hiding under a rock

Vampires speaking in dead languages.

Vampires being able to translate untranslatable scripts.

Vampires who react to straightwashing historical figures like “Are you kidding me everyone knew that man was queer!”

Vampires from cultures who were once antagonistic towards each other stubbornly maintaining a friendship that’s lasted longer than their civilizations.

vampire who couldn’t tell you what caravaggio was known for but duelled with him at least three times and slept with him at least ten. “cara-who OH YOU MEAN MICHAEL yeah he was cool”

vampire who spent 100 years in a convent and is still so bitter that in all that time they never made her mother superior “GODDAMMIT I HAD SENIORITY! I HAD SENIORITY!” “okay so first off janet, that was six hundred years ago, but more importantly, maybe if you didn’t always start those complaints off with blasphemy…”

vampire professor who just sort of showed up at oxford when it was founded and is still there (and nobody’s noticed because he still never actually shows up to his lectures)

queer vampire who constantly talks about the fashion for straightness and you need to be really careful because if you tell them straight is default they WILL scream at you for five days straight about what a modern concept heterosexuality is

vampire hoarder who has an entire town where they just kept having to buy new houses to keep their stuff in and some of it’s probably worth tens of millions by now but you’ll never find it in among the 1950s kitschy kitten sculptures and boxes of newspaper (the newspaper is a wonderful mix of yesterday’s guardian and daily courants from 1725)

vampire sailor from manderville’s time who just has so many stories and some of them might even be true

vampire bluestocking girl who took to the internet like a fish to water and spends her whole unlife engaging reddit antifeminists about women’s rights because that’s one fight she’s determined to see through. also with the advent of cheap dyes she literally wears blue socks every day and hopes one day someone gets the joke

vampire doctor who just gets SO CONFUSED about the literature because do you know how hard it is to keep up with medicine kevin? when i got my doctorate we thought leeches were good and then they were bad and now they’re good again? i was published in issue one of the lancet kevin that is 387 lancets kevin how the hell am i meant to remember which one’s current kevin why are they saying cannabis is good for pain like this is news??? (but also lives in a state of wonderment every day in hospital because wow look at all this stuff we can do now look at it kevin!)

“yeah i heard about the hundred years war but i was in northern african at the time so…”

“the roman empire fell??? how did the fucking roman empire fall??? i spend a fucking handful of decades in india and i come back to this???”

“russia needs to stop having revolutions, i can’t keep them all straight…”

“when did france become a democracy?? and america’s now it’s own country??? i’ve spent the last century in a forest in wallachia scaring small children so––wHat dO yOU meAn we’re calling it romania now??? when the fuck did it become romania???”

“WE HAD A WORLD WAR??? WE HAD TWO WORLD WARS???? well obviously ‘world’ is an exaggeration because i heard nothing about it while i was lost in the amazon rainforest for the last fifty years…”

Some cultures lack names For a color, you see. Hence good old Homer And his “wine-dark sea.”

A usage so quaint, A phrasing so old, For verses of romance Is sheer fucking gold.

Words are in flux And meanings they drift But the word purple You’ve given short shrift.

The concept of purple, My friends, is old And refers to a pigment once precious as gold.

By crushing up molluscs From the wine-dark sea You make a dye: Imperial decree

Meant that in Rome, to wear purpura was a privilege reserved

For only the emperor!

The word ‘purple’, for clothes so fancy, Entered English By the ninth century

.

Why then are voilets Not purple in song? The dye from this mollusc, known for so long

Is almost magenta; More red than blue. The concept of purple is old, and yet new.

The dye is red, So this might be true: Roses are purple And violets are blue

me, a connesiur of the arts:

This is “Kindled” by Laura K. Cannon, which is part of her portfolio that can be found here: http://navate.com/2wk6im1sartc92iwza7il07bxq2mk5