Orien

As when Gorsann on the day of wrath
raised his sword and sank it to the hilt
in the fertile earth of Nan Dornon,
commanding the island to sink,
so did the captain plant his blade,
thrusting it up between the man’s ribs
to nick the heart of his former friend
so his blood flowed like sand in the glass.
Too late, the healer’s hand wrapped the wrist
that clasped the hilt of the long, bright blade.
He opened his mouth to spit curses,
but as tides bring in only driftwood,
so did the healer speak foam and blood.
Life began ebbing from him at once.
The fingers loosed their rigorous grasp,
he coughed and the steel cut him inside.
“You threatened my ship and my whole crew,”
said Inaradd red-bearded sailor
to friend who’d helped him kill a dragon,
but betrayed him for a king’s envy.
With one rough knee to Tendiel’s chest,
Inaradd jerked the blade free from him—
the Jade Robe who wore the healer’s blue—
and kicked his surprised face overboard.
He sank into the Mother’s wet arms,
blood boiling from his mouth and gut.
Sea tugged at his blood-stained linen-folds,
and water became murky with red,
while Tendiel’s face, white as spindrift,
sank into Mother Ocean’s embrace.

Experimenting with Journler, the program recommended. So far, I’m impressed. It allows me to write offline — which will be useful, dangerously so, at school — and then send things to LiveJournal later. Also seems to save journal entries automagically, so even if I lose power suddenly, it will retain the entry. I can also keep multiple categories of journal, so I can keep one for poetry, and one for Epic, and one for school stuff, and one for fencing… the possibilities just begin to unfold.

Conversations with Mom among others, have brought it to mind that writing the epic longhand is going painfully, laboriously slow. I understand that it makes it ‘cooler’ to do it in ink before I do it digitally. But it’s also slowing me down. A LOT. I wrote this short piece of it in maybe 10 minutes, where it might take me an hour to think it and compose it and write it down. I’ve written parts of it before, digitally. I might think about doing the rest of Book II, and Book III, in type, and see how that goes, if it goes faster or slower or about the same. Finishing it sometime this decade would be good for me.

Sometimes Orien and This World Touch…

Whole worlds come and go like Ocean’s tide when anyone dies and leaves us behind:
their ship leaves while we stand on the quay, knowing our ship will come in, some day.

It’s worth saying here that the dead here is not someone I know. But sometimes, the tales of others remind us of our own mortality, and it is useful, then, to sit up, pay attention, and wave to those going out to Ocean. Our time will come eventually, and nothing will keep us on the wharf when the time comes to depart.

It sounds like he was a good man.

[Orien] Inarion, Book 2, Canto III

I did finally manage to pry a dozen lines or so of the Epic out of the dancing daughters of the twins.

King Valden, of course, saw everything,
for his keen eyes marked all that occurred
within the circle of his hearth’s heat
and the leaping, dancing shadows.
As the shepherd rests but fitfully
alert for the cry of wolf and bear,
and the distant baying of trapped ewes
or the horn-clash of embattled rams,
ready to rise with crook and bow,
and fight with any threat to his flock,
so does a king recline on his throne,
restless even when taking his ease.
A challenge can come from anywhere:
even the yeoman at the doorpost,
who loyally sits a lonely watch,
may rebel against his sovereign lord
or with scheming dreams doom his master.
Inaradd’s deeds were much in his mind,
and though his hall held many heroes,
sly king Valden saw the red sailor
as the sort of man who must go far –
Without restraint on his ambition,
his thoughtful eye might stray to the crown.
So the king resolved to lend his help
that Inaradd might fulfull his oath
to the ghosting of Captain Asho,
and journey away over Ocean,
from when he would likely not return,
or come home an old and broken man.

Orien

This came to me last night while I was prepping for the end-of-year party. The words are Inaradd the king’s, but I have no idea who he is speaking to. Comments welcome.

“Princes will come to my funeral,
and nobles of rank will ring my bier;
but they will set torch to the pyre
with but few regrets and fewer tears.
I am a king and I am not kind,
and only the simple will mourn me.
But your sons will carry your casket
home to your barrow by your fathers
who rest in the grave-field by your house.
Your friends will attend your obsequies,
and cast clods of earth into your grave.
Men will praise your deeds with honest words;
even your rivals will respect you
and ungrudgingly give you your due.
Yes, kings will mark my passing from life,
but they will revel in my dying,
knowing how I kept them on the leash.
But your journey to the dim, dry land
will start with a stately procession
and men you have known forty winters
and women you knew an afternoon
will come in droves to bid you farewell.
I envy you that, gentle harper,
even more than I envy the ship
that bears you on the gull-winged waters,
with spray in your beard, breath in your breast
and your hand on the long-armed tiller!
If I could go to Ocean again,
and not bend my backside to the throne
nor cramp hands with the law-giver’s pen,
I would rise from this throne and depart,
and never set foot again on land,
but take long passage to Ardalis
and see dark Daesena one last time.”

I haven’t written anything connected with Orien in more than a year, and suddenly this came up into my memory last night about 6pm. But of course, I was on my way out the door. So I didn’t write it down, thinking even as I left and didn’t write, that it was a mistake. It wasn’t. It was still pounding in my head three hours later, and even still when I got up this morning. So here it is, where I need it to be, for now.

２3rd and Fifth

1. Go into your LJ’s archives.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

My sentence:

My man Ovan is dead; his wife is widowed, and she is a weaver.

Parth Morren Days (Orien)

Notes on Parth Morren [Orien]

Dawn over Parth Morren (Orien)

Parth Morren Days (Orien)

Parth Morren (Orien)