I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I've kind of been in reading eleven books at once, getting ridiculously overexcited about everything and bursting into tears about nothing mode lately. But for once, the comic page is so not late, it could almost be described as being on time. By the Power of Grayskull!
The Blackwater Tales is Updated.
And also, I've been itching to write something other than terrible poetry again, so here's the beginning of a rambling adaptation of my favourite Babylonian Oldest Story That Ever Were Written. It also contains plenty of sex and death, cause it seems Sumerians, even the two-thirds immortal ones, were pretty much like anyone else. This is really for my own entertainment, and therefore has my own absolute license to be complete shit.
The one who saw all, I will declare to the world,
The one who knew all I will tell about.
He saw the great Mystery, he knew the Hidden:
He recovered the knowledge of all the times before the Flood.
He journeyed beyond the distant, he journeyed beyond exhaustion,
And then carved his story on stone.
Sha nagba imuru.
They say this is a great city, the greatest of all cities that ever shall be. Indeed, look around, and see it for yourself. The walls, how high they rise, higher than the very sun himself, they say. Just before sunrise, (you must wait, for it is just before sunrise you see, and there are many hours of darkness yet), the sun himself, he flounders even at the outskirts of our walls. The Euphrates rises, he is near drowned. Still they are too high. A marvel. Did you ever see craftsmanship so fine as this, so variously skilled? And here, look here. At the base of the gates, the foundation of the city walls, do you see it? A stone inset, of gleaming lapis lazuli, without flaw or defect. On this stone is carved Gilgamesh's account of his exploits. This is the story you are about to hear. The account begins.
Before anything there was heat. For an immeasurable time he was aware of nothing else, nothing outside of this intimately dark, searing world. He was heat, he was a landscape of redness, an endless map of pulsating veins and fluids. After a period he was able to distinguish slight fluctuations in this sensation, at first sharp and erratic, crashing through him in waves of nausea, finally settling into a steady, throbbing rhythm. As yet there was no concept of a centre to this, no body. It all seemed to float directly above him, expanding and contracting, abstract, inscrutable, like clouds of sand, drifting just beyond the veil of his comprehension. He lay there like a newborn infant, comfortable, dormant, eyes blank under hooded lids.
When he woke at last from this state, there was a name. Enkidu. This was himself. That was this body, a vast, yellow, muscled structure, stretching out on the ground before him. He now also knew pain; crying out from every limb in great excruciating spasms which made his insides twist with hate and dull animal fear. He found that he must move, the thoughts forming in his mind with rapid instinct, so foreign and new that he could barely follow them. Slowly he swung his body over, so that his face and stomach lay flat against the dust. For a moment the pain was over-ridden by an inexplicable, overwhelming elation which set every nerve on fire, the intense knowledge of his own command. Teeth clenched, he began to inch his way forward through the dust, like some great yellow spider, his palms grinding unpleasantly into shards of rock. There was light, too, he began to become aware, and a kind of heat, though different; harder, dryer to that he had known before. He could feel it hard on his forehead, making him weaker and weaker as he crawled, until it seemed he was crawling against a great thickening wall of it, pushing down on him. There was nothing, now, but heat and pain and his own twitching body, no longer abstract but wrenchingly solid below him. Enkidu. Enkidu. The ground and sky failed him, and he sank back into the darkness.
‘Do you love me?’ There was no fear or kindness in the question, nothing but a kind of detached curiosity, completely free of inhibition, so childish it frightened her. Trembling, the girl bowed her assent, keeping her gaze down towards her feet. She could not see his expression, but for a second the air stirred with what could have been laughter.
‘And your husband, he also, does he love me?’ The nod was barely perceptible this time, more of a shudder. Outside peacocks were calling in the darkened gardens, soft and mournful, and she found herself longing to see them. In here it was warm, uncomfortably so, the perfumed incense making the air spiced and heavy in her nostrils. The sensation made her light-headed, unbearably tired. She found herself sitting down, and in an instant the king was there on the bed, his hand reached out to steady her, with what could almost have been tenderness.
‘This makes me glad.’ His smile was steady, keen, like a cat ready to spring. Long tendrils of black hair fell from his shoulders as he leaned in towards her. His face was smooth, almost girlish, but the eyes were dark and hard as flint, too invulnerable. Two-parts god. Gently he lifted a hand and idly traced her thighs as he talked, as though hypnotised, his fingertips delicate on the warm brown flesh, pimpled beneath the muslin of her dress. ‘You must understand the very nature of sacrifice. There is pain, there is bloodshed, and there is exultation in surrender. Am I not your king, your lord? There is no greater love for me than this.’ The voice was no longer childlike, had sunk now a deep, steady murmur, pulsing in the girl’s ears. She felt her body calm as he spoke, grow languid and dream-like under his touch. He carried on, the words merging now, almost a chant, and she found, with little surprise, she could no longer understand what he was saying. He was reaching now at the hemline of her dress, letting the fabric slide easily over the small rounded breasts, nipples stiffening, pooling softly around her navel. She found herself growing strangely distant, unable to comprehend anything other than the gleam of his gilded eyelids in the candlelight above her, his voice, his body swaying like a snake. Her husband, his eyes as they had taken her from him on their wedding night, unable to say a word, all this was floating from her like a dream, further by the second. She felt fingers slip between her legs, slick and strange, and it was gone.
When Enkidu awoke again it was dark, and there was another pain, more needling and insistent than the first. Between his teeth and his tongue the skin cracked and burned like fire, peeling off in great swathes of white . He groaned, and the sound was thin and dry in his ears, barely audible. Bringing up his elbows, he moved forward once again, throwing himself over the sands, half crawl, half unsteady amble, falling in the troughs of sand that slid under his feet. As far as he could see there was nothing on the horizon, nothing but endless scrub and rock and sky. The thoughts came to him with prickling, unnatural coherency; this is sky, Enkidu, Anu, and slipped out of his mind again, numbed by the consuming want that drove his shambling body forwards. There was no register between waking and sleeping in those first few days, no sense of time. He could have made a dozen tracks circling the same ground, he could have been following the tracks of strange, unknown beasts that evaded him by sight, shifting in the shadows in the dark. Everything was blurred, watery, overwhelmed by scent and sound, the cries of creatures wheeling above.
After time the land became smoother and softer, full of strange reverberations under his feet. Enkidu understood, flooded with familiar instinct. Enki. Enkimdu. Rushing forward, legs buckling weightily underneath him, he crested the hill and saw what he had already known. Fringed by green, a sheen of liquid stretched out, the reflection broken by grey, long limbed creatures that shot it into ghostly pieces and clustered around it’s edge. Enkidu lurched forwards into it before he knew what he was doing, wrapping the coldness around his yellow body, more cold than anything he had ever felt before. Mouth open, he let it immerse his insides, swallowing more and more until it burned in his chest unbearably. He remerged and gagged, was sick and sick until his tongue and throat made strange and violent noises in his ears. The grey creatures were edging closer, now, staring with liquid, curious eyes. Pulling himself out of the water, he approached, and he saw they did not fear. They keened and pushed against his face, and Enkidu keened in turn, running his hands across their rough grey sides. He lay, naked, exhausted by the stinging of the liquid in him, and they lay also, draping out around him like a grey sheet on the sand, as the water grew dark and still before them.
It ends kind of abruptly, I am planning to write more.
Also! A small thought-scribble for Julie, and her wicked grasp of the Greek gods, who own a pantheon-shaped soft spot in me 'eart. Complete with free, bizarre discussion on desert vegetation. Don't ask.
I don't know, does he look too much like Snape or something here? I imagine he's sexier. You really have to be sexy, ruling the Underworld. It's practically in the job description.
Okay, I'm all out of nonsense for this week. Time for college work.
The Blackwater Tales is Updated.
And also, I've been itching to write something other than terrible poetry again, so here's the beginning of a rambling adaptation of my favourite Babylonian Oldest Story That Ever Were Written. It also contains plenty of sex and death, cause it seems Sumerians, even the two-thirds immortal ones, were pretty much like anyone else. This is really for my own entertainment, and therefore has my own absolute license to be complete shit.
The one who saw all, I will declare to the world,
The one who knew all I will tell about.
He saw the great Mystery, he knew the Hidden:
He recovered the knowledge of all the times before the Flood.
He journeyed beyond the distant, he journeyed beyond exhaustion,
And then carved his story on stone.
Sha nagba imuru.
They say this is a great city, the greatest of all cities that ever shall be. Indeed, look around, and see it for yourself. The walls, how high they rise, higher than the very sun himself, they say. Just before sunrise, (you must wait, for it is just before sunrise you see, and there are many hours of darkness yet), the sun himself, he flounders even at the outskirts of our walls. The Euphrates rises, he is near drowned. Still they are too high. A marvel. Did you ever see craftsmanship so fine as this, so variously skilled? And here, look here. At the base of the gates, the foundation of the city walls, do you see it? A stone inset, of gleaming lapis lazuli, without flaw or defect. On this stone is carved Gilgamesh's account of his exploits. This is the story you are about to hear. The account begins.
Before anything there was heat. For an immeasurable time he was aware of nothing else, nothing outside of this intimately dark, searing world. He was heat, he was a landscape of redness, an endless map of pulsating veins and fluids. After a period he was able to distinguish slight fluctuations in this sensation, at first sharp and erratic, crashing through him in waves of nausea, finally settling into a steady, throbbing rhythm. As yet there was no concept of a centre to this, no body. It all seemed to float directly above him, expanding and contracting, abstract, inscrutable, like clouds of sand, drifting just beyond the veil of his comprehension. He lay there like a newborn infant, comfortable, dormant, eyes blank under hooded lids.
When he woke at last from this state, there was a name. Enkidu. This was himself. That was this body, a vast, yellow, muscled structure, stretching out on the ground before him. He now also knew pain; crying out from every limb in great excruciating spasms which made his insides twist with hate and dull animal fear. He found that he must move, the thoughts forming in his mind with rapid instinct, so foreign and new that he could barely follow them. Slowly he swung his body over, so that his face and stomach lay flat against the dust. For a moment the pain was over-ridden by an inexplicable, overwhelming elation which set every nerve on fire, the intense knowledge of his own command. Teeth clenched, he began to inch his way forward through the dust, like some great yellow spider, his palms grinding unpleasantly into shards of rock. There was light, too, he began to become aware, and a kind of heat, though different; harder, dryer to that he had known before. He could feel it hard on his forehead, making him weaker and weaker as he crawled, until it seemed he was crawling against a great thickening wall of it, pushing down on him. There was nothing, now, but heat and pain and his own twitching body, no longer abstract but wrenchingly solid below him. Enkidu. Enkidu. The ground and sky failed him, and he sank back into the darkness.
‘Do you love me?’ There was no fear or kindness in the question, nothing but a kind of detached curiosity, completely free of inhibition, so childish it frightened her. Trembling, the girl bowed her assent, keeping her gaze down towards her feet. She could not see his expression, but for a second the air stirred with what could have been laughter.
‘And your husband, he also, does he love me?’ The nod was barely perceptible this time, more of a shudder. Outside peacocks were calling in the darkened gardens, soft and mournful, and she found herself longing to see them. In here it was warm, uncomfortably so, the perfumed incense making the air spiced and heavy in her nostrils. The sensation made her light-headed, unbearably tired. She found herself sitting down, and in an instant the king was there on the bed, his hand reached out to steady her, with what could almost have been tenderness.
‘This makes me glad.’ His smile was steady, keen, like a cat ready to spring. Long tendrils of black hair fell from his shoulders as he leaned in towards her. His face was smooth, almost girlish, but the eyes were dark and hard as flint, too invulnerable. Two-parts god. Gently he lifted a hand and idly traced her thighs as he talked, as though hypnotised, his fingertips delicate on the warm brown flesh, pimpled beneath the muslin of her dress. ‘You must understand the very nature of sacrifice. There is pain, there is bloodshed, and there is exultation in surrender. Am I not your king, your lord? There is no greater love for me than this.’ The voice was no longer childlike, had sunk now a deep, steady murmur, pulsing in the girl’s ears. She felt her body calm as he spoke, grow languid and dream-like under his touch. He carried on, the words merging now, almost a chant, and she found, with little surprise, she could no longer understand what he was saying. He was reaching now at the hemline of her dress, letting the fabric slide easily over the small rounded breasts, nipples stiffening, pooling softly around her navel. She found herself growing strangely distant, unable to comprehend anything other than the gleam of his gilded eyelids in the candlelight above her, his voice, his body swaying like a snake. Her husband, his eyes as they had taken her from him on their wedding night, unable to say a word, all this was floating from her like a dream, further by the second. She felt fingers slip between her legs, slick and strange, and it was gone.
When Enkidu awoke again it was dark, and there was another pain, more needling and insistent than the first. Between his teeth and his tongue the skin cracked and burned like fire, peeling off in great swathes of white . He groaned, and the sound was thin and dry in his ears, barely audible. Bringing up his elbows, he moved forward once again, throwing himself over the sands, half crawl, half unsteady amble, falling in the troughs of sand that slid under his feet. As far as he could see there was nothing on the horizon, nothing but endless scrub and rock and sky. The thoughts came to him with prickling, unnatural coherency; this is sky, Enkidu, Anu, and slipped out of his mind again, numbed by the consuming want that drove his shambling body forwards. There was no register between waking and sleeping in those first few days, no sense of time. He could have made a dozen tracks circling the same ground, he could have been following the tracks of strange, unknown beasts that evaded him by sight, shifting in the shadows in the dark. Everything was blurred, watery, overwhelmed by scent and sound, the cries of creatures wheeling above.
After time the land became smoother and softer, full of strange reverberations under his feet. Enkidu understood, flooded with familiar instinct. Enki. Enkimdu. Rushing forward, legs buckling weightily underneath him, he crested the hill and saw what he had already known. Fringed by green, a sheen of liquid stretched out, the reflection broken by grey, long limbed creatures that shot it into ghostly pieces and clustered around it’s edge. Enkidu lurched forwards into it before he knew what he was doing, wrapping the coldness around his yellow body, more cold than anything he had ever felt before. Mouth open, he let it immerse his insides, swallowing more and more until it burned in his chest unbearably. He remerged and gagged, was sick and sick until his tongue and throat made strange and violent noises in his ears. The grey creatures were edging closer, now, staring with liquid, curious eyes. Pulling himself out of the water, he approached, and he saw they did not fear. They keened and pushed against his face, and Enkidu keened in turn, running his hands across their rough grey sides. He lay, naked, exhausted by the stinging of the liquid in him, and they lay also, draping out around him like a grey sheet on the sand, as the water grew dark and still before them.
It ends kind of abruptly, I am planning to write more.
Also! A small thought-scribble for Julie, and her wicked grasp of the Greek gods, who own a pantheon-shaped soft spot in me 'eart. Complete with free, bizarre discussion on desert vegetation. Don't ask.
I don't know, does he look too much like Snape or something here? I imagine he's sexier. You really have to be sexy, ruling the Underworld. It's practically in the job description.
Okay, I'm all out of nonsense for this week. Time for college work.