malins
Stumbling Seeker
Thats' what he thinks... for now...
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Every Shadow Burns My Face
- Thread starter malins
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shastar
Tribune
Hope everything is all right with you, Malins... She wore a flower in her head...
SL&G, 'Lope'
Racing from my head forever
Staring wildly as in like a feather blowing
Take me through an open window
Maybe we could play a part
And not know we played it
They're hanging like the hours
That move with hidden powers
Take me to a silken shadow
Maybe we could play a part
And not know we played it
malins
Stumbling Seeker
Feathers and Blades (5)
Finished with dressing her wounds, he lifts her up in his arms and carries her through one of the inner curtains further into the great tent that had since the last summer become the Regent Queen’s abode, in place of the marvelous Palace of Flowers in Alriunas, that former wonder of the world, resplendent with lush gardens, sparkling fountains and arcades lined with columns each carved in the figure of a dancing goddess or rampant hero – now heaps of rubble and churned earth after Tsilsne herself had ordered the huge bronze-cast bombards that guarded the Capital turned inward during the reconquest from the usurpers.
For now, she was a queen of war who held court where ever her army might march, discarding such fineries of royalty that wouldn’t fit into a half-dozen wooden chests, and on nights of late summer, instead of reclining in a heap of pillows on the terraces atop her chambers, splendid starlight above, musicians and dancers around, philosophers and storytellers at her side… now on such nights she went out into the dark to wrestle with demons.
Oh, the demons. Those of us who carry them with us, each of us have our own ways of dealing with them - sometimes making a tense peace, cohabiting with them, other times grappling with them when they threaten to overwhelm us. We would not be who we are without them, and they drive us to become something more, or something else, than we are. Both of us do that, don’t we.
For certain, he thinks, that is one of the ties that bind me to this dazzling creature, who has become so indispensable for my existence while being sometimes so very unbearable… I could divulge to her the worst I have learned of what men are capable of, and I could confess to her of the worst this man has wrought unto others… and she did not try to console, judge, or forgive; she did not try – simply, she understood, as she knew.
Where have you been that you could know such things, that you would recognize them as your own.
You go there again and again, I fear.
You weren’t there when your loved ones were slain.
You couldn’t have changed anything.
You didn’t follow that treacherous invitation; you would have but couldn’t because of the life growing inside you, that was ready to come into the world.
It is for the birthright of that fragile life, that boy prince, your armies have professed to fight – but for all your pretense otherwise it is you – certainly you know as much as I that the most of your men care none for the Regency and the distant throne of Belquemer, a land unknown to many among them… they fight for a Queen who lives among them and not the feeble Prince hidden somewhere in the mountains.
And their Queen… she fights because of demons.
I, a man of war in an an age of downfall, once a General of a foundering Enpire – I have been through Tepshin-Yarl and I dragged myself half-dead among a company of shadows to Ennussim, ragged columns of survivors stretched over the arid plain, thinned out ever more by the merciless beating of the sun, dried-out shells of men sinking to desiccate into clench-toothed mummies by the wayside. I was banished then to the bogs, the northern wastelands, where I saw pale dead eyes looking up through pools of stagnant water.
I would not have thought it fit for any woman to understand such things.
I’ve had all sorts of girls and loved quite a few of them honestly, but all of those despaired of that darkness in me, and it’s the reason why men like me usually accustom themselves to loneliness.
She had said that just before she did – just before she touched him that way.
And she needs someone to touch her that way too.
That most painful way, the most unforgettable, essential, indispensable way, branding and tearing but soothing and healing at once.
But for now rest, my love.
And heal, as far as you can.
Tomorrow the sun will be bright and you will need to look ahead, further than your eyes can see, and cast decisions.
Till then, I’ll watch over you as you sleep.
She lies still on her side, breathing deep, the dim light of the oil-lamp contouring her body, gentle crescents and curves and the secrets hidden there.
The loose, unruly mass of her black curls obscuring most of her face.
It is long before he realizes – from beneath there she is gazing back at him.
Drawing him in then, with her eyes locked on him as if he were all the world, thin rims of emerald around bottomless wells, with silken skin and shudders as his lips brush her breast, giving herself completely.
He rises at dawn.
The taste of the witch still in his mouth.
Finished with dressing her wounds, he lifts her up in his arms and carries her through one of the inner curtains further into the great tent that had since the last summer become the Regent Queen’s abode, in place of the marvelous Palace of Flowers in Alriunas, that former wonder of the world, resplendent with lush gardens, sparkling fountains and arcades lined with columns each carved in the figure of a dancing goddess or rampant hero – now heaps of rubble and churned earth after Tsilsne herself had ordered the huge bronze-cast bombards that guarded the Capital turned inward during the reconquest from the usurpers.
For now, she was a queen of war who held court where ever her army might march, discarding such fineries of royalty that wouldn’t fit into a half-dozen wooden chests, and on nights of late summer, instead of reclining in a heap of pillows on the terraces atop her chambers, splendid starlight above, musicians and dancers around, philosophers and storytellers at her side… now on such nights she went out into the dark to wrestle with demons.
Oh, the demons. Those of us who carry them with us, each of us have our own ways of dealing with them - sometimes making a tense peace, cohabiting with them, other times grappling with them when they threaten to overwhelm us. We would not be who we are without them, and they drive us to become something more, or something else, than we are. Both of us do that, don’t we.
For certain, he thinks, that is one of the ties that bind me to this dazzling creature, who has become so indispensable for my existence while being sometimes so very unbearable… I could divulge to her the worst I have learned of what men are capable of, and I could confess to her of the worst this man has wrought unto others… and she did not try to console, judge, or forgive; she did not try – simply, she understood, as she knew.
Where have you been that you could know such things, that you would recognize them as your own.
You go there again and again, I fear.
You weren’t there when your loved ones were slain.
You couldn’t have changed anything.
You didn’t follow that treacherous invitation; you would have but couldn’t because of the life growing inside you, that was ready to come into the world.
It is for the birthright of that fragile life, that boy prince, your armies have professed to fight – but for all your pretense otherwise it is you – certainly you know as much as I that the most of your men care none for the Regency and the distant throne of Belquemer, a land unknown to many among them… they fight for a Queen who lives among them and not the feeble Prince hidden somewhere in the mountains.
And their Queen… she fights because of demons.
I, a man of war in an an age of downfall, once a General of a foundering Enpire – I have been through Tepshin-Yarl and I dragged myself half-dead among a company of shadows to Ennussim, ragged columns of survivors stretched over the arid plain, thinned out ever more by the merciless beating of the sun, dried-out shells of men sinking to desiccate into clench-toothed mummies by the wayside. I was banished then to the bogs, the northern wastelands, where I saw pale dead eyes looking up through pools of stagnant water.
I would not have thought it fit for any woman to understand such things.
I’ve had all sorts of girls and loved quite a few of them honestly, but all of those despaired of that darkness in me, and it’s the reason why men like me usually accustom themselves to loneliness.
“You do not let your true scars ever be touched even when you let me run my fingers tender over the marks on your body.”
She had said that just before she did – just before she touched him that way.
And she needs someone to touch her that way too.
That most painful way, the most unforgettable, essential, indispensable way, branding and tearing but soothing and healing at once.
But for now rest, my love.
And heal, as far as you can.
Tomorrow the sun will be bright and you will need to look ahead, further than your eyes can see, and cast decisions.
Till then, I’ll watch over you as you sleep.
She lies still on her side, breathing deep, the dim light of the oil-lamp contouring her body, gentle crescents and curves and the secrets hidden there.
The loose, unruly mass of her black curls obscuring most of her face.
It is long before he realizes – from beneath there she is gazing back at him.
Drawing him in then, with her eyes locked on him as if he were all the world, thin rims of emerald around bottomless wells, with silken skin and shudders as his lips brush her breast, giving herself completely.
He rises at dawn.
The taste of the witch still in his mouth.
I like this passage. Stimulates the imagination!
"She lies still on her side, breathing deep, the dim light of the oil-lamp contouring her body, gentle crescents and curves and the secrets hidden there.
The loose, unruly mass of her black curls obscuring most of her face."
malins
Stumbling Seeker
Anyway, while we get a lot of pics of 'Warrior Queens' who try a bit of 'being naked' and 'wearing armor' at the same time,
the one here is more 'either-or'; right now she'd look more like this,
maybe next week more like that (minus the impractical show-off sword)
but not an unsuitable mix of both
the one here is more 'either-or'; right now she'd look more like this,
maybe next week more like that (minus the impractical show-off sword)
but not an unsuitable mix of both
malins
Stumbling Seeker
Hmmm... she did know how to handle a knife and usually kept one upon her ... not quite as big though... (her maid Mirasintsa still has it, Tsilsne having passed it to her before flinging herself onto the pyre...) - but it was intended for other uses... this kind of work she usually would have left for her henchmen ... though Mirasintsa does recall her confessing of two killings she committed personally ... once 'with her own hands' and once 'without touching' ... and it was reported, while watching the proceedings of one of the more ghastly executions she ordered, she had to be 'revived twice with smelling-salts'... sometimes she decides to go through with things that then are a bit too tough for her to handle. After all she wasn't raised and trained for bloodshed and doesn't have all too many years to get used to it
RacingRodent
Consul
After all she wasn't raised and trained for bloodshed and doesn't have all too many years to get used to it
One of the marvellous things about this story is you have richly layered characters whose personalities have been shaped by their actual experiences.
malins
Stumbling Seeker
And anyway it's a cascade of events, where one things lead to another.
What I am trying to avoid, is despite the fact that Tsilsne is obviously endowed with some amount of magical talents, I don't want to make her a kind of pure superhero or supervillain character.
So we've got this girl who'se supposed to be married off to some minor king as a replacement for her big sister who died of disease, that doesn't work out though and she gets married off to some other place that she's never seen before where she tries to fit in, make herself useful, bears children,( and every now and then maybe has some fun).
Then suddenly she's the sole survivor of the royal family, along with a newborn baby, and with hopeless odds, what everyone more or less expects is she'll flee to a convent somewhere or choose exile or throw herself off a tower or so. She just says no to that. And maybe a moment's resolve rallies just enough support around her to win a first unexpected victory and from there it's a snowball effect.
At some point she succumbs to certain temptations... it becomes intoxicating for her to see that people are willing to carry out even the most extreme commands ... that she can make nightmare visions of revenge come real ... but it's a thin line between her ability to suppress any empathy with the victims of her collective punishments and the recognition that she's doing pretty much the same that was done to her family, and so she begins to be consumed simultaneously by delusions of grandiosity, and despair at her deeds, to some degree a self-hating tyrant. And,
as a representant of the nobility she's been raised from early on to play her parts, as a person who doesn't quite understand her own special talents and has learned to conceal them but not to control them she's learned to play some additional masquerades, but then as a war-leader she deliberately tries to project the image of the terrible witch-queen who casts inescapable curses. At some point she just loses track of who she is... which was probably more difficult for her to keep track of anyway than for a person without her talents - if you consider someone who sometimes goes walking through other people's dreams or drifts out of body, she'll certainly have some experiences that other people wouldn't, but might be rather confused about what is actually of herself and what isn't, especially if those talents already manifest during childhood, which from the 'Gardener' sequence, was the case...
Dying Priestesses
Guard
Ok. Wow. Are you sure you are not a published writer? if not, that is an absolute sin! Seeing this on paper would be amazing!
malins
Stumbling Seeker
Thanks and welcome aboard... sadly I haven't been much of any kind of writer in recent weeks but yes, old tales can be revived, it's happened to others and when time and mood allow this one will go on...
malins
Stumbling Seeker
Feathers and Blades (6)
Complex calligraphy flowed onto the sheet, the quill gliding effortlessly, blotless and spotless even though the writer was hunched over, her left arm angled away awkwardly, still throbbing.
She could not know that this piece of writing would be scrutinized by generations of scholars and chroniclers.
But it would have satisfied her vanity to know that one day it should be found.
Under the one condition that it must happen only after her death – for once a wish which would be fulfilled.
She could not ever tell but still, wanted to be known, and understood.
She would rather die than confess.
It had always been so, from the first moments she realized she was not like the others.
Writing like this, disheveled and driven, she looked as if she were spinning the tale out of the mass of her ink-black curls, flicked over to the left.
But it came from deeper, from the well of souls inside her.
For herself, she felt as if moving among flowing sheets of silk inside the tent.
Veils that obscured and would not let her see clearly.
Writing like this, she is catching them, cutting through them, making the world and her body her own again.
Banishing the terror.
When she had finished her head would sink, she would rest a while, tears would come and subside, then she would seize and crumple up the sheet.
A long while after, tenderly straighten it out again and hide it away, among all the other papers.
Reading it, one could wonder how a crazed witches' fairy-tale slipped in between cautiously worded diplomatic letters, well-researched notes on strategies of ancient battles, and meticulous columns of costs and obligations.
Until it is recalled, than when it is Tsilsne who speaks the outrageous or pens the preposterous, it behooves all to take it seriously.
And so in fairy-tales we might read of a secret sister, poor and rejected, owning near to nothing, unseen by and unknown to all, who on certain nights slips into a splendid dress, steals out and wears it as her own. And she strolls into the palace as if it belonged to her. But however much she tries, that borrowed cloth will always snag on something as she returns to her concealment, or she’ll lose some telling piece of finery, and so finally she is discovered.
A tale like that is in near every book.
Tsilsne’s tale, though, speaks of a secret sister, unseen and unknown to all, who on certain nights crawls up from the bottom of the well of souls, and seeks out her body to slip into.
Throwing it over her ghostly frame.
A dream made flesh.
She throws that warm coat over herself to wear out, wear it as her own.
And she sneaks into the castle as if it was her own.
She takes that body, except for the heart – that she has, her own to bring along.
Poor and rejected, she has near to nothing, but she does have a heart, and it knows how to sing; this heart, it does not beat dull and weary like the other one.
One that can be left as food for the beast.
If that tale is in your book then it's sure to be written in Tsilsne’s hand.
Just like her imagined counterpart, this one, when she came home to hang that borrowed dress over its sorry rack, she often left it damaged.
But so long as it was for someone else to wear the scars, the secret sister returned to her concealment, and never was she discovered.
Not until the day when fires raged and walls collapsed and wells filled in and there was no one left to take back what she had borrowed.
Then she had needed to go out not only for a night, but for all of life and wear that dress for evermore.
It had been singed upon her.
But before that fateful day, just like her imagined counterpart, she would go out and return.
Still each time she ventured out she would snag on something, and leave behind a bit of herself.
Complex calligraphy flowed onto the sheet, the quill gliding effortlessly, blotless and spotless even though the writer was hunched over, her left arm angled away awkwardly, still throbbing.
She could not know that this piece of writing would be scrutinized by generations of scholars and chroniclers.
But it would have satisfied her vanity to know that one day it should be found.
Under the one condition that it must happen only after her death – for once a wish which would be fulfilled.
She could not ever tell but still, wanted to be known, and understood.
She would rather die than confess.
It had always been so, from the first moments she realized she was not like the others.
Writing like this, disheveled and driven, she looked as if she were spinning the tale out of the mass of her ink-black curls, flicked over to the left.
But it came from deeper, from the well of souls inside her.
For herself, she felt as if moving among flowing sheets of silk inside the tent.
Veils that obscured and would not let her see clearly.
Writing like this, she is catching them, cutting through them, making the world and her body her own again.
Banishing the terror.
When she had finished her head would sink, she would rest a while, tears would come and subside, then she would seize and crumple up the sheet.
A long while after, tenderly straighten it out again and hide it away, among all the other papers.
Reading it, one could wonder how a crazed witches' fairy-tale slipped in between cautiously worded diplomatic letters, well-researched notes on strategies of ancient battles, and meticulous columns of costs and obligations.
Until it is recalled, than when it is Tsilsne who speaks the outrageous or pens the preposterous, it behooves all to take it seriously.
And so in fairy-tales we might read of a secret sister, poor and rejected, owning near to nothing, unseen by and unknown to all, who on certain nights slips into a splendid dress, steals out and wears it as her own. And she strolls into the palace as if it belonged to her. But however much she tries, that borrowed cloth will always snag on something as she returns to her concealment, or she’ll lose some telling piece of finery, and so finally she is discovered.
A tale like that is in near every book.
Tsilsne’s tale, though, speaks of a secret sister, unseen and unknown to all, who on certain nights crawls up from the bottom of the well of souls, and seeks out her body to slip into.
Throwing it over her ghostly frame.
A dream made flesh.
She throws that warm coat over herself to wear out, wear it as her own.
And she sneaks into the castle as if it was her own.
She takes that body, except for the heart – that she has, her own to bring along.
Poor and rejected, she has near to nothing, but she does have a heart, and it knows how to sing; this heart, it does not beat dull and weary like the other one.
One that can be left as food for the beast.
If that tale is in your book then it's sure to be written in Tsilsne’s hand.
Just like her imagined counterpart, this one, when she came home to hang that borrowed dress over its sorry rack, she often left it damaged.
But so long as it was for someone else to wear the scars, the secret sister returned to her concealment, and never was she discovered.
Not until the day when fires raged and walls collapsed and wells filled in and there was no one left to take back what she had borrowed.
Then she had needed to go out not only for a night, but for all of life and wear that dress for evermore.
It had been singed upon her.
But before that fateful day, just like her imagined counterpart, she would go out and return.
Still each time she ventured out she would snag on something, and leave behind a bit of herself.
And that is why I let you.
Those little scraps, little shreds of your heart that you leave behind for me.
I love you and I curse you, child of darkness.
But it is those scraps that make me grow back because I have to feed Him with the very fiber of my heart and that would have been dead and consumed long ago if it weren’t for what you give of yours.
And you hide because you know all that stands between Him and you, that’s me, and if ever He swallows me whole, that’s when he’ll see you, and then He’ll come after you too.
And He will bite down on you and you will know what it is like to feel the Devil chew.
Those little scraps, little shreds of your heart that you leave behind for me.
I love you and I curse you, child of darkness.
But it is those scraps that make me grow back because I have to feed Him with the very fiber of my heart and that would have been dead and consumed long ago if it weren’t for what you give of yours.
And you hide because you know all that stands between Him and you, that’s me, and if ever He swallows me whole, that’s when he’ll see you, and then He’ll come after you too.
And He will bite down on you and you will know what it is like to feel the Devil chew.
RacingRodent
Consul
Powerful, very powerful Malins. So co-joined souls or perhaps a soul divided? Not quite perhaps the possession that was alleged by a certain gardener.
I had meant to comment when I read this for the first time yesterday, but I had no words. Beautifully written, Malins. I still don't really know what to say, because I'm not sure what it all means. I don't mean that as a criticism - poetry of this sort touches the reader through the force of the words and images themselves, reaching a deeper place than the surface of the mind. Very powerful.
malins
Stumbling Seeker
Squirrels are good at cracking nuts...
I think what I ought to do is post a PDF of what there is so far, it'll help me get back into the story too. The mystery of what it all means is hard to approach for the characters within it too as it's sometimes unspeakable... the characters resort to dreams, legends, metaphors, fairytales to explain it.
So often just by looking for recurring keywords helps figure out what's going on. It's like the leitmotif or recurring melody in a piece of music. Also the referrals to fairytales, or associations such as repeated mention of the nettle-plant in context with Anrirathu, all have their background -- it's a bit of a riddle and there are many things still to discover
This last segment, though from the perspective of Tsilsne, picks up the leitmotif of Anrirathu throughout the story, and so connects the perspectives of the two characters ... Anrirathu's view is in the Blind Sculptor segment, http://www.cruxforums.com/xf/threads/every-shadow-burns-my-face.5113/page-9#post-249922
Anrirathu, the 'child of darkness', there places herself as part of a mysterious triangle.
Apart from herself, there's a 'He' who's a devouring threat, and a 'You' she addresses, she considers herself a 'secret sister' to that one, and who seems to protect but also imprison Anrirathu, but ...
So when the moon stood right you could let me out alone.
Granting me all the woods to roam at night.
"Feathers and Blades" has been describing what happens among the constituents of that triangle when the 'moon stands right'.
'He' comes as the raptor with obsidian claws. The Gardener also saw inside Tsilsne a place 'where the shadow prowled with sharp claws and ruled his wilderness' and obsidian shows up there too. Still a mystery this one. Though guesssable!
Tsilsne -- this must be the 'You' Anrirathu addressed; she's feeding 'Him', and deserts her body. 'A beast such as this must be nourished, but it is best not to witness its feeding. Her soul slips away.' And she observes that the reason she can continue to feed 'Him' is that she's 'learned to grow her heart back' (a bit like Prometheus' regenerating liver that is also fed upon by a raptor) ... and that growback is because when the 'child of darkness' 'crawls up from the bottom of the well of souls', inhabits Tsilsne's body and then hands it back ... she leaves 'scraps of her heart' behind. And well, the High priest once called Anrirathu 'a curse-burdened woman who had a face stolen by the devil, a voice of milk and honey, the hands of a murderess, and he thought, a heart of gold;' it seems scraps of Anrirathu's heart are worth enough for Tsilsne that she'll occasionally hand over her body to get them.
Anrirathu -- We can guess she is the dream-wanderer who goes into the castle of Ondriscensu and empathizes with a random prisoner she encounters, washing him and feeding him, and promising that he will be freed.
She doesn't think in terms of conquering the castle, ... although when the warrior queen Tsilsne props up her tent behind a perimeter of guards and great earthworks... well, she is besieging that place, and if she can magically enter it, ought to be mapping those secret entrances to get her warriors in. But Anrirathu doesn't care about the war - perhaps she hardly knows about it.
When she encounters the prisoner, and he asks who she is, she 'gives him the name of the one on the hill, who lies sprawled on her back, offering her heart to rending talons and the slicing beak.' - that is, the name of Tsilsne. This of course seems absurdly ridiculous to the prisoner, he must be mad if he's seeing a queen who's the mortal enemy of his lord just stroll into his cell... alone, naked! It's clear that she's deciding not to give her own name, she's always reluctant to, and well, listen to Mirasintsa explain the custom of the secret name among her people, in 'The Cup of Sorrow', http://www.cruxforums.com/xf/threads/every-shadow-burns-my-face.5113/page-8#post-237009
a possible interpretation might be
that young Tsilsne, after the ceremony of the second naming, gave away her secret name to that co-joined soul, and perhaps unwittingly by doing that, granted it an independent personhood... this might imply that until the age of seven, Anrirathu's childhood memories, such as the ice-skating scene, might be the same as young Tsilsne's... but the act of naming her might have turned a co-joined soul into a divided one, and thrown her to the bottom of the well of souls. Ooops. Names are always powerful in magic...
The night-wanderer encounters 'Two girls, huddling together, only candlelight now, their faces close, their hair warm dark gold. They whisper fearful imaginations to each other. ... . What does it mean to be born noble; you are blessed with gifts that you did not earn, but also you may be cursed with punishments you did not deserve.'
Tsilsne has plans for those two:
bludgeoned to death with their sisters' severed heads. After she'd herself braided the girls' golden hair into single thick braids so, after the chop, the henchmen could swing the heads like maces, crushing.
That's definitely 'punishments you did not deserve' for that other pair of sisters, and under no circumstance would Anrirathu dream up such cruelty ... but since their souls are intertwined she does sense a threat - 'Death hovering near, the threads of their fate almost visible, so easy to cut. If she wanted to, she could reach through and touch the thread.' - that is the echo of Tsilsne's evil intent, but Anrirathu would never actually reach through and cut that thread, it is more of an innocent fascination for her that she feels she can see that fragile thread of fate.
That's definitely 'punishments you did not deserve' for that other pair of sisters, and under no circumstance would Anrirathu dream up such cruelty ... but since their souls are intertwined she does sense a threat - 'Death hovering near, the threads of their fate almost visible, so easy to cut. If she wanted to, she could reach through and touch the thread.' - that is the echo of Tsilsne's evil intent, but Anrirathu would never actually reach through and cut that thread, it is more of an innocent fascination for her that she feels she can see that fragile thread of fate.
The part of the last segment that refers to 'when fires raged and walls collapsed' ...
see Mirasintsa's recollection of Tsilsne's pyre http://www.cruxforums.com/xf/threads/every-shadow-burns-my-face.5113/page-4#post-224971
and the High Priest thinks he is close to unraveling the secret, he says 'I think I know from whence rose the Shadow that burned your face.' - at the end of http://www.cruxforums.com/xf/threads/every-shadow-burns-my-face.5113/page-8#post-237009 -- and his guess is that the murder Anrirathu confesses to is that of Tsilsne -- only he hasn't quite yet figured out the 'well of souls' thing, but he's asking the right questions, if it seems Anrirathu was within Tsilsne's innermost circle, why is there no person unaccounted for who might have become the hooded creature? -- it seems plausible to him, that the curse afflicting Anrirathu might be something the witch-queen Tsilsne did in her dying moments. Just like the Gardener though, his conclusions aren't all correct yet, probably...
and the High Priest thinks he is close to unraveling the secret, he says 'I think I know from whence rose the Shadow that burned your face.' - at the end of http://www.cruxforums.com/xf/threads/every-shadow-burns-my-face.5113/page-8#post-237009 -- and his guess is that the murder Anrirathu confesses to is that of Tsilsne -- only he hasn't quite yet figured out the 'well of souls' thing, but he's asking the right questions, if it seems Anrirathu was within Tsilsne's innermost circle, why is there no person unaccounted for who might have become the hooded creature? -- it seems plausible to him, that the curse afflicting Anrirathu might be something the witch-queen Tsilsne did in her dying moments. Just like the Gardener though, his conclusions aren't all correct yet, probably...
In fact when I return to those characters that will be what they try to do, come up with a story that makes sense to explain what they've found, a kind of magical detective approach, because magic is assumed to be real in this story (though not wizardry as in Saruman/Gandalf etc), but still there has to be some internal logic how this situation came about ... and there ought to be some sort of resolution to it.
As for the General, who is also Tsilsne's lover for some years, he's explaining away her weird behavior as her distinct way of dealing with PTSD. Because he's sort of familiar with that. He doesn't have an eye for magic. Tsilsne herself does confess a little bit to Mirasintsa when asked, to using some degree of witchcraft, http://www.cruxforums.com/xf/threads/every-shadow-burns-my-face.5113/page-3#post-224712 - but even Mirasintsa realizes 'maybe the Lady wasn't admitting to all she could do'
Certainly not ... but the Gardener did encounter the well of souls, and the devouring threat of 'Him', but she didn't see Anrirathu.
And maybe she was right in her observation about the efficacy of crucifixion in such cases,
http://www.cruxforums.com/xf/threads/every-shadow-burns-my-face.5113/page-6#post-234170
malins
Stumbling Seeker
not directly story-related, a drawing from an artist I follow on deviantart, but it feels somehow fitting here
http://ninetteponyme.deviantart.com/gallery/
http://ninetteponyme.deviantart.com/gallery/
old slave
FELIS RESPICIENS
I confess I gave up this story after about four episodes because of its complexity in this segment format, with several other stories at the time I couldn't hold all the characters in place in my brain.
I saw #233 just posted and had forgotten that I had abandoned the thread, was so taken by the writing, that I thought "What was this tale?" That was Saturday. Today is Monday and I've just finished reading every episode.
Give yourself a virtual 'like' for all of them.
As for a comment, I can't do better than say "What s/he said." Other contributors have said it all.
Now the characters have been hammered into my old mind by days of reading, please continue at your own pace, I feel I can keep up.
Thank you.
I saw #233 just posted and had forgotten that I had abandoned the thread, was so taken by the writing, that I thought "What was this tale?" That was Saturday. Today is Monday and I've just finished reading every episode.
Give yourself a virtual 'like' for all of them.
As for a comment, I can't do better than say "What s/he said." Other contributors have said it all.
Now the characters have been hammered into my old mind by days of reading, please continue at your own pace, I feel I can keep up.
Thank you.
malins
Stumbling Seeker
Thanks a lot, it's very meandering and with switching back and forth in time and place, it's a collection of fragments, but that is in a way also how some of the characters face their experiences.
If I manage to draw anyone in to spend some hours in a weird bewitched world then the effort was worth it
I think I'll be putting in a PDF of the episodes so far.
rb1956
Lone Wolf
love this story the characters are so well thought out an complex. well written you have a lot of talent!!! i hope to read more.