The Four Riders

Conquest invaded and usurped me. He was an irresistible force that I was unable to ignore, unable to stop, unable to turn away. He bent me to his will, he reframed my body and twisted my mind, he pushed and pulled and wrestled me into place, and moved me to his desires. No care was given; there was no gentleness in his touch. There was only brutal demand. It was entirely about him: his need, his pleasure, his to take and break.

War punished my body. Every infraction I committed, she repaid me in full and then again, and once more. For all my sins, I was punished, severely, threefold. She beat me until I was tender, and she raked at me until I was raw. No part was safe from flail or claw, no portion off limits for the shock of the wand, no place sacred against pain. My flesh burned and flushed and throbbed and ached.

Famine was pure, unadulterated torture. After I was ravage and flayed, naked before them, mewling and pathetic, panting with exhaustion, they soothed me with soft words, with light touches and gentle kisses. Soon they were pulling me up to the edge of the cliff, feeding my need with a flick of a finger or touch of their tongue, and then they pulled back, and left me to shiver and writhe, starved for death. Over and over they took me just to the teetering edge of a magnificent precipice, and then withdrew. I sobbed with hunger, begged for mercy, pleaded for death, my muscles tensed and aching, my belly hollow, and my mind far, far away…

And at last, there was Death. He is my Master. I knelt at his feet, suppliant. He rewarded me with himself, and pushed me, pulled me, dragged me to that liminal cliff, and then, finally, together with my Master, I plunged headlong over the edge and fell through endless space. He shattered me over and over with the most exquisite precision, until there was nothing but a pulsing wave of pleasure humming through my bones, an endless, little death.

…and my prayers and pleas are answered -- my mind fades away, and I melt into him, and my self becomes nothing but a vehicle for his pleasure, safe because I know he will always lead me back…

The Wee Folk of the Wishing Well

So you see, so you see,
So they say, so they say,
What happens at the crossroads in the twilight
In the gloaming
Can you see? Can you see?
Dare you say? Dare you say?
What you saw? Whom you met?
At the crossroads in the twilight
On a warm autumnal evening…

(Follow the stairs down the side of the hill,
Follow the path twixt the ivy-hung trees,
Follow the spit alongside of the Sound,
Follow us into the mossy green haunting…)

Find the place past the troll’s bridge,
Where the cloverleaf ramps thrive
In the brambled, ivied hills,
To the wheel-spoke splay
Where the roads cross thrice.

At the twilight there, in the gloaming,
The light shines upon the path
To the wishing well.
The path is only there on odd nights
When the worlds align
In the twilight, in the gloaming.

Find the well, the wishing well,
Amongst the trembling aspens
The well where they drop down wishes
Like coins upon our heads:
Send a babe, turn a head, spark a love, play a game;
Drop a lure, catch a look, act the muse, stop a pain.
We polish up the wishes they drop
Like coins upon our heads,
Shine them up till bright they gleam,
And then we send them back,
Wishes granted, though perhaps
Not quite as they would think
In the twilight, in the gloaming

Those well-wishers rarely give us thanks
But still we grant the wishes that fall
Like coins upon our heads,
Cos that’s what well-wishing’s for.

The Old Man Who Tends the Cloud Trees...

There is a place in the world that few persons know; it is a place high on a mountain that no one climbs, deep in a wood no one travels. It is not on any map; as Melville says, true places never are.

High on this mountain, deep in this wood, there is a small house. An old man lives there, has always lived there. As long as there has been this wood on this mountain, there has been an old man living amongst the mist and trees.

He lives a simple life deep in the wood, high on the mountain, tending the trees that grow up around his small house.

Every morning, he rises with the sun and goes to the well. He sits on the edge of the well and drops all his hopes and wishes and dreams into the water, pieces of his soul, falling like pebbles from his mouth to splash down at the bottom. He then draws bucket after bucket of water from the well and pours out his wishes and hopes and dreams at the foot of each of the trees that grows around the clearing where his house sits.

When the sun climbs high into the sky, in the clear mountain air, and the mist dissolves, and the thirst of the trees has been quenched, the old man goes to the shed next to the well and takes out an odd looking knife. The handle of the knife is white as bone, smooth and shiny, and moulded to fit his hand. The blade is long and thin and bent at an odd angle. One side has serrated teeth, the other a straight, sharp edge.

While the sun finishes its arcing journey across the noonday sky into the evening, he takes his odd knife and he trims the trees, pruning away leaves and branches, smoothing them, shaping them. While he cuts at a tree, he whispers to it, telling it all the dreams he has for it, all the hopes, and he pours out his heart to each tree as he grooms it, filling it up with love as he pares away the parts of the tree that are not suited for its purpose.

When the sun sets, the old man’s work is finished, and he retires for the day. The mist returns as the sky darkens and the leaves of the trees shimmer and shift in the fey light of the gloaming. As the moon rises above them in the dark of the night, the trees inhale as one, and exhale as one, and they release into the sky great puffy clouds. Once the clouds gather above the deep wood, high on the mountain, the west wind comes and carries them away.