#castingmysilver

[4/20/26]

Valiantly face your shadow

Like a namesake gone before.

Royal child of hidden kingdoms,

Seek to hear the Lion's roar.

You're a child of blooming Spring,

...I want happy or at minimum bittersweet endings, but I *can* take being hurt - if it means being *healed* afterward. I guess for me... "Life is hell so I want reassurance it may be survived" is sometimes a good summary?

I don’t disagree! I’ve always been very partial to this quote, which is Neil Gaiman very liberally paraphrasing G. K. Chesterton:

Fairy tales are more than true – not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.

I can take bittersweet, and I’m fine with ‘earn your happy ending,’ but... well, there was that whole thing a while back with people acting like romance novels were lazy for always ending with a HEA and it was just like ‘my dudes... I think you might have somehow missed the entire point of this genre.’

I’m also still being unsubtly salty as hell about Eder not being a romance option in Pillars of Eternity, so like, this wasn’t me having Grand Deep Feelings, it’s me going ‘dear creators; your refusal to give me what I want is not engendering personal growth or making me think you’re Super Deep, it is just making me grumpy enough to apply fanfic to patch what I see as Problems.’ Basically, I want people to stop acting like there’s some kind of virtue in dragging the audience through thorn bushes if that’s not something said audience is into. Some people are! That’s fine! Some people jump out of airplanes for fun, too!

By and large swap arrangements include that you remain the same caste as you were when you move but under-fours can sometimes have this fudged with more or less dubiously legal paperwork and nobody cares that much.

[4/18/26]

Is the sky pouring down to make soup, or tea?

There are leaves on the ground aplenty,

And floral teas can be pretty neat,

I think.

I drink

My tea with you when we meet;

Your apple-spice, my China black lychee.

Perhaps the warmth helps make our conversation free.

Your tea nook is a weather-map

Of friendships over time.

The chocolate and the berry swap

Tales of places far, and joys sublime.

Rainy days still make us bloom,

Lightning flash and thunder boom

May try to bring the heat

(For Shasta in the fog.)

--

In the dark, in the dark–in the dark and cold–

Pines dripping, wind biting, and path untold–

A boy rides alone, and his sorrow seethes.

But something unseen at his side, it breathes;

Warm and deep and slow and wild.

A voice in the shadows comes, rich and mild.

It had waited long for him to speak,

Holding all answers he could seek.

If he wanted Truth, he had only to ask.

What lies behind his every task?

Whose are his sorrows, and whose his hope?

Who sheltered him there at the end of his rope,

That night in the tombs when ghouls he feared?

Who brought him in safely when death he neared

As a wailing child at the edge of the sea?

What lurks past his every memory?

In the dark, in the dark, triune voices call,

Echoing forth from a singular footfall,

And the fog's shroud is fading into white,

[4/13/26]

Two girls spin out of orbit, into different sorts of power.

They only want belonging.

They find a kingdom and a tower.

One studious and careful, but with lightning in her veins.

One wild and girlish, muddy skirts,

Stands in high places, seeks the power that drains

Desire's cup,

While her sister finds the vacuum nature abhors,

And grins,

And fills it up.

Binary stars are burning:

Bloody red,

Electric blue.

Wary hearts still yearning