In the Deep Dark Hills

Get it Out / Spit it Out

bunny

For @tamlinweek Day 2: Dark Spring/Spring Mythology & Celebrations. Poem + Moodboard, but since the pitcures are a bit triggering I've out them under the cut after the poem ends. Read On AO3 here.

In vernal hush where bloodroots sprawl,

The trees don masks of blossom-white,

And Spring in velvet-footed thrall 

Prepares its feast for bloom and blight.

The crocus choir sings low, off-key,

While willows whisper prayers to bone—

Their pollen-thick obscurity

A veil for rites best left unknown.

The people come in garlands crowned,

With ivy cinched and ashwood bows,

To hunt the Beast of sacred ground. 

Through foxglove fields and shadowed rows.

A hunger wakes in hawthorn’s breath,

Where every thorn remembers sin;

They chase the scent of moss and death—

It waits beneath the alder's grin.

Tamlin leads, with sword unsheathed,

His mantle stitched from fern and flame.

The bloom god, cursed and laurel-wreathed,

Who speaks the old rite’s bloodless name.

But as they tread the myrtle glen,         

And silver sap drips from the bark,

A twist begins inside the men—

Yet Tamlin feels the deepest mark.

His hands, once fair, now marred with bark,

The veins beneath a sickly green.

His breath is mulch, his gaze grows stark,

His thoughts grow gnarled and evergreen.

The others chant, a ritual hymn,

To bind the Beast in roots and fire.

Yet none dare speak the change in him—

Their lord now kindles dark desire.

He smells the fear, the petaled blood,

A bloom upon the hunting knife.

And when he roars within the wood,

It echoes more than beast or life.

For Spring demands its tithe in pain,

In sap and sinew, heart and limb.

The offering was not the slain—

The offering, it seems, was him.

PRIDE MONTH IS UPON US... AND THE CATS MAKE THEIR RETURN FROM THE SHADOWS.

All designs are available as shirts, stickers, mugs, pins, blankets, tapestries, and more on my Redbubble and TeePublic shops. This year I've added the aromantic flag as well as two options for the aroace flag. Invite one of these snarling beasts into your home today, and let's go bite throats.

All purchases go to support a starving queer artist. Thanks! ---

don’t fall in love, don’t go by the river, don’t go to the sea, don’t talk to sailors, don’t gamble, don’t ramble, don’t go North, don’t go North-West, don’t stand in the wind, don’t dance with anyone named Sally, Sue, Mary, Ann, or Barbara, don’t go to the pub (but if you do go to the pub at least don’t drink, and if you do drink at least pay for your own drink, and if you are absolutely broke and have to let someone else pay for your drink then at the very least do try not to forget to toast everyone you know whom you think might be there very loudly and possibly multiple times), don’t lend money, don’t borrow money, don’t wish you had more money, don’t make plans to make more money, don’t start working for a new employer, absolutely do believe anyone who says they will try to kill you, curse you, or maim you, absolutely do believe anyone who says you might die, turn down every invitation to go a-hunting, horse-riding, or a-courting, be wary of flute players you meet on your path, don’t dance with satanic men in black coats, don’t marry off your daughters to the first man who’ll have them, and don’t promise your true love any herbs you can’t readily plant and gather in your own garden.