little as she had to go by right now, Miss Taylor thought that it was a very good toss-up.

Miss Taylor supposed that she ought to say something, but then Nancy spoke up. Miss Taylor wondered if perhaps she had caught some sort of... some sort of glance shared between the two before Nancy had spoken, but then Nancy repeated herself and continued talking. "It's late. I know because my mom is up and she gets up really late. Also, the clock says that it's five past seven. So."

"So?" Miss Taylor repeated.

"So we're your last people!" Her eyes lit up. "We can make hot chocolate! Can't we mama?" she asked. Nancy looked at her mother with imploring eyes.

"Well, I suppose that that depends on Elizabeth," Autumn said. "I can call you Elizabeth, can't I?"

This was confusing. Everything was confusing. Where had this come from? "Sure." Really. She couldn't remember the last time that a family had asked her to drink hot chocolate with them. Probably because there had never been such a time before now.

"Well then." Autumn grinned. "Do you have to return to the office at the end of the day or do you normally go home?"

"I can go straight home if I have to, but I don't see what-"

"But will they miss you?" Nancy asked, adopting a pouting expression. "That is, will they expect you to come to the office, and be worried if you don't?"

Miss Taylor also couldn't remember the last time that a nine-year-old child had prefaced a clarifying statement with the words "That is." For much the same reason as her other recent failure at recollection. "No, I suppose not. Why?"

"It makes things easier," Autumn said. "I don't have to wear your skin and mimic your voice for a few hours in order for everyone to see you end your day as normal."

If that wasn't the strangest thing that Miss Taylor had ever heard- and she had heard no fewer than three very strange things in the past two minutes- then she was going to give up trying to understand anything at all in the world.

Before she could think about it any further, though, Autumn moved. And there was only the barest fraction of a second for the words "People don't move that fast" to flash through her mind before her neck was snapped and she stopped being surprised forever.

Autumn looked the woman over. "It isn't often that dinner comes to me, Nancy. Might be the last time I get to eat before we have to move. They'll start looking for her soon." She turned to her daughter. "You need to mind yourself better. There was a moment when you didn't sound like a normal nine-year-old."

"What would you know about normal nine-year-olds, mama?" Nancy retorted. "You haven't been one since forever."

"1750 is hardly 'forever,'" Autumn replied. "And being old doesn't make me blind." She chuckled. "Actually, for our kind, it makes me less blind."

"Your kind," Nancy muttered. She turned away.

"Oh, Nancy. Nancy," Autumn said, and she gently nudged Nancy's chin so as to make her daughter look into her eyes. "You just haven't grown into your wings, dear. You'll be fit for immortality yet."

"Y-you sure?"

"Of course." Autumn stood. She picked up the social worker's body and began to take it into the back. "And don't forget to eat your vegetables. That's important while you're still human."

"But mama..."

FIN

Maybe a little bit of subtle doubling (even subtle, inconsistent doubling?) and such might be good, as a way to hint at different traditions that grew out of a single original story over the generations and someone later tried to revise and blend into each other, but not so perfectly?

I'm obviously saying this without any idea how well those rugged Northmen did or did not keep their sagas from mutating over time, and what later generations would or would not do when confronted with several stories that may have been or definitely were different versions of the same story. Did they choose one over the others? Consider them all equally valid? Ignore the problem? Splice them, as I describe here?

Unfortunately, I don't think that I did.

All of my posts are in the Art Gallery, IIRC.

QuoteFragments from the lost epic Kalethulu

DO WANT

Closed the portal, deep the darkness
Age-old evil ever brooding
Like a pressure vessel boiling/ Like a putrid plague boil fest'ring
That may burst at any moment

Elder Signs they seal the portal
For/In/Through strange eons never broken
Lock him in the foe unyielding
Keep us safe while they are holding

I love how you include alternate ways of translating the verses, showing how your work, like real translations, doesn't have a One True Way to read it (and the general ambiguity in some words when you try to translate them).

For those interested:

Interested!

QuoteKalethulu is a contraction of Kall ef Thulu or Kalli Thulu and is derived from Islandic Kall (= Call, Calling, Vocation) and either Þulur (=Speaker, Narrator) or Þula (=song, verse). So it means either Call of the Story-Teller or The Call of Poetry (in very free translation maybe even Siren Song).

No allusion to a certain Finnish piece of literature or the fevered imagination of a Providencial pulp-writer

I like that you include a faux etymology.

Especially since, until I read it, I totally didn't think about the Kalevala and was wondering what this had to do with a Cthulhu made out of kale.

Quote from: Swatopluk on November 08, 2011, 09:11:56 AM
That is Cthulhu
Lord of Giants (or evil powers in general)
Monster/Spawn of stars
Enemy (he is) of mankind
Dead but dreaming
His day will come
Madness rules
But there is no light

I like that you show the writers having to express things outside of their understanding with words that, naturally enough, are designed to express only concepts that exist in their usual paradigm. They don't have anything to convey what Cthulhu and his kind are so they have to go with the closest possible equivalent, giants.

QuoteOwl-Terry and the Red Bull

When I have children this is going to be one of their bedtime stories. I'm not joking.

QuoteNew Year's Resolution: finish by next New Year

Lol.

When you're done with your epic (or even before) I would love to be able to reference it (just name-dropping and/or including excerpts*) as an in-universe work in some of my Lovecraftian stories, if you're interested.

*Just popped into my head that there's an awesome story waiting to be told about the epic being discovered and translated, and what happens after. Some people think that it's a hoax, some people think that it's authentic but a baseless myth, and other people think that it's authentic and with a grain of truth to it. And they go looking for the truth beneath the myths (in part to prove that the epic isn't a hoax).

AND THEN THE SCARY HAPPENED.

Or, alternately, play it straight as a story about scholars battling it out over a newly-discovered epic and the efforts of some to prove it to be true. I mean, not every investigation into some Lovecraftian has to end with the people involved coming across mind-gibbering horrors. Seems to me like it's a combination of determination and (bad) luck that's responsible.

Alright! First story of my return.

And it's pretty sad (wait, what?).

Also, the story will probably be at least a little confusing. Beyond telling there is showing, and beyond showing there is just implying. This story is an exercise in implying as much as possible over showing or telling: this is a single episode in a long, eventful life, and the story tries to capture some of that "in the moment" feeling. My Beta reader said that the story still works despite not knowing the whole story, but I'd like to get your thoughts.

Please be very critical. If there's anything at all that you don't think works, let me know.

Absolutely Positive

You made the lentil soup yourself. No-one can make it the way that you do. A dash of this and that. Humble ingredients that are spun together to make a meal fit for a noble. At least, you think so. Many nobles have disagreed with you on the matter.

Perhaps that is why they needed to die.

It isn't that you killed them for lacking in good culinary taste or simply disagreeing with you. But they couldn't appreciate the simple things. They couldn't see the refinement of humility or the grandeur therein. This had many different consequences. One of them was that they were unable to appreciate the best things in life. Another was that you have been been killing them whenever you could get away with it.

That's life, isn't it? And it's also life that you won't be able to kill any more of them. And life that they'll die soon anyway.

It's done. Babylon the great has fallen. Your dreams of empire crushed to dust.

And here you are, all alone, eating lentil soup.

There are books all around you. Surrounding you. Like a cloud or a ring of fire. On every imaginable topic, rising high in piles like towers and great walls. Here a treatise on astronomy, there five volumes of poetry by a circle of poet-historians all centuries dead. If you close your eyes then you can envision each and every one of them in its place, exactly where you left it.

If you can close your eyes then you can remember your first day in Babylon. You had not always been a speaker for the living, or a philosopher, or a demagogue (and all three were the same in Babylon, or so they were to you). Once, you had been a trader. A sailor. A night shipwreck had brought you to the edges of Babylon, and you walked to the lights from the crash site, no other survivors in sight. Who would have thought that you would stumble across a library? Who would have thought that you would enter therein?

Perhaps it was fate. If so, then you wonder what it was that had made fate love you so, as much as you love books. And you wonder what it was that had made fate so fickle, and made her turn her eyes and her favor from you.

You drop the spoon into its bowl and stand. It is time. "I come, I come," you whisper. A smile spreads on your face. "Why do you call for me?"

The world is falling to ashes at your hands. All future history aborted and replaced with a hideousness that burns your mind's eye. You have a duty to perform, a rectification to perform. And you are hardly going to do that in the nude.

Luckily you have clothes hanging beside your desk. You slip on silken underclothing first of all. Comfortable clothing, to be sure, but once its purpose was to catch the arrows aimed at the ancestors of your adopted people. The sleeves are long and wide, far from restrictive. Next to go on is a poet blouse and a short, dark blue skirt. Less your style than your previous dress or undress, but you can own it all the same. You have to. The rules for formal dress are older than your grandfather. And he's pretty old.

You remember walking through the streets in the wake of the Iconoclasm. The Trial of Sisyphus was brought to the forefront of your mind. "The quest for power is an empty thing," you told John. "Sisyphus' wife threw his corpse into the public square."  

John didn't say anything. It was John's corpse that was thrown into the square, John that spent ten years in Hell before your friends could secure a release. But that's why you say it. You understand. You understand the pain. And what else you understand, what must be understood by John if it is not already, is that these are more than stories. Or else all other things are no more than stories.  

But if there is mourning for the sacrifices that have been made, then surely there can also be rejoicing over fresh gardens and empty tombs. "Here, John," you told your friend, and the two of you looked around at the scattered statues all about you, like the books in your study. "Hear the silence of the idols."  

Stories, you did not know if John understood. But you could see in your comrade's eyes that acceptable losses were understood. John lost something, in those ten years at Letois, and John accepted the pain every day (there is no price too high for the glory of the city Babylon).

You slide copper bracelets over your left hand and hang jade rings from your ears. You move as you dress, you dance as you move. Happiness is not good for mortals but neither is sorrow not fitting for immortals, and you know that no-one has ever been a prince by playing a pauper. Do you weep today?

There is salt enough in your lentil soup already, you think. Why would you add more? What reason do you have to weep? You can feel the sun rising and falling in your body, and the waves reaching and sinking. You stand alone, and you stand alone in the midst of creation. This is the nobility of your soul, that you can see past the dark of space into that day when the gods, now dead, now not-yet-born, are made by the hands of men and women with their eyes firmly fixed upon the stars.

This is the nobility of your soul, that you can see in your heart the future ashes and rubble of Babylon, and not flinch. That you can see, and see past it- to the songs that will be played on other worlds in generations hence. And today you see to it, where it will not be seen, and make a cure against a sickness unto death. To realize, and to exist in awareness of yourself and your own future gods.

To stand. And to do your duty.

A memory floats into your thoughts, from scant days ago. You were speaking with John and Elymas. The three of you had begun to realize that the war was not going as you had planned it. That the city would fall. That every pain and trial in your collective history would be turned to vain.

Unless...

Unless. The most powerful word with which a sorcerer can conjure.  

You wrap your hands around one of John's, and look at Elymas. "The process from perception to comprehension is like this, a closing fist," you say. "I will persuade Persephone before you, as Sisyphus did."  

Neither of them doubt you. This was your dream all along. Your dream that you made yours, or your dream and theirs, woven into a more brilliant tapestry. Your dream was history itself.

You put on felt socks and leather boots, and over your hands go soft green gloves with a button leaf design.

"Oh, Aesopus," you say. "Aesopus, there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn!"

You take the golden crown into your hands and rest it on your head. You look at it in the mirror and make a face. You toss it away with a flick of your fingers and pay no attention to where it goes.

"Benediction. Benediction, Mister Cross. Haha!"

You give a little spin where you stand, and giggle. Very girlish of you- but then, you haven't allowed yourself to be a girl for so long. Perhaps you can be one again in this short space of time, hanging between moments.

You take your suit-jacket off of its hook. Orange and white pinstripes. Perhaps you can allow yourself just one touch of personal expression.

Your fingers deftly work their way up the jacket's buttons. Smooth out a couple of ruffles in your outfit. Tie your hair back into a ponytail.

You hear the front door open downstairs.

You look at yourself in the mirror. This is it: the katalepsis of the sniper.

There are footsteps coming up the stairs.

You ascend the chair. It must look very silly, if you're going to be honest with yourself. Your hands brush against your throat.

You think back to Sisyphus one last time. Think of the war, the stone, the victory. The struggle was enough, and he had become Man alone.

John appears at the head of the stairs. You can hear a scream, you can hear the words, but you cannot attach to them any meaning.

You look at John. Smile. "Look! For I shall die, and in dying shall conquer death!"

You kick the chair out from under you, and then your neck catches against the belt.

"Zeno! Zeno!"

John won't get you down in time. You're safe.

You've done it.

"Happiness is a good flow of life."

- Zeno, as quoted by Stobaeus

Quote from: Swatopluk on December 07, 2013, 06:37:31 AM
Well, I mostly write for my own enjoyment too. Not much of a market, I'd presume, for my stuff. Those who like the old metres will inevitable prefer the original old stuff not my imitations.

There's a market for everything! Only problem is how many people who would like it are aware.

7 billion people on the planet. Some of them have got to like it.

At least, that's what keeps my own hopes alive.

Quote from: Griffin NoName on December 07, 2013, 08:16:07 AM
Good to have a ghost writer - will you finish my MSc dissertation for me?

Sadly, I don't think that I'm permitted to do that...

Technically I'm not new, but it has been a long, long while since last I came here.

Although, for some reason, both of the stories that I posted in the Art Gallery are still on the front page.   

Anyway, in light of my extended absence I thought that I should come re-introduce myself for the benefit of everybody that came after me and everybody that forgot that I came at all (so, between those two groups, probably just "everybody").

In the meantime I've gone and served a two-year proselyting mission for the LDS Church, and now I'm back.

At least for the first little while I'll probably just run around the Art Gallery (and that's most likely where I'll be most active even after the busy parts of my life get not-so-busy). Hope nobody minds, and if anyone has any particular story ideas that they'd like to see turned into something then I'll take a look over and see what I can do.

I don't claim to be anything good but it's not like I'm charging (heck, I should probably pay you, what with giving me a new idea, but I'm poor so...). I just like writing, and it's more likely to please at least one person if somebody requested it.

Many, many apologies about the delays.

I'll be able to get back in a few days, but in the meantime, take this small piece.

Transcript Five

SHEILA THURGOOD: Hello, Marie. I didn't expect... That was probably silly of me.
MARIE GRAYSON: H-Hello.
(there follows two minutes, thirty-eight seconds of silence)
ST: Marie?
MG: (whispering) They... they shot him. He's... I've spent the past two days trying to snap out of this, but I can't, I can't , I can't do it, I can't stop thinking about it, and, oh God... He's...
(faint sound like crying)
ST: Shush now... It'll be, this'll work out, somehow. Be strong and carry on. That's what we're supposed to do. It'll be— shush now, Marie. Calm down. Deep breaths. Just keep leaning on me. In, out. In, out. That's it. Just breathe. It's okay. It's—
MG: It's not. It isn't, and it can't be, how can things be right?
ST: People don't live forever Marie. Everyone dies, whether that pale figure takes us in the morning or in the evening of our life.
(faint sound stops suddenly)
MG: You read Rebisceau?
ST: Of course. (pause) I thought that literature might help bring you back.
(silence)
MG: Sgoldstino is dead.
ST: I know.
MG: What are we going to do?
(pause)
ST: I don't know, Marie. I don't know. But Goldstein would want us to move on. The next few steps are going to be so much harder, they're going to hurt so much, but we're going to have to press on, and...
MG: Lose ourselves in the struggle.
ST: Exactly as he says it.
MG: Doctor Thurgood?
ST: Yes?
MG: Thank you.
ST: You're welcome, Marie.
(silence)
MG: I... haven't stepped out of my room since I heard. Not until now. My parents probably think that I'm still in there. I don't want to see my mother.
ST: Why?
MG: The war is going to get worse, and I don't think that it's going to get better. I don't want to see my mother when she realizes what I have. She's been pinning everything on this. It's okay that we're distant from each other, even though she still tries to keep me as close as she can, because once the war ends there will be more than enough time to fix the damage. The war was going to end soon. She was sure of that. The only alternative, after all, was that the war would get worse, and she wouldn't let herself imagine how that would happen. She couldn't bear to. She had to keep...
ST: Tomorrow morning isn't going to be very spectacular. We still need to march forward, though. This is a setback. We will march forward, though, and we will come out of this.
MG: Not like we were before.
ST: No.
MG: I depended on him. If Sgoldstino could hold off the Bolsheviks, then... Chicago always felt so much easier... It was still hard, but it wasn't as hard, when I remembered that some of the problems were being kept away. I counted on Sgoldstino to keep me from having to worry about anything past the city limits.
ST: He wasn't a military genius, Marie. He was just the object of our faith. Sgoldstino was the one with the words to reassure us.
MG: But he kept them in check. All the power that the government has... Zelia won't see another person like him in her life, able to be trusted with everything we gave to Sgoldstino. It won't take much to make us like the other side. The military hasn't lost any of its minds, but Congress... It barely exists. When Sgoldstino wanted something, he got it. And I-I could trust him with that sort of power. It's too much to hope that Dallings is the same.
ST: March forward, Marie. March forward. Sgoldstino wouldn't have chosen someone horrible as his successor, would he?
MG: I had faith in his integrity and his ability to keep us united, and to know enough to let the generals do their job, instead of harrying them and impeding them. (MG sighs) I never said that I had faith in his ability to see into the mind of another person and know for sure that they were totally incorruptible.
ST: Then have a little faith in the people. Right now, it doesn't matter what Dallings does. Dallings knows the military well. We shouldn't have any problems there. If we can stick together still and prove that we don't need Sgoldstino to keep marching forward, we can still win the war.
MG: Does it matter who wins, if we're Bolsheviks at the end?
ST: Let's worry about one thing at a time, Marie. Things will be hard, but we will march forward.
(forty-three minutes of silence follows, with nothing but the sound of breathing in the background)

End of Transcript Five

Sorry. I've been really busy lately. New job and all that. It took me more'n a week just to get around to posting this.

Expect updates to resume by Saturday after next.

Still wearing her second face, and with Wreathe still on her mind, Marie knocked twice on the door, hitting it hard both times, then stood back. Thirty seconds later, it was opened, and by one of the most terrible-looking humans she had seen who were still humans, and not leviathan-ridden or the suits of k'k't'k. Deep wrinkles were carved into his dry, scarred face, and what little hair was on his head was a gray bordering on white. Bite marks littered his skin and three of the fingers of his right hand, which was outstretched in the manner of one who was expecting a handshake, appeared to be attached solely by a thick red thread. She did not shake his hand, partially out of a worry that, were she to do so, his fingers would fall off.

"Ahaha." It was just as much an inhalation as it was a laugh. "You must be the Star-Eyed Girl. The yuggoth said that you hwould be coming by sometime. I admit that I hhad expected you earlier."

"Ibsen Pentland Wilde, I presume."

"Ahaha, of course."

"You look half-dead, if you don't mind my saying so."

"Only hhalf?" Ibsen grinned, revealing many ivory teeth, and even more which were simply missing. "That's certainly, ahaha, an improvement over being completely dead, isn't it? Not a pleasant experience, not a pleasant experience. Come inside girl." He turned and Marie followed him into his house. Almost instantly they entered a room covered wall to wall with bookshelves, every inch of them crammed full of books, stacks of bound papers, and various knickknacks.

"Are you a collector, Ibsen?"

"Yes. Ahaha, yes. You could fancy me a Lovecraft actually, except that I actually investigate of my own accord and do not rely simply on the accounts of passers-by such as, well, such as myself."

"You spoke to Lovecraft?" Marie looked him over. One of his eyes, she noticed, neither moved nor blinked, but simply stared forward as if it were made of glass, not flesh, even though it was most plainly the latter. "You certainly look old enough to have done it. I can give you that."

"Ahaha. Also another difference is that I did not publish any of my own stories, but it is not for those that you are hhere, is it? It is the King in Yellow, in hwhich you are interested." He gave another half-toothless smile. "Come, come. Into the kitchen."

There was barely any difference between the kitchen and the last room. Stacks of thirty books each rested on the icebox, and the small table at which he probably ate was covered with maps and loose scraps of papers. "I am terribly disorganized at times. Ahaha. Oh, hhere hwe are, Captain." He pulled out a thin book from one of the many shelves, and offered it to her, holding it in both of his hands.

"The King in Yellow," she read. She did not take it. She was not so foolish as to take any object which happened to be offered to her by someone she did not know, without explanation as to what it was.

"It is a play, Star-Eyed Girl. Written by Robert W. Chambers."

"I never heard of it. Not very common, is it?"

"Ahaha, more and less common than you hwould think. Ahaha. This play hwas notorious. Infamous," Ibsen hissed. "It hwas written in the hwaning decade of the nineteenth century, and it hwas banned in country after country. To possess a copy hwas to be sentenced to years in prison."

"Why?"

"Even hwithout reading it, it hwas realized that it presented, ahaha, a grave danger to society. It hholds inside itself keys, Captain. Keys to unlock the mind, to open up the eye inside so that the King in Yellow Hhimself can be glimpsed in all his hwonder, terrible hwonder."

"I don't recall Chambers writing any such play, though, and I'm pretty well-read with him."

"Ahaha. That is because this play never existed hhere in this world."

"Excuse me?"

"The yuggothr fear the city hwhich rests on the hwater, and they are right to do so. But they do not know it as it truly is. Some of hwhat the yuggoth told you hwas conjecture accepted as surely as if it were proven fact. The city is named Carcosa, and it is the sum total of a hhundred thousand shattered timelines. Hworlds hwhich never hwere, hwhich never could be, all part of that faintly glimmering city. This play as it exists hhere in this book comes from such a hworld, conceived there and then conceived hhere, in minds sufficiently broken enough that the truth of things hheld little sway over them, and they hwere free to glimpse hworlds hwhich hweren't, and Carcosa itself. This is the first step to the assault hwhich Carcosa brings to bear against us. The hwish for Carcosa's potential is born in the minds of those who hwill call it, and their desire calls forth first the play, so that they can properly call it forth."

"What will it do to us?"

"It hwill tear this hworld apart, shredding our entire hhistory to ribbons and stitching the pieces into itself. Ahaha. Hwe hwill not likely come out of the experience... hwell."

"What is the King in Yellow, then?"

Ibsen's eyes seemed to take on a glow for just the shortest of moments. "Nothing less than the city itself, Captain. Gaze into Hhis eyes, and you hwill see everything. It is a terrible thing to be in the hhands of a living god. The Princes quake before Hhim."

"The yuggoth I spoke to said that Him Who Is Not To Be Named was able to hold off the city."

"Ahaha. Even you, Captain, can hhold off Carcosa. But if the King in Yellow hhas Hhis opportunity to hwalk freely in this hworld, then there is no longer a chance for you. Carcosa forms now, but it is not yet hhere, and so Hhe is not yet hhere."

"I was told to stop the call on this side."

Ibsen nodded. "The Imperial Dynasty of America." He grinned.

"I never heard of it. Some sort of secret society which has been running the country ever since it was founded?"

"Ahaha! Not at all, not at all, Captain! Rather, it is something hwhich is not, hwhich those who call Carcosa hwhish to be true. Of the myriad hworlds and possible hwhich are the city Carcosa, there is one hwhere the true ruling dynasty lies, a royal family, ruling openly, not secretly, hwith inhhuman blood flowing through their veins, claiming, ahaha, their origins to rest in the Hhyades. In Carcosa, all things are true, and all they must do, to make this hworld match to their desires, is call that city, and draw forth the Imperial Dynasty of America."

"Why?"

Ibsen Wilde closed his one functional eye. "Everything leads up to the future."

"Can you explain more?"

He pushed the book into her hands. "Inside this book is a sign which you hwill not be able to see. It is this sign by hwhich the King in Yellow rules. It is this sign by hwhich Hhis servants command."

"There was someone who was looking for me last week. I broke into his mind and—"

Ibsen opened his good eye and nodded. "They are not useful for many things. To see the Yellow Sign is to cored out entirely with nothing to replace hwhat hhas been removed. They are like broken slaves, unable to think except straight ahhead. They crave direction. They need to be commanded, not just because they hhunger for it but because they are so useless hwithout it. The Yellow Sign hwill protect their secrets from you, however. Though their field agents lack initiative and self-determination, they do not stop, and they do not understand self-preservation, and no more effort is required than to sketch out the Yellow Sign and display it."

"I forgot what it looked like the instant I left his mind. Why?"

"Your leviathan protects you from more than just poisons of the body. It vanquishes the symbol before it can take root in your mind. They do not like competition. They do not like the Yellow Sign."

"The ones who are trying to do this, are they Captains? Is that how they can write the Yellow Sign without falling victim to it?"

Ibsen shook his head. "Any Captain would be completely unable to draw out the Yellow Sign, because she hwould not be able to remember hwhat it looked like." He laughed. "The Yellow Sign hhas no pull on the dead, Captain.

"So you really are dead, aren't you?"

"Ahaha. Again and again, many times over. I killed my death. I am free." Ibsen leaned forward. He stared at Marie. "I look forward to seeing hhow you fare against your own death."

"I'll be back if I need anything else."

---

The girl's eyes are bright. She is slimly built, and her hair reaches down to her shoulders. She looks like she is wearing something almost like a faintly glowing chain mail; her gloves are of some loose and light substance which is not leather. She is very pale, and she is frozen in this moment, caught off-guard. Marie's hands are around her neck, and the girl is being strangled.

This is not the first time that Marie had found herself strangling a thirteen-year-old girl. It is, actually, the fourth time. It is, however, the first time that she has found herself strangling such a girl (or any Captain, for that matter) without fully knowing why.

She is strangling the girl in order to cut off her oxygen, in order to wear away at the girl. She is doing this because the girl is trying to kill her. But she does not know why the girl is trying to kill her, and so she does not, in the end, really know why she is strangling the girl.

The shock is gone and the girl reacts, kicking Marie in the stomach and twisting out of her hands. She spins as she moves away from Marie's reach, and there is the barest hint of a smile on her face. There's more sadness there, though. Disappointment, more exactly. Marie is well-used to that look.

But that doesn't matter at all to Marie right now. There is blood music playing in her ears, pounding ruthlessly in her head like a war chant. The beat is going on, making a rhythm for her to fight by. Her clothes have been soaked with a neutralizing solution and her leviathan is currently filtering her bodily fluids, changing them. Marie has been stabbed ninety-seven times since this girl attacked twelve minutes ago, and she has been hurt in countless other ways. So it is not unreasonable at all that she is sweating rabidly now, and her skin is coated with a viscous corrosive.

"Chorale sword!" the girl calls out, and she is charging Marie as her left arm shifts and molds itself and extends as it becomes a long saber. It's absolutely pathetic, but Marie is too far-gone to care about correcting the girl.

Marie's hands are black gauntlets when she punches the girl. Spikes sprout and dig into the flesh. She leaps up as the girl swings the saber, and rips the gauntlets out as she moves past the girl's head. She turns and punches the girl's back with both gauntlets, forcing the spikes in deep. They change, becoming barbed, and it is with a muffled yelp that the girl tears away.

The blade swings past Marie's head, flying close to her ears, and she can hear a trace of song as it does so. It is unfamiliar, but it is unmistakably music. All it does is fuel her, adding symphonies and the voices of a hundred songsters to the blood-music playing in her head.

No, it also angers her. But she was angry already. Someone is trying to kill her, after all. And the anger is fuel, too.

Marie is breathing heavily. Her breath is laced with enough caustic moisture that she could burn faces with a kiss. Burning fluid is nearly pouring off of her.

She's still moving. She's always moving— leaping, swerving, getting as close as she can so that she can strike again and again. She lets the girl impale her on the saber so that she can get close enough, and she doesn't care that she's moving along the length of the blade when she smashes the girl's windpipe.

It's a temporary thing, of course. All the damage is. The Captains always heal themselves as quickly as they're hurt. They're wearing each other down, though.

Then the girl says something. Marie doesn't know what it is, but she recognizes two of the words. Those words make her furious. Furious enough to pause, just for an instant, because she cannot imagine where the girl heard that name, when she was so obviously new, when she could not have been in the city or else been a Captain for more than a month, for Marie would have heard of her operating before now, and here she is, already picking a fight with this Captain, out of all of them, for a reason that Marie can't even begin to speculate at, and she says that.

Who told her that name? is what runs through Marie's head for the barest fraction of a second. It's the music, it's the words, it's the sword, it's everything about this girl, and then she says the name, and she loses control for the barest fraction of a second.

Everything changes. The girl knows more than she had let on. She moves faster and hits harder. She sings something, beneath her breath, and it disrupts Marie's concentration. The blood-music is growing erratic. The pounding in her head is just a little bit more unsteady. She flows into the new rhythm almost without thinking about it but she doesn't adjust as quickly as she should.

Marie steps away. She slams a boot into the girl's chest hard enough that she breaks rib bones, and then only a few breaths later she's twenty feet away. She's catching her breath. That's all she needs. She just needs a second to reorient herself.

The girl probably doesn't even know that she's a mockery. The girl may as well be a walking corpse. It was all there, scratching at Marie the whole time, but it wasn't until the girl spoke that it finally snapped her.

And then she speaks again.

"You were great, years ago. You were wonderful. Then... then you got hurt." The girl looks up, at Marie. "It didn't have to happen like that. It shouldn't have. The world can be fixed. The King in Yellow can fix it. He can fix you, too."

Someone might have been tempted. Marie didn't deal in fools' promises.  "The King in Yellow." There wasn't anything in Marie which needed fixing, anyways.
"Yes." The girl smiles. "I want you to be happy again. I want you to be right and good and just again."

Then the girl walks down an alley, and she is gone by the time that Marie runs after her.

But the girl's face wasn't concealed, and Marie feels sure that it was her real face. She is enraged, though calming down now that the girl is gone. Calming down.

She will think about the girl later. She's liable to do something horrendously damaging to the environment around her if she thinks more on the girl before she is completely calm again.

This was very specifically targeted at her. Everything about the girl was targeted at her. She never would have been so disturbing, so infuriating, for any other Captain.

End of Interlude Four

---

I would greatly appreciate any thoughts so far and, especially, feedback on the first real fight in the story thus far. 

Interlude Four

"Marie? Are you there?"

Howard snapped his fingers in front of his sister's face, and she finally reacted.

"Oh. Yes. I just went out of it for a minute. Sorry. I was distracted."

"You're getting distracted a lot lately," Howard said.

"Yeah." Marie yawned.

"Are you getting enough sleep?"

"Never getting enough sleep, Howard. You should know that already."

"Why do you push yourself so hard?"

"Got to, Howard."

"Look at your grades, Marie. They're good. You could forget about all of your homework until the end of the semester and the school year, and you would still do good."

"I still have other business to take care of."

"But you'll be able to sleep a bit more if you just forget about the homework. It's not important anymore. You can get by without it. Get some sleep, Marie."

---

SHEILA THURGOOD— She's being a lot more open with me these past two weeks. I think that it's safe to consider this to be a permanent change. Marie is getting used to this, and as she said, she's been wanting to talk like this for a long while. I can't hurt her, like a Captain can, and from her point of view I'm coming into this situation already thinking that she's crazy, so it doesn't matter what she says. Her family and friends, however, are an entirely different story.
She's getting stuck to the routine of coming in and talking to me. She admitted as much last week. I don't think that I will need to worry about what I will have to do if she suddenly decides to stop coming.

Next week, I want to see if we can talk more about how things are going at home. We started to get to that, but then the discussion was steered off to other things before we were able to talk about much more than Zelia. I let myself get distracted, it seems. Something she said prompted me to ask a question, and then all of a sudden we were going off along an entirely different path, and then we moved on to another different path, and before I noticed where the time had gone, it was nearly up and there was no point to keeping her. There were only a few minutes left.

She didn't ask about the time. I'm still surprised by that. It makes me optimistic.

This notebook of hers is very interesting. The symbols... The best way to describe them is that they're collections of chicken-scratch lines and dots. It looks like she was writing it from right to left. There isn't any indentation for paragraphs to judge that by, but you can line things up perfectly on the right side, as if that were where she had started each line, while the left side has peaks and ditches, although they're very small.

I'm spending some time just flipping through the pages and looking at the writing and the pictures.  There is this strange-looking insect that she has several pictures of, as if it were from an anatomy book, or a collection of pictures from after a dissection. It doesn't seem like it is one of those... those... (sound of paper moving) k'k't things that she mentions frequently.

Marie appears to mention yuggoth, k'k't, and me-deg most often. There have been a couple of mentions of other species, but she has never given much information about them.

I think that I may need to reassert my footing, so to speak. I noticed, during my last session with her, that I was slipping almost into believing what she was saying. There wasn't a time when I actually thought that what she was saying was true, but I was just going along with her stories so readily. There wasn't any hesitation in my mind. It just flowed so smoothly, and...

(silence)

I am going to try to find some of these other Captains she has mentioned. That, more than anything else, proves just how badly I need to change my mindset. I am telling myself that I am simply trying to close off and disprove something which she has said, or that I am hoping that, while much of what she says about Captains is metaphorical, there are at least other people who she interacts with and who she can contact in the manner that she told me.

That doesn't change the fact that I am still trying to talk with these other Captains she has spoken about.

She didn't give me very much information, however. There are post offices in the general area of North Lawndale. I can scout those out and decide things from there. Maybe the place to put a letter will seem obvious to me, once I have looked at it. I can always ask the workers, too. If there really is a girl who is regularly checking the mail she's getting there, then they should know. Violet Child also seems like a possibility. There can only be so many Behcets in this city, after all. I do not think that it is a very common name.

From there, I don't know what I will do. (pause) I'll keep in mind what she said about Knife Errant, however, and be ready for something unexpected if I even hear the letters in her name. If these other girls that Marie is talking about really do exist, then regardless of the leviathans or anything else, it's safe to assume— not simply for playing the odds, but for matters of prudence and caution— that they are just as... shaky as Marie.

I don't like the story about Kelly Jelly. It's unsettling, and not for the obvious reasons. There's just something about the idea that this story was resting in Marie's head, whether she was told it by another person or came up with it on her own.

Next week I want to talk about her life, years from now. I don't remember if I said that yet.

---

It was half past eight in the evening, and Marie was walking along the edge of the sidewalk. She was wearing her second face, and a segment of her leviathan was wrapping tightly around her torso, hardened enough that there wasn't likely to be a knife manufacturer anywhere who could make something sharp and strong enough to pierce it. Marie moved slowly, for she never trusted this part of town, with the inhuman crowd that it tended to attract, and it was more important to keep her wits about her as she made to her destination than it was to get there quickly.

{Should we wrack/tear Wilde?}

The concrete was cracked, weeds were growing everywhere, and the few working streetlamps were flickering every few minutes.

All of a sudden, a girl came falling down as if out from the sky, landing at Marie's side, rolling and quickly recovering. The girl dusted herself off as she stood, and then made up the few feet of distance which had grown between herself and Marie in that time. Besides the goggles strapped to her forehead, the only other piece of clothing she had was a pair of drainpipe jeans, but she was tightly-wrapped from foot to neck with flesh-colored bandages which, in the sense that they were part of the girl's leviathan, were in fact not simply flesh-colored but actual flesh.

Marie stuck her hands in her pockets, and looked at the girl out from the corner of her eye. Something about the girl made it hard to look at her face directly, and she thought that it was sufficient to keep her identity hidden.

"What brings this little two-chit bad news to my attention, huh? Don't you have someone else to bother at this time of night, Wreathe?"

Stupid girl. Marie could force herself to look if she wanted to, and she had, on two occasions. There were other things in this city that could do it, too. Marie didn't tell the young girl about it, though.

"Word got 'round about how you're on the scrounge for something. Word is that something big is happening."

"That so?" muttered Marie, and she turned left into an alley. "What's that got to do with lil' bad news coming and bothering me?"

"You're the oldest out of all of us, Nameless." An old joke, that name, and one which Marie didn't much like. But she had a bad habit of beating people who called her Blue Star, and she hadn't really taken the name Star-Eyed Girl; it was just a way of referring to her. "There isn't any other Captain in Chicago older than you who hasn't gone solitaire and rejected her Prince."

"Did Knife Errant die without me knowing about it?"

Wreathe smiled. "Knife Errant's a pretentious bitch. None of us like her. You help us, sometimes, and you're straight honest with us. You're... You're like a big sister to all of us, sometimes."

"Won't keep me from killing you little chits," Marie said, and she leaned back against the wall. A streetlamp flickered out, and it didn't come flicker back in.

"That's what I'm talking about," Wreathe said, and she laughed. Then she stopped, suddenly. "If there's something big going around... I've talked to some other Captains. There's at least a dozen of us who'll take your lead, do whatever you say. Even Minister Rufous and Seventy-Twelve."

Marie blinked. "You sure about that? I tore off Minister's arms last year. Holy Spirit knows that I wouldn't quickly forget about getting my arms ripped off."

"We're Captains. We just fix ourselves right up and jump back into the fray. I talked to her myself, Nameless," Wreathe assured her.

Marie thought about it for a few seconds. Then she answered: "No."

"What?"

"I don't trust you lot. Any of you. Not with this. You seem to forget that we have conflicts of interest."

"My Prince can go to the Void, Marie. If something's going to be affecting this city or, Spirit forbid, this whole country, I don't care what my Prince wants. I'm going to keep it from happening."

"You sleep with leviathans, Wreathe. Leviathans," Marie snarled. "That puts you firmly in my Do-Not-Trust books, do you understand me?"

"You have Do-Not-Trust books? As in, books in the plural? That's a lot of people you don't trust. How big are these books?" Wreathe smirked. "Can't help it. Regular folk just don't do it for me, you know?"

"You're too young."

"Almost fifteen!" protested Wreathe.

"Exactly! You've got no right to be bored of men already. Certainly got no right to be bored of humans already."

Wreathe snorted. "So just because I get my jollies off with leviathans, you don't trust me?"

"Hell, girl, I have got more reasons than that. But you want number one, there it is. Intimacy with a leviathan, it's just going to mess with your head."

"Of course I'm going to take advice from you, Nameless. After all, it's not like you—" Wreathe stopped, suddenly. There was nothing good which would come out of finishing that comment. It didn't matter what Marie had or hadn't done. Even if she'd never done it, Wreathe knew that she'd turn into something nasty at the mere insinuation.

Wreathe's moments of stupidity were youthful indiscretions and lapses of thinking. On the balance, she was a bright girl. A pity, then, that the odds were extremely likely that she would never live long enough to reach past the age where she was vulnerable to youthful indiscretions.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled, but Marie didn't respond, in a way that suggested that the matter simply wouldn't be referred to anymore, not that she was too angry to respond.

"Got a light?" Wreathe asked a second later. It was completely unnecessary, since she was perfectly capable of lighting up a cigarette with the tip of her tongue, but Marie dug a hand into a pocket and tossed a lighter at the other girl a moment later. Marie rarely had a need for a lighter, herself, but it was best to be prepared.
Wreathe nodded in thanks and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, removing two and handing one to Marie before sliding the rest into the back pocket of her jeans. She held the lighter out for Marie, applied her own to the lighter, and then handed it back to Marie.

The cigarettes were useless, really. Their leviathans were processing the tobacco before their bodies even noticed that there was anything entering the system, and it was impossible to get even the slightest sensation. But the cigarettes weren't being used for that. It was for the same reason that Marie handed over her lighter, when Wreathe's tongue would have worked just as well: this was something communal, between the two of them, something to share.

A lot of Captains smoked together or knocked back the hardest drinks that they could when they exchanged pleasantries (although at least alcohol also had a taste).
"I'm serious you know," Marie said, and she exhaled slowly, watching the smoke curl outside her mouth. "You keep on walking this path, and one of us is going to fall hard."

"It'll be me," Wreathe said.

"Excuse me?"

"When it comes down to fighting, you're going to kill me. I like you too much."

"Oh, so I don't like you at all, is that it?" Marie raised an eyebrow. "I'm cold and heartless, am I?"

Wreathe shook her head. "Might be that you love more than any of the rest of us possibly could. It's just that you've got something pulling you along. You're going to live, and there be nothing that's going to keep you from staying alive. You're going to live for ten million years and more, because that's what you do: You live. No matter what happens to anyone else, you live."

Marie laughed. "Fug off. I'm going to die when I'm twenty-four, and you know that well as I do. Or did you forget what my Prince does to His old Captains after waking up?"

Fifteen minutes passed before Wreathe spoke again. "Promise that you'll kill me if my head goes south?"

"Promise," Marie said, and the other girl smiled.

Wreathe dropped the stub of her cigarette onto the ground, and ran toward the dumpster further down the alley. She jumped onto it, leapt backwards, and managed to grab a hold on the bottom of the fire escape before she flipped up, feet landing on the edge, and then propelled herself with her hands, disappearing feet-first through a broken window.

Marie watched the window for another minute before she turned back to the street and resumed her business as she thought about how short a time ago it seemed to have been, back when she could almost have trusted Wreathe with something like this. But getting too close to a leviathan could have damaging— compromising— consequences.

---

[/b]A/N[/b] I don't need to explain to anyone why it's a Bad Idea for Wreathe to be shagging mind-rapey shapeshifting horrors, even if they do have tentacles, do I? I did have to take a few minutes to elaborate on the matter, and its consequences, with one of my Betas, a long while back, but you folks seem more, well, sane.