41
General Conversation / Youtube embed test
« Last post by bahgheera on May 12, 2010, 05:20:09 PM »[youtube]9bOiOYxuuRA[/youtube]
[yt]9bOiOYxuuRA[/yt]
[yt]9bOiOYxuuRA[/yt]
Recent Posts
42
The Lyric Warehouse / Memories
« Last post by bahgheera on May 02, 2010, 09:14:26 PM »The memories you left with me are each one a stricken, moon-pale flower that grows in the spot where you forgot about me.
43
Writings / Burning bridges
« Last post by bahgheera on April 16, 2010, 02:38:00 PM »One day I'll burn this bridge that I built from memories of you and me, but for now I'm content to stand at the top and look over the edge, contemplating leaping...
44
Writings / Characters
« Last post by bahgheera on February 15, 2010, 11:29:41 AM »Quell - ruthless space pirate / mercenary. Driven by a life-long quest to find a certain object with strange physical properties, but we are never introduced to a detailed description.
Go Bena - an ethereal, mist-like being that at times can take on the form of a person you may know by examining your mind and retrieving the physical and personal aspects of that person.
Ton Bena - related (we are not sure how) to Go Bena; another mist-creature that can take on the shape of anything it wishes. While Go Bena is perceived to be malevolent and hostile towards humans and most other creatures, Ton Bena is not; in fact, Ton Bena seems to take an interest in the affairs of humanoids, humans especially.
Ran Gen - Ran Gen comes from the world of Pol Cama Rei, in the Leste-rei system. Ran Gen and his people resemble what we would think of as a goat; bearing thick fur and a set of horns that curve down behind his ears, the Pol Camain people are misunderstood by humans as a hostile race. In fact, the Pol Camains would prefer to be left alone, but do respond with hostility when encroached upon by members of other races.
Servat 2 - A vaguely humanoid robot, manufactured as a base model service bot. At some point in the past his programming has been compromised; it was modified by another being or he has begun to rewrite his own code, or possibly both. At any rate, Servat operates outside of standard parameters to an extreme point. Not necessarily hostile, nor friendly, his attitude is more of indifference (to anything except his own aims) than anything else.
Nona So - A human whose cerebral cortex has been modified to give the ability of teleportation. A perfect crew member for the pirate who is interested in retrieving things from behind closed, and usually locked, doors.
Old Blind Jon - A human that grew up on a planet far distant from Earth, during the time of The Opening. He accidentally discovered a way from his planet (which is unkown) to Earth, a sort of door, that he fell through. On becoming an adult he realized he had various abilities - chiefly, interdimensional travel, visualizing a tesseract that has one entry point in his dimension and either eight or sixteen exit points in other dimensions. He also gained incredibly long life (he is thought to be over 1800 Earth-years old) and vision in ranges above and below the part of the spectrum normally visible to humans.
Prevo the Andollocian - a monk from the planet Rama 3. Prevo is indirectly responsible for the cleansing of all life from Posi-space, the region of space outside of space that was discovered and colonized during the time of The Opening. Posi-space is now a desolate, but pristine, remnant of human and other civilizations.
Go Bena - an ethereal, mist-like being that at times can take on the form of a person you may know by examining your mind and retrieving the physical and personal aspects of that person.
Ton Bena - related (we are not sure how) to Go Bena; another mist-creature that can take on the shape of anything it wishes. While Go Bena is perceived to be malevolent and hostile towards humans and most other creatures, Ton Bena is not; in fact, Ton Bena seems to take an interest in the affairs of humanoids, humans especially.
Ran Gen - Ran Gen comes from the world of Pol Cama Rei, in the Leste-rei system. Ran Gen and his people resemble what we would think of as a goat; bearing thick fur and a set of horns that curve down behind his ears, the Pol Camain people are misunderstood by humans as a hostile race. In fact, the Pol Camains would prefer to be left alone, but do respond with hostility when encroached upon by members of other races.
Servat 2 - A vaguely humanoid robot, manufactured as a base model service bot. At some point in the past his programming has been compromised; it was modified by another being or he has begun to rewrite his own code, or possibly both. At any rate, Servat operates outside of standard parameters to an extreme point. Not necessarily hostile, nor friendly, his attitude is more of indifference (to anything except his own aims) than anything else.
Nona So - A human whose cerebral cortex has been modified to give the ability of teleportation. A perfect crew member for the pirate who is interested in retrieving things from behind closed, and usually locked, doors.
Old Blind Jon - A human that grew up on a planet far distant from Earth, during the time of The Opening. He accidentally discovered a way from his planet (which is unkown) to Earth, a sort of door, that he fell through. On becoming an adult he realized he had various abilities - chiefly, interdimensional travel, visualizing a tesseract that has one entry point in his dimension and either eight or sixteen exit points in other dimensions. He also gained incredibly long life (he is thought to be over 1800 Earth-years old) and vision in ranges above and below the part of the spectrum normally visible to humans.
Prevo the Andollocian - a monk from the planet Rama 3. Prevo is indirectly responsible for the cleansing of all life from Posi-space, the region of space outside of space that was discovered and colonized during the time of The Opening. Posi-space is now a desolate, but pristine, remnant of human and other civilizations.
45
Writings / Re: South America 2.1
« Last post by bahgheera on December 05, 2009, 04:42:53 PM »I was in a small rowboat on a river somewhere south of Colombia, possibly somewhere along the border of Peru and Bolivia. We had started at Puerto Maldonado on Rio Madre de Dios, headed east, and took a turn to the south along a smaller course, the name of which escapes me at the moment. The end of this smaller, muddy river was where I needed to be, but I wasn't sure if my Peruvian guide could get me there and I couldn't remember why I was going.
Our boat was barely more than a skiff, but it held the two of us and all our gear. The boat was old, perhaps older than me and my guide put together, had a peculiar odor emanating from it, as though it had accommodated one too many drunken fishermen, and it displayed the multicolored evidence of many coats of paint that had been hurriedly applied over the years. I would say it had an almost mystical quality about it, that kept it afloat more than air tightness did. It was packed fore and aft with all sorts of camping gear and supplies - our two tents, gas stoves, sleeping bags, trail supplies, several types of dried meat, and glass jars with various types of curiously seasoned vegetables in them that I had never seen before but provided excellent subsistence for the aboriginal inhabitants of the area. These latter supplies had been bestowed on us by local folks who had a dark and hidden look in their eye, as if they wished to accompany us on our journey despite their knowledge of what lay at the end of it.
Along the river were thousands of these tribal locals. It was the time of a certain festival, a celebration of some local hero long since departed, and his heroic acts. Many boats were stashed in the mud on either side, and people, families, young ones and old ones alike, splashing and bathing in the moiling light brown water. Each group of family and friends had set up a brilliant display of colorful bits of cloth, strung along a line between two poles, like a clothesline with the most dazzling autumn leaves hung out to dry. The sky was clear, vibrant blue, with the yellow light of the sun casting a perfect light on the celebrators. Our modest craft silently drifted by all of this, drawing the gaze of the people and silencing them from their merrymaking as we passed. Each man, woman and child stopped what he or she was doing and looked in our direction with an expression of regret that an outsider would dare to drift down their rio, to disturb their everyday life with alien curiosity.
Hours later, we had traveled many miles and left the revelers long behind. We came to a narrow spot, where the water became shallower and much much faster. The mountains on either side closed in tight on this spot, looming up above us to the port and starboard with unscalable sheer rock faces that seemed to peer into our very being and warn of the danger that presented itself here. This was when I realized that my friend the oak tree, whom I'd known since an acorn, would not be able to continue along with us. The oak tree was a very different sort of timber from what I'm sure most are familiar with, as he had playing cards growing at the end of his branches rather than acorns. Long ago I had watched an old man plant the very acorn that this tree had grown from, and perform some sort of noisy and animated ritual over it that gave it a very divergent life from all it's arboreal cousins.
I held on to my friend's branches, and as we squeezed through the narrows, I slowly began to lose my grip. The rapids grew and applied more and more pressure on our tiny vessel, and in the end I lost my friend. As the branches slid out of my grasp though, forty playing cards were plucked and left in my hand. We hurtled over the last bit of white water, which was more of a waterfall, a straight drop of almost thirty feet, during which we lost most of our gear and the boat sustained some slight damage to the bow, which didn't seem to make much difference in it's float-worthiness.
But the playing cards remained in my hand; forty of them. An Italian deck. I wrapped them up in a piece of paper that had miraculously remained dry through the recent ordeal, intent that there was a special purpose for them in the near future.
We picked up the boat to carry it over a stony, shallow area where the water was abnormally clear and slow moving, as though it had lost its energy and needed to rest before continuing. When we set the boat down for a bit to rest, I noticed that my guide had walked a few yards into the woods and was reciting some sort of lilting, repetitive poetry. I followed him over into a clearing and was immediately struck by the serene beauty of this particular location. Perhaps this was the spot that we had come to find? Maybe this was the end of our journey and I would finally accomplish my objective.
I came to realize that he was summoning small colorful birds and other animals that I couldn't quite recognize, and each of these was made of thin tissue paper. The tissue creatures descended slowly and quietly, in the manner of snowflakes; there was a strange light through the tops of the trees, rays of arcane luminosity that highlighted the dust particles that danced and capered in the air, as well as the vivid, almost over saturated autumn colors of the leaves on the ground and still on the trees. There was no sound whatsoever, and for a moment I wondered if I had actually suffered damage to the delicate inner workings of my ears during our trials on the waterfall. But soon I realized that it was a deathly silence that I was experiencing, one like I had experienced never before, and not since.
I remembered my pack of playing cards and removed them from the paper wrapper. As each amalgamate of plant and animal descended, I laid a card by it's resting place in the leaves. As I was doing this, I noticed a small white and black striped spider on my right hand. It was a singular specimen of arachnid, with noticeable tufts of dark hair or fur along the end of each of it's front legs. It was extremely fast, dodging my attempts to brush it off, and tenacious as well for neither could I shake it off. It bit me, very like a mosquito, and as I tried to brush it off, another appeared further up my arm. And then another, and another, now three more, then ten, until there were thousands of them covering me, biting, filling me with horror, dread and venom. I screamed at my guide, but he was nowhere to be found.
Now how I got out of that predicament, little ones, I'll have to leave to your imagination. For now it is time for me to return to my native land and discuss the strange noises that have been coming from the great stone giant...
Our boat was barely more than a skiff, but it held the two of us and all our gear. The boat was old, perhaps older than me and my guide put together, had a peculiar odor emanating from it, as though it had accommodated one too many drunken fishermen, and it displayed the multicolored evidence of many coats of paint that had been hurriedly applied over the years. I would say it had an almost mystical quality about it, that kept it afloat more than air tightness did. It was packed fore and aft with all sorts of camping gear and supplies - our two tents, gas stoves, sleeping bags, trail supplies, several types of dried meat, and glass jars with various types of curiously seasoned vegetables in them that I had never seen before but provided excellent subsistence for the aboriginal inhabitants of the area. These latter supplies had been bestowed on us by local folks who had a dark and hidden look in their eye, as if they wished to accompany us on our journey despite their knowledge of what lay at the end of it.
Along the river were thousands of these tribal locals. It was the time of a certain festival, a celebration of some local hero long since departed, and his heroic acts. Many boats were stashed in the mud on either side, and people, families, young ones and old ones alike, splashing and bathing in the moiling light brown water. Each group of family and friends had set up a brilliant display of colorful bits of cloth, strung along a line between two poles, like a clothesline with the most dazzling autumn leaves hung out to dry. The sky was clear, vibrant blue, with the yellow light of the sun casting a perfect light on the celebrators. Our modest craft silently drifted by all of this, drawing the gaze of the people and silencing them from their merrymaking as we passed. Each man, woman and child stopped what he or she was doing and looked in our direction with an expression of regret that an outsider would dare to drift down their rio, to disturb their everyday life with alien curiosity.
Hours later, we had traveled many miles and left the revelers long behind. We came to a narrow spot, where the water became shallower and much much faster. The mountains on either side closed in tight on this spot, looming up above us to the port and starboard with unscalable sheer rock faces that seemed to peer into our very being and warn of the danger that presented itself here. This was when I realized that my friend the oak tree, whom I'd known since an acorn, would not be able to continue along with us. The oak tree was a very different sort of timber from what I'm sure most are familiar with, as he had playing cards growing at the end of his branches rather than acorns. Long ago I had watched an old man plant the very acorn that this tree had grown from, and perform some sort of noisy and animated ritual over it that gave it a very divergent life from all it's arboreal cousins.
I held on to my friend's branches, and as we squeezed through the narrows, I slowly began to lose my grip. The rapids grew and applied more and more pressure on our tiny vessel, and in the end I lost my friend. As the branches slid out of my grasp though, forty playing cards were plucked and left in my hand. We hurtled over the last bit of white water, which was more of a waterfall, a straight drop of almost thirty feet, during which we lost most of our gear and the boat sustained some slight damage to the bow, which didn't seem to make much difference in it's float-worthiness.
But the playing cards remained in my hand; forty of them. An Italian deck. I wrapped them up in a piece of paper that had miraculously remained dry through the recent ordeal, intent that there was a special purpose for them in the near future.
We picked up the boat to carry it over a stony, shallow area where the water was abnormally clear and slow moving, as though it had lost its energy and needed to rest before continuing. When we set the boat down for a bit to rest, I noticed that my guide had walked a few yards into the woods and was reciting some sort of lilting, repetitive poetry. I followed him over into a clearing and was immediately struck by the serene beauty of this particular location. Perhaps this was the spot that we had come to find? Maybe this was the end of our journey and I would finally accomplish my objective.
I came to realize that he was summoning small colorful birds and other animals that I couldn't quite recognize, and each of these was made of thin tissue paper. The tissue creatures descended slowly and quietly, in the manner of snowflakes; there was a strange light through the tops of the trees, rays of arcane luminosity that highlighted the dust particles that danced and capered in the air, as well as the vivid, almost over saturated autumn colors of the leaves on the ground and still on the trees. There was no sound whatsoever, and for a moment I wondered if I had actually suffered damage to the delicate inner workings of my ears during our trials on the waterfall. But soon I realized that it was a deathly silence that I was experiencing, one like I had experienced never before, and not since.
I remembered my pack of playing cards and removed them from the paper wrapper. As each amalgamate of plant and animal descended, I laid a card by it's resting place in the leaves. As I was doing this, I noticed a small white and black striped spider on my right hand. It was a singular specimen of arachnid, with noticeable tufts of dark hair or fur along the end of each of it's front legs. It was extremely fast, dodging my attempts to brush it off, and tenacious as well for neither could I shake it off. It bit me, very like a mosquito, and as I tried to brush it off, another appeared further up my arm. And then another, and another, now three more, then ten, until there were thousands of them covering me, biting, filling me with horror, dread and venom. I screamed at my guide, but he was nowhere to be found.
Now how I got out of that predicament, little ones, I'll have to leave to your imagination. For now it is time for me to return to my native land and discuss the strange noises that have been coming from the great stone giant...
46
Explorations / Not sure about this one...
« Last post by bahgheera on November 20, 2009, 02:31:19 AM »47
Explorations / Late night hip hop
« Last post by bahgheera on November 20, 2009, 02:06:50 AM »Figured I'd make use of this section of a forum that I never make use of...
Not family friendly:
http://www.wmrecordings.com/releases/wm095.htm
Not family friendly:
http://www.wmrecordings.com/releases/wm095.htm
48
I stand before the door. It trembles and rattles, the knob loose in its mount rattling back and forth with a sinister intent. There are no windows in this room, no light save for that coming under the door, which is just enough illumination for me to see the shiny false brass of the doorknob under assault from whatever is on the other side. I can also see the only other thing in the room with me. A dark mass against the wall opposite the door, difficult to make out in the dim light. At first it appeared to be a pile of rags or scraps of material, maybe dirty laundry, but as my eyes adjusted to the darkness I could see that it is clearly a body. Who's body I have no idea, but I have a dreadful feeling that it's someone I know.
I've been here for quite a number of hours now, with emotions running the full gammut - fear, anger, love for life, sadness at the prospect of losing it, but mostly fear. I see the shadow of my assailant in the midst of the light under the door, moving back and forth, rapidly, sometimes running away but always returning moments later. He, she, or it makes no noise, but for the incessant rattling, pounding, scratching at the door.
At this point, having abandoned hope, I realize there is only one way out. I unlock the door and grasp the knob, turn it quickly and fling the door wide open.
I've been here for quite a number of hours now, with emotions running the full gammut - fear, anger, love for life, sadness at the prospect of losing it, but mostly fear. I see the shadow of my assailant in the midst of the light under the door, moving back and forth, rapidly, sometimes running away but always returning moments later. He, she, or it makes no noise, but for the incessant rattling, pounding, scratching at the door.
At this point, having abandoned hope, I realize there is only one way out. I unlock the door and grasp the knob, turn it quickly and fling the door wide open.
49
Writings / Re: South America 2.0
« Last post by bahgheera on November 03, 2009, 11:57:41 PM »It was sometime in late autumn. I was in small rowboat on a river somewhere south of Colombia. Possibly somewhere along the border of Peru and Bolivia. I do remember that we started at Puerto Maldonado on Rio Madre de Dios, headed east, and took a turn to the south along a smaller course, the name of which escapes me at the moment. The end of this smaller, muddy river was where I needed to be, but I wasn't sure if my Peruvian guide could get me there and I couldn't remember why I was going.
Our boat was barely more than a skiff, but it held the two of us and all our gear. The boat was old, perhaps older than me and my guide put together, had a peculiar odor emanating from it, and displayed the multicolored evidence of many coats of paint that had been hurriedly applied over the years. I would say it had an almost mystical quality about it, that kept it afloat more than air tightness did. It was packed fore and aft with all sorts of camping gear and supplies - our two tents, gas stoves, sleeping bags, trail supplies, several types of dried meat, and glass jars with all sorts of curiously seasoned vegetables in them that I had never seen before but provided excellent subsistence for the aboriginal inhabitants of the area. These latter supplies had been bestowed on us by local folks who had a dark and hidden look in their eye, as if they wished to accompany us on our journey despite their dread knowledge of what lay at the end of it.
Along the river were thousands of these tribal townsfolk. It was the time of a certain festival, a celebration of some local hero long since departed, and his heroic acts. There were a myriad of boats stashed in the mud on either side, and people, families, young ones and old ones alike, splashing and bathing in the moiling light brown water. Each group of family and friends had set up a brilliant display of colorful bits of cloth, strung along a line between two poles, like a clothesline with the most dazzling autumn leaves hung out to dry. Reds and golds, blues, yellows, greens adorned the banks of the river as far as the eye could see. The sky was clear, vibrant blue, with the yellow light of the sun casting a perfect light on the celebrators. Our modest craft silently drifted by all of this, drawing the gaze of the people and silencing them from their revelries as we passed. Each man, woman and child stopped what he or she was doing and looked in our direction with an expression of regret that an outsider would dare to drift down their rio, to disturb their everyday life with alien curiosity.
Hours later, we had traveled many miles and left the revelers long behind. We came to a narrow spot, where the water became shallower and much much faster. The mountains on either side closed in tight on this spot, looming up above us to the port and starboard with unscalable sheer rock faces that seemed to peer into our very being and warn of the danger that presented itself here. This was when I realized that my friend the oak tree, whom I'd known since an acorn, would not be able to continue along with us. The oak tree was a very different sort of timber from what I'm sure you are familiar with, as he had playing cards growing at the end of his branches rather than acorns. Long ago I had watched an old man plant the very acorn that this tree had grown from, and perform some sort of noisy and animated ritual over it that gave it a very divergent life from all it's arboreal cousins.
I held on to my friends branches, and as we squeezed through the narrows, I slowly began to lose my grip. The rapids grew and applied more and more pressure on our tiny vessel, and in the end I lost my friend. As the branches slid out of my grasp though, forty playing cards were plucked and left in my hand. We hurtled over the last bit of white water, which was more of a waterfall, a straight drop of almost thirty feet, during which we lost most of our gear and the boat sustained some slight damage to the bow, which didn't seem to make much difference in it's float-worthiness.
But the playing cards remained in my hand; forty of them. An Italian deck. I wrapped them up in a piece of paper that had miraculously remained dry through the recent ordeal, intent that there was a special purpose for them in the near future.
We picked up the boat to carry it over a stony, shallow area where the water was abnormally clear and slow moving, as though it had lost its energy and needed to rest before continuing. When we set the boat down for a bit to rest, I noticed that my guide had walked a few yards into the woods and was reciting some sort of lilting, repetitive poetry. I followed him over into a clearing and was immediately struck by the serene beauty of this particular location. Perhaps this was the spot that we had come to find? Maybe this was the end of our journey and I would finally accomplish my objective.
I came to realize that he was summoning small colorful birds and other animals that I couldn't quite recognize, and each of these was made of thin tissue paper. The tissue creatures descended slowly and quietly, in the manner of snowflakes; there was a strange light through the tops of the trees, rays of arcane luminosity that highlighted the dust particles that danced and capered in the air, as well as the vivid, almost over saturated autumn colors of the leaves on the ground and still on the trees. There was no sound whatsoever, and for a moment I wondered if I had actually suffered damage to the delicate inner workings of my ears during our trials on the waterfall. But soon I realized that it was a deathly silence that I was experiencing, one like I had experienced never before, and not since.
I remembered my pack of playing cards and removed them from the paper wrapper. As each amalgamate of plant and animal descended, I laid a card by it's resting place in the leaves. As I was doing this, I noticed a small white and black striped spider on my right hand. It was a singular specimen of arachnid, with noticeable tufts of dark hair or fur along the end of each of it's front legs. It was extremely fast, dodging my attempts to brush it off, and tenacious as well for neither could I shake it off. It bit me, very like a mosquito, and as I tried to brush it off, another appeared further up my arm. And then another, and another, now three more, then ten, until there were thousands of them covering me, biting, filling me with horror, dread and venom. I screamed at my guide, but he was nowhere to be found.
Now how I got out of that predicament, little ones, I'll have to leave to your imagination. For now it is time for me to return to my native land and discuss the strange noises that have been coming from the great stone giant...
Our boat was barely more than a skiff, but it held the two of us and all our gear. The boat was old, perhaps older than me and my guide put together, had a peculiar odor emanating from it, and displayed the multicolored evidence of many coats of paint that had been hurriedly applied over the years. I would say it had an almost mystical quality about it, that kept it afloat more than air tightness did. It was packed fore and aft with all sorts of camping gear and supplies - our two tents, gas stoves, sleeping bags, trail supplies, several types of dried meat, and glass jars with all sorts of curiously seasoned vegetables in them that I had never seen before but provided excellent subsistence for the aboriginal inhabitants of the area. These latter supplies had been bestowed on us by local folks who had a dark and hidden look in their eye, as if they wished to accompany us on our journey despite their dread knowledge of what lay at the end of it.
Along the river were thousands of these tribal townsfolk. It was the time of a certain festival, a celebration of some local hero long since departed, and his heroic acts. There were a myriad of boats stashed in the mud on either side, and people, families, young ones and old ones alike, splashing and bathing in the moiling light brown water. Each group of family and friends had set up a brilliant display of colorful bits of cloth, strung along a line between two poles, like a clothesline with the most dazzling autumn leaves hung out to dry. Reds and golds, blues, yellows, greens adorned the banks of the river as far as the eye could see. The sky was clear, vibrant blue, with the yellow light of the sun casting a perfect light on the celebrators. Our modest craft silently drifted by all of this, drawing the gaze of the people and silencing them from their revelries as we passed. Each man, woman and child stopped what he or she was doing and looked in our direction with an expression of regret that an outsider would dare to drift down their rio, to disturb their everyday life with alien curiosity.
Hours later, we had traveled many miles and left the revelers long behind. We came to a narrow spot, where the water became shallower and much much faster. The mountains on either side closed in tight on this spot, looming up above us to the port and starboard with unscalable sheer rock faces that seemed to peer into our very being and warn of the danger that presented itself here. This was when I realized that my friend the oak tree, whom I'd known since an acorn, would not be able to continue along with us. The oak tree was a very different sort of timber from what I'm sure you are familiar with, as he had playing cards growing at the end of his branches rather than acorns. Long ago I had watched an old man plant the very acorn that this tree had grown from, and perform some sort of noisy and animated ritual over it that gave it a very divergent life from all it's arboreal cousins.
I held on to my friends branches, and as we squeezed through the narrows, I slowly began to lose my grip. The rapids grew and applied more and more pressure on our tiny vessel, and in the end I lost my friend. As the branches slid out of my grasp though, forty playing cards were plucked and left in my hand. We hurtled over the last bit of white water, which was more of a waterfall, a straight drop of almost thirty feet, during which we lost most of our gear and the boat sustained some slight damage to the bow, which didn't seem to make much difference in it's float-worthiness.
But the playing cards remained in my hand; forty of them. An Italian deck. I wrapped them up in a piece of paper that had miraculously remained dry through the recent ordeal, intent that there was a special purpose for them in the near future.
We picked up the boat to carry it over a stony, shallow area where the water was abnormally clear and slow moving, as though it had lost its energy and needed to rest before continuing. When we set the boat down for a bit to rest, I noticed that my guide had walked a few yards into the woods and was reciting some sort of lilting, repetitive poetry. I followed him over into a clearing and was immediately struck by the serene beauty of this particular location. Perhaps this was the spot that we had come to find? Maybe this was the end of our journey and I would finally accomplish my objective.
I came to realize that he was summoning small colorful birds and other animals that I couldn't quite recognize, and each of these was made of thin tissue paper. The tissue creatures descended slowly and quietly, in the manner of snowflakes; there was a strange light through the tops of the trees, rays of arcane luminosity that highlighted the dust particles that danced and capered in the air, as well as the vivid, almost over saturated autumn colors of the leaves on the ground and still on the trees. There was no sound whatsoever, and for a moment I wondered if I had actually suffered damage to the delicate inner workings of my ears during our trials on the waterfall. But soon I realized that it was a deathly silence that I was experiencing, one like I had experienced never before, and not since.
I remembered my pack of playing cards and removed them from the paper wrapper. As each amalgamate of plant and animal descended, I laid a card by it's resting place in the leaves. As I was doing this, I noticed a small white and black striped spider on my right hand. It was a singular specimen of arachnid, with noticeable tufts of dark hair or fur along the end of each of it's front legs. It was extremely fast, dodging my attempts to brush it off, and tenacious as well for neither could I shake it off. It bit me, very like a mosquito, and as I tried to brush it off, another appeared further up my arm. And then another, and another, now three more, then ten, until there were thousands of them covering me, biting, filling me with horror, dread and venom. I screamed at my guide, but he was nowhere to be found.
Now how I got out of that predicament, little ones, I'll have to leave to your imagination. For now it is time for me to return to my native land and discuss the strange noises that have been coming from the great stone giant...
50
Writings / In the city
« Last post by bahgheera on September 22, 2009, 09:25:08 PM »I've known this city since the day it was born. I've walked it's streets, breathed it's air, heard it's sounds and felt its pulse thump with the rhythm of a million heartbeats. I've been right there with every young mother taking her kids to the library, with every sewer rat quickly venturing out onto the sidewalk in broad daylight to snatch a discarded pizza crust, with every hobo asking for a dollar, every drug deal and every shady political maneuver. I know this city, as if it were my own mind, and let me tell you something, man these people just don't appreciate what they've got. They don't appreciate the filth laying there in the gutter, they don't appreciate the smog hanging in the air, they don't appreciate the pigeon poop on all the statues at the park or the riff-raff hanging out in the alleys, smelling of beer and urine, looking for an outsider to roll, for an easy target they can intimidate into handing over his wallet just before he gets the crap kicked out of him. They don't appreciate any of that. All they see is what they want to see, not what really is.
Not to say they're not appreciative. Man, they're appreciative all right. They love all the social programs, the park beautification, the road maintenance, the trash cleanup, the local celebrations and festivals, etc. All that crap. The crap that isn't worth a thing. Because you know what? Man, they never think about that stuff. The stuff they love - it's never on their minds. The stuff they hate? It's all they ever think about. That young mother at the library - she should be glad she's got a library to take those kids to. But all she's seeing is the vagrants on the corner, the vagrants sleeping in chairs inside, it's all she can focus on to the point that half the time she doesn't even go there. See what I mean? These people don't really appreciate what they've got.
Take me for example. Long as I've been here, I've been observing. Watching, seeing things happen, seeing from the dark corners into the light, sometimes being the darkness, sometimes wafting in through an open window. They all know I'm there, they know it with every fiber of their being. Man, they know I'm there and they know they need me there, know that this city just wouldn't operate without me. But they don't want to acknowledge me, man they even act like I don't exist! It's downright comical at times, to see what lengths these people will go to, just to pretend like I'm not there, to try and trick themselves into believing that I'm a figment of some childish imagination, a figure from a dream, that lives in a child's closet and disappears into vapor as soon as Dad looks in. 'See, there's nothing there!'. Man, I've heard that one a thousand times. And it's so untrue. Because I am there. But I'm not what you were expecting, I'm not the bogeyman or some hideous creature wanting to snatch the kids into another dimension and eat their souls. I'm simply a manifestation of reality, fulfilling my duty, just like you and every other creature on this world. And man, I don't even need to tell you why I'm here, don't need to tell this city why I'm here, because you, and they, know it. They know it when I'm in their minds, you know it, when you smell that strange burning scent in the air, they know it when I'm hovering six inches behind them, you know it when I'm circling above your house in the middle of the night. Man, you KNOW it.
Not to say they're not appreciative. Man, they're appreciative all right. They love all the social programs, the park beautification, the road maintenance, the trash cleanup, the local celebrations and festivals, etc. All that crap. The crap that isn't worth a thing. Because you know what? Man, they never think about that stuff. The stuff they love - it's never on their minds. The stuff they hate? It's all they ever think about. That young mother at the library - she should be glad she's got a library to take those kids to. But all she's seeing is the vagrants on the corner, the vagrants sleeping in chairs inside, it's all she can focus on to the point that half the time she doesn't even go there. See what I mean? These people don't really appreciate what they've got.
Take me for example. Long as I've been here, I've been observing. Watching, seeing things happen, seeing from the dark corners into the light, sometimes being the darkness, sometimes wafting in through an open window. They all know I'm there, they know it with every fiber of their being. Man, they know I'm there and they know they need me there, know that this city just wouldn't operate without me. But they don't want to acknowledge me, man they even act like I don't exist! It's downright comical at times, to see what lengths these people will go to, just to pretend like I'm not there, to try and trick themselves into believing that I'm a figment of some childish imagination, a figure from a dream, that lives in a child's closet and disappears into vapor as soon as Dad looks in. 'See, there's nothing there!'. Man, I've heard that one a thousand times. And it's so untrue. Because I am there. But I'm not what you were expecting, I'm not the bogeyman or some hideous creature wanting to snatch the kids into another dimension and eat their souls. I'm simply a manifestation of reality, fulfilling my duty, just like you and every other creature on this world. And man, I don't even need to tell you why I'm here, don't need to tell this city why I'm here, because you, and they, know it. They know it when I'm in their minds, you know it, when you smell that strange burning scent in the air, they know it when I'm hovering six inches behind them, you know it when I'm circling above your house in the middle of the night. Man, you KNOW it.