15 October 2009

I keep feeling...

As though I really ought to write something.

Problem is I have no idea what - or even what format. My brain is atrophying without use and could benefit greatly from some linguistic working out, and my creative side is craving release but...

Application has long been the problem.

22 September 2009

The stupid things we find challenging that others find easy

Are a constant source of annoyance, self-beration and anxiety. Things we know are simple but struggle with every time they raise their head.

Fucking telephones.

27 July 2009

Cute girl was cute, is gone

Just got back from a weekend at a music festival, the first one of them I've been to in 11 years. Much good about the experience, some bad too - mostly related to my state of being, my mind, and prinicpally the weather.

These things happen - glorious warm sun one day, pissing rain and biting wind the next. Just as the bands on show varied from fun to fabulous, to "fuck-I-want-to-deafen-myself-just-to-not-hear-you". All to be expected.

I should also have expected to feel lots of "alone in the crowd" moments; I don't know why I don't engage. It may have something to do with how I appreciate music - a very individual and powerful sensation - but I suspect it is more wide ranging than that as I've had such moments in crowds for other things too. And it isn't indicative, necessarily, of being there on my own; nor is it a slight on people I might actually be with.

I can't explain it, though I reckon its all tied in with my not being outgoing and finding reaching out to people - or accepting them in, though that is easier - difficult. As such I end up spending a lot of time beating myself up internally and this weekend was no different, especially when the folks I was with are able to just approach anyone and everyone, even to mug band members for hairy coo photies.

And so people pass me by. Cute girl was cute, is gone.

11 July 2009

Even in despair, the funny side is clear

As I sank to my knees, giving up on yet another wasted weekend in what amounts to a wasted life, a crappy day drawing to a close... the track ticked over. Bad Day - oh how appropriate.

25 March 2009

Branded

What an eventful week. First that sense of power, of being; of Life. That was what walking the pattern gave me in the immediacy, but now it leaves me doubting - hurt and bemused, broken and remade and even now, having supposedly proven myself "real" by completing that walk, it leaves me feeling a fake. Angry, alone and in over my head - and indeed everyone else is too if things really are as they appear.

To cut a long story short dear reader, in case the whole tale does not interest you, I suspect that I am... someone else, yet not entirely; it is complicated, as is everything else around here, it seems. From what I can glean from Fiona, amongst others, it appears that what gave me power, what made me "real" was not parentage as it was for all other Amberites I have met

But to not rush off too far ahead - that is just the latest and greatest of the weird and disturbing events to befall me. The first happened whilst wandering directionless through shadow (I had never shifted before) on the way back from Caercorran. I had somehow come to be in Avernus - I later learned that shadow has history; oh how fate mocks the unknowing - when I was assaulted by cat-like creatures with 4 arms an very, very, nasty blades. I had made the mistake of travelling unarmed (one I shall certainly not repeat), such was the haste of my decision to walk the pattern and the blur of events since then and though I fought hard, I was soon in a less than survivable condition - impaled on a barbed and serrated blade with a dead creature on my back and a dying one in my arms. It was thus Rowland and Malice came across me. I fainted soon after, and when I next remember having consciousness I was in a strange box-like room where everything was white and funny boxes made bleeping noises and connected to me by wires. Then Keats resolved into view - that bastard brother of mine has only tried to outdo me again.

It seemed he had taken offense to my message and sought out another who held a grudge - the demon Wyrdsworth felt jilted, apparently, with my having been to Amber. And so he had dealt my soul into Keats' filthy hands, and had lifted him up far beyond anything that he offered me. It makes me choke and spit to think of it, but somehow the snivelling, conniving bastard sibling of mine finally had what he had always wanted, I was at his mercy, trapped in his mind and ripe for... well, empty threats so far. He wouldn't, or couldn't, act there and then. Instead he delivered a cryptic warning - to me, my companions, and to Amber itself. All of this in some... nightmarish vision of a place. I only escaped through Rowland's intervention, and sooner or later this constant failure and reliance on him must end. It is unseemly and disgraceful.

From there we walked shadow; I had recovered well but not fully from the impaling and they wanted me to rest. We ended up in a shadow of Rowland's choosing, which had but one interesting feature: a painting of the woman in white who appeared on the Trump that seemed to link us three. It was of her, on a throne, and... it was missing something. When I put my eye to it, and let my pen wander instinctively, it appeared as though it had once also shown a boy playing with a crown, so I drew him in. Rowland then tried to Trump using the painting, and knocked himself unconscious in the act; I had drawn Rowland as a child, the woman in white thus revealed as his mother. Cassandra.

There was more to that, but it was uninteresting. We struggled for a plan, but Malice wanted to go back to Avernus to look for her father. As with everything else this week, it turned out badly. Werewolves, long drops and being forced into further deals with the devil. Further exposition on that may be unwise.

But that is of nothing to compare with the revelation that followed. Rowland and I rescued Bleys - an elder, missing for years - from a sacrificial altar the wolves had set up; Malice had been captured too, but seemed to have thrown in with the blasted creatures and their head... Brand, her father. Rowland was livid - they argued - then as things were looking very hairy the whole camp disappeared.

With nowhere else to turn, we managed to find horses and ride for Amber - and let me tell you I do not wish to Hellride again anytime soon - to find King Random had "gone on holiday" and that Fiona was in charge for now. Apparently Random had gotten worried once it emerged Rowland was Eric's son, but this was as nothing compared to the threat that Brand apparently posed. I did not know my history then, but now...

Well, he was supposed to be gone, apparently, though not everyone was surprised by his return. I learned from Fiona that the memories I recalled whilst walking the pattern were not my own - they were Brand's. I had not done it before, and perhaps should never have done so at all, though given what I was told before I did, were that true would I still be here?

It then emerged that when Brand was toppled into the abyss someone - Fiona, would be my guess - stole aspects of his being and hid it somewhere, for what has returned is not whole. This, plus the memories point to me as a vessel, a less than charming thought which supposedly puts my survival in Fiona's best interests... and is there anywhere less safe to be, if the mutterings of the other elders are to be believed?

As to what I do now... I have not the faintest clue.

02 February 2009

Walking the Pattern

I am writing this having just left Caercorran. I wait with interest to hear how my other family react to the little gift I left them. The bastards will know I am coming back for them, and that I know how.

These days I know a lot more than that it seems... Know, or remember. It is hard to separate new knowledge from old memory, and the whole thing is a bit of a blur. I had walked it before, bent shadow before... killed before. Power once lost is coming to the fore again but I hazard it will be a long while yet before it returns in full. For now, through remembrance and pushing myself I am merely finding my feet anew.

It has been a strange few days - from unwitting minor noble in some backwater province that was not even real, to close to godhood and the memories of a prior existence. From overwhelmed and undecisive fool at the banquet to an awareness and impulse born of Fiona's "gift". Her attentions unnerved me before, but now they intrigue; I can only assume she knew - nay, knows - something I yet do not. To hand me a trump of the Pattern... well, Roland's reaction to it told it all: who would make such a card?! This was not chance, it was planned - but to what detail? That the first two cards I picked were identical, her brother I believe, and the third - the charm - being the pattern itself. Hah, and dead central too - of course it was no chance.

I can only imagine what she was thinking when I took the bait, but the betting is that things have worked out as she desired - I would not give myself the credit to match an elder, and particularly not one I had been expressly warned about. Still, the impulsiveness felt good - the first trump contact I initiate, and it is to the Pattern room itself! Oh, the look on Roland's face must have been priceless when I made that connection. The sense of power, of belonging, when I realised that I was afoot the Pattern itself after the transport - and that (and I'm sure Malice will be disappointed) I was not "goo" - that feeling was to be treasured. The rest of the journey, on the other hand... it is a mixture of pain, pain and more pain. Some of it delicious, but more of it excruciating. Funny how it was only after the self-mutilation and impalement that the memory of how to walk the Pattern returned! Hah, and to think I nearly did not make it - Roland, bless him, must have helped, else why would he have been at the centre with me? Otherwise why put yourself through that for a second time... unless you had forgotten!

The horrors and specifics I will leave out here, but I trust that this time I shall carry them always in mind, for to put myself through that a third time would be foolish indeed! I found the immediate aftermath a bit of a nightmare, albeit an empowering one - I recall simply bloodlust, the need to hunt, and feeling envigorated and energised but only for as long as it took to find raw meat. Not such an alien feeling, that - the imagery of claws, fangs and the taste of blood have been common these few days, but that the first thing I saw was not elk, nor deer, nor game but wolf... well poor chance. The urge needed sating however, and so it had to die. That it's terrible head now adorns my "father's" throne, well... I wager the note I left my "brother" promising his come-uppance will hold as great an effect. And neither of them will be pleased...