Quincunx

(part two of two) "Should we take Mogmallow?" asked Rydia, scratching under the mane of a plump pegasus. The bobblie-stalk on the pegasus's bridle waved as it flicked its ear happily. Rydia smiled and flicked her own ears in friendship. Rune wandered in and out of the stalls, swooshing her feet through piles of shed pegasi feathers and fur. One pegasus nosed its way into her pockets and snuffed at the chocolate kisses, while another one leaned down and whispered, "You can ride me bareback," and showed her its golden eyes. Decisively she announced, "I pick THAT one!" and bounced up onto its back. The pegasus bolted out of the stables with Rune clinging desperately to its mane, gaining altitude without spreading its wings and outpacing the other pegasi. Rydia's screams faded as she and the other pegasi were left under the clouds. Rune looked down, unafraid, but unhappy. The clouds looked different from up here, more solid, and the pegasus's hooves struck flint-gray sparks as it cantered up and down the cloudbank. "You said I could ride bareback!" she pouted. With a toss of its nose, the pooka was back in natural form. "I did not say the ride was safe." Rune wailed, "Are you gonna DROP me?" "It's not the journey you should fear. Here we are safe, but we are traveling away from safety." The pooka was shifting once more; Rune could feel muscles sliding and growing, throwing her off balance. She bounced along on its right side with her leg over its back, but the pooka rippled silver and slippery--Rune lost her grip! She dropped onto the clouds, bounced, and rolled with the new creature in pursuit. Tzimfemme caught Rune by an ankle. "Watch it, you're close to the edge!" the naked mage snapped, then looked back, then down at herself. "Strange things happen out here. For sure and certain that wasn't part of my personae before," she amended, swinging the demoness up for a piggyback ride. They loped along, sinking between glassy clouds that started to lick upwards in waves, then spouts, then fires. . . Rune gasped. This was a wasteland! Flat gray pans of volcanic glass stretched as far as she could see (craning her neck), no sun, no sound, no wind. . .brilliant white cracks hanging in midair between the frozen spouts, ringed by silver fire. A nearby crack bulged and widened momentarily before the fire consumed it; Rune's eyes rounded and she hid behind Tzimfemme's shoulder. "This is the border between fantasy and reality. This is the hearth of what you call the soul." She spoke, but no sound came out! Rune scribbled spells and they crumbled as soon as they left her fingertips. The dust hung in midair. "Nothing works properly here," continued Tzimfemme, "spells fall apart and physics fails. Nothing but words. If you don't have your words out here. . .Reality shines through, grinds you down to a featureless spirit. It's horrible, but you needed to see what you--pardon, what your other personae are fighting. They say it's not so bad, they say it's inevitable--pah!" In a fury she twitched her fingers like typing, building up a silver aura, and sent the fire through a crack with a jab of the right little finger. On the other side, Rune watched text flicker on a vertical panel, and the reader sigh thoughtfully; beside them in the Fantasy, a woman in white dress and boots and wide-brimmed hat materialized. Tzimfemme nodded to Sossity. "Sometimes I think we're related," she confided to Rune. "Be that as it is, she was born out here, she's one of the ones who keeps things to their proper places--" All of them swiveled, hearing the faint rasp from one widening crack: "--ws sources tel--imminent war--" Sossity plucked Rune safely away as Tzimfemme leaped at the crack, mind ablaze, shouting, "Out out OUT! This is sanctuary! SANCTUARY I said! We could outcreate your destruction in our SLEEP!" Currents raced along the ground from all directions, and Rune scrambled down to put her palms on the ground; these words were magic, this one felt like reverie, and that one was traces of lumpenproletariat, and this one was Yui-chan for sure! The poems and journals and essays clustered around the fissure, knitting the crack in the Pen psyche, smoothing out the stress. Tzimfemme dropped her hands and smiled grimly as the crack faded to near nonexistence. "It's not me, and it's not you, that closed that," she finished. "It's all of us. My role here is to do battle with the bringers of drab reality," and with that she bent and kissed Rune's forehead, "and yours is to maintain the fortress, else we all are swept away in its undertow. Sossity and I are going to stay out here awhile, we'll make the Pen call you home--and be sure to thank all those people whose thoughts you were splashing in, they can feel it." "Sorry," Rune mumbled to the ground. The volcanic glass rippled as Rune found her voice again, picking her up in a gentle hollow and floating her away. . .

Rune looked around quickly for people, squinting through the dark as only a demoness could. . .nobody! A secret room meant a secret wall meant a PERFECT place to draw on! Only after digging out the crayon did she find someone else had gotten there first. All of the walls were inlaid with silver swirls and eyes and polished reflective patches (those hurt her sight) and at the very end, someone (how'd Rune miss her before? she was all glittery with jewelry) was still working! Rosemary laid down the stylus and sheet of silver leaf, then fluttered one hand near Rune's face in the gloom. "Pale but not as I am. . ." she murmured, "as blue as I," and traced along the silver with her other hand. She pointed at a counter-clockwise triskelion on the unfinished wall. "You," explained Rosemary. "What?" "You're why what was once that became this." "I don't get it," Rune said, looking at the wall. Well, it kinda looked like a spell. . . .She traced along the pattern too, but it seemed to suck away power as soon as she wrote it down. Fearfully the vampire snatched at Rune's hand and tugged her away. "Run," she whispered, backing away from the wall and dragging Rune with her. The little demoness dodged a spike of terror from Rosemary and stumbled along unhappily, shutting her eyes as the patterns glowed too brightly for words, faster and faster and faster. . . and faster. . .and something was funny about the other girl's hand. . . Rune got curious. "How come we're running?" she asked, opening her eyes again. "Dunno," Minta replied, and stopped. The Pen Keep kept moving under their feet for about half a minute, tapestries flashing by like a flipbook, then jarred to a halt. Minta scrambled up a tapestry of Cerulean's Masquerade (a picture of the Impostor cards being shuffled by GyrWyvern, with a border of smiling Pekkle heads) and peeked out the window. "Cool!" she reported, "We went backwards! I thought we were gonna move again an' I was kinda sad 'cause not everybody got here from the last time an' Rydia didn't wanna move the tower either 'cause she's got a boyfriend ewwwwwwww!" Rune climbed up the matching tapestry (this one showed Scarlett O'Tzimfemme as the sixty foot tall woman, the border a series of Decanters of Endless Booze all labeled "Drink Me") and peered out the window too. "It looks the same to me." Minta's eyes got really really wide and silverglinty. Awed, she said, "You don't know?" "What?" Rune repeated. The glints went out. "I dunno either, but it's important," sighed Minta, then changed her mood in an instant, "You wanna sneak into Rydia's room? Her boyfriend leaves candy sometimes, but Rydia doesn't know that yet." She beamed and put her hands in her pockets, pulling out fistfuls of slightly squashed chocolate kisses--and suddenly toppled forward in a burst of white light. Rydia stood behind Minta, blocking the hallway with her hands on her hips. "I keep track of EVERYTHING shiny that's in my room, ever! I've noticed those going missing for WEEKS! And to think I blamed the Waterlily," she sobbed quietly. Unobtrustively, Minta climbed up the tapestry and disappeared onto the lintel. Rune watched dust filter down from atop the next window, and the next, and so on down the hall, not noticing Rydia's pointed ears also tracking the motion. "As for you," Rydia continued, "I need to take you to Tzimfemme, she's bugging all of us about it. . .somehow. . .well I never understood it," she giggled nervously. "She's out on the Pen borders, so follow me, I'll let you ride on a pegasus. You'll love it, they like to dive and spin while they fly." Hand in hand, they skipped down the corridors and stairways (Rune sometimes taking a handrail down, zooooooooooom!). . . (part one of two)

Poetic? You want poetic? The matter was settled before I even began writing!!!!! Argh. Before I whap my head against my desk for hours, commentary: revery sailed right over my head. i am going back for a deeper look. impostor's plots interlock like a fibonacci spiral.

Priceless, absolutely priceless. . .

With an expressive poem like that, I have only one critique. . . it needs _NO_ preface. Let the poems speak for themselves, as the commentaries show, we identified with it although few were in the same age/situation. A preface only limits your potential audience. --Tzimfemme, the naked mage

Depression is one of nature's last attempts to cull us. Nature gave us weather and we thought of clothing. Nature gave us famine and we thought of agriculture. Nature gave us disease and we thought of medicine. . .Now nature has given us deceptive thoughts. Depression always ends. Always! Contrary to its message, it is inconstant, slinking away at the exercise of four smiling muscles, receding as quietly and slowly as it came, even cowering away from the lift of the spirits before suicide. The impermanent thought gives way to the permanent impulse to continue living. . .

You were thinking of a villanelle*, Impostor, this poem is vaguely Elizabethan sonnet form, with liberties taken on which lines rhymed with which, and rules concerning full stops heaved out of the channel. The poem was a stab at being poetic with crudity, lately a popular form here. . .without a lesson backing it, crudity is a worthless exercise, and I prefer 'most anything else I've written. *This is a villanelle

Well, if the entry was so mundane as to not even be counted, it certainly wouldn't win. Heheh.

Belted out over ten minutes, after too long of being in the room. Three nervous men who roll themselves in ink to hide their naked limbs. They roll and rub in consciouness of being male, and flub up lines to girls, and sweat, and sweat, and stink. . . They slime their way on others as a shield they know there's something secret and it's theirs but men are not alone in having hairs and girls all have no reason yet to yield. . . Uncertainty anticipates the sight, those hairs are tingling "Other Gender Near", What should we do to cover up our fear? (our girlish frets recurring every night) It's obvious they're just the same as us Except for that protrusion and that pus.

Doesn't seeing that [sic] make you feel il?

There are cookies and no chocolate--I'm leaving. --Tzimfemme, the naked mage, and the only one who got in, this not being EQ

Dammit! I was supposed to have left today, to muck about and ruin people's years and generally avenge the loss of my muse, but I stayed here too long and missed my flight, and why? Because I was bloody chatting on IRC where it all began and couldn't tear myself away.

Note to the non-Pen-people: I was _in_ the bally thing and it still didn't make any sense!

Tzimfemme tips a salute with her flail. "We'll be coming along as you like," she says, and wanders onward with the altar for the silver flame balanced precariously atop her head. Behind her, their portion of the Pen Keep (half a tower and a chunk of the keep from underneath it) hovers uncertainly until Rydia, standing at her window with eyes shut and whip extended, tilts her thumbs forward. Trailing behind on a rope, Minta giggles as her hang glider picks up altitude once more. Rosemary appears at a lower window, looks down, and vanishes behind the draperies. [Edit: Testing for invisible editing]