Old Ways.

Found on the byways, sideways. SLIDEways.

I heard it calling, the beat of the drum of my heart, beating skyward, earthward, tripping on the horizon dawn.

Whispers in the woods.

With hands covered in earth.

Sometimes it is fun to go back over my old notes for stories that either fell apart or I did worldbuilding for, but never took anywhere. Believe me, I have more than a few…

So, why mention these two?

Well, the first is the one I mentioned yesterday in my post about alchemy. My memory wasn’t quite as sharp as I thought about this one and they were less alchemists (although one of the characters was an alchemist) and more of an secret cabal doing many of the things that I recalled correctly: hunting down wayward nasties that are killing unsavory but human characters, dealing with curses, stopping eldritch things from crossing over from a conjunction of planes or via thin places, mystical stuff that might be magick, and all that jazz.

I found my notes, although I didn’t find my story start (suddenly suspect it is on the ReMarkable, an e-paper notebook I picked up back when it was mostly one of a kind), but I found all my world-building notes and the outline of two plotlines, and the portion of a third background story to weave into the larger story in an online tool I used to use until it became untenable to do so, as the limitation grew too strict for the free version and the paid version too expensive. Anyway, I tracked that down because I’d saved a backup of the Gingko App on my Google Drive and logged in to see it was still present in the original hierarchal “card” format. I liked the tool because you could “branch off” the tree for plot ideas, character development, research, misc notes, etc., and it is searchable (I wish I could find an online equivalent that wasn’t so much like wikipedia — I just want to make hierarchal-structured notes, not worry about making links — the closest is Zenkit, and that is still too fussy, in my opinion, for notetaking).

One of the more interesting things I had forgotten was the iteration of the name of the novel. In case you were wondering, “Arcanum Fabulis Factionis Sulphur” was Latin for “secret stories of the brimstone cabal”, which was the subtitle (with some liberties on the Latin). Other ideas that I’d probably lean more towards today are: “Sylloge Factionis Sulphur Historia”/”sylloge/collection of the Cabal Brimstone’s history” or “Arcanorum Factionis Sulphur”/”Arcane Record of the Brimstone Cabal”.

What’s the obsession with brimstone? As a cleansing/fumigation chemical. The Cabal envisioned themselves and the world’s janitors, clearing out impure and unpure elements that threatened mankind and the ones to purge intellectual darkness.

And I’d forgotten that I’d planned on have an antagonistic counter occult organization with a different agenda. Of course you need something like that in one of these types of tales, duh. They were “Coterie Crux Ansata”, kind of a precursor to a nazi-like group. A “crux ansata” is the Latin name for the ankh, and they are obsessed with the superman and everlasting life.

All fun to rediscover.

Looking at my old GingkoApp archive, I also saw another story outline that I’d completely forgotten about aside from the name, “Nightfell”. This was a story with more of the feel of the Hyperion Cantos (although I had yet to read that story when I started outlining this one). A little SciFi with a heavy dose of colonialism and “magic” (akin to the magic in Dune rather the the fireball-tossing stuff of high magic tales).

The main characters are bounty hunters on a planet left ruined by human colonialism. As my notecard reads:

Scathach and Brand are gloamstriders, mercenaries in a ruined, polluted world. The largely abandoned city-sprawls are now home to maddened beasts and malicious beings, products of weakened Engigang, the Narrows (or Narrow Ways), caused by the broken Galdorsang. The Galdorsang was a last-ditch effort to save an over-populated, polluted world but, instead of cleaning up the world, it unleashed further corruption bound behind doors meant to be closed forever by the Kyne.

With the addition of eldritch horrors to the already troubled planet, the remaining population fled for other planets — those that could afford it. Those who could not and did not wish to succumb to servitude to leave their home stayed behind. Eventually, even the transport carriers saw no profit in visiting the homeworld and ceased offering transport to the colonies.

Small pockets of humanity have eked out an existence behind barriers and via trade routes between enclaves, and the gloamstriders leveraged what they could of the ancient Galdorsang’s powers to provide the protection needed by merchants and travelers by tattooing their bodies with the song runes. Some of their work involved dark things as well, and they essentially became mercenaries for hire.

old notes

The Kyne are the fey-like shamanic nomads who are the original inhabitants who are more than a little annoyed they have been left with a mess to clean up. Why “gloamstriders”? I liked the sound of glyph-tattooed mercenaries for hire who lived neither “in the light” or “in the dark” because of the roles of the glyphs/rune as being non-dualistic. It is the name that the Kyne gave to them.

I won’t bother you with the rest, as the plot is far from sensible, written in half-pidgin that I might have understood at the time, but I assure you will require some deciphering if I want to use it. Plus, that was from “V.3”, and I’d have to go through the other versions to untangle what the whole plot was.

Still — seems promising… I should do that instead of writing lengthy posts about how something is “intriguing” and “seems promising”, but I haven’t.

Today: melancholy.

I realized as I sat down to work today that I miss two things: the circle/grove (but not the high rituals, if that makes sense), and the old-growth forest I used to basically live within when I was not swimming in the nearby lake as a child/early teen — at least until it was clear-cut and replaced with a shit-tonne of more-profitable, quick-growing, monospecies pine trees.

I miss the easy camaraderie of the circle and the grove I belonged to. Strangers were friends you had yet to meet. There were few value judgments and you could be you without wondering to much what might be said of you after you left the room. We were all rebels and outcasts, each group was an island for misfit toys, and so, unless you did something wholly egregious, you were accepted — superficial flaws and all. And it was enlightening, to sit there with the group in either celebration or just casual socialization, chatting up about things both mundane and esoteric. You could have a counterpoint and people would respect it. If you were wrong, they’d patiently try to explain the logical fallacy and, if you were right, they’d give you a nod and adjust their views to fit your contribution.

Looking from the outside these days, I don’t know that it works that way anymore. As more people have gotten involved, it seems like the same kinds of schisms we see in everyday life seem to have infiltrated the community, which makes me sad to some degree. I don’t know if you can ever go back to what it was 35 years ago — as welcoming and open-minded as it was back then. There were divisions, to be sure — but those dissolved when easily for the sake of common cause.

As far as the forest goes — I can’t say why that came to mind aside from the fact that I miss it. I’m not sure where I could find something so primitive that was an easy day jaunt, especially as people try to escape the confines of coronavirus and have overrun nature to the point that it feels like there are very few places left that they haven’t turned into a tourist destination. It used to be that I could get my fix down by the Minnesota or Mississippi Rivers, or even at bare-ass beach at Cedar Lake on a weekday (when people are decidedly clothed, if present at all), but my recent forays into similar areas have shown an insane amount of uptick in traffic — the kind where people need to be typical Americans and turn the volume to “eleven”, bring their shouting kids, and barking dogs and there is very little nature sticking around for all the cacophony of din. They are treating the nature areas as their new shopping malls, and it’s putting a lot of stress on those areas. It is not fun or relaxing at all to visit under those conditions. It grates, honestly, with the subwoofers and glass-pack mufflers, the whoops and hollers, the mountain bikers ignoring the “no off-road biking” signs… So I avoid it. People are nature, too, but they often make more than their fair share of “nature” and crowd out the rest.

Besides, it misses the whole “primitive” to follow established trails meant to keep disrespectful visitors from completely disrupting the ecosystem. I want to be somewhere where I have to be careful not to disturb a wayward sapling and snap an exuberant shoot of growth leaning over the trail, or dodge an elaborate web, or step over a mostly-rotten deadfall laying over the trail. To catch the flash of a white tail, or rouse a slumbering grouse when you step too close, or to hear the skittering of something that you can’t identify as it scampers over the dead leaves in the undergrowth. One sound I miss hearing perhaps the most is the lonely call of a loon filtering through the tree branches as I weaved my way along the narrow trails, leaving little more that boot-prints to be erased by rain or a deer hoof in my wake.

©2021 Michael Raven

We walked from the population center to the buildings being swallowed by the Ocean, my son and I [note: I do not have a son in real life], to go fishing in the waters beyond the newer ruins. We carried our fishing poles and made sure the residents saw we had our coronavirus masks on, though they seemed more intrigued by our kits and poles. “Americans,” muttered one in a business suit and a bowler hat, shook his head and gave us wide berth.

We thread our way between the newer ruins to the sandbars beyond, the more ancient places protected somewhat by an artificial reef of roman-style pillars and arches tumbled to ruin. The Ocean, it raged beyond the barrier, with waves reaching 20, 30, 50 feet in height, with a dark grey storm sky as backdrop. I wasn’t worried and my son didn’t know to be worried about such things as he ran ahead of me. I smiled because he smiled — though I wished he wouldn’t rush through the tide pools that filled with the raging storm between our destination on shore and the fallen city. Some were deep enough to pour over the hip waders I wore, filling them with salt water. It didn’t matter, I’d be dry soon enough.

I looked down at my feet and, to my joy, I found a fragment of the past: an olive-colored stone piece of an even older time, etched with hounds and cranes, weathered smooth and polished to a shine. I called to my son to share my discovery, but he was too far to hear me over the sound of the wind and the Ocean’s waves. A talisman for me, then.

I followed in his footsteps, the Ocean raging more and the sky getting darker with every step — but the kind of darkness where you can sense the sun behind the clouds. I found a jutting upright piece of stonework, stuck in the sand as if by some giant’s hand, with similar images as those carved on the piece I carried and I knew we’d come fishing to the the right place.

I caught up with my son, showed him my find and he smiled. Though the storm raged all around us, I only knew joy.

©2021 Michael Raven

Hold an eagle feather to my heart, washing the wind with each wave of my heart, washing the air with my breath, drinking in the leaf-rot scents, earthy with fungal fragrant decomposition. Violets at the funeral of Pan, long live the horned one, horny one, the man without a face.

I take the past , crumple into into all corners and shove it up their ass, shouting to the sky — are you happy now? Are you happy? They don’t feel a thing, I am sure, the efforts a waste, but goddamn does it feel good to desecrate those straw dogs! Then, the light dancing like motes on the cold breeze and —

I stand in the manicured garden I trample with my hooves and spite and fear and loathing, reborn I suppose. I trample those violets too, absurd as they are. Who wants to worry about the Death in winter, when it is spring? We dance, we sing, ushering in the Queen riding rabbits in a way that would make your mother cover your eyes were you still a child, make you father shudder in shame…

I was bed.

It was night, it was a gift ride home and, well, not so much bed as ‘carpeted’. We didn’t wait for comfort. It was green, nothing at all like grass, but we made it grass that May eve, lost in the brambles and soil as they rode us into the night. Belladonna and mandrake, the taste of dirt and sex into the early hours. Maybe declaring love to strangers. Shh — that’s secret.

I left that past out of my myriad folded prize. That is a past I will relish — inductress of mine. Selfish, I keep those treasures close, unwilling to let them fade.

Memories fade, washed out rags of grey and tatters ribbons flapping in the mountain of a mind gone to rubble. Where is the path? Overgrown.

The cold breeze wakes me at the top of the hill, my naked skin prickling with the chill, desire shrinking with the funeral wake of the vision and I tumble into the maelstrom me, skin and sticks, refuse and bones, laying in the rot of spring.

©2021 Michael Raven

Visits. Six or seven last night; like thieves in the night. Others, the nights before.

Friday, I heard floorboards creak as I slumbered, didn’t think much of it. Felt the bed compress with the weight of an adult, turned to say something.

No one there.

Saturday. Rinse. Repeat. Someone kissed me on the forehead as I woke. I swear I swear I swear I was not dreaming.

Last night, the barrage. These stayed in dream. Waking up from the visits, now fading into the mists of memory. On the hour, every hour starting at midnight. Thieves. They stole something, but left something in exchange. I may have ended up with the better end of the exchange, but it was still a theft.

Wisps:

• Saint Paul, West Seventh limestone storefronts. We shared coffee, smokes. Advice: left behind the counter. He laughed.
• Seattle, Belltown. Shopping. Something taken from racks and given, we ran and laughed as the cops were called. She told me not to worry; it was all a dream, she explained, but that I should cling tightly to what we snatched.
• Grandparents house. Grandma telling tall tales, except each was more true than real life.
• The crows, laughing outside. They spoke of other times and places. I listened, intent. I heard a secret, I am sure.
• More. But gone now. The clock read 1am, it read 2am, it read..

Memory, waking, slipstream and fading. Important things — I hope I put it into a treasure chest for later.