Vaiya’s mother had taught her never
to do things halfway. If you wanted something done, you did it yourself, and
you did it better than anyone else.
She had
bought the expensive salt from the poisoned flatlands and made a perfect circle
with it. She had personally snipped two whiskers from a pure black cat (the
spell only called for one, but it was good to have a back-up) and used it for
the wick in her homemade firebee wax candle. The candle sat in the middle of
the salt circle, surrounded by painstakingly sketched runes. She had the silver
knife, if she needed it, and a cup of holy water sitting casually within hand’s
reach. The moon was dark. It was time.
She recited
the spell she had memorized, not slowly but deliberately, giving each word its
proper weight. She leaned over the edge of the circle, taking care not to scuff
it, and lit the wick of the candle. It smelled like burning hair, and beneath
that lurked another smell, like sulfur. She drew back quickly.
Something
uncoiled from the candle flame. It stretched up, spread itself out, and drew
back in on itself. The demon looked like flame made solid. It had taken the
shape of a cat, though a much bigger and fiercer one than the feline whose
whiskers she had used. Its flame-yellow teeth jutted past its lower jaw, and
its forked tongue, when it yawned, gleamed burnished copper orange.
“And what
can I do for you, O Summoner?” it asked. Its pupils were the only part of its
body not the color of fire. They were shiny coal black, and they dilated as the
demon studied her.
“I want the
hoard of the dragon that died two days ago,” Vaiya said. “I want it in my
cellar tomorrow morning, no later than nine o’clock. I’m not trekking up that
mountain to get it.”
The demon
stretched its front legs, which lengthened unnaturally as it did so. It tapped
the edge of the circle, and its ember-red toes immediately withered into
charcoal. The demon studied its toes with interest.
“Impressive,”
it said. “You do not smell like a witch.” It licked its toes until they began
to glow again.
“I’m not, I
just dabble,” Vaiya said. “But I know enough to know you’ll want something in
exchange.”
“You are
correct.” The demon slunk to the edge of the circle and paced along it, though
this time it avoided touching the salt.
“I want a
child,” it said. “It will be half demon, and you will carry it for me for six
months. Less than your kind usually must bear, so I hear.”
“You heard
right,” she said. “So, this demon child. Will it kill me in the process of
giving birth?”
The demon
purred.
“Fire is
always hungry, always seeking to spread. But a fire that destroyed the wood
that birthed it would die at once. No, it will not kill you. But I advise
against keeping it for long.”
“Fair
enough,” Vaiya said. “You get a demon child, I get a dragon’s hoard. Agreed?”
“Agreed,”
said the demon. It sat, tail twitching.
“Blood is
traditional, to seal the arrangement.”
“Funny. I
heard hair works just as well and comes with fewer side effects,” said Vaiya.
The demon
did not quite sigh, having no need to breath. But it came close.
“You are
correct,” it said.
Vaiya cut a
length of her hair with the silver knife and tossed it into the circle. The
demon licked it up, and the smell of burning hair intensified.
“We will
meet again,” the demon said. And then it vanished, as abruptly as a flame going
out. Vaiya sprinkled holy water over the whole area, just in case. Then she
swept up the salt and ashes, carried the dustpan to the pigpen, and dumped it
all in. She buried the remains of her summoning, knowing that a demon with that
much dignity would never risk emerging covered in pig muck.
“Right,
well, that’s done,” she muttered to herself. “I’ll deal with the witch
tomorrow.”
Look, I don’t believe in God, but I will not disrespect the Good Gentlemen of the Hills. That’s just common sense.
Between this and the Icelanders with their elves I do not understand what is going on above the 50th parallel.
My general rule of thumb: you don’t have to believe in everything, but don’t fuck with it, just in case.
^^^ that part
This is truer than true. Especially the Irish part.
Let me tell you what I know about this after living here for nearly thirty years.
This is a modern European country, the home of hot net startups, of Internet giants and (in some places, some very few places) the fastest broadband on Earth. People here live in this century, HARD.
Yet they get nervous about walking up that one hill close to their home after dark, because, you know… stuff happens there.
I know this because Peter and I live next to One Of Those Hills. There are people in our locality who wouldn’t go up our tiny country road on a dark night for love or money. What they make of us being so close to it for so long without harm coming to us, I have no idea. For all I know, it’s ascribed to us being writers (i.e. sort of bards) or mad folk (also in some kind of positive relationship with the Dangerous Side: don’t forget that the root word of “silly”, which used to be English for “crazy”, is the Old English _saelig_, “holy”…) or otherwise somehow weirdly exempt.
And you know what? I’m never going to ask. Because one does not discuss such things. Lest people from outside get the wrong idea about us, about normal modern Irish people living in normal modern Ireland.
You hear about this in whispers, though, in the pub, late at night, when all the tourists have gone to bed or gone away and no one but the locals are around. That hill. That curve in the road. That cold feeling you get in that one place. There is a deep understanding that there is something here older than us, that doesn’t care about us particularly, that (when we obtrude on it) is as willing to kick us in the slats as to let us pass by unmolested.
So you greet the magpies, singly or otherwise. You let stones in the middle of fields be. You apologize to the hawthorn bush when you’re pruning it. If you see something peculiar that cannot be otherwise explained, you are polite to it and pass onward about your business without further comment. And you don’t go on about it afterwards. Because it’s… unwise. Not that you personally know any examples of people who’ve screwed it up, of course. But you don’t meddle, and you learn when to look the other way, not to see, not to hear. Some things have just been here (for various values of “here” and various values of “been”) a lot longer than you have, and will be here still after you’re gone. That’s the way of it. When you hear the story about the idiots who for a prank chainsawed the centuries-old fairy tree a couple of counties over, you say – if asked by a neighbor – exactly what they’re probably thinking: “Poor fuckers. They’re doomed.” And if asked by anybody else you shake your head and say something anodyne about Kids These Days. (While thinking DOOMED all over again, because there are some particularly self-destructive ways to increase entropy.)
Meanwhile, in Iceland: the county council that carelessly knocked a known elf rock off a hillside when repairing a road has had to go dig the rock up from where it got buried during construction, because that road has had the most impossible damn stuff happen to it since that you ever heard of. Doubtless some nice person (maybe they’ll send out for the Priest of Thor or some such) will come along and do a little propitiatory sacrifice of some kind to the alfar, belatedly begging their pardon for the inconvenience.
They’re building the alfar a new temple, too.
Atlantic islands. Faerie: we haz it.
The Southwest is like this in some ways. You don’t go traveling along the highways at night with an empty car seat. Because an empty car seat is an invitation. You stick your luggage, your laptop bag, whatever you got in that seat. Else something best left undiscussed and unnamed (because to discuss it by name is to go ‘AY WE’RE TALKING BOUT YA WE’RE HERE AND ALSO IGNORANT OF WHAT YOU’RE CAPABLE OF’ at the top of your damn lungs at them) will jump in to the car, after which you’re gonna have a bad time.
If you’re out in the woods, you keep constant, consistent count of your party and make sure you know everyone well enough that you can ID them by face alone, lest something imitating a person get at you. They like to insert themselves in the party and just observe before they strike. It’s a game to them. In general you don’t fuck with the weird, you ignore the lights in the sky (no, this isn’t a god damn night vale reference, yes I’m serious) and the woods, you lock up at night and you don’t answer the door for love or money. Whatever or whoever’s knocking ain’t your buddy.
^ So much good advice in this post right here
I live in the south and… you just… don’t go into the woods or fields at night.
Don’t go near big trees in the night
If you live on a farm, don’t look outside the windows at night
I have broken all these rules.
I’ve seen some shit.
If it sounds like your mom, but you didn’t realize your mom is home…. it’s not your mom. Promise.
One walked onto the porch once. Wasn’t fun. But they’re not super keen on guns. Typically bolt when they see one.
You think it’s the neighbor kids.
It’s not the neighbor kids.
Might sound like coyotes but you never really /see/ the coyotes but then wow that one cow was reaaaaaally fucked up this morning. The next night when you hear another one screaming you just turn the tv up a little more. Maybe fire a gun in the air but you don’t go after it. If it is coyotes then it’s probably a pack and you seriously don’t want to fuck with that and if it’s the other thing you seriously REALLY don’t want to fuck with that.
So in the south, especially near the mountains, you just go straight from your car to inside your house, draw your curtains and watch tv.
If you see lights in the fields just fucking leave it alone.
Eyes forward. Don’t be fucking stupid. Mind your own business. Call your neighbors and tell them to bring the cats in. There’s coyotes out. Some of them know. Most of them don’t.
Other than that everything’s a ghost and they died in the civil war. Literally all of everything else is just the civil war. We used to smell old perfume and pipe tobacco in the weeks leading up to the battle anniversaries.
Shit’s wild and I sound fucking crazy but I swear to god it’s true.
Every time this post comes around, it’s my favorite to open up the notes and read the stories. Probably shouldn’t have since I’m sleeping alone tonight, but you know, it’s fine. 😂
Austrian girl here who has lived in Ireland for 5+ years. This shit is LEGIT. I’ve seen it with my own two Catholic eyes.
Sure, visit during the day. That’s alright as long as you’re respectful. But you couldn’t PAY ME ENOUGH to go there at night. These are also the last places where you wanna start littering.
I grew up in southwest Pennsylvania which is a weird mixture of American cultures and environments. I was in the heavily forested mountains (northern Appalachia) but had lots and lots of corn fields and cow pastures. Like the Smoky Mountains and fields of Kansas combined. And being so cut off from a lot of the world, we had our fair share of ghost stories.
We had ‘witches’ in the mountains (more like ghost-women who will snatch you up by making you wander in a daze around the forest like the Blair Witch before killing you or letting you back out into society but you’re… different). Or devils in springs or abandoned wells (don’t look too long into one or something will follow you).
But we also had the cornfield demons. I’ve witnessed this many times. You’ll be in the passenger seat looking out the window and see red glowing eyes in the cornfield. No light shining in that direction. Just two red dots a few inches apart faintly glowing in a pitch black cornfield. They’re not the glow of deer eyes in the headlights. More like the embers of a dying fire. Sometimes, as you drive away, you’ll look out the back window or side mirror and you can see the eyes have moved to the edge of the corn field, still watching you. If you bring it up with the driver, they’ll call you paranoid, but grip the wheel a bit tighter and driver a little faster.
I was walking to a friend’s house one night. It was about 20 minutes down a dirt road with forest on one side and a cornfield on the other. I’ve walked past it many times and wasn’t really concerned. My main worry was coming across a skunk or porcupine. I didn’t have a flashlight because the moonlight was bright enough and I knew the walk really well. Then I saw the eyes. I immediately averted mine (because for some reason that’s how to not annoy it) but they kept wandering back. They were still there, watching. I heard rustling and saw the eyes come closer and I took off running. I got to my friends without a scratch, but I was terrified. I mentioned it to my friend and that’s when I found out it was A Thing. Her parents agreed and shared their stories. I brought it up more and almost everyone knew what I was talking about. It was a phenomenon a lot of folks around town experienced but never mentioned. To this day, I don’t linger around poorly light cornfields at night.
North Floridian here. When in the woods at night, only use the woods from already fallen trees and branches and never leave the fire light. For any reason, whatsoever. If you think your hear or see something in the woods by god just leave it be. If there’s a nearby source of water nearby then make sure to keep the fire between you and it. stay as far away from the water’s edge at night as possible and do not leave the fire light.
North Floridian, as well, here—but I grew up in central Florida. On a lake. In a town that had to build its roads around the lakes and springs. Also, in the part of central Florida that happens to be apart of the Bermuda Triangle, so that was fun.
There weren’t as many Civil War cemeteries as I live by now (there is one a tenth of a mile from my house currently) but most the advice I learned or decided was good to just trust my gut on still applies. Mind you, I’m studying physics, so I either learned the hard way or just decided that my instinct was better safe than sorry.
Don’t go near the lake at night. Don’t follow the fireflies toward the water’s edge because they’re not fireflies. Trust the cat. The cat always knows better than you do.
If you’re swimming in a spring and see a winking light in the Mouth, don’t go near it. They say people die because they get caught in the caves. I know that’s only half true. Whatever that light is, I’ve gotten close enough to watch it back deep into the shadows. Actually, unless you’re a strong swimmer don’t go near the mouth of a spring at all in Florida.
Touch the Great Oaks and Live Oaks with tender reverence because they are guardians but only if you show respect. Don’t look at the scrub at night, things with yellow eyes will stare back and you will want to follow them.
What I’ve learned in the Panhandle boils down to: stay out of the woods at night unless you know the Firebreak around your house. Be respectful of the dead in the Cemeteries if you must be there after dusk, because the things within the gates will leave you be—it’s what wanders outside the gates that you have to worry about.
When you leave a cemetery at night, get to your car, and get out as fast as possible. Don’t look back at the graveyard until you’ve put a couple of hundred yards between it and you if you can avoid it (don’t invite the ghost in your car, basically.)
There is always some wooden bridge that lots of people have jumped off of and died that is very much haunted that runs over a river. It’s always a pre-Civil War bridge. It might have been remade and isn’t wood anymore, but you don’t cross it at night, and you NEVER cross it at midnight or later.
In my town, there’s a spot in the river where anything built there is burned to the ground consistently, and never lasts more than seven years.
There is one statue in one of the Civil War cemeteries that no one goes near and has never been cleaned. I didn’t grow up here so no one will tell me why.
Trees forming perfectly geometrically shaped clearings are some of the safest places in the woods. Getting to them, however, is probably not, and often is done at high speed. Carry iron and silver with you in the woods if you go out at night. And on those days where the light is tinted gray, and the needles on the pines look like ash? Don’t go into the woods.
Leave the bathroom fan on because you don’t want to hear the sounds that come from the woods. When the neighbor dogs all go nuts and start barking and yelling and yowling lock your doors and windows and bring the cats in if they didn’t come in already.
Stay away from faerie rings. Especially on college campuses. I don’t know why but around here, University and College campuses seem to have much more… active… Fae. Also, don’t ever, and I mean EVER go near a kitten that is in the middle of a faerie ring. I don’t care how much you love cats. I really don’t. Trust me, it’s not fun.
Ignore the thunk against the screen door. It’s just a moth. It’s always just a moth.
Never say too long at the rest stops along I-10. They’re all liminal spaces and you don’t want something following you home. Also, there is one that has just been finished west and closes to Tallahassee… just… I don’t know what they disturbed, but get in and get out because that place feels WRONG. Don’t look into the woods/scrubs along any of the rest stops in Florida. You won’t like what you see, or what you think you see. There are things in the woods that never forgot.
At 2 am on a clear night you will hear a train’s whistle. There is no schedule for the train and only one set of tracks in town. You can be right there by the tracks and you will never see the train. It always sounds as far away whether you’re at home seven miles away from the tracks or are sitting at them.
Oh, and if you must go look for a pet at night in the woods, don’t speak a human language to call them.
Southeast Missouri, Ripley? county. Minutes from the Arkansas border.
I grew up in a little peninsula of farming land. Beans on one side, corn on the other. Nightmare for me during rice season because of mosquitos.
When I was five? I randomly woke up in my brother’s room and looked up out his bedroom window to see a pair of large, red, oval eyes on the other side. I didn’t know what to make of it, merely blinked and laid back down to sleep. I don’t think my brother was in the room at all.
He claimed to have played with goats’ heads (y’know, inverted pentagrams and demons and whatnot). I doubt he actually did anything, but he remains convinced and unnerved. Maybe he did do something.
Nothing else happened that I can recall at that house. It was fairly void of things that I’m aware of, though the empty bean fields felt… weird. Mischievous, I think.
Where my grandma lived, however, is a different story.
Things are in those woods in Butler county. You wouldn’t think so during the daylight, but the sheer amount of nightmares I had when we moved there was enough to convince me by the third night in a row of having them, well before I would be scared to go into the bathroom without the light being beforehand. Only once did see something when I was awake at her house, another time I can’t be too sure I was dreaming or not at the house we moved into years later.
The frequent feeling of witch winds without the witch weather is also a common occurrence. … Things… ride the winds, in both Butler and Ripley. They’ve been kind to me.
They prefer the warm fronts, though. And autumn. But they are oddly absent near pine trees or where there’s a lack of open space.
When I was 15 or 16, during a particularly terrified reaction to the premise of playing dodgeball (try being hit in the face at least once a game since they introduced it to the class in public school and not develop a near PTSD-like reaction to it), I was given an errand to go do… something else… because I was legit crying and scared about the prospect of playing and it was obvious that I just wasn’t being lazy and had a legit reason for not wanting to play.
I swear to god something or someone in the wind took my fear. It was a bit windy when I left the gym and it billowed around me, lifted my shirt all around just a few inches, like being under a vent, and… it was gone. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t crying. I was… calm. At peace. I walked back into that gym perfectly fine.
Be kind to the wind. Sing it songs. Vocalize to it. Read it poetry and stories. Those that ride the wind in the country typically will be just as kind.
However.
Tread carefully in the woods. While the trees and ground may be quiet, the wind is all but void and dark things will rise after dark. Particularly angry ones with overcast days. They will wait for prey and follow you home. They don’t care about white light wards but do care about the electric light you leave on. They will haunt you in the places you frequent with your guard down. You can temporarily throw them off track by being in a different room for a night. Maybe two. But they will realize where you’ve gone and will follow you.
I live on an island for half the year, and there are some days, where the wind picks up and and the clouds come in low and you don’t hear any seagulls, and it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up straight. I think there is a reason those days are “tea and book and stay inside” days.
I walk past a graveyard on my way to the grocery store sometimes. I’ve been in that graveyard, done a photoshoot in that graveyard. It’s beautiful, but no way am I going in after dark. It’s too picturesque, too old. Despite the older nature of a lot of the building around here, it feels out of place.
Most of this is very good advice. There is just one thing lacking.
You are not defenseless.
Someone mentions a defense (Iron and silver) but doesn’t say WHY, and the why is so very important. The iron is to ward off certain things in the woods that do not care for it; the silver is for you. Silver remembers, and silver is for the night, and silver is kind. The strength you possess is amplified by silver.
Gold is for daytime, the metal of the sun…but it’s not daytime that most of us need to be concerned with. Honestly, gold is more useful for trading than it is for warding.
Stainless Steel is melded with iron. If you can’t find straight-up iron, stainless steel jewelry is useful as hell…but don’t pierce your skin with it. It’ll weaken you, too. (Remember: We are all stardust.)
Keep cast iron in your home–the real thing, not the cheap shit they’re labeling as cast iron in stores nowadays. Place a mirror washed in salt water across from your doors so that things trying to get in immediately go right back out again…and can’t use the mirror to return. (Salt is your friend, too, but mirrors will fuck with you if you let them.)
Some people will never believe this. Some will. But: You are the biggest, baddest, scariest motherfucker in those woods/on that road/near that circle/next to that tree.
If you don’t want something to follow you, you have the right to say so.
Don’t envoke religion; not everyone follows the same religion and you
don’t want to piss other beings off because you think your rosary is for
everyone. (Hint: it isn’t.)
Don’t let fear guide your decisions. Running from the car to your door means you’re just tiring yourself out. These things are older and faster–if they were really interested in making you a snack, speed will not matter. However, your car IS made of iron. If you see/feel something watching you and it doesn’t feel safe to get out…well. 1.5 average tons of steel, bitches. Sleep in that car if you have to. There are worse things.
Bonus: Don’t fuck with ouiji (spirit) boards. Just don’t fucking do it, okay? It doesn’t matter how many people are handling the cutesy little moving object. NO.
“Yeah. Something went wrong–I never found out what–and he stood up and said, ‘Ah fix it.’ He dicked around under the hood and got back on the bus and said, ‘start’er up.’ The bus was fine and we made it to the hotel.”
John could tell Dave was taking this seriously because not even an eyebrow wiggled. "Yes. Help me Obi-Dave –“
“Nah, Dave Solo, except that I never shoot first. ”
Victor falls in love easily. A note of music, a turn of the head, a movement of the hips, a clasp of the hand. He falls in love for as long as it lasts; a summer or a winter. Once for a year, once for an afternoon.
Images flooded her brain, chaotic and contradictory, and she closed her eyes as if that would somehow block them out. She couldn’t think about the future right now. If she thought about the future, she’d go catatonic. Now, though. She could handle now.
Steve strips the bed methodically, trying to ignore the thick red stain in the sheets even as the not-quite-dry blood sticks to his fingers. The blood has seeped into the top of the mattress too, a violent bloom on the left side of it, and Steve resists the urge to haul the mattress from the frame and throw it down the stairs. The only thing keeping him from destroying it is the fact that it would certainly wake Peggy, who has finally managed to fall asleep in Bucky’s old bed.
The memory of her telling him that she liked how this shirt brought out his eyes the last time he’d worn it had, in fact, drifted across his mind when he was going through his closet to get dressed for tonight. “Oh,” he says after a brief pause, scratching at his cheek. “Thank you. You also…look nice. Very…sparkly,” he finishes lamely with an awkward hand gesture that’s supposed to…emphasize her sparkliness? Oh god, he’s terrible at this.
The last thing I need is to accidentally kill an NHL player with an allergic reaction to my cooking. I’m pretty sure his ass alone is insured for more than the value of this house. I’m too pretty for prison, y’all.
Another gauntlet was in front of me now. It was the left hand, the one tracing gentle circles on my palm was the right. I assumed it was both of them, the “hands” were too far apart to comfortably be the same person.
“It’s a
very nice dress,” Mack says, and Jemma looks placated for a moment. “My
grandmother has one just like it.”
Jemma meeps
in indignation, and Daisy laughs.
Ursula smiled and several of the guards stepped back. It was a rare smile that could make a vampire nervous.
“My dear Countess,” her smile broadened, “I am the stuff of nightmares.”
Cecily shakes her head, taking the thermos before stepping back to lean against the crumbling chimney Richard’s perched on. It’ll hold tonight, and tomorrow, and long enough for everyone who’ll come to watch the meteors. “There will be too many people to really watch them.” She pauses, tracking a path through the sky and murmuring, “now,” right before the meteor begins to burn bright.
So scientists have found gravitational waves, and I’d like to take the opportunity to talk to you guys about how I feel this impacts magic.
Magic is real. It is the manipulation of energies in the world. It is us these tiny, cosmic blips reaching out in the fabric of existence and imposing our will. It is atoms restructuring atoms, energy changing the flow and movement of energy. We are told so often that magic isn’t real, that these forces can’t exist, and yet we are just now finding solid proof of things that were as yet unproven.
We knew gravity was real. Obviously we haven’t flown off the planet and into the far reaches of space. SOMETHING was doing it. It was known. We weren’t solid on the actual workings though. Now we know. Now we can see it. Now its tangible to people.
In “olden times” healers used herbs and it was magic. And then we learned about chemical compounds and somehow decided that made it less magical. We discovered the placebo effect and decided that was less magical too, despite proving how much control we have over our own bodies. Most horrifyingly of all, we discovered celestial songs and decided it was a neat factoid and not a stunning truth of reality that stars and plants sing in the first place! Its not magic its science. Because now we have an explanation.
Bullshit.
These things are magic. Today we have learned that there are waves we have never seen, that the effect of celestial bodies spiraling through the void is tangible. Stars and planets sing and give off waves that touch and effect other things. And that is magical. We tiny creatures with blood made of star dust, we are a part of this! And science has no measure yet, but perhaps one day it will. For now though, we deal with what we know, what we experience, but which cannot yet be quantified: We are magical.
Science and magic do not have to be in opposition. Just like science and religion. Science is just another way of observing and measuring the world around us. Often the science of magic is dismissed because a few people with shoddy scientific methods have tainted it.
Went looking at one of my older original ‘verses because one of @lectorel‘s posts niggled at me about it, and I’m re-reading my stories, and grumbling at myself over a few things, and making mental notes about research to do to take what I have and expand it. Ok, and actual notes, too, because who knows when I’ll have the spoons to go doing the research needed.
Putting the rest beneath a cut because I don’t actually have the stories themselves posted publicly anywhere, and without them as reference, some of the bits might not make sense.
…. Erm, ok, and some of the snippets and bits I’m thinking are worth keeping, in some fashion or another, are also under the cut.
Also, anyone who wants to take the idea of a world where magic is present, and deeply distrusted in the US (just another minority to exploit, oppress, and murder, as far as the government is concerned), and run with it, or any of these characters, feel free. I’m honestly not sure I’m up to writing much in this particular ‘verse at the moment. It’s depressing, and I do not have the spoons to deal with it as is right now.
The pair who are straight – one is black or Native American or both, and the other is ADHD or autistic, and she’s very fond of playing a very particular sort of game (magic, it’s a cooperative game, the goal is to create something pretty and interesting and challenging for each other to add to). They’re the ones in the most bits, and in the end, theoretically, he dies. At least, as far as anyone from the outside would think. I’m not entirely sure he actually does so. (I’m also, while still proud of certain lines of his dialogue, am not certain I’m proud of them in context so much as out of it.)
The boy who suffers entirely more than he should, damnit, is transgender and utterly confused by people who care. He’s also physically disabled, and possibly has mental health issues beyond C-PTSD. He’s definitely nonverbal, and whether that is just because talking was dangerous or more than that, I don’t know.
The woman who dances in the storm surge and incoming hurricane is poor, and lives along the Atlantic coast, somewhere south of Delaware. Most likely, considering my own experiences, Maryland or North Carolina.
The person the priest makes the mistake of confronting is AFAB nonbinary whose depression tends to manifest as rage. Who has no one to turn to, is suicidal, and has absolutely no qualms about taking everyone around them with them.
I have no idea who the woman who is the figure in the dancing bit is, but I’m fairly certain her deities of choice are deities of life and death, creation and destruction. She’s also probably not thin, but I have so little to work from in her snippet. (Which is at the end of this post.)
The band is a trio who are poly, whose gender I can’t figure out, are pissed off, are probably white and probably aren’t the heroes they want to be, but they’re the ones the media focuses on, so they say fuck it, and do their damndest to turn conversations and interviews to those who are being exploited and murdered and stripped of their rights by a right-wing, conservative, reactionary government.
And the one with roses, I only know the villain of the piece, and I would dearly love to punt the “Inspector” into a deep dark pit full of pissed off non-venomous snakes. Because it’ll take longer for him to die than if they were venomous. (I’m not posting any bits from it.)
Interesting lines and snippets:
“Can’t control the mountains with iron and piss. Can’t trap the wind in a jar.”
“You can’t hear her screaming, and you think you have the power to hold her back. Think that concrete and steel will keep her out, that by burying your prison cells far from shore or fault line you’ll hide from her fury.”
“Mother’s cradle, hands rocking you to sleep. Can’t run now, the walls are shaking off their foundations. Don’t scream now, baby’s sleeping.”
“I don’t intend to go down quietly when they find me.” Take them with him, instead. Expend every trace of energy he could gather in a brilliant firestorm that would be hard to miss.
There’s a knock on the door, and he looks up, uncertain why the person hasn’t just come into the room. Surely it can’t be his, something like this never is. He curls against the pillow, his arms wrapping around his knees as he waits for the person to come in, for them to tell him he doesn’t belong here, to leave.
An admonishment that never comes, even when the person finally opens the door, looking in uncertainly before giving him an encouraging smile, and asking him if she can come in. He doesn’t know what to say, a shiver going through his body. No one ever asks him anything. No one cares enough.
Except they do care, they tell him. Let him stay in the room, let him eat as much as he wants, never hurt him, never tell him what he can do is wrong. He doesn’t come out very often, sits at the window and watches the rain, tracing the trickles of water that slide down the other side of the glass. He can’t quite bring himself to believe them, can’t quite believe this is real.
“You cannot take this from me,” she murmured, a smile curving her lips before she shouted it again. Laughing as she spun, feet splashing in the surging surf, arms stretched wide. Knowing she was dancing on the knife’s edge, all but daring the storm to take her off her feet, take her away from this world entirely, and not caring if it did.
“Cling to your cross and your book, holy man. Pray that your god will deliver you into the mercy of death, because I will have no such kindness for you.”
“Oh, call me a demon, call me an angel, call me a god. Call me mother, call me father, call me Death.”
“The world believes they’re wrong, believes we as a nation are wrong. A whole generation of Americans believes they’re wrong.”
“Change is a necessity, or a culture stagnates, and they’re desperate to prevent the change their children and grandchildren want. Everything they say and do makes them look like they’re trying to recreate the ‘good old days’, to create a time that never actually existed.”
"If they’re wrong, what would you say to the violence known to be committed by the so-called ‘magical community’?”
“Most of it can’t even be proven to have been them, rather than acts of nature, or the malice of those who want to maintain the status quo. That which can be confirmed is them defending themselves, which isn’t illegal unless you’re using magic. They aren’t afforded the right to live their own lives, to be human, in this country, only the right to be government property and cannon-fodder.”
Dance With Us
Hands raised with arms spread in welcome, she stands in the center of the circle, her lips moving in silent invocation. Hips sway slightly to the beat of intangible drums, hands beating out an old rhythm for her call. Warrior and mother, creator and destroyer, beauty and danger. Old memories rising on wind and dancing around her in a heartbeat promise of renewal.
Blood on stone, death and new life. Voice rising with the wind, drums louder beating against her skin. Ecstatic in the pain and the promise, pleasure warm as the blood painting her bare skin. The roar of wind, swirling around her filled with dust.
When magic starts to return to the modern world, barely anyone notices. It doesn’t look anything like what we imagine. People don’t suddenly start developing magic powers, casting spells, or turning into elves and dwarves. In fact, people don’t really change at all, not at first. It turns out that the magic isn’t even here for us. It’s here for what we’ve built.
The change is slow, and subtle, and strange, as the magic works its way into our institutions. You mail letters to dead relatives, and the post office starts delivering their replies. Late-night bus routes stop at places never seen on any atlas. Libraries suddenly include subterranean archives where you can look anything you’ve ever forgotten, from the names of your favorite childhood books to the precise flavor of your first-ever chocolate chip cookie.
The people working at these places take the changes in stride. The letters from the dead just show up every morning, sorted and stamped and ready for delivery, so why not carry them? Bus drivers follow the maps they’re given without trouble, and learn to accept even small gold coins as more than adequate fare. Electricians get used to seeing warding symbols in circuit diagrams, while clerks at the DMV find a stack of forms for registering ghostly steeds as personal vehicles, and sigh in relief at finally having that particular bureaucratic headache solved. The firefighters are shocked the first time they see a giant of living water burst out from a hydrant, but after it rescues several of them from a burning building, they decide not to ask questions. They tell their stories to others, though, and soon word of the changes is spreading.
There’s no single moment of realization where everyone discovers that magic is real; the knowledge just creeps into day to day life a bit at a time, and society adapts. Cyber-safety programs teach people to never accept a file from the electric fairies without sharing one in return, and to never accept their Terms and Conditions without searching for the subsection on Souls, Forfeiture Thereof. Students leave offerings of coffee and boxed wine to petition the School Spirit for lower tuition or exam deferrals. Nurses learn the hours when Death stalks the hospital hallways, and keep bedside vigils in the children’s ward. They bring board games and cards for when the reaper is feeling playful, and well-worn baseball bats for when he isn’t.
There are problems, of course, like the vicious monsters of blood and fire spawned from age-old hate groups, or infestations of the writing many-mouthed worms that literally feed on governmental corruption, but really, they were already there before the change. Magic only elaborates on what we’ve made, good or ill, manifesting the latent modern mythology underpinning our society. It doesn’t offer solutions to all of life’s problem, but for a few hurting people, guarded by the concrete arms of a neighborhood come to life to protect its community, or flying away on wings of copper wire and fiber-optic cable, it’s exactly the change they needed.
oh man but what if there was the same culture about magic as with other things in acidemia. Like there was this old fashioned way of doing potions and casting spells and creating charms and then a street way that might be more edgy and experimental. Like people programming spells and shit into their phones is frowned upon and new spells are considered fake and not real because they were not in the older academic books and a street level alchemy would produce dangerous new things but also kickass new potions and charms to help people but the government would not take them seriously
and people look at new-age magic like new-age medicine, like there are community groups who swap homemade spells like remedies and you can go to an ‘alternative’ school or doctor or what have you and learn more about it but you might not be taken seriously by academia
yes this is good tell me more
ok but pentagrams done in graffiti on the streets is said to be weaker than doing it in some fancy ass other method when there is actually no proof of this being so and books written on how to cast spells are hard to read and dense and annoying but there is a culture pasted down of verbal magic that has evolved into something different and lets take a kid who comes from this street magic culture and is fucking strong and powerful going to some preppy elite school for mages and not knowing how to do shit with all these expensive ingredients for a potion because yo potatoes work just fine too
are you now telling me about class dynamics within magic okay lets play this game
name-brand spell materials come about and are required by academic magic classes just like specific non-resellable textbooks, and people start flea-market style things to swap unused materials after the semester ends, and people finding alternatives to these but the professors won’t let them in class because it’s not approved by whatever government agency/corporation regulates this stuff for safety
people learning how to do magic at home from their parents and communities and coming to school to learn how to do exactly the same thing but less effectively and for more money
city kids coming up with brilliant magical solutions to problems and them not being listened to by academia at large because they didn’t “do it right” or use recognized, branded materials
ok so lets say most people have the ability to be a little bit magical but some people have more than others and are stronger so the elite in this culture have ways to enhance their powers
we have politicians playing games on the regulation of magic use and people being divided on how much power mages get on systems and the price fixing and the stereotypes
lets talk about backwoods magic in middle of no where where people have developed spells so specific to the area and their own culture it would be impossible to bring outside
west coast cities having a different lazier form of spell casting with longer reaching ability and more power in the base of the spell where as the upper east coast cities like new york have quick sharp spells that get the jobs done
accents impacting incantations and a kid with a lisp accidentally discovering a new way of casting a spell
cultures across the world which came up with spells for the same thing that work in almost the same way but using totally different methods, words and materials
native language affecting the outcome of spells in a second language just slightly, despite perfect pronunciation
you can enhance your powers by practicing lots of different spells for a long time, but some people have to work and don’t have the time or energy to practice spells other than everyday things like calling their kids and pets home remotely or fertilizing their window gardens or keeping mold out of their fridge or warding burglars away from the window with the broken inside lock
While we’re here let’s think about when people should and should not use magic. Is it even possible to not use any magic? Is magic like atomic force, where it’s always peripherally involved? Is using magic in certain ways and on certain objects illegal? Immoral? Unsportsmanlike? Rude?What about on other people?
Bits and pieces of this are more accurate to real life magic users than I think the previous bloggers realize.
More than “bits and pieces” I think.
I was literally thinking this is a commentary on current magical practices.
Please, please, PLEASE never tell a witch with schizophrenia, schizoaffective or any other hallucination/delusion disorder that their hallucinations are spirits/demons/ghosts/etc. Please, please, PLEASE do not advise them to go off their medication. I am all for holistics to a certain degree but you CANNOT validate something as serious as hallucinations or delusions because it can make things seriously, seriously worse. As someone who went off their medication because a reiki master claimed to have cured them, I can tell you now, it isn’t safe.
If someone wants to take a holistic approach to their healthcare/disorder, that should be between them and a licensed professional.
Please, please, PLEASE stop trying to tell me to go off my medication. You have no idea what a challenge it is to get me to take them in the first place and I’ve been on them three years strong without skipping.
I’m not saying big pharmacy drugs are better than holistics. I’m just saying it is dangerous to try and take the place of a doctor who this person has been working with and the routine/regimen they’ve worked out in order to treat their disorder.
Thank you.
THIS IS SO IMPORTANT.
If you are not a licensed medical professional, by which I mean you have gone to school and received a degree and an official license to practice some form of medicine, DO NOT try to tell people how they “should” treat their mental and physical ailments.
And most especially, DO NOT shame people who want or need to be on medication. That’s their business, not yours, and they know better than you do what they need and what works for them.
And even if you are a medical professional, just remember that if people want your advice on their condition, they’ll ask for it.
I know that the Force is basically Space Magic ™ anyway, but entertain me:
Stormtroopers, casting in unison, chanting and moving, not knowing the theory or impact of their casting, but following orders. Finn, after getting out, with a brain full of magic that requires hundreds and hundreds of other people working in tandem to work properly. Someone shows him how to cast a charm on his own, and he is blown away; he had never thought that it was something you could do individually.
The pilots of the resistance, cockpits hung with good luck charms of hundreds of different planets and species. “This one was made during the alignment of the stars, which only happens once a hundred years” Pava says, knocking her fingernail against a star-strung chain hung from her headrest. “Oh yeah? Snap says, producing a small bag from under his flight suit. “Moon sand, from the first time the species achieved space flight, blessed by three different sects.” “Nice.” Pava says admiringly. Most of them are trinkets, cheap pieces of junk pawned to off-worlders. All the pilots know this.Most of them, if you asked them seriously, would claim it was all a bunch of garbage. But when a single screw up in your job means that you burn up in atmosphere, or get ejected from your seat at nearly light-speed, or collide with a meteor belt, you take all the extra luck you can get. They keep the bags fed, and ring the bells, and kiss the images; you never know what a little bit of an edge can do.
Leia is the last known practitioner of Alderaanian low magic. It requires ritual, and dozens of different plants that are now extinct, and the light of a moon now wandering lonely in an asteroid belt. It’s not something she is good at; she curses at her little herb garden as the plants refuse to grow, her braided charms fall apart even as she weaves them, and as a princess ‘magical education’ was the first thing cut when she needed to learn to shoot, and encrypt messages, and resist torture techniques. But when her son turns nine, for his coming of age she crowns him with the same flowers, woven in the same patterns that her mother made for her, and blesses him with everything that should come with the crown: Respect, power, and a legacy etched in the stars themselves. Her planet is dead, but her son received the same blessings she did. That is something; that is something.
Poe, given a pen and half a moment, can create runes in half a dozen different languages. He scrawls them up and down his arms before he goes out missions, writes them in get well soon cards, spray paints them on the side of hangers, and carves them into the side of his toolbox. He once spent a very productive dozen rest periods inscribing every rune he knew for ‘safety’ and ‘protection’ and ‘safe return’ into all the individual pieces of BB-8. The other pilots tease him about it, that he shows more concern for the droid than for his own safety. It’s funny, right up until it’s not.
Han, like many pilots, knows only a smattering of blessings and curses. His are all spoken things, minor magic without preparation and without materials. Hexes whispered out of the corner of the mouth to make an opponent trip, or panted under the breath to make your feet swifter, your aim truer, your dodges quicker than whoever was shooting at you. He doesn’t see the appeal of the fancy stuff, until he sees Leia, on what would have been Alderaan’s solstice hunched over a bowl of fragrant herbs, starlight and an undeniable sense of home filling the air.
Luke knows folk magic, farmers magic, home grown on Tatooine. People expect it to be massive, flashy, larger than life, but it’s exactly life sized. Luke knows to rub a nail on a tooth and stick it in a tree to cure a toothache, to divine the sex of a baby with a needle and thread, to spit into the wind and tell you when rain is coming. He’s unnervingly accurate, but his magic is mundane, fundamentally. It’s magic intended for hearth and home, and for family, although it didn’t manage to keep a single one of those together.
Rey’s magic, much like Rey herself, is wild, untrained and deeply powerful. The force of her intent can floor everyone in a 100 foot radius, including herself. She can push herself for days longer without food or water than she should be able to, and everyone around her feels the same hunger, the same desperate thirst that she does.
She has gotten into more arguments than she can remember where she has had to stop yelling to stamp the fire out of her wrap.
Her fear causes ice inches thick to form on the interrogation chamber on star-killer base. Her joy, when Finn wakes, causes every flower in a three mile radius to spontaneously blossom. She is shakingly powerful, and unrefined; standing near her when magic leaks out is like standing in the path of a tidal wave.
This fascinates me so much.
Okay so…
Finn’s stormtrooper magic, having its roots in clonetrooper magic, chants and battle cries and marching rhythms. The last threads that Jango could pass on to (his sons) from a time when the True Mandalorians were a collection of clans and not a man and his genetic copies. Magic that could be done separately OR in a group. Across star-systems, in unison with your brothers wherever they were. Send-offs for the fallen, power and protection to make it through this next battle. (Synchronized chronos, whispered plans passed unit to unit, company to company, battalion to battalion, and one moment when every trooper in the galaxy moved to chant together with their brothers). Vode An.
And the Jedi Order then, with so many collections of magic, from so many different corners of the galaxy, mixing Force with magic, and also all the lost magic, too, from heritages that one was never able to fully learn before a child was taken away to the Order. Mace Windu, with the deep-rooted power for Korunni clan-magic that he never could fully access because it wasn’t until he was an adult that he ever had anyone to teach it to him. Plo Koon with four traditions, The Baran Do Sages and their Force and Magic, along with the Force-teachings of the Jedi and the hodgepodge magic of the Order itself.
Obi-Wan Kenobi, who long learned to control the surface of his emotions, given away by tells in the air, a slight humid heat with his anger, the cold wind-whisper of his disapproval. The calming, warm breeze of his contentment and love, that changes at a moment’s notice to protect—with a hurricane’s intensity—all those he wasn’t supposed to be Attached to. Obi-Wan Kenobi who never understood why, for all his mastery over meditation and all that he learned of releasing his emotions in the Force, why he hurts. Why his heart bleeds with ache at the loss of those he loves, never realizing that severing magic so abruptly always hurts.
Anakin’s mastery of his magic is almost entirely involuntary. There is so much of it, and yet what he hasn’t learned from his mother—in Tatooine’s slave quarters, about magic meant to be small and subtle and quiet—and later somewhat from Obi-Wan he can barely control at all. He can stand in the center of a storm untouched, but he struggles to form the finger-shapes for a simple spell of flashed handsigns. (Padme, who takes his larger hands in hers, and with all the patience of someone who wants to help give a culture to someone who was ripped from theirs, helping him trace over and over and over the sigils of Naboo. Deep and easy and rooted in a desire for tranquility, unity, and peace. Without her, he never manages to spell them right again.)
The Senators who are ‘above such petty, primitive’ things such as charms. Those who honor their home systems’ traditions, and those who mean it. (Palpatine, who will use magic when it suits his purposes, but still considers it a lesser power to the power of the Dark Side.)
Just… the galaxy has AT LEAST 200,000 years of sapient life. Over two hundred thousand years of magic.
Jesus fuck I just got shivers! This is intense!
*flees the bunnies of doom*
@morgynleri i thought you might have some interest?
This is interesting, and at the moment, I have no spoons to figure out what to do with it. Thank you for tagging me in it, though! 🙂
aw, man. this was an awful experience 😦 and sca is supposed to teach people not to be asshats… i don’t understand why people don’t understand that you don’t talk about religion without being invited to.
The SCA is full of people, and people are people regardless of where and when, so I’m not actually surprised there are asshats present. I just attempt to avoid those I know are going to be asshats.
The conversation was about magic, and things done with it, so I suppose he felt that it was appropriate, but the way he went about it was… very not. Mention cleansing for negative magic in general discussion, that would work.
Come directly to me and speak quietly so no one else hears, and act like you’re concerned about me, when you don’t know me or my magical traditions? Not cool at all.
And me mentioning my deities was the only way out without risking a lecture about how magic works, at least to my subconscious, since I was running on instinct and not careful thought at that point. Because AFT had already left me off-balance and wary.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 