Category: vignette

From Red to Black

Posted on by RDP

In the camp of the undead soldier, torches blaze with great fury as though an anger hides on the wind, whipping embers and dragging flames into the air with great points that swirl in funnels toward the blackness of night.

The air is dense with the fire’s heat, but the ground grows cold and there is a damp chill in the air that makes mortal flesh yearn for shelter and comforts. There is nothing like that in this camp, however — no relief or fellowship, at least not for her. She pauses in the distance and takes a last look at the velvet blanket of sky above and beyond, speckled with celestial diamonds. She must force her heart to stone. As much as she wishes to recall their time in the pale caress of the star-cast glow, she leeches the feelings from her very bones. The sun and moon have danced across the sky many times since that time, and he has changed from light to dark; from red to black.

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We are Like Ravens

Posted on by RDP

The raindrops are gray ravens, their call resounding in his ears and brushing at his full cheeks with a feathery and woeful constant. He exhales spirit mists into the blue dawn and rests his tired spine against the slippery wooden bones of the hut’s exterior. There has been a sound in his mind since she left, something like a sigh, a whisper, or a wanting suggestion of desire on the wind, the kind that whistles through the trees and around mountain passes during the winter’s coldest chill.

He pushes his bare toes into the black earth and reaches, eyes closed, for the worn wooden lyre at his side. The sky’s weeping moistens and swells the soundbox and bridge, and like tears on lashes, it slips off the horsehair strings. He is a dark echo of Freyr, conjuring the day’s weeping with his existence, but revolving and drowning in this boggy domain so far in his mind from anything that resembles a shining sun.

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We are Like Wolves

Posted on by RDP

There’s a feeling in the air. Something dense, full, and saturated with memory, sadness, and desire. A cutting wind whips around the wooden threshold and the cold assaults the flesh like thousands of pricking daggers. It’s tireless, unrelenting, and impossible to escape or ignore.

              Cast the runes on the white furs. Cast the runes till the spirit stirs.

Orange shimmering flames spark and pop in the middle of the small room — their heat colliding with the damp freeze that pours into the hut through aged cracks and carefully aligned seams and beams. The sensation of snow is all around, despite the fire, fresh straw, and pelts that pack the space.

His deep exhale emits feathery apparitions, and with each breath, it’s as though the pieces of time that comprise him are wrestling to break free and realize a place somewhere in the immortal plane.

              Cast the runes for the fighter lost. Cast the runes for the heart betossed.

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The Dark

Posted on by RDP

Stranger, bring me to the dark. There are salty swells that lull the hull, and I am swirling, hurtling toward the abyss.

A cold ache spreads throughout — a voracious desire beyond the quell.

Those books bang, such a ponderous sound, the vibrations and expectations.

Bring me to the dark. The candlelight and the anxious warming breath, unrelenting, fast and impure.

Lieutenant, we feel the difference in the darkness, and honesty uncaged and wild. Leadership surrendered and our minds bear, forcing toward the blue-black of spattered stars.

Secretive voices are wispy rasps, and I lament my life’s beat; how far I’ve allowed his hands.

Pirate, please.

Golden knuckles and calloused touch — the skeptical brow and petrified gaze. That pounding, desirous pulse. Bring me to the dark again.

The Thieves Spell

Posted on by RDP

He is heavy in the chest — his limbs like petrified bark. Sweat dapples his brow, and there is a cloudiness in his sight – a type that even enchantments cannot correct – a poison that courses through the tiny tubes of his existence, striking and thwarting all that makes his matter.

She is a summer storm as she works, her hands muddling and concocting. He eases as he hears her careful worrying, ad he minds the beating of his heart: fast, then slow, then fast again, and then slow. Sun behind clouds, then moon, then sun again, and then dark.

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