Warrior Heart

The snow swirled thick, outside in the almost opaque white night through the icy winds, her breathe coming in streams, Everlot SwordBorne Demonsbane struggled against the storm. She bent her multi-hued head as far back into her cowl as it would go and steeled her bare arms, her fast freezing fingers resting on the lions head pommel of  Immortalis, the great broad sword she hefted on her belt. This last campaign had been a victory, one wild and vicious but she had not stopped inside the won citadel. Once she has assured all posts had been covered and all the citizenry cared for, she had journeyed forth. She did not seek the warmth of victory fires, the dances of a liberated people or celebration, a general of the deadliest army in all the 12 Kingdoms, she was made for war.

Victory sent her straight back to her king. The ministers and bureaucrats following her victorious trail like a comet trailing sparks would soon bring peace and security to the kingdom she had liberated from its evil overlords, the people would welcome the food; gold and goodness that came at the hand of her king The High Lord Wulfric ElfSpawn ArdRi of the Summerlands.  Everlot was weary but she thought only of the next kingdom struggling under the yoke of the Demon Overlords; who had swarmed out the netherworld to try their hand at domination; and pushed forward. Her mist colored eyes scanned the horizon for threats but she doubted a demon horde would travel this far into this frozen storm even for the head of their greatest enemy. The cold was anathema to their kind. Thanking the Goddess for this blessing of the snow storm which assured her safety, if it did not freeze her first, she struggled on.

The snow flakes became larger and soon sharp shards of ice were buffeted by a growing north wind to thump resoundingly against her armor. She must seek shelter or the bards would soon have a new tale of the great general felled by a errant icicle. For just a moment she wondered whether the storm was a magical one but her own considerable skills had not detected any foreign energies, no this storm was Goddess sent. As the storm grew in volume, she broke into a run. Even a great oak would shield her from the roar of the storms fury, she almost ran up against the house before she could make out its snow covered outlines against the dark of the looming cliffs. Her fist beat but once against the door before it was opened and a deep voice hurried her in. She found herself inside a cozy warm candle lit room.  As the first strike of lightening found ground in the adamant cliffs, she looked up at the man who had opened his home to her.

Unusually tall, he was dressed in clean well mended buckskins, that had been worn to smooth softness. He carried no weapons, that she could see but his wide shoulders spoke of physical labor. His pointed ears and forest eyes spoke of mixed heritage , nothing as exotic as her human witch mother and elf mage father, but yes one of his parents had laid with something not quite human and one of them had come away with a child.  And she could sense from the warm golden aura around him, that he had magic, his own, she could not sense the flavor of his magic. She spoke cautiously, not seeking to offend.
'I Everlot SwordBorne Demonsbane, general of the 1st legion seek shelter and guest rights, I will pay with coin and blessings from the mothers three' 
He answers her in the accents of the Northlands:
'I Duncan App Adamant offer you the shelter of this home and seek no payments'

It seemed that the air between them lightened and his aura became brighter. Even though her enemies doubted that her face could do it, Everlot fetched out a smile for this kind stranger. He was watching her with his curious cat eyed gaze, as she doffed her long bow and arrows, her cloak and cowl. Drawing closer to the fire, she found she had little to say. Her conversations normally conducted over maps and with spies around war techniques and training and none of those would serve her now. She would not risk scaring her host by speaking of how many demons she had slayed and how her battle magick sent them fleeing before her gibbering as she slaughtered them, or how she discovered women the beasts had captured and freed them, healing them as she could. The horrors of her life seemed truly violent here in this place with its red quilted covered and hand woven rugs.

'You may leave your sword, none will threaten you here'
She looked at him with surprise, Immortalis had been at her waist for so long an extension of her own hand, again not wishing to offend, she drew off her sword belt and short stabbing dagger, the disc throwing blade too and laid them on his great table. She knew a storm of such fury would not last long and even as her fingers flexed as if in separation anxiety, she knew she would soon be on her way. Besides even without bow, dagger, blade or broadsword she was far from defenseless. Her magick and hand to hand combat skills would best any warrior in the 12 Kingdoms.

'You have journeyed far in this cold'
As he spoke he fetched two turned wood bowls and two carved spoons, laying them on the table. Setting her a place as if Immortalis were one of those flower bouquets that ladies laid in the center of the formal dinner table.  Well she reasoned, Immortalis is beautiful and has more purpose than any blossom that decorated a high lords table. The silence grew as if he awaited her answer.
'Yes, I must hurry to my kings side'
As he sliced a cottage loaf and spooned out something that looked glossy and thick redolent with the smell of mountain thyme, he glanced at her.
'Your King would have you journey on such a night, surely even Generals make camp'
She did not know how to reply to this comment because, it was not her King that commanded her but her own battle hunger that drove her, She knew her King often wished she would celebrate, that she would partake in receiving of the spoils and he often urged her to journey to the Summerlands and rest between campaigns But she did not, She did not have the skills to be a soft daughter, pride to her father at home. Her sisters lives made her hungry for things she should not have. She had turned from that, her magick was made for battle and the Goddesses themselves had called her to war.

'He does not wish me to travel, but It is known to me that whilst others remain oppressed by the Demonic hordes, he will not rest, therefore this being so, how can I?'
He said naught but poured out a deep claret colored wine into lathe turned drinking cups. Everlot watched as his preparations done, he gestured her to the table. Sitting down to his right, the woman's place, she felt strange. In her world as a general, she ate at the king's table, his dark left hand, or alone in her library in the warrior tower.
'You are really her then, descender of all those hoards, the one the people call Dark Death?
Everlot was shocked, that here in the backwoods of these Northern wastes he had heard of her.
Yes I am She.'
She was not ashamed of her fury and might, this was the work of her life. He looked at her as she ate, occasionally drinking and eating, but mostly watching her. Everlot was tempted to shout Boo! and see if he started.
'Are you on to free the final city now?'
This question startled her, the final city was Sindra a seaport, the final strong hold where freedom must yet come to the people and to the demonic hordes their descent back to the hells they arose from. Once Sindra was won, the hordes would finally be scourged free from the 12 Kingdoms.
'Yes'
He stared at her, his face lit by wry amusement
'You don't make polite conversation easy, general'
Everlot started and then for the first time in the longest time, she laughed. He was right, the long past 6 years of unerring war had given little chance of practice of politeness and conversation. Perhaps she had been trading threats with Demonkine for so long, she had forgotten these soft things.
'I don't have much cause for practice'

'Ah, so the Demon hordes don't trade pleasantries'.
His laugh was so big, it was almost a living thing. his golden aura alight with pleasure and delight. There was such joy inside this little room, just through the simple act of his laughter. His smile curved face was compelling, it was as if all his magick was tied up inside the act of simply being happy. Everlot watched him and wished he would laugh again/
'but the next time I encounter some, before I descend them, I will ask about their tea preferences'

His glance was surprised but the great delightful shout of laughter that followed made her smile.
'and they say Generals can not laugh'
Everlot ate up, the simple act of sharing a meal in relative safety was new to her. Suddenly she wished to know more. Who was this lone soul, in this cabin here on the edge of nowhere.
'How do you come to be here, Duncan of the Adamant?'
He looked at her square in her mist borne eyes and smiled.
'I am truly as I am named, Of the mountains, I can sing the adamantine from the rock and then I shape it into weapons. So here with my rock is where I must stay'
Everlot was surprised, metal smiths especially those who could use their magics to draw the adamantine from the mountains were rare. All the blades and weapons used to slay demonskine came from such magicians, and they were a rare magic gift.
That blade, he gestured at Immortalis, is of my make.

Everlot was startled, her blade had come to her in her vision quest. It was one thing to tip arrows in metal and master the craft of folding the steel and honing its edge but to make a blade such as Immortalis, meant the maker was guided by the Goddesses three to make a blade for a warrior a million miles away, who powers and hands would fit the blade and such blades often came to change histories. Duncan was no mere metal smith, he was a metal mage.  A rarity among the rare.  She wondered if he had made only one blessed blade. Almost as if he sensed her question; he answered.

I have made only this one blessed blade, She of the Dark Moon, the Dark Goddess spoke to me, the three did come but she spoke first. Bade me make this blade, when It was done, they all spoke in turn and I watched the three who were one draw the blade through the mists. I did not dare hope to see this blade again. When I heard word from trappers of your sword and goddess marks, I knew that blade had a found a home. 

Everlot looked at his great scarred fingers holding his spoons, the Goddesses had called her blade: her destiny, promised her it would lead her to overturn fates and free the people and bring her joy. She had both loved and respected Immortalis. She could not believe this blessed blade had brought her home to its maker. Her head spun with the wonder, she wondered if any of the other 3 bearers of the blessed swords had ever been so blessed as she to share salt with the maker of her blade. The ancients believed that the mages poured themselves into their swords, that each sword lived only because its maker sacrificed a piece of his own magic soul to make it so. She wondered at the will of the Goddess to bring her here on this night in the midst of a great war.

There is always purpose in her workings in your wryd, in your fate . 

Duncan watched the warrior at his table with great eyes, she had the stink of fate about her. She could not be the woman the Goddess promised him. For this was no soft woman to bear him sons. He had given much of himself to the forging of Immortalis and he had been promised much without his asking.  To him in the ravaged land would come a twin flame, a mirror soul and his sons would be kings in this land and the next. He was comforted by her otherness, she was truly a worthy wielder of the sword he spent years singing to life. As she finished her meal and  set down her spoon. She rose and he rose with her.

Would you like to see it?


As Duncan watched she drew the sword from its scabbard and presented it to him, As he closed his fists around this sword, he Felt. his own magic danced and intertwined with hers. Pulsing deep inside this blade, powering it with deadly purpose and righteous rage. He sensed his own strength and patience beneath the fire of her passion and rage. He could sense the wild joy of her battle fury, the deep sense of serenity she found in peace and there in the midst of it all his own magic flowing with hers, lending it stability, lending it power. She truly took this creation and put it to its glorious purpose.

War

 I have made battle upon the stars

I have struggled with the universe

Bleeding and punch drunk on my small victories
Winning an inch
Cheating destiny
Like an outlaw shouting my defiance
I would not be bound by the universe
I would fight to become
To heal
Fate was not my mistress
I Wild, defiant rebellious woman
Refusing to bow
Until Fate brought me You
At once a fatal blow
I am laid low
I am undone
I kiss my hands to the stars
I lay down my weapons
At last peace
I can not fight
I am at once still
I stand beneath the moon with your hand in mine and I am calmed.
For all my scars are healed at once
In the light of us
Now the stars soften and I am distracted
By your eyes and your soft smile
I take your hand
But every now and then
I look at Fate
Gimlet gazed
I remind Her
That I am always what I once was
I remind the stars that my knives cut
And for this I may be prepared to die
For this I will fight
For this peace I will go to War
For is there any creature more determined than a warrior who has discovered her home.

Longing

What worth is the starlight, what use the moons glow when there is no you to kiss beneath them.
The oceans symphony might as well be silence for without you there is no one to dance with.
The soft sands may well be molten for who else would walk beside me.
The summer breeze could blow askance for with out you who spares a glance.
Come home my love, come and see.
How your absence sickens me.
How I am weary.
Come home for I long to hear the wordless way you say you love me. Come home and we can finally be, all that shimmered between you and me!

Woman

There is something indefinable in your beauty, a rare clean quality that cuts me like a knife.
The angles of your face covered in such fine fine skin, a galaxy of silk sprinkled with constellations of freckles. Each one an invitation to kisses. The high fine planes of your face, punctuated by your compelling mouth.
An incredible hit of sweetness amid all your planes and angles, fascinating sweeps of sherbet colour, their soft fullness a distraction.
I think of the brush that swept you in colour, and those Hands that mounded your strength and softness, grateful to the stars that died so their components could be made into the dips made for my kisses. Into expanses of velvet softness,the valleys of your body a land I could become lost in. No maps, forging paths in the softness, hearing your heartbeat jump and conducting orchestras comprised of sighs and muscle pulses, the high sacred language of sighs we speak in codes, reading braille promises to your seeking fingers.
You are honey to my mouth and I horde each taste, coming to you like a pilgrim seeking your taste before all else. Baptized in sensation and spine arching lightening, our bed is my temple, I can think of nothing else.
Where would I not go if your eyes beckoned me, beyond the border of what I know, I am falling and flying. I am taken entirely by their color, which is never but always the same. Gazing in wonder wrapped in my own thoughts, my walking daydream with a name and a voice is in the world.
I write you in reams and the ink runs deep like my thoughts when I think of us, I could write you forever like my time when I think of us, but now I don't want to write you, I aches to feel you because my words are poor response to the magic you make with your hands...I get wild fires and I can only give you these incandescent sparks from my memories of a light so vital, I can't capture it in these streams of word.

Troubled Mind-thinking thoughts

I wish I had some noble intention, some grand deed I wished to see accomplished through my plannings and mechanization, instead I have desire, pure and unadulterated, naked raw and damn exquisite. It is roaring through my blood with my blood, the idea makes me deadly sin lust for the reality. The sheer force of need is almost too much for me to bear.

Like parched earth, hides a multitude of potential so too does my seemingly innocent skin hide the secret of my myriad fantasies. Spontaneous combustion, completion and exhaustion inside the sacred chambers of my mind, finally I set match to the pyre I have raised. Standing inside the reality of rejection my stubborn senses remember the sensation of your fingers on my skin, the taste of your mouth on mine. It is a million tiny things I can not begin to name. So much sensation, too many emotions and oh , the things I imagined doing. I wonder if you have ever been desired like this before.

By someone like me, lavishing hours of fantasy to the final unwrapping and  consumption. Like loving you so softly, you may wonder at the sweet insinuation of my skin on yours, in delicate traceries and slow sure strokes, singing hymns to your beauties, till your skin warmed to my worship. Making a soft dissolution of your boundaries,until you expire in breathy whispers of your fidelity. Sinking sweet words inside your skin, until any who tasted you after me, would leave with a sugar high. imagine swallowing the sounds of your pleasure, sweat slicked skin, sliding home to the heart of me. Darling I will leave you spent inside the universe of our creation.

Though other times, I want it harder. I just want to be your thing, taken. Like you have no equal anywhere, like no one but you can touch this. slide the knife's edge of pain and pleasure, make me writhe and rise to your fingers. School me, how you like. Leave your fingerprints on me and aches in me. Place those long strong strong fingers over my mouth, drown the screams you draw. till all I hear is the sound of my own ragged breathing and tell me thick with desire how you want to f*&%k me harder. Primal and instinctive, leave nothing left. Take all of myself in multiples, in screams in spine bowing pleasure. Leaving torn clothes and exposed tenderness, make me surrender, leave me mindless in you, keep this big brain silent. Make me nerve ends and sensation. Make me first woman, take it like no one has before you, let me remember you in aches and slow motions on the the morning after.


Set me free, name me custodian of that magnificent body. Let me explore you, no compass needed, Let me learn from senses; the smooth taste of you, let me roll it like whiskey all smoke and caramel, till that taste makes my mind shudder in memory of the pleasure associated with you. Let me break all those taboos, till there is nothing left. First time, life  memory. Sugar i will redefine your idea of what pleasure can be, put you till the edge of your sanity. I am this ready, this fulsome, in my power. Baby I will make it so none can come after me, kiss consume each second of your precious attention. Perhaps it is best i do not indulge my pleasures, i am always a recovering addict to your particular brand of slow poison. . .

letter to a girl child

Dear She


I just thought someone should let you know, you are magnificent.
I wanted to tell you that yesterday, you broke my heart, that moment when you let them make you feel like nothing, when you listened to the world that moment just broke my heart and I thought someone should let you know, you are beautiful.


I don't want to tell you that beauty doesn't matter because beauty is everywhere. It is in the savagery of a preying jaguar, dark and deadly but it also lives in the sweet domesticity of the whorled rose. Why do you listen to the crowd, I write this letter, this passionate declamation in praise of your beauties. Beauties, plural. A wolf does not long for the antlers of the deer, she is implicitly perfect in tooth and claw for what she is meant to be. Why then do you look upon others and long for their ideals.  Your body that you seem determined to starve, wax, cut and inject into submission is an amalgamation, a celebration of love. You yourself, walk this earth as living proof that inside human skin lies the capacity to create a miracle. 


Each whorl of skin, is home to sensation every millimeter delicately sensitive to touch, touch the elemental language of humanity. Your skin is singular, every marking a maker's distinction,  your Creator loved you this much. Have you seen the way the sun luxuriates in your hair making it dance with motes of light, this light that travels through the dark of the universe for years, it dances through hair, delights in the silken nets.


I swear every time I look into your eyes I am reminded why humanity chases the dream of space. The mercurial color, the way they darken when you let the world bring your tears and the sure light inside them when you pray. Your eyes are like clear quicksand, drawing people in to drown them in the storm of emotions so clearly writ inside them. A fringe of spiky lashed rebellion, with your eyes I would raze the world to submission.


Sometimes I watch you and wonder how I share space with something this wondrous. I know you hate your body, you measure it by models, you weigh it with magazines. But you have a vintage shape, curved and deep. You may not be heroin chic, you are burlesque. You are not the daisy, you are the night-blooming jasmine, a haunting all-pervading scent of seduction. The size of your jeans is but an arbitrary measurement. Your body is an outright statement of feminity, a declaration of womanity.


Why do you look after those who are far too rough, far too steeped in themselves to understand the value of your softness. Their affections will be triumphed by one who will see the delicacy inside your heart,one who is grown enough to reach up to you and not grasp you down to them. I wish you would see the illuminant light you shine in the world, you yourself. These things of the world, these things you measure yourself against,  their glow is but a poor reflection of the true light of you. You draw others like moths they come, why do you think?


Don't let the world twist that innocent wild child dance you were born with. There is a reason your core is softness, like my core is strength. We balance each other, a yin and a yang and because I know you, I can state without any reservation, dear heart, you are beauty. Know it in your soul, walk with it like a cherished secret, make them ache to know why you walk like a conqueror. Why do you seek to be one of many when you are a masterstroke.




Take it from one who knows 

Happily ever after

Why are evil queens evil.
have they stood
here
Here where I stand
Watching everything
everything they loved
everything they dreamed
everything they secreted
ride into the sunset

Why are evil queens evil . . .
have they stood
here
Here where I stand
feeling destruction
destroying the castles
built on air
of fantasy
whims slaughtered
Why are evil queens evil
Did they stop believing
in white knights
in happily ever afters
After the conflagration of their dreams
did they simply wish to pay the world back in kind
Why are evil queens evil?
tired of being destroyed
by princesses
some destroy the world
others like I
simply seek
to burn themselves
away to nothing
happily ever after
forever