Posted on by tworoadsdivergedinyellowwood

Stef dared you to go down to the lake in the dark of the moon, and you aren’t even afraid of the dark, so you laughed, and told her you would.

The air smells of hot summer rain and feels like perspiration. The cicadas are sighing loudly, hoping for attention, but the grasshoppers and crickets are still having a loud conversation over the top. The camp dog, Screwdriver, trots beside you down the path. You don’t know why they call him Screwdriver.

He’s a gentleman for sure, though he has lost an ear and most of his tail to dog-fights back when he was young. Now he’s old, but he still doesn’t act like it. He is gentle and playful, constantly taking you by the arm with his mouth and whining that he wants to play fetch, not go down to the stinky old lake.

You think nothing of it. It would be nice to get in the water though.

The lake is clearer and cooler than most lakes in this part of the country–there aren’t ever any tires or broken glass in it, and when there is trash someone always picks it up. There are little snails you can pull out and not as much algae, since a small brook feeds into it and out over the beaver dam. The beavers don’t bother the campers if the campers don’t bother the beavers. You’ve never stopped to think about weather beavers are diurnal or nocturnal before. Maybe you’ll bother the beavers. But they’re forgiving little critters, and you are really hoping to see the racoon you named Samuel that seems to have the strangest crush on Kathleen, the elegant polecat that the camp also keeps on staff.

The desire to see Samuel wins out over Screwdriver’s desire to play and the desire not to bother the beavers. 

“C’mon, boy. C’mon.”

Screwdriver gets more upset; whining and nipping, he starts to pull at you.

You see the water of the lake, broken by what you think might be a mermaid, and so you get closer and out of it comes the full body of a girl. You flip your eyes up to her face–her astonished, then storm-dark angry face, as she hisses curse words at you in another language.

“Do you need a shirt? I’ve got a tank under this one. Sorry, I was also going to swim, but I’ve never been one for skinny dipping, so I’ve got like, hundreds of layers going on if you need it. Or I can leave you alone. Sorry, I didn’t know you were here. It’s after curfew, but I won’t tell if you don’t.”

The hissing in another language continues. You blink at her. You feel something strange in the pit of your stomach and then Screwdriver, with a ferocious noise, bites you in the hand until you’re bleeding. You look down at him in shock, stumbling a few steps back. The girl appears before you, dressed now, in a tunic. There’s a silver wire dripping with the moon and stars around her head, and she has the bow and arrows from the archery range in her hands. 

Screwdriver bites at her, and she startles at him.

“Easy boy!” You drop to your knees. You look at his mouth; you’re very certain he isn’t mad, but you don’t understand his distress. You fondle his ears and neck, and stare up the strange girl.

“I’m sorry again for disturbing you.” You smile at her. “If you’re feeling weird about it please don’t. I promise I don’t care about that sort of thing. I won’t be thinking about it any longer than I have to be. I’m really really sorry. Be careful, though, a lot of kids come out after curfew.”

She tips her head at you, brows furrowed. “One of those Aphrodite hasn’t touched?”

Her voice is strange and hissing and musical, and your ears feel raw and full hearing it. It sounds like you have never heard a voice before.

You laugh. “Sh! Don’t make her mad. Yeah, I’m ace, I guess.”

She tips her head, and then passes a hand across your skin and the horns in your hair–horns??? Where did you get–

You fling up a hand to touch them and they are gone, as though they had never been there. You feel like you might’ve imagined it.

Her hand is still touching your skin. It feels cool and alien and alive, and nothing like skin should feel like. You stare up at her. Her eyes are glowing. Her lips are faintly curved.

“The next time someone dares you to tempt the gods, little mortal, don’t listen. Not always will you be protected by my noble servants. Still, you must be punished somehow for what happened tonight–”

And she lunges and bites you in the neck. Blood spurts for the second time this evening.

You physically throw her off you. “What the hell!” You shout, and then you feel something murky and hot in your veins, and your lips grow too dry. “What,” you say, and then you stumble. 

“Tonight and tomorrow and the day after you serve me, and then I shall return you here unharmed. Never mind, Screwdriver, the child isn’t hurt. Stop biting at me. Oh, yes, I know, you are a good boy, you’re protecting the nice mortal, the mortal will be fine–fine, only tomorrow. Alright.”

It’s a morning. You wake up at the lake. Stef finds you, face so pale she looks like death. She clutches you against her, and you don’t know why. Evonne, your very favorite councilor, cries and tells you never to disappear from camp again, and you realize it’s been a day since the dark of the moon. You reach up to touch your neck.

The bite is still there; but at the cleft of your throat, something metal rests. A tiny arrow on a strand of silver as thin as floss. 

You realize, very suddenly, that you should probably get a book about mythology. You also give Screwdriver your entire breakfast. You aren’t exactly hungry for it anyway.

What the seeker begged for on the mountain

Posted on by tworoadsdivergedinyellowwood

When they made mortals, inscribed upon their skin beauty

They found you awaking in the depths of the sea

And they drew you forth, hooked and netted, to feed the starving.

It was not you, but your mother, of course, they ensnared, and from her

They pulled you

And wondered.

They lit you within to ask your forgiveness,

Made you a heart of pity and lungs of pain,

With your ruined hair they bound you

And set you on the mountain

For me to come and find.

Me, they did no such injury to;

It was men who injured me.

And I sought you, starving, besotted,

Remembering in my pain nothing but your name,

Which they put on my lips from the day I came to be,

To send me as sacrifice to you, that I might feed the starving

And justice would be served.

I bled on every ocean floor, crying your name, weeping and sniveling,

Begging even to see your face. I crushed kingdoms so.

Now I come to you, bloody with guilt,

An empire behind me and death before,

And I ask you to be unmerciful, as you have never been

Because you have spared so many of us, and it never does us any good when you do.

I am never merciful, darling, and your punishment has already begun.

The poets told you love ruined men, but you shall be broken asunder and yet love me,

And your agony will never end.

This is your torture; you will be hungry forever, and I will remain eternally unsatisfied.

Thus, then, The Giant

Posted on by tworoadsdivergedinyellowwood

(If you haven’t noticed, some personal faults irritate you far more than they do anyone else).

I stand and face the fears that cripple

Small, unlovely, foul, despicable

I laugh at them while it is light

But woe betides me when comes the blight

And thus, then, the giant.

I stand and face the sweet temptation

And smile and know I own salvation

I easily turn my face aside

Temptation smiles: must only bide

And thus, then, the Giant.

The devil mocks me, gently cruel

I pray and know he is the fool

But his eyes are light and fiendish

He knows I am not at the finish

And thus, then, The Giant.

I grin with the brightness of the sun

And swear that God and me are one

And turn with delight as great as then

To laugh as coarse as fallen men

And Thus, then, The Giant.

I think that it is easily slain

It’s small, bitter, I’ll stamp it in twain

Its smile is cold as the fires of hell

It tastes in it’s mouth the Victory Bell

And THUS, Then, THE GIANT.

When His hands turn my face to look

At the redolent evil that is not in my book

I recognize, horribly, the eyes are my own,

The blood in the chalice is the blood I have sown,

And THIS, then, MY Giant.

It looms huge above me, the size of a fly

One good whack with a swatter, it would lay down and die

But I am the size of a subatomic bit

All the more likely, somehow, to be hit

And Thus, Then, IT’S GIANT.

That possibility’s His men do not comprehend

And don’t ultimately, unless, in the end

He takes and he bends things we think He cannot

Not the strong, but the weak, and the frail, and untaught,

And Thus, then, The Giant.

The fears that I’m facing are idiot fears

The tears that I’ve wept out are idiot tears

And shrunken before them I stand tiny and shrill

Screaming words to myself I’ve not heard and not will

And This IS MY GIANT.

Is it faith to face an ant and think you will win?

It is, only isn’t, till you’re shrunken in sin

Is it hope to face death and say life is more true?

It is, only isn’t, till death faces you.

Well Goodness, it’s Giant.

I’ve faced you down, idiot, for 19 months now

I’ve no promise I’ll beat you anyway anyhow

But I am not budging until you budge first

You’re the smallest and stupidest, weakest and worst,

But you are My Giant.

I should probably pray considering you’re huge

But do and then do as though in the deluge

I’ve got no chance of an angelic umbrella

My God, you’re a stubborn and idiot fella

But thus, then, the Giant.

I’ll probably fight you till my dying day

But I’ll believe until then that I’ll beat you one day

And should I or shouldn’t I the answer’s the same:

There is victory, freedom, and hope in His Name,

And Thus, then, The Giant.

Compression

Posted on by tworoadsdivergedinyellowwood

Take sixty or forty things you hate

Enemies do not abate

Take fifty or eighty of your fears

Insecurity you drenched in tears

Drink six or ten glasses of wine

That fed on hollow silver vine

Eat twelve or thirteen of your faults

Unlock the doors and vault the vaults

Compress these follies, hopes, despairs,

Leave curtains out on old, raw chairs,

Move houses once, or twice, or eight

And love a thing you thought you’d hate

Let the walls of your life collapse on you

Say things you never said you’d do

Cut straight to the core of empty things

Cut off the finger’s diamond rings

Find your darkest memories of depression:

Congratulations, you’ve found compression.

Take a year of sunshine that you felt

Take ice cream that you meant to melt

Take bitter tears and mornings glad

Take silly friends who scream “Egad!”

Light the halls with sweet expression;

There it is, again, compression.

“When did you get so very tall?”

“I remember when you were small.”

“I don’t remember you at all.”

Honesty does have you in thrall.

And look at that collected digression

Oho! Again. It is compression.

Take the delegation home in session

You find yourself inside compression.

When you’re stretched as wide as you will go

Your truest self you cannot know

But when you fit inside yourself

You’ll find your heart laid on a shelf

And open it without obsession;

And find what is yourself: compression.

The Night was Dread

Posted on by tworoadsdivergedinyellowwood

And the boy said to the frightened knight

“Why are you afraid?

“This day and night together you have watched and you have prayed.

“Yet you pray as though none hears your voice or answers to your call

“But say God heedeth everyone and ever answers all.

“Be not faithless in your faith nor hopeless in your hope.

“If the captain casts the anchor

“He will not cut the rope.”

I only write men to give you the reader unreasonably high expectations because you deserve it <3

Posted on by tworoadsdivergedinyellowwood

in other news have an excerpt of my darling idiot Sebastian.

“See here’s the thing, I say we’re best friends because Maren and I may be basically engaged but then she ends up on fairy drugs somehow and says something like ‘I can hold the entire world in my hands,’ and then grabs. Bryce’s. Face. And if it’s my kind of fiance saying that you’d think I’d be mad, but if I tell you she’s my dumbass best friend you understand why I’m laughing so hard I can’t breathe for like 8 minutes while she blinks at him and then says, ‘wait, you aren’t my cat,’” Sebastian explained, and Roslind looked at him like he was insane.
“MY SISTER WAS HIGH?”
“Well, I mean she is 5 8, so to you I suppose she is,” Sebastian said.

Enraged

Posted on by tworoadsdivergedinyellowwood

it’s bnha but you don’t need to be a bnha fan to read it! Please enjoy ❤

It’s the least heroic feeling

It’s the easiest feeling

It’s the drip drip dripping

In the pit of his stomach

A raindrop suspended over the ocean in a storm

And he never knows what it is until he looks into bright scarlet eyes

And something snaps inside him

And it is

RAGE

A gushing earthquake

A vast and trembling wound.

”Deku!”

And the voice is sweet and pretty

Just like another voice used to be sweet and pretty when its owner held hands with him

Walked him to school

There isn’t shame in the name

There is Betrayal

And his veins keep igniting with the anger.

Heroes don’t get to be angry.

He wants to help, only monsters get angry.

How do you avoid getting angry when they don’t let you help?

His teeth are gritted when he screams.

He wonders if his friends know how often the tears aren’t sorrow or joy or excitement

But rage so pure and entire that his stomach feels like a furnace

And he holds it.

Excessive force is a mortal sin

Because the worst crime

(he knows he knows he knows he’s watched he’s burned)

Is to have power

(power is such a game though, it’s such a toy, when the world is so much bigger and the adults are so much bitterer and your hands are tied tied tied behind your back good god)

And abuse it

(he still sees the blood spurting behind his eyes and it’s not what he wants he just wants the dam inside him to burst, he just wants to go, he just wants to d i s a p p e a r)

And part of him is angrier that they won’t let him

Than if they never noticed at all.

He wants to make it better and he’s so so so so so angry

And when he’s not angry he’s empty

And when he’s not empty he’s seventy other things that make empty worse

And given the choice between emptiness or rage

He’s not certain he’s strong enough

This is why you don’t give a weakling power:

He doesn’t know how to give it up.