tears of ink

The library demon tends to books unwanted, abandoned, stolen and cursed. Books that weep their sorrows in tears of black ink. They sit neatly lined on black painted shelves darkly lit library. She lends her books with a smile, but she will keep your soul on hold. And if you steal you may find yourself weeping ink on a shelf.

The library demon dresses in newspaper and lace, with shining buttons onyx black and heart’s blood red. She never eats. She drinks only inky tears. She dreams nightmares in black and white. A forest of words and leaves of paper.

chimera drabble prompt: leaves

something that has beens wirling about my brain. I used part of this for one of my doll stories on my meridianaril blog but I have tears of ink stuck in my head still so may twist it into something else again.

green moon

I woke in the shadows curled beneath the arms of an oak tree. The earth smelled of dead leaves and copper. Naked I stumbled, frozen grass splintering beneath bare feet. The moon hung low, a sickly green orb smiling down on night. I crouched at the edge of the water, surface still as glass. I reached out for the moon’s watery reflection and saw my own pale face. Darkness dripped from my mouth, trailing down my moon white skin. I licked my lips and tasted salt and copper. Blood is black in moonlight. A wolf howled. The wolf was me.

The Red Necklace

Lord Lucian lived in a beautiful manor house in the countryside. His coffers were filled with gold and silver, silks and spices, and the finest jewels in the land. The rooms of the house were filled with art, beautifully crafted furniture, Persian carpets, silken walls, ancient artefacts and heavy leather bound books.

In the gallery hung a series of portraits men and women, the men were all darkly handsome and beside each man, a woman with sad eyes dressed in rubies and silver.

A young servant fell in love with his master’s bride to be. He wooed her with roses, and peppermint creams. He asked her to run away with him and she agreed.

He crept into his master’s chamber and stole a necklace of black metal and glittering diamonds.

The young man wrapped the necklace of diamonds around her slender neck. Together the young lovers ran through the twists and turns of the great house. They ran and ran but each turn brought them back to the same hall, the same carved door at the end of the house, the master’s bedroom.

The door opened on silent hinges and as it did so the servant’s bride collapsed to the floor fingers digging at her pale neck, colour fading from her cheeks, terror shined in her eyes.

The diamonds around her neck bit deep, a thousand glittering teeth biting into pale flesh. Drops of crimson blood dripped down her neck as the necklace cut deeper, the diamonds colouring the pale pink of new dawn. Her lover pulled at the necklace, rough fingers tearing at the delicate necklace. He watched with silent horror as the life bled out of his love.

The diamonds turned to blood rubies. He held his bride’s cold body crying silent tears. Lord Lucian stepped from the shadows, silver and black cane glinting in the muted light before it crashed down onto the servant’s head. Lucian laughed as he tore the glistening ruby necklace from the bride’s throat.

As the servant lay in a growing pool of blood, his fingers grasping at his bride’s cold fingers. Lord Lucian opened the door at the end of the hall. The room behind was bathed in light, in a chair sat a woman in a white silken gown, her long golden hair piled atop her head, pale skin, sunken eyes that stared lifelessly at the servant. The corpse bride’s paper dry lips were peeled back in a pearly white smile.

Lucian stepped behind his bride and wrapped the gleaming ruby strand around her lifeless neck. A whispering noise filled the room, a sound of dry leaves and death, the sound of the corpse bride laughing. And as the corpse laughed the blood drained from the stones, until once more diamonds shone and the corpse flesh filled out, golden hair shining in the candle light, black eyes shining, skin a delicate cream, cheeks a delicate rose. Lord Lucian kissed his beautiful laughing bride as the light faded from the servant’s eyes.

The White Raven (first draft)

The White Raven flew high above the trees, twisting and turning singing her joy to the sun. In the forest below a hunter stood on the moss at the edge of a spring of sweet water. The raven flew down, her wingtips rippling the surface of the water. Ivory feathers a blaze of white in the forest gloom. Sharp claws scratched against stone as she landed on a smooth grey rock at the edge of the pool of clear water. The raven tilted her head to the side, observing the hunter with winter blue eyes.

The hunter nodded to the raven and wandered into the deep woods in search of his game. The white raven followed. The forest was bountiful, deer, elk, hares, grouse, and ptarmigan fell to the hunter’s bow. The raven made a game of following the hunter, hopping from tree to tree, gliding above the forest and diving down to scare game from tall grass and thickets. Each night the hunter and the raven met at pool. The hunter would cut small gobbets of flesh from his kills and offer them to the raven perched on her rock.

The white raven fell in love with the hunter. She wove the wild magic of the forest to change her shape. The raven stood in human form, glowing white skin, and winter blue eyes, and feather soft hair the colour of snowy white wings.

As the moon rose the hunter crept through the forest to the pool. Standing on the rock arms raised to the heavy moon the white raven stood in her pale human guise. The hunter covered the girl with his cape and took her home as his bride.

The raven was happy in the small cottage in the forest with her husband the hunter. She bore seven children, four sons and three daughters with milk white skin and downy hair white as new fallen snow. White raven was a good wife, loving and kind, but she held her secrets and would not speak of where she came from or how she appeared at the pool in the forest or where she went on the days she went walking among the trees.

One autumn, when leaves tumbled from the trees, the sun was warm, but the wind smelled of winter the hunter’s wife disappeared into the woods. The hunter was furious that his wife was gone. He left the children alone in the cottage and searched every path through the twisting woods. Creeping from shadow to shadow, boots silent on the leaf strewn forest floor, the hunter scoured the forest. Morning turned to noon, noon to dusk and still there was no sign of his beloved wife. The trees opened up and the hunter found himself standing on the edge of the pool shaking with fury as he held his bow in his hands. The forest was silent all around, no leaves whispered on the wind, no squirrels chittering in the trees, or birds singing in the sky.

The white raven perched on the smooth grey stone beside the water, wings stretched out in the sunlight. The hunter was angry and notched an arrow in his bow. The raven folded her wings and looked at him with a winter blue eye.

The hunter loosed his arrow. It flew true across the still pool reflecting in the icy chill of the water. The arrow pierced the raven’s snowy white breast. The raven cried as red blood flowed across her white feathers and dripped onto the cold grey rock. As the white raven fell light filled the clearing brighter than the sun, the hunter hid his eyes, and when the light faded a woman lay on the rock, an arrow piercing the heart of his beautiful wife.

The hunter stumbled to the rock and held her as she lay dying. The clearing filled with the rush of wings and seven white ravens plummeted from the sky, they circled around the hunter and his dying bride before landing on the mossy ground. The hunter gazed with grief stricken eyes as the ravens transformed into seven small children. They turned sad eyes to their mother, faces solemn as they ripped the arrow from their mother’s chest. The eldest held the arrow and dropped it into his father’s hands. The world shifted and pulsed as the children changed small feathered bodies taking flight.

White feathers turned black. The colour of their sorrow.

the end

flint

Hand in hand we crossed the road, and the steep ditch to step lightly onto the newly tilled field. Black earth turn brown in the warm spring sun. Walking at my father’s side, eyes on the ground scanning back and forth, examining each mound of dirt. Looking for the telltale rounded shape of a bead, the long cylinder of a broken pipe, a discarded arrowhead. Tiny fragments of history, laying in the drying dirt in freshly tilled field. An edge of flint, glinting dully in the morning sun. Small hands digging in soft dirt. Muddy footprints, laughter, a treasure found.



(a memory from when I was small)