Ripost!

Electric leaves share whispers above the world, the only speaking things.

Foxes, voles, and the many furred things made their ways around the roots, but none of them spoke in the Everforest. None of them danced or sang or played the strings, but there’s a magic to the Everforest, nonetheless.

The leaves listen, and they carry tingles of their secrets across branches and along the vines. Every fiber glints and gleams with every color, prisms of racing information. Glyphs run and race along deep rings, ever-expanding to contain more records of what happens in the shade of a world-spanning canopy. The roots run deep, coursing with currents, crafting lightning from the sun and wind to store in the silent earth. Some drink the heat below. Some run that deep.

The Everforest is an elegant computer, one that holds a flawless history. It has no bias, no perspectives, and no limitations of an author’s eye. It records. It remembers. The Everforest whispers, and the Everforest is the only listener.

It not plant itself, but it outlived its planters and evolved beyond their whims.

The Everforest needs no other hands, no other cause, no other value.

Electric leaves share whispers above the world for no one.

TW: Body horror

“Fear’s no good, girl. Come now, don’t be afraid.” He held both her hands in one of his. Hers were small, but just as rough. He’d seen to that. No... she had. He’d seen her grow. He’d see her struggle. He wouldn’t see her die, not tonight. 

“Fear is a coward. Say it. Say it!”

“It doesn’t make sense!” she shouted back, shivering. Shaking. He could see her blood writhe under the skin, forming talons just too dull to break, tendrils just too thin to snap the vessels. Gnawing teeth. Tongues. This would be a long night. She sweat pink, and so he held on. She howled at him. “Take it back! Too soon!”

He shook his head. “You’re of age.” So she was. Younger than he’d been, but harder. Better. She hadn’t started sobbing yet. He’d wept by midnight. And she would, but not yet. No, not yet. “You’re of age, and you’re ready. Say it with me.”

“Fear’s a coward!” she spat. And she did spit red, right into his face. He saw the blood-hand crawling up her throat, trying to choke her from within. Not to kill. No, never to ruin the vessel. But they’d weary her. Wound her. Wear her down.

“Fear’s a coward,” he repeated, letting the red drip. “Fear gives power to the powerful. It will come to serve in time. So, what do we seek?” He felt it, even now. He squeezed her hands, too hard. It must hurt... but she had to know he was there. Had to know something other that boiling blood and the things in it.

“Fear’s a coward! But anger.... Anger answers us all! The weakest, most of all!” She grit her teeth, and there they were. Red tears. She’d lasted so long. Twilight. Unthinkable.  If she lived through the day, she’d be stronger than he’d ever been. More potent than he’d ever seen. If she lived, whole of mind...

They say his grandfather laughed. They had to put him down within a week.

“Anger is our answer to the mighty things that come,” he said. She repeated it, in agony. Her blood was boiling now. The heat scalded his hands, but he’d rather lose them both than let go of his girl tonight. He’d burned before. He’d burn now.

If the gods were fair, he’d burn long after, for letting her follow him into this life.“And come the dawn?” he promised her, as he’d been promised. “The devils die, and we alone will anger in the light...” It was a lie, in its ways, but necessary.

She didn’t answer. She screamed instead. She screamed until the edge of day.

She danced around the edges of the argument. They shone in the moonlight.

Daggers flashes and sweat flew like sparks between them. One pressed, and the other rolled and shoved them past. The other rolled, whirled, threw a blade and drew another - a distraction that failed to distract - and they clashed again.

There was no dialogue, no exchange of quips or grievances. Their eyes were were past the dancing edges, locked on wrists and knees and eyes - the honest indicators. Each one had their share of tiger stripes, but neither stopped. Neither could. Momentum had them in the moment, and to relent first would be costly.

She makes a mistake - too much pressure on the front foot, too far forward, and her blade takes a bite out of the other’s cheek. A feint turned terrible breaks the rhythm. After that, it’s already over. A whirl on the fingers and its pommels to the plexus, throat, and nose. The other falls - heartless, breathless, blinded by pain.

Daggers clatter to the floor. All they had to say, all they had to resolve... and an accident turned ugly ended it. She spat onto the floor and turned. Hesitated.

Then she left the other, left one more ex-lover on the proving ground.

I had a feeling. 

It was you. 

I should have known better.

Strike the page.

Strike out all the love letters, and all the words they wrote together. They haven’t left me, but they’ve left me paper, ink, and anger to swallow. Prose, reduced to past tense by mere perspective. I get it now. I understand. So strike the page.

Throw out my affect of protagonism. This will never be that kind of story. Now, the seeker becomes the stalker, the sorrowful, the soulful, or the sick. To stay with what’s been written is to fall, but not in love. To let go of what was written...?

Still, strike the page. No words will move. No dreams will come. No leaps will bound, no twists will tear of the heart, and not a second’s sleep is lost for anyone but me, because the worst work in the world is a tale untold. Or a song unheard.

Strike the page. Better to swallow words, I think, than waste them.

Better to hurt than to burden.

It’s for the best.

Prompt:

“I know you don’t care anymore, but I still love you.”  - @writing-is-ruining-my-life

Feels good to just to mess around with words again...

The cider was fine. Just fine. The view was decent. The seat? Uncomfortable.

There was no back to the stone she sat on. There were no grooves or indentations. She sat upon the least impressive butt plug ever carved by the wind and rain itself, and she had to admit. Nature needed a few more classes. Still... even being slowly parted inside her ragged, bloodstained jeans was not enough to move her. She was tired. She was sitting. She was there. So it was.

The cider? She’d found a warm can amidst the wreckage, a few miles back. She didn’t want to think about that gas station. She didn’t want to think about who’d worked there. There was no name to how they ended up. No name for what was left of them. No name she could assign to that particular vision, except ‘another’.

Another sight. Another cider. This wasn’t the last one she’d scrounged up. She’d be sitting there a while. And, as for the view... Well, it wasn’t going anywhere.

It wasn’t her fault, she assured herself. People would thank her one day. Right?

But from up here, looking down the mountain at the giant lizard’s corpse, laying out like she planned to be by morning over the rubble of a former city’s sprawl?

She had to wonder if this ‘superhero’ thing was working out. Maybe next time.

But for now? Now, she had cider and a sunset and a rock that owed her dinner.

All in all? Winning felt a little weird.

Prompt: “It's been a long time, Hawk. / Too long. / One day after our journeys have ended nearby / the dripping eaves and Westminster bells .../ what beer do you drink?” from @text-onlynopromises

I don’t know if I’m back, but I felt like practicing.

I’m fighting off a cold, and it is terrible.

It’s this dragging, heavy presence. It’s a scarf in the wrong season and it’s tied too tight. It’s a blockage when you just need to get it out. It is the antithesis to everything you’ve ever taught your body about fluids - retention becomes sin.

I’m fighting off a cold, and that’s adventure enough for one night.

Isn’t that a story?

I dunno. It blows. Ow.

Her knees were shaking. Why were they shaking? Were her teeth shaking, too?

Was she sweating from the feeling or the fabric? Why did this have to be hard?

“Stop!” she shouted. She hadn’t planned on that. The mugger was right in front of her, couldn’t be more than five feet. Her voice startled the victim, a guy with better taste in make-up than she’d ever had. Good job, Gayle. Be the hero...

The mugger stopped, at least. Stopped. Looked. Leered, more like it. Laughed.

“Unhand that...” She paused. Wait, was he even a he? Was she about to make things worse? “Citizen!” The victim heard the hesitation. She swore she detected a scowl. “Every citizen has a right to security, safety, and proper address!”

The mugger didn’t get it. The victim, which is another awkward term, mouthed ‘them’. She nodded back, mouthing ‘them’ in return. Confirming. Affirming. They shared a smile.

Then the mugger cocked the gun. “Get the fuck out of here!” And god, she almost did.

It wasn’t fear, not the kind you’d think. Anyone who has to cock a gun on the fly doesn’t know how to use one. That made him more dangerous to her them, but not a threat to her. Not that he was a threat to her, anyway. She had a thousand ways to disarm him... but she couldn’t think of one. She couldn’t think of which.

Instead, she thought about the way his voice boomed. How it shook her bones. How it echoed with other voices, years ago and long away. How she was still scared of those echoes, even after they could never, ever hurt her... 

Is every kid a scared kid for the rest of their lives? She had to swallow down the bile.

She had the mask. She had a thousand ways to handle this. She had a choice.

“Put down the gun and walk away, or I put down the gun and you crawl home.”

She didn’t shout that time, but the mugger and her citizen in need heard it.

The mugger fired. But don’t worry - she had a thousand ways to handle it.

And all she needed was one. 

It hurt. A lot.

Prompt:

"Why does it feel so wrong standing up for oneself, even when there is no doubt you're in the right?"

The first three hundred lives are best. After that? You get annoyed by repetitions.

I used to live life with a vigor and a thirst for vice. I wanted to indulge in every bloody need, and I wanted to be justified. I wanted to kill wicked men. I wanted to love virtuous men. I wanted to drink deep in the cups of victory. I wanted to be full in the belly and the bed and the pocket. I believed in things like right reasons.

Repetition robs you of virtue. When you’ve returned in new skin down roads you’d paved, to see the harvest of your wild oats? You learn. Oh gods, you learn. For every life you thought you saved, you find resentment springing from the bones you’d broken. From every seed you’d sown? You find your own mistakes. It’s a wonder anyone still reincarnates - maybe they don’t remember, like I do.

I never ask. I couldn’t bear to meet anyone again, not knowing what I know now.

These days, I live narrowly. I seek out something that I haven’t done, so I can see how it looks in perfect hindsidght. This, in itself, requires endless repeitition. The evasions, the economic schemes, the lies, the sheer labor of comfortable invisibility. I’ve managed to make every other life a comfort. And those between?

A labor of repetitive sin. I kill. I cry. I mitigate my harms as best I can, so poorly.

It’s hardly worth remembering, the agonies of those lives. It’s like daydreaming.

I was born a few years back, and this life will not be a kind one.

At least I was born wealthy, this time. To unsuspecting idealists.

Fewer repetitive sins. Guilt becomes a most boring burden.

It’s the only thing that never loses meaning.

Prompt:

"They weren't even worth the headache their screams gave me."