My brain is completely eaten between Shame's vocabulary lessons, the Admonishments (#3 tomorrow!) and finishing up the illustrations for the Aphorisms. So in lieu of my content, go read Ysabet's poem. She wrote this one about what it is to be a Jokku anadi, and it absolutely wrecked me the first time I read it. It's gorgeous. Check it out!


Stardancer Home.

Tags: jokka, networking, poetry
Current Mood: eaten

I huddle closer, hide my face against thick hair, feel the arm looped around my back tightening. There are so many of them on the staggered tiers of seats, like bleachers. Not sitting. Perched like vultures in black velvet. They know nothing but violence. I smell the effluvium on them, the cruelty. Their gazes rove here, there, seeking fear...

...and we, we are surrounded.

"We're going to die," I whisper. I can see it happening, their mouths, the stench, their satiation as our vision dwindles to gray nothing. "They're going to kill us—"

"—no," is the answer, hushed against my ear. Afraid but serene, a serenity that spreads to me. "They feed on violence and are never slaked. We have something more sublime. Come."

I rest my nose against the flat plane of a cheek, breathe the reek of fear and feel... oh, nothing but joy. Love ascendant, that makes my heart surge, love that makes it immaterial that they are all turning to us with bared fangs. Love that makes their gutter-dark hungers nothing but chains and we... oh, we are winged.

Our mouths draw close but never touch, and yet we drink and are sustained. Trapped in their bleak parlor, we shine. I see nothing but light. They cannot touch us.

***

Sometimes I have really astonishing dreams. I thought I'd share this one.


Stardancer Home.

Tags: excerpts
Current Mood: dream-fogged