This Is A Neutral Post

The problem with people being able to read the books you’ve written, is that when they talk to you in person they expect you to say writery things.

I don’t know how to explain that my mouth and my fingertips have vastly different vocabularies.

Y'know, you could just make up accents in dnd. Tried to give ur character an Australian accent and failed? Well, there is no Australia in this fantasy universe, but there is conceivably a settlement of people who all speak in an accent which sounds, to our ears, like really bad Australian.

What I’m saying is just use the worst fuckong voices for all ur characters and if u get called out on then just say it’s how people talk in fricking green-mushrooms or wherever ur character comes from. Make your party suffer.

A lost, lonely Templar on her way back to the garden after a disastrous mission. But no matter how hard she tries, she can’t seem to find her way back. She picks up a defective Haremhorn cast out from her herd because her horns and hair won’t stop growing.

A non-canon character insert set in Dan Kim’s “My Shut-in Vampire Princess Bride” comic world. His world-building is amazing, so it’s difficult to not see stories untold unfold in your mind. :3

harpy girls. harp e-girls…..

but did victor frankenstein actually have a phd

It'sa mermaid for mermay! Played with textures and color stuff. Little different but we’ll see where I wanna go with it.

A little Urban Fantasy

I wish I could say this was born out of a long, well thought out concept of a wizard/shaman character trying to scrape by in the big city as a detective on a supernatural investigative team whilst dealing with the myriad of fantasy creatures sticking their nose into his personal life and causing all kinds of chaos around his town. But in reality, I just wanted a chance for a guy to nail a God in the junk. So, Enjoy.

~~~~~~

The night air was heavy with the musk of summer heat. Standing across the desolate park was Mr. Simmons, or so he went by. I had been tracing his movements for some time, trying to catch him slip up. I had my suspicions after watching him stand behind little Timmy at the festival a few weeks ago. An unremarkable man, Mr. Simmons looked like any other office worker. His dull suit and unoffensive presence made him blend well into the scenery of the urban setting. A little too well.

I had managed to get him out to the meeting when I mailed him some photos I took of him at the festival. I had to shop in some special details, marking in the note that I had a special lens attached. I figured he would just get antsy and cover his tracks, but here he is. Staring at me as if to set me on fire. For all I knew, he could do it.

I guess Gods can get nervous too.

Mr. Simmons reached into his jacket. I tensed my hand around the revolver at my side. A bullet to the gut probably wouldn’t do much to an omnipotent being, but its presence allowed me the bravado I needed to stare down celestial types. He produced an envelope and held it out in front of him, quirking an expectant eyebrow.  I followed suit. Without losing my grip on the pistol, a steady hand fished a roll of film from my pocket. I also held it up for the long-distance scrutiny of my business partner.

Now this is where the dance gets tricky. We show off the goods, hand it over to a confidant and they make the trade. If either side showed sign of unfavorable response, the deal is blown and we go our separate ways, usually the head goes one way and the body goes another. Seeing as my conversation piece was powered by gunpowder and his by the visceral might of eternity, I hedged my bets on taking a dive. As such, I play by as many rules to get by as I can. Stay cool, stay professional, stay alive. Blackmailing Gods is tricky business to say the least.

I hand the cartridge to my confidant beside me, a little sprite I have lovingly deemed “Fetch”. The Fey can be chaotic at times, but with the right incentive they can be a boon for simple tasks. Such as, “give to the big scary guy and nab the goods. Then comes energy drinks.”

The diminutive fellow hefts the cartridge in his arms and sets his wings in motion. Across the park, Mr. Simmons does the same. His choice of companion is best described as a pile of compost. Various bits of plant detritus, leaves and twigs, jutting out at odd angles and mashed together with a pair of flowers at the top as a form of eyes I guess. It managed to balance the envelope on its head and shamble its way over to me.

I had been milling the thought for a while, ‘why would a land god use a blob of mulch as a companion and not some kind of cute woodland creature?’ I narrowed my eyes at the undulating creature. As it approached, I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I glanced over to Fetch, he was almost to Simmons. I decided to make a small diversion. Tilting my head back, I let out a loud sneeze. Everyone on the scene froze for a moment as I reached for a handkerchief. I wiped my nose and glanced over at Fetch, who had been looking at me over his shoulder. He whipped around, letting the canister fall from his grip. It clattered on the ground.

“Ah, come on Fetch!” I called to him, “Be professional, like we practiced.”

Yelling at my companion gave me an opening to steal a glance at the vegetative familiar. The envelope had toppled from its head when I bellowed my sneeze. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the mess snatch the envelope with a bony hand protruding from within the pile of leaves. I made a sound, something between a hiccup and a shriek. Whatever it was, it was obvious enough to alert the land god to my epiphany. Er, correction. That was no land god. I was attempting to blackmail a being of decay, of rot and death. Standing across from me wearing a rather irritated expression was a Plague God.

Remember that part about “separate ways”? Well, things were going to go very “separate” for me in short order unless quick thinking could save my bacon. When in doubt, fall back on the classics.

“AAAAAAHHHH!” I shouted and ran like a maniac. This clued Fetch in to do his most favorite trick. A mystical light-speed hokey-pokey that filled the area with enough razzle and dazzle to out glitz Vegas. The diversion must have gotten to the very angry being of unlife as I managed to make the few steps necessary to pounce on the envelope. A well placed back-hand toppled the camouflaged corpse into a rotten pile of bones. I sprang to my feet as the glitter faded from the air, the little guy can only boogie so long. I let loose a string of colorful language. Or I tried, I got to kiss the dirt before finishing “Shi-“ and had a powerful and ancient being digging its all-powerful boot into my back.

“Did you really think you could best me, Mortal?” It said with a voice like searing acid. I felt a deep chill fill my body. A cold that threatened to stop my heart before I could blink. But, it is in our most dour moments, that glory can be found and indomitable wit can be harnessed. I dug my numb hand into my pocket and work what I assumed were my fingers around my revolver.

“Did—you think, I wouldn’t…gun!” I pulled the trigger and felt a hot sting in my foot.

Some ideas are better than others. The deity howled in laughter, stepping off me and drawing a long, gnarly looking scimitar. Raising it high over his head and looming over me.

“Such are the machinations of a fool.”

I flipped to my back, “Me? A fool?” I pulled my bloody foot in front of me. “Maybe, but I ain’t the one staring down a Gate, am I?” With my one-liner properly dispatched, I gave Simmons my best crippled nut-shot.

The look of surprise on his face was priceless. Horror, disgust, rage and maybe a tinge of acceptance, though that might just be the hubris talking. The portal I had unlocked via bullet to the foot swallowed the powerful being in a wondrous display of magic and light. There were magical words floating in the air, vortex-y looking structures crafted from aether and a really sci-fi “vwoosh”-ing sound. After the fireworks display, the dust settled and the park returned to a quiet and serene place. I even had a moment to enjoy the adrenaline before the shrill sound of police sirens permeated the night. My signal to get moving.

I whistled for Fetch and I hobbled my way back to the car. My faithful driver waiting patiently, smoking a thick cigar. As I approached, he pulled the door open for me and I threw myself inside, Fetch staying close by. We pulled away from the park and disappeared into the night, literally. It’s handy to know a few gnome mechanics.

“Just as planned?” Piped up my driver, the cigar clenched between his teeth.

I winced as the adrenaline gave way to the throbbing pain aching my whole body. I managed to pretty up the expression with a rugged and manly smirk. I reached down and tugged the envelope free from the hole in my foot.

“All in a day’s work.”

He gave a sideways glance and shuddered, “You Gates are so weird.”

We continued in silence. It gave me time to wonder. A plague god had no place waltzing into the festival. How the heck did he sneak in? I looked over the envelope and resolved to bring it up with Marshal back at the office. But that could wait.

“Danny,” I said, “Take me to 42nd and Vice. I got a date with a gal.”

“Can I ride shotgun?”

I shook my head, “Got a Plague God riding shotgun right now, but if you are into that kind of thing…”

He pounded the palm of his hand on the steering wheel. “Dammit, I never get to—“ He paused and let the cigar drop from his mouth. “Plague God!?”

I snatched the cigar before it landed on the seats and popped it back into his mouth. “Never fret, my friend.” I smiled, “I got a plan.”

He took a drag on the tobacco and let out a thick sigh, “I need to find a new line of work.”

Ha ha seriously tho.

the fight is harder each year.

when i was seven the sea-witch cursed me.

she cursed my great-grandfather, actually, who had spat on the hands of the ocean and disrespected the beating heart of the earth - for what else are waves but a pulse - who was silly and violent and who tried to rip from the water what was hers by rights. we were wealthy, before that, a family of merchants. my mother says in her youth she recalls white horses, the gleam of candles, early mornings with bread baked fresh by a horde of servants.

he didn’t ask permission to cross her. that’s what my mother tells me while she spoons porridge with no flavor into the wood of my bowl. he had no faith in superstition, rode with boats that were more decoration than strength, the folly of a man who was cruel and vain and proud of his own gold teeth. the sky had been blue, so regardless of what the village witch said, he would sail that day. and when his boat sank; their lives turned blue like the sky that day.

my mother says she thinks the curse on the men of our family, even if they come in when they marry, is that they will forever be violent, too foolish to see the storm on the horizon. she whispers this to me on the eve of my seventh birthday, while father is his own storm, thundering around the house, looking for her. later, when i am cleaning the cut by her cheek, she tells me the curse is on the women to forever be unhappy, to wane until they are shadows, to walk into the deep like a sinking ship. 

we don’t burn candles often, they are too expensive. she tells me this in the silk of a dark room. the moon kisses her hair. 

in three days, my mother will walk into the ocean, and my father will be my own problem. the curse will pass onto me. 

my father does not believe in superstition, no curse to conquer him. when he is gone, and i am heartbroken, i go to the village witch. i ask her to teach me about magic, and other things, and about how the ocean can be coaxed, and how to save my father’s soul. 

and my hands rot too, keeping a house by myself with things i barely knew. i learn the art of a good scrubbing, keep my mind full of white horses while i endlessly clean, dream of candles in dark while i make the bread that he will not allow me to eat. he keeps me from the ocean, from visiting the place that took my mom, from following in her footsteps where the water makes women undone.

i am sixteen when i see her in the water of a bowl. she scares me so completely that i drop it, and my father comes in with his hands, and the curse, and i almost forget all about it. it isn’t until after that i realize she is beautiful, and young, which surprises me. 

i think about it every evening. her face becomes distorted to me. i can no longer remember the exact shape of it, only the impression of beauty. 

i turn seventeen and wait for the high moon. i pin safety to my vest in little witch herbs and runes. i put naked toes on the sand and slip closer, closer, to the avenue of my family’s doom. i find a little private beach, small and surrounded by rocks, hidden from my father in the event he ever thought to come looking. at high tide, it is barely the span of my body. at low, it feels empty.

the witch of the land has given me what i need to call in the witch of the sea, but i do not use it. it feels wrong, somehow, standing here in the wind and the quiet pulse of the world. i put down the incense and sage and i sit just close enough it feels wild, dangerous - but not close enough to get caught up in thrill. 

when nothing happens, i go home and i make bread that i will not eat.

for months i do this. i climb down to my beach. i learn to do it when the moon is half, and then when the moon is empty. i learn to do it so well that sometimes i go to sleep in my own bed and wake up by the water. i take to sleeping with warding runes to keep me from being pulled in the rip out to the waiting hands of a hungry sea-witch.

i don’t know when i start talking. more often i sing, because singing in my house is not allowed, and something about the way the rocks echo my voice feels comforting. the older i get, the more i can pretend i hear my mother’s voice, answering me, harmonizing gently. i sing songs about sadness and lullabies about curses. when i have exhausted every song i know, i write new ones about fathers who have never learned how to be kind, about the house i work in but do not love, about mothers who left, and about a sea witch.

i see her sometimes. in a puddle, in the drop of rain, in the strangest places. i never expect it, although i always hope. i am never able to see her for more than the length of a wave, breaking, and each time, it does something new to my heart.

at eighteen i am too much of my father’s burden. he tries to unload me onto other men. the land witch helps me with this. i rub hemlock, burn wolfsbane. we arrange so these men have other women to marry. the news of my curse is bad enough to scare most away. my father is not happy.

after a particularly savage night, i wonder how bad it could be. i could marry some boy from the village who didn’t quite bother me. i suppose they’re not ugly. timothy had always been gentle to me. i think about a life, and how i am cursed to be unhappy. my father would finally be proud of me.

i walk to the beach and i tell the waves about him and how i could convince myself it was love if i just never wanted from him. how i could be okay, if not content, how i could be free, how i already had learned life down on knees.

but i go home and i write a rune of warding. and the years pass and i find reasons each suitor is wanting. and the sea witch i see, sometimes, peeking out at me, staying long each time in the water, looking, watching. i see her in mirrors when my father storms against me. it is bad because he mistakes the cause of my smiling. it is better when she is there the next morning.

and i go to the ocean. when i am too sad to speak, it seems like the ocean is whispering for me. i picture my mother’s voice and tell myself i am happy. i am seven again and we are sewing. i am seven again and the curse has not been given to me. i am seven and she came home after she walked to the sea.

i grow silly, brave, unthinking. i leave behind the herbs and i wade deep. i teach myself the art of swimming. i am bad at it, at first, but something about it feels good to me. like the ocean wants to buoy me. in the day i think of it, guilty. what if there was a rip tide, and the water took me? who would care for my father if i stepped off the beach into a long drop? wasn’t i clever enough to know that the ocean is uncaring?

it is not this that does it. i go out after a rain and i slip on the rocks and suddenly i am in water above my head but without the moon i cannot see the up of it. i kick and i thrash and the water surrounds me. the tide pulls on my body and in the cold i feel my body grow weary. water spills into me. it punches through my body, up my nose and into my lungs and some part of me knows this is what mother felt before she was gone.

i kick ground by accident, reorient, drag myself heaving and spitting into the air. i lie there for a long time, half in and half out of death, enjoying the sensation of breathing and of life.

when i look up, i think i see her, watching me, her brows knit with something like worry. but we make eye contact and my heart leaps and then she is gone and i am left alone with nothing but the dawn breaking.

my father is furious when there is no bread. he finds my hair wet, and the salt of the ocean still smelling on me. and that is it. that day he goes out and pays someone to agree to marry me.

this feels right to me, i think. i’m twenty-one, three times seven, a perfect number for a curse to fully come down on me. i will be wed in three weeks.

the land witch comes to visit me. she looks like she’s sorry for me. she gives me a spell and tells me to put it under my pillow; i’ll dream of love and it will soothe me. instead i dream of the seawitch, and how wonderful she is, and the sight of her, out on the water, worried.

even though it is risky, i go down to the beach. i do not bother with protective spells, i have already seen that the water can kill me. fear alone keeps me from wandering. i sit on the beach and in the sand i draw runes for understanding and i make the small magicks i’ve spent years learning and i close my eyes and i ask the ocean “why do you do this to me.”

i fall asleep. i dream that the sea witch talks to me. i dream she is my age, that she is the great-granddaughter of the first to curse my family. i dream she has spent years watching, learning, finding the truth of me. that she just needs to get the courage to come and speak, that she has fallen in love with my singing, that she knows no curse but the one in her heart that brings her back to a human, to a creature of air and not water, to a mistake in the making.

in the dawn i know it is a dream and no more. i make bread. i pour water out before it can make mirrors. i do not look. i do not like the ache that has filled me, as if i’ve been looking for an answer and the answer only leads to longing.

the man i meet - my husband-to-be - is delighted by the house i keep. he believes a woman should keep in her place, and her place should be clean. he hears from neighbors that sometimes i sneak out to the land witch’s house. laughter barks out of him. not going to allow that behavior, not me. he does not believe in curses. he will pack me up and move me from the ocean to somewhere in the mountains, where i know nobody. and i will, he promises, learn to keep my place, and that place clean.

i tell myself i could love him. he is not ugly. he says i’m pretty enough after whiskey. my father mentions i used to sing. i refuse to perform for these men so instead i make them cookies. they laugh and talk about me, even when i am in the room, as if they cannot even see. they shake hands and talk about how useless a woman is for much else than breeding. it’s very funny. the man meets my eyes and promises he’ll put a baby in me. i look down and pretend the thrill i feel is excitement, not fear brewing in me.

the land witch comes by a week before my wedding. she is smaller these days, aging. her apprentice and i get along wonderfully. the two women stand before me, holding something. 

a small box, so tiny and lovely. “break the curse,” the witch whispers, “learn to be happy.”

i smuggle the box, take it everywhere with me. it is days before i have a moment to slip away, to open it by the sea. i take a candle with me, even though my father will notice and be angry.

by the light of fire i read the spell they have left me inside, and then i am so full of gratitude i cannot stop crying.

it must be a full moon, so i must wait. in the meantime, i walk home, and i bake. 

i do not see the seawitch, even though i look for her. maybe i have wounded her, getting married. my father asks why i keep smiling. i tell him it is because i am finally with a man. he grunts and says to stop looking so silly. 

the man kisses me. i let him. we are married on a night with a full moon, and i poison him and my father in the bread i did not eat. i think of how these men were cursed so they could not see a storm coming. i watch them as they lie there, dying, and then i put all of the things i own into a basket for the land witch. i leave it there with a song i wrote for her, a spell i know will make her happy, will stop the aging of her joints, will give her the kind of relief she gave me. 

i go down to the water. i find myself running, even though i am in no hurry. i know the way so well it is like i wake up there, panting. i ask permission first. i lay out the contents of the box, i organize and practice and when the needle and pain comes, i am ready for it. i am used to pain at night. i breathe into it and walk naked into waters that swallowed my mother.

i chew bitter herbs. i swallow fire. i feel myself drown as i change from land witch to sea witch. 

when it is done, i open my eyes in the deep of a moonlit ocean. and i see her. 

this time she does not flicker. this time when i reach for her, she is there, and she is pushing my hair out of my eyes, and we are kissing with the ocean rejoicing around us, and i am laughing, and i hear her voice as clear as bell inside me.

and we live like this, a whole world between us where white horses are the size of pinky fingers and swim with their thin snouts, where i need no candles because i was raised lightless, where we have no servants but the water takes care of us. i show her the magic of land and she unfolds the magic of water. together we are unstoppable. when i come up to the air to sing little girls a promise that they can survive the madness, she sings with me, and we make a beautiful harmony.