This is the first part of a longer story I'm writing called The Alterac Falcon. It's set in World of Warcraft, and although it's from the point of view of a certain Dorian, the girl in the story is a young Annie Fox. Opinions and suggestions are always welcomed and appreciated.

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The Alterac Falcon

Chapter One: The Fox at Bay


At nearly an hour until midnight, the forest lay quiet. A man knelt on the forest floor, reaching between the jagged splinters of a moss-ridden pine trunk, long since fallen from its place in the crown of the forest and now comfortably rotting into the surrounding detritus of leaves, needles, and grubs. As he leaned forward, a shaft of moonlight caught the dark face, pulling it for a moment out of the shadows. Dark hair, its colour indistinguishable in the absence of day, fell ragged over his shoulders, framing a harsh face; a falcon-like face, with a hooked nose and dark features.

The man, whose name was Lord Dorian Andural, plucked a white, almost luminous, fungus from the rot and held it carefully between his thumb and forefinger, inspecting it. Ghost mushrooms were rare; it was an unusual gesture of fortune that this one had grown so close to the camp, and that he had spotted its eerie cap here in the cleft of a decaying log. He opened a pouch on his belt, pulling out a scrap of linen, and carefully wrapped the mushroom in the cloth.

Dorian's musing was cut short by a low and very nearby scream. The sound crashed through the night for a second and then ended, abruptly, before it reached its pinnacle, but its echo rippled through the heavy air, permeating every trunk and needle and stone. It was akin to the cry of a wounded animal, but Dorian, who knew the calls of every bird and beast of this forest, recognised it as human. He dropped the mushroom into the pouch and, leaping over the fallen log with a cougar's litheness, sprang away into the shadows.

( Read more... )

After some kind and encouraging words from aohdwyn, I've decided to post some of my short pieces about my roleplay characters. Most of my roleplaying is currently in the setting of World of Warcraft, but I'll do my best to make the stories accessable and add background and context where it might be useful.

My favourite character, and the one on whom I've spent most time, is called Annie Fox. As an introduction to who she is and what she's like, I decided to write up a few short paragraphs in the form of a documentary. A set of interviewers is stopping people in the streets of a city, asking them whether they know a woman by the name of Annie Fox, and filming their responses. This is certainly an experiment as far as the writing goes, but I hope it will be a short and snappy way of introducing a character of whom I'm very fond!

( An Introduction to Annie )

Dawn Portrait

The first dull light caresses the water;
the heavy salt-air stirs
as the mist rises.

A woman stirs
and throws a blanket like a shroud from her shoulders.
Her feet caress the floor as she rises.

Her shadow is a sundial, reaching out, out into the distance–
her hands tell the years,
in lines and burns and calluses;

but caught in her hair, in the turn of her jaw,
beneath the scarred and ragged skin

is the glow of everliving sparks.

A Shadow and a Flicker

Your heartbeat
is a caged songbird, a canary
fluttering, beating
its wings against the futility of the hours
rising, sweeping,
toward the parching sun;

yet you have hung your life around your neck,
clutched it against your chest,
etched it into every line of muscle
and every traversing scar.

Some days,
in the warmth of the parching sun,
the past fades into a cool, mouldy corner
biding its time, tamely;

but most days it lurks
or sprawls or crouches,
waiting for a time propitious
to leap like a flame around your ankles,
through your calves and groin and chest,

and to consume you
until you are only ash.

Girl at Thirty

Dreamin' in the firelight,
pouring wine over my cuts and thinking of you--

of the days in the kitchen
in the bar, behind the casks and glasses
when nothing but liquor comes between our lips

and we are like the ends of cigarettes,
glowing.

Dreaming in Colour

You were the gentle hand,
the firelight, the corner of a dusky pub.
No one remembered our names, but we,
in perfect silence,
were more alive than the most explosive
fireworks.

I only dream in black and white, now,
without the green flicker of your eyes.

Angelus of One

Dark eyes, lids laden with winter days
like snowdrifts on a coal heap:

He was young in the city,
this forlorn and ragged
boy-almost-man; all eyes and
white skin stretched like rice-paper over his cheekbones.

This apparition, he said, “Lady,
lady-

holy shit you’re not the girl I remember.
You’re like a streetlamp now,
tall and lovely,
and I wish you were here still—

more than a spectre in my drug-fuelled
and long fragmented dreams."

The Farewell Messenger


How did I manage to lose you, Gabriel—
was there anyone who loved you
without hating you

or was it only I,
one-handed and one-eyed,
crying like the Nile, but always
singing?

Or perhaps we were like a bird in winter,
scratching meagrely—
a scarlet exclamation mark against the snow.

Here As We Were Last Year

1.

Between the mending and the scraping
between daily visits to the hospital
in search of memory and desire.
Because of my own inertia
once the ball was set rolling, damn
it rolled
collecting snow

and at the bottom of the hill nothing was left but the
fragmented corpse of a snowman.


2.

If you like the grim-dark
in fiction only,
you wouldn’t like this hotel.

Judging by the stains on the wallpaper,
I would guess that someone had a quarrel
and threw tomatoes.

American winter
is the breath of frost,
the eyes glowing from behind dustbins,
disembodied
like sad voracious children.

They are the last coals,
for tonight ushers in our uncertain dread-
colourless, odorless,

like perfectly formed icicles.

Harangued forecasters say clear skies, but
don’t forget your coats-
and you might want to bring your pearly whites,
too,

so that when you’re standing in the gutter,
disembodied,
you’ll be able to hear them chatter

and you’ll know that there is still life
in this goddam city
among the flotsam and the jetsam.

There might be a fire burning somewhere,
dustbins smouldering with dead leaves.
The frozen skeletons of autumn
are everywhere—

If you were more delicate,
you, too,
could be one of them.

Who said you could die in peace?

certainly not the damn frostbitten
bony hand of winter
in America.

The Travellers

As I came to know you,
I saw that you were like a bear,
the dark loam of your eyes glinting
under deep and shaggy brows.

You carried me on your back
over the threshold of hope,
taking care with each step
to keep us from the clutches of thorns.

Tenderly you lumbered forward
while I clung to your warm neck,
the weary sentinel
looking toward the end of the road.

Although I am sure this doesn't need to be said to anyone who knows me, this poem is about someone other than me.


First Morning, Last Days


Peel off the blankets, layers of an onion
that wrapped you tighter than my arms.
Pull your boots on,
whistle while the floorboards creak under your steps;
let me slip from your memory.

Swagger down the indifferent stair
while your seeds grow into thorns.

Oh, I was asleep the whole time,
dreaming of the South Seas.

Images


You used to fight with fists
knocking down the bullies on the playground

in your mind, anyway.

Life was simpler
although you took a few knocks yourself;

a young eagle grew inside you
screeching, waiting to hatch
waiting for the day

when your wings would stay unbroken.

_

second version:

Images


You used to fight with fists
knocking down the bullies on the playground-

so the shadow in your hallways,
the ghosts in your living room, well

they weren't so much bigger.
They could be knocked down, too-


in your mind, anyway.


Every new year
there were still ghosts and shadows

but a young eagle grew inside you
screeching, waiting to hatch
waiting for the day

when your wings would stay unbroken.

I'm not sure if this is really finished, as it was the product of a few minutes, so I welcome your thoughts...


The Shades of Winter


Scene One: a desk, sheaves of paper
strewn around like snow

and a man sits, smoking.


The air gleams with syllables;

poised,
they condense on the windowglass
before making rivulets on the page.



Scene Two: the attic
of stereotypical indolence.


The page is blotched,
the poet in bed,

echoes of last night's vitriolic gin

sprawling carelessly
like a ghost above the headboard.

Within my dusking memory
is a day when kings were wise, when bards would play,
when ashes lay upon the grave
but beauty was near to every heart—
as near as the sword to the warrior's hand,
as near as the sinews 'round his bones.
Thus was the kingdom of which I sing
until the shadows fell darkling over its dales
until the twilight fell.

Great were the deeds that time has covered;
fierce was the fall of the Northern star.
In the night when life gave up its ghost
to thrice-accursed shades of death
all was a noise of burning.
O bright gleamed the fires in Lordaeron
over men with starlit brows
over men with reddened blades.
And when children fled behind their mothers
and few men held their ground
in the flamelight was a sea of bodies
half living and half dead;
and so all the living fled.

Heard ye the keening when Lordaeron fell?
that city's folk running, the countryside scarred;
the folk were like hares estranged from their burrows
and the streams and the wells were defiled.
Men's kin were devoured, a plague devouring
all without recourse to kith and kin.
Had you been there, could you have stood, o warrior?
Few stayed to fight in the face of the burning;
those few are the steel of honour's own blade,
though yet they fell.

Bright were the brave, shining the company
who wielded their blades for Lordaeron fair;
they flashed like the thunder
for she who had borne them and sheltered their fears,
they flashed like the thunder
though the streets before them were shrieking with death.
Battle they offered, but battle was naught
in the face of a hell-driven scourge
in the face of such carnage.

O City, City, eye of all cities,
what shall I compare to you?
What blackened powers desired you,
that you should come to such wrack and ruin?
In the light of the dawn, starker seems your downfall;
your children torn from your arms
your body bruised and broken.
In the light of the dawn, a darkness swift-rising
has covered the gild of your walls.

The Apple-Man

There are no leaves left,
when he lifts blind eyes to heaven
his hands on the gnarled bark,
his heart among last year's apples.
Time was squeezed dry in the cider-press;
the furrows in his face
the rocky soil in his knuckles
root the vast expanses of the orchard
to the vast expanse in him.
There are no leaves left,
as he withers with the trees.

Beauty speaks, or a few words to the weary


If one would seek a brighter star
Than Jupiter, or russet Mars,
I would blithely recommend
He find a field at daylight's end.
There wild stems gleam quiet-white;
Dewy shards refracting light.
Could Day have such resplendent maids
As twilight's gossamers and greys?

I thought I'd just put up a few wedding photos with which I've been experimenting... they are all pretty and black and white ^^ The actual photography isn't mine, obviously, and I'll note the photographers as I post them!





(Clare Sawczuk)









(Clare Sawczuk)











(Clare Sawczuk)








(Rachel Moss)









(Rachel Moss)









(Rachel Moss)









(Clare Sawczuk)









(Clare Sawczuk)










(Clare Sawczuk)

This is a rather rough version... I do miss having people to read/ mercilessly edit my poems.


The Natives


Six cool eyes, three lasses;
seen through a dozen rose-coloured
martini glasses

and the evening sprawls outside
like a cat before the door.
The panther full with hunting, turns
his yawning head, and waits
for the next twist of the knife.



Julia Rigby, lady sans mysteries,
comes to Sunday dinner
and asks no opinions but her own
like the good manager of a shop
she gnaws upon the bone.

'I am tired today, are you tired?'
I am not one for dialogue. The words
come out all wrong, misspelled.
'Oh, nevermind. You're all right,'
Come the words out of the night
until death do us part
until the world falls down.



Slender Aphrodite
grew from sacred pearls
Isis and Diana
sprang about the world;

for all the world's a stage
and those alive all players.

I play rugby in the morning,
and snooker around noon. A full English
with a pint, until evening
when the wind grates at the door
and lights beat away her claws.

What'll it be-
the Fox and Hound, or Revolutions?
I never thought much
of a night without a girl;
remember Jessie Alexander?



From Lower Briggate
to the colony shores
there is a jungle knotting up her insides,
growing through her core;
some infection or disease
that she's too beautiful to see.

Sibling Rivalry


I speak English:
I had a shower,
made a cuppa,
and at the end of the day,
I was knackered.

I speak English:
I took a shower,
made some coffee,
and when it all came down to it,
I was worn out.