Miscellanea

Sage Brown Eyes
I saw a woman on the bus earlier this week with strangely attractive eyes. She was a young black woman, maybe in her late twenties, and pretty but nothing noteworthy in a city where I've seen the whole gamut from street-worn homeless to impeccably beautiful professional. No, this one's allure was all in the eyes. They were light brown; not fawn brown, or khaki, or mocha, but a color for which I lack a description. I was reminded of that famous National Geographic photo of the Afghan girl with her haunting green gaze. I think it was the ring of darker brown around the edge of the irises that brought the Afghan girl to mind. And then, an apt comparison came to me. If sage was a shade of brown, that is what it would be.


The Future, Soon
I fret about the future. It's part of my nature; I don't remember a time when I wasn't always thinking, planning, worrying, waiting for the next day, the next month, just a few more years.... Recently, I was pulled aside into a small, Spartan office with green walls and told by my not-so-empathetic manager that I was being laid off, along with a hundred other people. After years of being surrounded by people hurt by the slack economy while remaining, myself, seemingly untouched, I finally became its victim.

You can imagine the wave of fretting that's set off in my brain. If I were a bird, by this point I'd have worried my feathers off, and I'd probably be wearing a miniature cone around my neck to keep me from preening off the pitiful remains of my plumage. I'm glad I'm not a bird. It would be hard to blog with cone around my neck. The talons would probably get in the way of typing, too.

I worry about the future. I worry, am I a good enough writer to go from proofreading other people's work to writing my own? Can I pull off being a technical writer, or a proposal writer, any kind of writer other than on-and-off-again unpublished fantasy writer? I don't know, but it's try, or go back to the unfulfilling existence of "it's just a job".


Feat of Strength
I impressed a little old lady on the bus this evening. I thought she was homeless at first, with the amount of bags she had strapped onto her wheeled, miniature dolly, and maybe she was. She had a smell about her that reminded me of potatoes dug fresh from the garden -- not at all unpleasant, just an odd smell for a human being to have. She seemed charming, her hair wrapped around in a faded silk shawl and chatting with the girl sitting on the bench next to her while we all waited for the bus to come.

As it was pulling up, she said in a sweet grandma's voice that she hoped it didn't have steps. She was in luck; it wasn't one of the taller buses, but it was still a bit of a lift from the curb. I stepped up and asked her if she would like a hand with her bag, and she said yes so I stepped up onto the bus, got a good hold of the handle, and hefted it up after me. It was fifty pounds, if not more, and I definitely shouldn't have lifted it the way I did (bad back and all), but she smiled so broadly and commented on how strong I was, and even the bus driver chuckled and said he wouldn't want to mess with me. I think I probably blushed a little but I smiled as I took my seat and we got on our way.

Despair?

I was contemplating despair today at work (yes, I know, very emo of me, silence!) This piece is a failure in that it doesn't convey really what I meant it to, but it did get me to sit at the computer and write for a couple hours, so here it is. This is kind of a "speed story", like speed painting but fewer pretty colors. I didn't re-read it, and didn't edit it in any fashion before posting. Enjoy!

Despair. The gryphon's world was falling down around her – in this case, literally. Her beautiful aerie, once a gleaming bastion of polished basalt security and warm, pillow-laden comfort, was being shaken to its foundation by the same forces that had brought low the city of the Sagebrush Crown.

Kyriel – once Princess Kyriel – shielded herself with one wing as another knick-knack tumbled down from its place on the wall. Her toys and baubles lay smashed to pieces on the cold stone floor, left where they had fallen as the earth shook beneath her talons. Kyriel left them where they had fallen, had left them all after flailing helplessly in the first few moments of panic.

Now a familiar brown face appeared in the doorway; one of her “handlers”, and an old friend. “Kyriel!” he gasped. He hadn't expected to see her sprawled so placidly in the middle of the floor, surrounded by embroidered pillows and broken trinkets and ominous bits of crumbled stone from the high ceiling above.

“My friend,” the osprey-gryphon greeted him. Her voice didn't betray her, and no gryphon's wide avian eyes, not even her peculiar icy blue ones, have ever misted up in show of fear or sorrow.

“Kyriel,” he repeated. His eyes were brown, wide with fright, disbelief, a hundred other things, as he crossed the room to kneel before the gryphon. “It's not safe here. There's fighting in the palace, fighting in the Mother's temple.” His voice was shaky, and Kyriel was discomfited to hear it. Her friend was usually unshakable, or else he disguised it well enough that she couldn't tell anything was wrong. Hmph. She was a gryphon, though – maybe she was just bad at reading him.

“The men—madmen!—that attacked the temple claim that Mother Coyote is battling a great Serpent in the hills, and their battle is what shakes the earth beneath us.” A timely tremor caused him to sway, and the gryphon stretched out her neck to steady him. He grabbed hold of her, gratefully, and brought her eyes even with his. “You can't stay, Kyriel. You were brought here for the Empress' pleasure, and her enemies will hate you for that. When she put you aside, you became a friend of the temple, and our enemies will hate you more still.”

Kyriel's hearing, although nothing special for the animal world, was enough to catch distant shouts from below, echoing through the stony caverns of the Mother's temple. Angry, animal shouts that came, nonetheless, from men. She did not share this with her friend, and instead pulled him close to nervously preen the wild black curls of his hair. “Then...I have to go.” Her heart constricted at saying it, and trying to deny the feeling, she surged to her feet, nearly sending the human man sprawling.

She walked over the remains of her life, scaly, taloned feet crushing bits of glass figurine and scattering shards of statuettes across the floor. Don't look back, look forward. Leave it all behind. She did it once before; she could do it again. Her friend trailed behind her and together they slipped out the wide back door into the chaos outside.

Her yard was simple, nothing more than a broad, flat area swept clean by wind and wings, but it had a spectacular view of the city – better than the palace's view, even. It was a little past sunrise, and the light turned the brown hills all around them golden. The black basalt of the city shone, and its gaudy banners and transplanted greenery waved fitfully in the breeze that would die before the sun had made it halfway to noon. As the banners flickered, so too did the fire. Two Rivers, the city of the Sagebrush Crown, burned. “How did this happen?” she breathed, shocked by the world outside her comfortable aerie.

“Nobody knows.” Her friend stood beside her, his fingers buried in her soft feathers, scratching gently in that way he had that always soothed her. “Word from the palace is that the Dowager is dead, the Empress is missing, and nobody knows if the Emperor has gone missing with her or if he's down there somewhere, fighting them.” He nodded his head toward the gleaming brown-black city. “Skinchangers claiming to be Mother's true disciples, and we nothing but a bunch of power-hungry mages.” The word, 'mages', curled from his lips with such distaste that even had she not known how he felt about the moniker, she wouldn't have had to ask.

“Will you be able to drive them back?” The earth heaved, more than a mere tremor this time, and Kyriel flapped her wings unsteadily.

“We've got to,” was her friend's grim answer. “And you've got to go. Get out of here, you've got wings, and a home to return to.” His voice wasn't shaky with fear, now, but squeezed tight with another emotion.

“I said I'd never go back there,” Kyriel said flatly, dismissing the idea. It was the past, and she would die before she returned to her life of the past—the quiet desperation, the despair that was close to what she was feeling now. She thought she wouldn't have to fly again, not like this. Her throat tightened, and she realized that it wasn't just emotion. Her friend was hugging her tightly, arms thrown around her neck.

“Go,” he whispered. “You have to.”

“I'm afraid,” she whispered back, voice strangled by terror, by grief, by the horrible feeling of events spiraling out of control around her.

“Go!” he said again, harshly, and pushed away from her. “Go, Kyriel, use those pretty wings for something besides getting your vanity stroked.”

Well, that was very poetic, in a stilted, overblown sort of way. The thought was irreverent in Kyriel's head, popping up in the middle of her wind-blown emotions. He stared at her, waiting for her to go.

The gryphon flexed her wings, and when the earth growled violently a moment later, she exploded into the air. Fear and heartbreak tore a ragged cry from her beak, and more than one set of eyes – human and otherwise – turned upward at that anguished sound. The brown-and-white gryphon circled once, her plumage bronzed by the sun; she circled twice, indecisively; then, with a tilt of the wings, she was away.

The Wind of the Evening

What a beautiful night! I got out of work a little early tonight, so by the time I got off the bus and started on the brief walk to my home, the crescent moon was still there, low and thin and guarded by a lone star. A planet, actually, but I'm not sure which one -- Venus, it would have to be, or maybe Jupiter, by its brightness. I slowed to a stroll the whole way, just to feel the night. It's warm out, unbelievably warm for February, but the ice winds of Michigan's winter still haven't blown out of my memories. I had on my winter jacket and scarf but I didn't need them -- a light jacket would have been fine.

The wind is what I loved. Not biting, not blustery, but a constant, low breath that was fitful at intervals. Flowing past my face and running through my hair, its touch was more sensuous than sex. I closed my eyes and luxuriated in the dark and moving air as I walked, and when I opened them again, there was the moon, speaking to me. It reminded me of a time a decade ago, longer, and all the times since then that I've been reminded of that same feeling. The moon in the west, and the low wind--but the longing wasn't there this time. I'm not in the same place I was, and when the wild sky called me and tempted me with memories of the West, of home, I smiled and knew that I am home.

I sat outside on the cold stone steps for I don't know how long. Maybe half an hour. Just to feel the night and stare up at the stars flashing in and out behind pale clouds that flew between them and me. It was a beautiful evening.

The Kobold's Pie

I was inspired today by the very fine weather to write a silly story about a kobold. Here it is!

Once upon a time, there was a little kobold, and her name was Rakkshi. She had a pointed, scaly snout, a short, lizardy tail, and from her dainty, clawed feet to the tips of the two tiny horns on the top of her head, she stood a very respectable three-feet-seven-inches.

Rakkshi had two sisters and three brothers, and out of them all, her father loved her best. He had to leave their cozy cave home all the time to do very important things, but when he came back, he sometimes brought his children presents, and Rakkshi always got the best. Her favorite present in the world was a long brown cloak the color of dead leaves, that wrapped right around her and kept her warm and snug when it got cold.

On just such a cold day, her father and his friends were away from home. Her mother, who was tired of the chirping and quarreling and wrestling that six young kobolds do when left to their own devices, shooed them all out of the cave and told them not to come back until each had found something good to eat for dinner. Her three brothers immediately conspired together to steal a fishing net from one of the neighboring kobold families. Her sisters were both dreadfully unhappy at being shoved out into the cold and given a job to do.

“Finding dinner is a boy's job!” one of them whined. She was the youngest, with a chubby belly, and her favorite things were to play with her kobold dollies and have delicious things brought to her.

“Finding dinner is a kobold's job,” the other replied nastily. “With our empty-headed brothers at it, we'll all starve for sure.” She was the oldest, and would much rather be inside patching up some old leather armor to impress the neighbor boy with. She grabbed her whining sister by the arm. “Come on, I know where there might be some late mushrooms. Are you coming, Rakkshi?”

Rakkshi shook her head and said, “No, it will be better if we split up. I'll meet you later.” As her older sister nodded sharply and dragged the youngest away, Rakkshi pulled her cloak tightly around herself and looked boldly down the path that led away from her home. She had a plan, and when her father came back from his trip, she would have a tastier treat to give him than anyone!

The sun was shining down through the bare, brown branches, but it didn't feel warm at all as Rakkshi traipsed through the crunchy leaves that littered the hard dirt path. The playful wind kept trying to find ways to open up her cloak and let in the autumn chill, but the little kobold didn't let it distract her from her mission. Two miles was a very long way for a small creature, and if she thought too much about the cold, she might give up on her quest and never make it.

Her goal was a big farmhouse where a family of humans lived. All of the little kobolds in her family had been strictly warned to stay away, but all Rakkshi was thinking about was the delicious, salted meat that her father brought home once. He said it was called a ham, and it came from a pig, which was like a tame boar that humans kept as pets. She just knew that if she could find where these humans kept their hams, she could snatch one away and her father would be so happy that he wouldn't even remember to punish her for doing wrong by going to the farm in the first place.

At last, after walking for what seemed like forever, Rakkshi came to the edge of the woods, and there it was! A tall house made of rough grey stones with dry yellow thatch for a roof. There was a squat shed behind it, made of old wood that had seen so much sun and wind that it had turned pale grey. There was a fence that looked just as old encircling the shed, and Rakkshi thought she saw animals in between the slats. Pigs? She wondered. Maybe they kept the hams in the shed and the pigs right outside so they were all together in one convenient place.

While Rakkshi hesitated at the edge of the farmyard, looking carefully around to see if she could spot any humans, the wind turned around on her and brought a most unusual scent to her nose. Now, kobolds don't have a very good sense of smell, but this was a powerful, sweet, warm scent that even the rough wind couldn't blow apart. It wasn't like mushroom stew, or rat on a stick, or even like the sweet-tangy meat-smell of the ham whose memory had brought her here. “Whatever it is, that's for me!” Rakkshi said to herself, and since she hadn't seen any creatures that matched her father's description of humans, she abandoned her half-formed plan to assault the pigpen and instead hunched down low and hustled across the open ground toward the farmhouse, following her nose the whole way.

Humans must be very tall creatures, the kobold thought to herself as she approached the house and the cracked-open window that was letting out the delicious smell. The window sill so high up, she couldn't see over the edge, so she reached out her hand to pull herself up and instead put it right into something warm and crusty and gooey! Right at the same time, a voice whispered from the bushes, “Hey! You're stealin' the pie I was gonna steal!”

Terrified that she'd been caught and was about to be fed to the pigs, she whirled around, put her back to the wall, and stared wildly into the bushes, waiting for someone to jump out at her. Her hand was sticky and smelled warm and sweet and spicy, and after seconds passed and she wasn't attacked, she gave in to the urge to lick it. It was indescribable! It was fruit! Apples, she thought, because she'd once bitten into one on a dare, but this was so much sweeter and layered with a golden crust, the crumbs of which stuck to her fingers until she licked them clean off.

“You're not s'posed to be here,” the voice from the bushes said again, startling Rakkshi back into terror. Then a person stepped out – a human! But it was very short for a human. Barely taller than Rakkshi, in fact.

“Don't eat me!” Rakkshi wailed, and threw up her hands in self defense, upon seeing that the boy – for boy it was – had a small knife in his hand.

The boy shushed her fiercely. “They'll hear you! Grab the pie and c'mon!”

Rakkshi was confused, but she wasn't one to disobey a human with a weapon – even a dull-edged dagger that looked like it had seen decades of use, like the one in the boy's hand. Clumsily she groped about the sill above her, clasped her fingers around the sides of the pie tin, then followed the boy quickly away from the house and back into the woods behind the pig shed.

“You're a kobold, aren't you?” the boy quizzed her as soon as they were out of sight of the farmhouse. When she nodded dumbly, he said, “My mom says you steal babies. My dad says it's not true, you only steal useful stuff like knives and food. Guess my dad's right!” Rakkshi nodded again. The pie smelled very good and she wondered if she could outrun the boy without dropping it.

“You don't seem like you want to talk very much. Listen, then. I've never seen a kobold or anything exciting 'cept a gryphon once that got lost in a storm and traded with my parents for a pig. Mom'll think I stole that pie anyway.” He grinned, which was a little frightening to Rakkshi with all those white teeth showing, but he didn't seem angry so she took it as a good sign. “Share that pie with me, tell me about kobolds, and when you go home, I won't tell anyone you were here.”

The pie did smell delicious. And Rakkshi was trapped now – if she didn't agree to share the pie, he wouldn't let her get away with it, so either way, her father wouldn't be getting any of it, like she intended! With a shy nod, the little kobold held out the pie toward the little human, and they spent the next half-hour filling themselves silly with hot apple pie. Rakkshi told him about her brothers and sisters – shyly, at first, but with more enthusiasm as he shared stories about his own family – and by the time they were done, the two were fast friends.

When his mother started calling for him (and it sounded like she was none-too-pleased!) the boy patted Rakkshi on the shoulder and asked her to come back and visit him sometime, but to be careful about his parents. And the dogs, which he said were like wolves but not wild. He even promised to share some ham with her, and with that – and his frienship – to entice her, Rakkshi happily agreed. Then the boy and Rakkshi both went home, although the little kobold had a much longer journey than he!

By the time she made it back to the cave, the pale sun had gone down and the bright white moon had come up. The family was gathered around the cookpot, arguing loudly over trivial matters, as kobolds love to do, with their mouths full of mushroom stew. When Rakkshi showed up empty-handed, she was roundly scolded by both her mother and father, and sent to bed without supper. Even while she snuggled down into her blankets and blew out the fat little candle, she smiled a secret smile and knew that missing out on dinner was worth the adventure she had today!

The Gryphon Meme: Gryphon in Wolf's Clothing

3) Now draw your gryphon as a different kind of fantasy creature. What would it look like as a dragon, or a pegasus, or something else?

The sun that shone was a spring sun, but the day held the warm promise of summer. Lilacs were in full bloom, and the air around the lake shore was sweet with their perfume. Down a little path flanked by tiny purple and white wildflowers, past the old birch that fell three winters ago, there rested a rounded stone left on the western edge of the lake when ancient glaciers first carved the land.

The rock was perfectly shaped for relaxing on, and at the moment, it was being used for just that. A mat of woven reeds was draped over its reclined, not-quite-chair-like shape, cushioning the creature that lay upon it, luxuriating in the sun. She was long and lanky, a wolf in vaguely human shape. She relaxed, brilliant white in the sunshine, with one arm behind her head and the other loosely engaged in holding up a fishing pole. The empty stringer staked into the lake bed testified to her lack of success so far.

Lazily, the werewolf's free hand moved out from behind her head to scratch at the speckling of brown fur that draped like a heavy necklace across her chest. Little tufts of winter molt came out with every pass of her short claws, and once the itch was satisfied, she reached out and flicked her padded fingers to rid them of the dead hair. A bath might be in order. Later. Now the sun was so warm, and she didn't want to scare the fish....

A shadow fell across her brown-masked face, and she opened her eyes to see who was standing in her light. Chocolate eyes met her azure gaze, and her mate greeted her with a simple, "Hi," and a wolfish smile.

"Hi," she answered, sitting up straight and wrapping an arm possessively around his waist, which was conveniently close given the height of her rocky perch. "I didn't want to wake you up after your long trip yesterday so I thought I'd come out and fish for a while until you woke up on your own."

"You mean you got bored lying there next to me after you woke up at your usual absurdly early hour," the black-furred wolfman translated, his mellow, pleasant voice good natured. He scratched the top of her head and then ran his fingers down through the fur of her neck and back, its dark brown a sharp contrast to the snowy hue of her front side. "What's for breakfast?" He looked skeptically at the fishing pole, held so lackadaisically, and then his eyes flicked to the stringer, floating serenely empty in the shallows next to shore.

The she-wolf followed his gaze, and grinned a little sheepishly. "Um. Me?"

Her mate laughed and said, "You're silly," with affection in his voice.

A few minutes later, the line on the fishing pole tugged, unnoticed. Shortly thereafter, a silver-sided fish made off with a tasty mouthful of bait, never knowing it had missed its chance to be breakfast that day.

The Gryphon Meme: Kyriel's Identity Crisis

Today I'm tackling the next question in the Gryphon Meme. Poor Kyriel's going to end up feeling a little lost. You try having your parts put on all backward and see how sane you feel!

2) Now draw that gryphon in reverse! Switch the halves. For example, if it's an eagle front/lion back gryphon, make it a lion front/eagle back.

Two females bared teeth at each other, bloody feline grimaces laced with sudden snarls in the midst of the hungry ripping and gulping of the rest of the pride. The smaller griff had crowded too close to her elder sister in the quest for the choicest meat, and Kyriel had responded with angrily spread wings and a harsh growl of rebuke. But the younger sibling, tired of being relegated to picking over her sister's leftovers, growled back. Two stout, muscular bodies faced off on the sere, trampled grass, scaly gray toes spread wide for balance and talons tearing into the dry soil.

Kyriel's dark brown wings spread wide, revealing broad, buff-barred feathers that shared their paler color with her thinly furred chest. Like the common vultures that waited, dark and croaking, for their turn at the kill, she had no arms with which to fight. Long wings anchored to a muscular chest built for soaring would work just as well to intimidate, or strike bone-fracturing blows if it actually came to violence. The pale, cream-colored feathers of her lower body stood erect, and her tail fanned out behind her. It was all a matter of bluffing, really, but if the junior princess wanted to try and take her sister's place in the pride, let her come!

The rounded, leonine ears of the younger female twitched as she hesitated, reconsidering her challenge. With her head out of the immediate vicinity of the intoxicating blood-smell, she weighed whether the very real risk of losing the battle was worth the narrow chance of success. In the end, it was decided for her. An irritable roar broke their facedown as their shared mate lifted his hoary head from the kill to let them know how he felt about the quarrel. Both quailed, wings falling close beside their body, and Kyriel's pale, lake-blue eyes snapped away from her sister's more ordinary yellow ones. Chastened, they returned to the slain beast to resume their feasting, careful to give each other room. The incident was soon forgotten, as the afternoon sun glided high over the veldt, the sisters shared a companionable perch on their favored jagged rock overlooking their pride's territory.

The Gryphon Meme

I haven't been inspired to write anything since the end of the Gryphon Advent Affair, but today I was struck by an idea. A while ago, Brenda Lyons (Windfalcon) put up a Gryphon Meme on her deviantART site. I've been watching as people posted their responses, and the gryphons have been many and varied. Huzzah to Windfalcon for inspiring more gryphtitude on the internet! Anyway, today while I was browsing the newest gryphon meme responses, it struck me that, although I lack in sufficient artistic talent to fill in one, I could do my own written version. And to prevent it from being a purely masturbatory effort, I'll post it on my blog for everyone to see.

Question 1: Draw your favorite kind of gryphon (or your gryphon character if you have one).

I'm going to use Kyriel for this exercise. I've previously posted her original description here, but today it's getting a complete rewrite.

A proud beast, this gryphon, from hooked, charcoal beak to tufted brown tailtip. Her head is an osprey's, white masked with dark brown, crowned with feathery ears and dominated by peculiar blue eyes, azure as the skies in summer. A ruff of white feathers covers neck and chest, interrupted by a necklace of brown speckling before continuing down her arms to the elbow. Rough, scaly skin of pale grey covers her forearms and toes that terminate in black, curving talons. The rest of her body continues on in white and brown duality, fine-furred lion's sides and underbelly the color of eggshells, and back and wings uniformly the brown of dark forest earth. Only when they're unfurled do the strong, pointed wings reveal white undersides and heavily barred secondary feathers. Her demeanor confident, her voice imperious, her rage vicious, Kyriel is every inch the gryphon princess.

I won't promise a new entry from the meme every day, but it's what I'll aspire to. Stay tuned for the rest!