Isaac was a Priest of Avandra who had been blessed with less than stellar luck.
He had been born in a village that no longer existed, having been raided by bandits a few months after his birth. His mother, an elf, had died before he’d been old enough to remember her face. His father, a goliath orc, had taught him excellent orcish in an area that did not speak the language. He had joined the Priesthood of Avandra and since then spent more time running away from angry people than travelling like he ought.
He had ended up as a young human in the elfish city of Thotō. And it was a very nice city, and the rest of the Temple staff wer
[Trapped & Creep]
Drip.
Cold. Quiet.
Drip.
No. Not entirely quiet.
Drip.
There was the sound of footsteps, occasionally. A heavy thunk, thunk, thunk on the boards above where the ones he heard the most.
Drip.
Sometimes, if it was really quiet, and he strained his ears, he heard the feather-light noise of feet from a smaller person, a child perhaps.
Drip.
Sometimes he would tap his fingers against the wooden floor, listening to the hollow echo, trying to time how often the dripping came, trying to work out if it was regular. He counted the noises like sheep to get himself to sleep at night.
Drip.
Sometimes he just lay awake.
Drip.
The soun
0:00
“Do you like owls?”
I glanced over at her, raising an eyebrow at the question. Not that sporadic questions weren’t something she asked all the time, but this one was weird even by her standards. She shot me a white-toothed grin in return. “Well, do you?” she pressed. I shrugged.
“I guess,” I allowed. “Same as any other bird.” She frowned. It wasn’t angry, just thoughtful, but I got the feeling I’d answered incorrectly nonetheless. The pause felt a little more uncomfortable than they normally did.
“Well, I like ‘em,” she responded. “T
Sele walked across the snow-covered cobbles, dragging the weathered chain behind him.
“Enough,” he whispered, smiling crookedly at the sight awaiting him.
In the drift the chain had dragged through the snow, metal rattled against stone.
**
“Word about town says it hit Anfalls last night,” the barkeep said. Sele’s eyes stayed fixed on the man’s hands, going round and round in quick, neat motions, cleaning the glass with a rag.
“Word is hearsay. Facts are better,” he remarked, a patron skirting around him as he shifted in his seat with the creak of old, worn leather. The ambient noise of
I wanted it to stop.
(People are very good at wishing for the impossible.)
**
When I became an Ophidian, they told me I shouldn’t hope to change my past, only that I should hope to save others from being put in my position. They told me I couldn’t make things run any differently. That was true.
They told me they had picked me up by chance. That sometimes an Ophidian finds you when you’re screaming by the wayside, begging for a second chance, blaming the world and screaming that it isn’t fair. That was lies. But most of them thought it was true.
**
“Lieutenant Galkin?”
“Receiving, just about. It
An open letter to the man who saved my father's life
Dear sir,
It becomes apparent as I open this letter that I can never begin it correctly. I do not know what to write, for I do not know your name. I know that you are a doctor, is that how someone is supposed to begin a letter to a man they have never met?
Nobody ever told me your name. I know, though, the other things they told me. Perhaps I could use them to fill the gaps, but part of me fears that removing the distance will take away some of the fascination. I know that you are more than just 'a doctor', I know that you are one of only four people in the whole world who knew how to do
Someone is smoking in your room. You walk through sweet-scented fog, and breathe deeply of the aroma around you. A nurse ducks in to tell your guest that there's no smoking in the hospital, but before she even finishes 'excuse me' he is gone, as if he never existed at all.
"I was watching you," a deep voice murmurs. You turn and see a man. He's old, probably in his forties at your best guess, and his dark brown hair is silvering at the edges. The eyes he turns on you are sharp, though. They look into you, and you feel vulnerable.
"Why?" you ask. He chuckles. It's a deep, sonorous sound. He smiles at you, and the corners of his eyes crinkle
Dreaming the Sky - File.01 by TsengEclipse, literature
Literature
Dreaming the Sky - File.01
Dreaming the Sky
The sunlight glinted off the tall, white towers and the forest of cogs and pulleys on the lower walls on the compound. A hand moved on the clock below a flag of a red sun casting light on a yellow sky.
Chime.
Five shots rang out in almost perfect unison, accompanied by the flight of a flock of startled birds.
Chime.
Footsteps crunched upon gravel, then paused. The handgun fired as the third bell sounded.
Chime.
Then silence.
For a long time, he didn't dare to move.
File.01: First Meeting
"Lance-Corporal Slater? Got a message for you."
Luther glanced up from cleaning his rifle in surprise to see a messenger, who pro
They buried her today.
I stood in the crowd, all of us dressed in blacks. I straightened my tie nervously as ladies I didn't know in big, veiled hats exchanged soft, sad words about what a shame it was. How she'd been so brilliant, how she'd had such a full life ahead of her. Ladies that didn't even know her.
There was a coffin, but there wasn't much in it. They didn't open the casket either, like they did sometimes. The man at the funeral home had said there was a limit to how much they could make fit for viewing, and I didn't really blame him for not even trying.
"This sucks," Cindy told me. We were sat at one of the cheap metal tables t
"There was no body to burn on the funeral pyre; only a wax effigy that bore no resemblance to the dead man it was meant to replace."
The flickers of firelight started from the bottom of the stack of wood, where the men had touched their torches to the pile and left them there to burn. The flames clambered up the structure like an inverted candle, finding the head of the effigy last, grasping at her wax features like fingers and pulling her skin down to drip onto the pyre with a hiss. Smoke billowed into the night sky, momentarily smudging the stars from the sky, like a blot of ink on a page.
The people around the fire stood impassively, hands
[Trapped & Creep]
Drip.
Cold. Quiet.
Drip.
No. Not entirely quiet.
Drip.
There was the sound of footsteps, occasionally. A heavy thunk, thunk, thunk on the boards above where the ones he heard the most.
Drip.
Sometimes, if it was really quiet, and he strained his ears, he heard the feather-light noise of feet from a smaller person, a child perhaps.
Drip.
Sometimes he would tap his fingers against the wooden floor, listening to the hollow echo, trying to time how often the dripping came, trying to work out if it was regular. He counted the noises like sheep to get himself to sleep at night.
Drip.
Sometimes he just lay awake.
Drip.
The soun
0:00
“Do you like owls?”
I glanced over at her, raising an eyebrow at the question. Not that sporadic questions weren’t something she asked all the time, but this one was weird even by her standards. She shot me a white-toothed grin in return. “Well, do you?” she pressed. I shrugged.
“I guess,” I allowed. “Same as any other bird.” She frowned. It wasn’t angry, just thoughtful, but I got the feeling I’d answered incorrectly nonetheless. The pause felt a little more uncomfortable than they normally did.
“Well, I like ‘em,” she responded. “T
Sele walked across the snow-covered cobbles, dragging the weathered chain behind him.
“Enough,” he whispered, smiling crookedly at the sight awaiting him.
In the drift the chain had dragged through the snow, metal rattled against stone.
**
“Word about town says it hit Anfalls last night,” the barkeep said. Sele’s eyes stayed fixed on the man’s hands, going round and round in quick, neat motions, cleaning the glass with a rag.
“Word is hearsay. Facts are better,” he remarked, a patron skirting around him as he shifted in his seat with the creak of old, worn leather. The ambient noise of
I wanted it to stop.
(People are very good at wishing for the impossible.)
**
When I became an Ophidian, they told me I shouldn’t hope to change my past, only that I should hope to save others from being put in my position. They told me I couldn’t make things run any differently. That was true.
They told me they had picked me up by chance. That sometimes an Ophidian finds you when you’re screaming by the wayside, begging for a second chance, blaming the world and screaming that it isn’t fair. That was lies. But most of them thought it was true.
**
“Lieutenant Galkin?”
“Receiving, just about. It
25: Write a piece based on "a blur of ego".
She was a dancer, and she moved her feet across the floor of Time’s progression. Every step rang out with little ripples from the point of impact, every movement fluid and perfectly timed, yet carefree and open.
Smiling, she showed bright white teeth to the passers-by, and moved on through the confusion that she left in the wake of her passage.
She would tell me that she didn’t belong in the here-and-now, that there was no such thing as ‘now’, that she was ‘here’, but would one day be everywhere. She told me she took a different route to work each day, to s
An open letter to the man who saved my father's life
Dear sir,
It becomes apparent as I open this letter that I can never begin it correctly. I do not know what to write, for I do not know your name. I know that you are a doctor, is that how someone is supposed to begin a letter to a man they have never met?
Nobody ever told me your name. I know, though, the other things they told me. Perhaps I could use them to fill the gaps, but part of me fears that removing the distance will take away some of the fascination. I know that you are more than just 'a doctor', I know that you are one of only four people in the whole world who knew how to do
Someone is smoking in your room. You walk through sweet-scented fog, and breathe deeply of the aroma around you. A nurse ducks in to tell your guest that there's no smoking in the hospital, but before she even finishes 'excuse me' he is gone, as if he never existed at all.
"I was watching you," a deep voice murmurs. You turn and see a man. He's old, probably in his forties at your best guess, and his dark brown hair is silvering at the edges. The eyes he turns on you are sharp, though. They look into you, and you feel vulnerable.
"Why?" you ask. He chuckles. It's a deep, sonorous sound. He smiles at you, and the corners of his eyes crinkle
The Last Ride Out
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Slowly, heavy-lidded eyes opened.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
"...ck this. Nothing to get out of it. Except maybe more proof that- Jesus Christ, will you look..."
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The room was blurry outlines of white and blue, the shapes nothing more than meaningless fuzz.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
"...Life signs, I think. Whole lot of zeros on it if that's the case."
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Laughter. Not like we're unused to it.
She blinked, and the fuzziness cleared a little. The incessant dripping dulled to background noise; her lungs could barely take in the air. She tried to move one of her hands, found it immobi
It's one of the earliest stories you're told as a child, the one about the Longest Road. The details seem to vary from family to family, but that's not surprising when the legend has been passed down for generations. Some think of it like an adventure, some tell it to their children as a horror story to discourage dangerous thinking, and some just mention it as an old wives' tale. My parents used the horror story approach, thinking it would quell any notions my young mind had about one day going in search of the Longest Road, but it did the opposite. The more they tried to tell me it was a terrifyi
Heart painted lips poke outwards as though mucous squeezed from an tender, shuddering eyeball. A frog pout and sucked in pink-tone cheeks battle for prominence on her round face. Poisoned yellow eyes swim, darting and floundering, in glaring ovals of cerulean paint. Eyebrows smothered, color gagged in virgin white over the chocolatey grey of her asthmatic skin. Unshined silver hair perches like the dried, immobile sand of a beach day castle on the tip top of her head. Dust hangs in the drapes of lace and chiffon oozing off her wasting body; it latches on like leeches, sticking to her bustle, her moth-eaten pettic
I watch the other men's faces nervously. We, six, sit around a wooden card table, sweating and glancing at one another. The room is dark, the only light comes from the seeping red sunset behind the half-open blinds. Our shadows elongate against the walls like a threatening mural, an omen for what is to come.
I take a deep breath, "A-are we sure about this?"
"What's a little fun without a little danger?" I can hear the cruel smile upon her lips. She watches us from the corner of the room. "Unless," she speaks with a sly undertone, "any of you boys are willing to talk?"
We stay dead silent. Eyes shift, no we will not rat anyone out. The cost
Milo dreams of caves; hundreds of thousands of seemingly endless feet, yards, miles of tunnels that twist and fold into each other like a frayed ball of string. Sunlight doesn't reach the caves, they are cold and dark as an abandoned tomb and even the air breathes thicker as mushroom clouds of dust fall from the ceiling and rise from the floor. The overwhelming feeling is of being buried alive and Milo wishes to beat on the coffin and beg for his freedom. The ceiling is too high to reach though, and rather than silence his cries are met by a cacophonous chorus of his own echoing voice. Milo turns on the spot but fails to choose a direction; a
Perhaps in a past life you were made of ink,
your eyes speckled like blotting paper,
complexion smooth as parchment.
And maybe your voice was storm cloud rolling
because I see your words
and they fill my heart with rain,
not the heavy kind that revels
in punching holes in butterfly wings but rather
the mist that paints the dew and
leaves the sky beautifully grey.
At the very least your soul was a mourning dove,
as there's a lilting sorrow in your words
that the air carries like a melody,
were I to speak them aloud
I would sing, hoping that my voice wouldn't shake
with your weeping.
Not strawberries. Definitely not strawberries.
He reads a lot and all the girls in his books have strawberry-scented hair and often strawberry-colored hair, but not this girl, the one in his arms. She has dark hair, black under insufficient lighting conditions, and it certainly does not smell of strawberries.
He hates strawberries anyway.
The Bright Side of Dyslexia by BatmanWithBunnyEars, literature
Literature
The Bright Side of Dyslexia
I was born with auditory dyslexia.
I once heard of someone who wrote, directed, and coastguard in their own movie.
I knew what the right word was, but it still got me thinking:
About the invigorating music of waves crashing against my vessel,
The challenge of serving to the best of my skills,
The pride of keeping the shores of my homeland safe.
That was how I found my career,
And it's been just as rewarding as I had hoped.
An episode of CSI mentioned literature marks on the vic's neck,
Which inspired a fulfilling side project of poetry.
In a later CSI, taunts were exchanged:
"I'm the king of the jingle here!
I wanted it to stop.
(People are very good at wishing for the impossible.)
**
When I became an Ophidian, they told me I shouldn’t hope to change my past, only that I should hope to save others from being put in my position. They told me I couldn’t make things run any differently. That was true.
They told me they had picked me up by chance. That sometimes an Ophidian finds you when you’re screaming by the wayside, begging for a second chance, blaming the world and screaming that it isn’t fair. That was lies. But most of them thought it was true.
**
“Lieutenant Galkin?”
“Receiving, just about. It
Well I haven't been on deviantART for a couple of months now due to issues in my personal life, but I logged on today after a quite long time to see that I got a DD!
I mean, wow. Thanks so much to neurotype-on-discord (https://www.deviantart.com/neurotype-on-discord) for the feature! And to every single person who commented and faved, also many thanks from the bottom of my heart. I worked very hard on that piece, especially since it was a short story (which I very rarely go back and edit), and to get a feature for it means a hell of a lot.
to my new watchers, welcome! I suppose this is the kick up the butt I need to start writing things again XD And I am going to do my best to respond to every c
Hi all! It's been a while since I've posted one of these, or anything to dA for that matter. Oops. ^^;
I was participating in both June and August Camp NaNoWriMo. I won both, but for obvious reasons the text will not be seeing the light of the 'net any time soon.
I'm hoping to start writing and posting more soon. I'm horribly behind with everything, especially group-based. Bluh.
But that's not what this is about! I am asking you for help, watchers/anyone who sees this!
I currently record the long-running D&D campaign I'm in using a simple A5 notebook I bought at STaples, but it's running out of pages. I was hoping to get something a bit m