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In with Ballagàrraidh: The Awareness That You Are Not at Home in the Wilderness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN7sZ2wMg_Q
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Jan 2, 2024 22:42
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 00:17 |
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Ballagàrraidh: The Awareness That You Are Not at Home in the Wilderness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN7sZ2wMg_Q AITA (Am I That Alienated?) 1500 words We were halfway down the three mile trail when a soft rain began to prickle my cheeks. Mom’s ashes were swaddled safely in several layers of plastic inside my backpack, but the rain didn’t bode well for her scattering. “It was sunny and seventy-three when we left Port Angeles,” Evalynne grumbled. “The ocean creates its own weather patterns,” I said as neutrally as possible. Here the trail became a low boardwalk that spanned a wetland. The boards were slick underfoot. None of the trails were quite as well maintained as they’d been before 2020, Mom had told us. The rangers and foresters hadn’t ever really stopped working, she’d said, but even so, weird weather and low morale had taken their toll. It hadn’t occurred to me to ask her how she knew the morale of state park workers. Now it was easy to see how she might have known—the wooden planks of the pathway were swollen with rain, so saturated that our little drizzle couldn’t penetrate, instead pooling in a frictionless layer of water atop the boards. The tread strips had worn away in many places, forcing us to keep our eyes downcast, watching our feet as if we were walking across an icy sidewalk. It wasn’t until Evalynne needed to stop and tie her shoe that I appreciated our surroundings. A riot of swamp-loving plants extended away to our left and right—dense clusters of salal, tall, tufted clumps of grass, ferns, and noisome skunk cabbages, whose yellow flowers stood out gleefully against their green and gray and brown neighbors. Mostly I saw things I couldn’t name. All of this life existed in a tangle of variety that was impossible to visually process; every square foot of the marsh offered too much diversity to encompass with my senses. The click of a lighter drew my attention back to Evalynne, who was now in the middle of a long drag off a cigarette. She exhaled and, seeing my expression, said, “Better to smell this than the swamp.” Her words rolled out on a long tongue of blue-gray smoke. “Mom was so proud when you quit,” I said, more out of bafflement than any desire to hurt her feelings. “And I was so proud of mom when she was alive,” Evalynne said in a matter-of-fact tone, “and not dying on a pointless cross-country hike.” I clenched my fists. Mom could’ve had a stroke anywhere. We’d fought that one out a hundred times since we got the call. To Evalynne, the Pacific Crest Trail had killed our mother. Instead of grieving, she could hate the thing, the object, that had taken Mom from us. Somehow, I didn't throw my sister into the swamp. I settled for trudging wordlessly past her, getting upwind of the acrid smoke. If she wanted to fight, she could do it with whatever lovely things were swimming around inside her head. . She kept smoking the whole way down to the beach. At first my indignation was mostly on our mother’s behalf—Mom had always been so worried about Evalynne’s smoking. Evalynne’s heart, her lungs, her arteries. She’s on birth control, Mom would fret to me. Doesn’t she know that smoking on birth control can cause a stroke? It’d been such a thing that Evalynne’s last Christmas present to our mom was the announcement that she’d been cigarette-free for six months. As Evalynne puffed along the sodden trail, I developed a secondary indignation. We passed from the wetland into a cathedral forest whose trees were draped in vestments of seafoam-green lichen. The pale lichen was offset by beards of velvety moss, colored a deep emerald, threaded with diamonds made of raindrops. I felt the gravity of the place in my sternum, in the birdcage of my ribs. As much as I tried to stay ahead of Evalynne, I couldn’t quite escape the bitter smell of smoke. It made me think of city streets, waiting in line for concerts, standing around outside of bars. Ideas that had no place in this assembly of venerable old trees. I’d almost come alone, should have come alone. It was only at the very last second that I’d been driven by guilt to call her, and she might not have even come if I hadn’t told her I’d be happy to go without her, then assured her effusively that this trail was nowhere near the one Mom died on. As if I’d put either of us through that. Finally, Evalynne and I emerged onto the open beach and the rain set upon us with the sting of a thousand-thousand swarming insects. This was vengeful oceanic weather, the sort of storm that attacked the coast as if committing a crime of passion. Through the gauzy gloom of rain flashed roiling teeth—the Pacific Ocean gnashing her waves against the shore, gnawing on the sand with a voracity that threatened to swallow the world. Apart from the white-fanged swells, it was impossible to tell sea from sky. It was all furiously churning gray. Evalynne burst out laughing, the first truly mirthful sound I’d heard her make since before the funeral. She was looking at the stub of a cigarette between her fingers—the wind had taken the cherry clean off, and the rain was making short work of what was left. She let go of the soggy butt and it twirled away into the TV static of the storm. “Ev!” I said over the vicious surf. “You’re really gonna be that rear end in a top hat?” “You’re gonna be that rear end in a top hat?” Evalynne countered. “Poseidon is pissing on us. This isn’t cuddly vulnerable nature that needs you to save it. Nothing here cares about what we do.” I made a frustrated noise and stalked off north so the wind and rain were at my back. I couldn’t have explained myself in that moment, not really. It wasn’t that she was littering, it was that the whole somatic experience of her cigarettes kept ripping me out of the moment, sending my mind back to the city. Back to city problems, city preoccupations. I wanted to be here, in this moment, feeling some facsimile of what my mom might have felt. A moment later, Evalynne jogged to catch up with me, her footsteps loud and clumsy in the wet sand. “Don’t be impossible,” she said, a little winded. “This is legit dangerous.” She pointed at the obvious high water mark that ran along the treeline, which we were on the oceanward side of. “I’ll stop walking if you quit smoking,” I said. “Okay, I quit.” “Bullshit,” I said, and broke into a jog. It was a stupid thing to do—I think I’d had some brief notion that Evalynne wouldn’t be able to keep up because of her smoking—and a dozen yards later my shoe caught on a hump of mostly-buried driftwood, sending me sprawling chin-first into a cluster of pebbles and shell fragments. Evalynne was at my side a moment later. “I didn’t—oh, gently caress. Your chin. Goddamnit. I wasn’t even smoking before today. Got a pack at the last second to piss you off—ah, poo poo, that looks deep. And sea life can give you, like, weird infections and poo poo.” As Evalynne babbled I became aware of the steady dribble of blood oozing out from somewhere beneath my line of sight. It pooled on the sand beneath my chin, staining the bone-white shell fragments. My brain couldn’t compute it; nothing hurt yet, numbed as I was by surprise and the cold rain. I got to my knees, leaning forward to keep the blood from running down my windbreaker, and fumbled with my backpack. In that moment I was possessed by a single-minded purpose: my mother, and this one last thing I could do for her. Mistaking my intention, Evalynne hastily helped me open the backpack, saying, “Oh, right. Yes. First aid kit. I was gonna—do you think we should try to find a park ranger?” I ignored her and withdrew the small urn, presently swaddled in plastic bags. Evalynne’s eyes went wide when I revealed the thing to her, and I realized belatedly that she’d only seen the urn once, at Mom’s funeral. It was forest green, wended with delicate golden filigree in the shape of fern fronds. I’d thought it was perfect when I picked it out, an ideal homage to a nature lover, but the longer it sat on my mantle, the more it felt like a gaudy cage for my mother’s remains. No. Wind, rain, sea, sand, blood—this is where my mother belonged. Evalynne made a noise that was part surprise and part exhilaration as I flung the lid aside and shook Mom out into the maelstrom. The ashes twirled gleefully away, at home on the wind, now part of this place in a way Evalynne and I would never be. A little while later, when the rain let up and my chin was bandaged, Evalynne and I passed a cigarette back and forth, sharing bitter smoke, contemplating ash.
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Jan 8, 2024 05:42
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in wish a flash ingredient
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Jan 9, 2024 20:12
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barclayed posted:never done this before and im gonna feel like a chump if i dont finish it, but gimme a flash ingredient i guess. Whirling posted:In, for my first time. Hit me with a flash.  welcome.
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Jan 11, 2024 09:00
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Prompt: Antidote wasp 1800 words Your sister, Anya, knows things about you. In your family, knowledge is leverage. You know things, too—about her, your other siblings, your parents, the chauffeur, your mother’s mistress, and the mistress's housekeeper. Occasionally you use this information to get things you want. Mostly you keep silent dossiers of exploitable morsels. Anya, by contrast, is loose and petty in her use of knowledge. You and the rest of the family know this, even find it charming. Her machinations are adorably legible and easy to avoid. Mostly. Usually. Unless, for example, you sometimes forget that you allow her to come to parties with you out of pity, and, high as you occasionally are on several substances, don’t notice that she’s in the room when your coked up, ketamined-down brain decides to disclose the many grandiose ways in which you’re loving over your siblings. Your sister usually has the presence of mind to pull out her phone and start recording and, well, now here you are. Tonight is a siblings-only dinner. Not an unusual thing; your shared constellation of parents and step-parents know that you kids need time to plot amongst yourselves. Family make for instructive enemies—if you can outthink those who know you best, you can outthink anyone. Your most recent opsec fuckup was two weeks ago. The perfect amount of time for Anya to contrive some infantile reveal of your treachery to the rest of your siblings. When you received the text inviting you and the rest of the siblings to dinner at the old estate, you’re not surprised. You already have a menu ready. You’re not just an immaculately sexy, perpetually young, ruthlessly efficient hustler. You’re also an amazing chef. It’s not the sort of thing you would normally share with your family—you’re repulsed by the idea of them tasting something you put actual care and love into—but your stupid, oblivious sister found you out. Now you cook for your family in secret and Anya takes the credit. The old estate is a minor tourist destination, the sort of place haunted by daytime visitors with children and smartphones. Your family doesn’t own the mansion in the traditional sense; rather, they administer the estate through contacts in the Royal Parks Charity. This means your family name isn’t attached to the estate, so you and your siblings can use it to sordid ends with relative anonymity. It’s late in the evening and all the tourists are gone. The dining room is drafty and maximalist, dominated by the long mahogany table down its center. Presently, your siblings—minus your sister—are seated along its length, all eight of them. The conversation is soft and polite and full of menace, the hissing of function room vipers. These are the scions of all the most lucrative industries: aerospace, energy, communications, commercial banking and real estate. You consider yourself a jack of all those trades and more, the truest heir to your family’s ambitions. Tonight’s dinner begins with fresh bread and a cultured butter so rich and salty that you secretly licked it off your elaborately manicured nails. The bread, a crusty sourdough, is sliced delicately thin so as to not spoil appetites. Your sister sweeps in from the kitchen and places the bread on the table with exaggerated deliberateness, the kayfabe of a parent presenting a child to a new academy. You override your revulsion and eat a slice. You compliment its body, its structure, the breakfasty warmth of the butter. The humiliation of it tightens the noose of your resolve. “Divine,” one of your brothers, Adam, proclaims of the bread. “If you weren’t part of the family, I’d hire you as my head chef.” “It’s just bread,” you say shortly. “Save your accolades for something that actually warrants praise.” Your bread absolutely warrants praise, but it wouldn’t be in character for you to do so. “If we did that,” Adam drawls, “then who would give lip service to your accomplishments, my love?” Light tittering from around the table, which you endure. Your sister inclines her head and returns to the kitchen to retrieve the amuse-bouche: tomato water drained from heirloom tomatoes and infused into a gelatin, sprinkled with a fine Japanese sea salt, served by the mouthful in porcelain soup spoons. “It’s like tasting a summer afternoon,” proclaims one of your other siblings. “A can of V8 has a similar effect,” you say, thinking ruefully of the hours spent selecting tomatoes, pureeing, straining, cooling, perfecting. “It was simple,” Anya agreed. “No real skill required, to be honest.” This was Anya’s other favorite thing to do—take credit for your cooking, then make self-effacing remarks discrediting the amount of skill required to prepare the dishes. Her pettiness causes a particular sense of revulsion in you. The smallness of it. Like finding the corpse of a wasp inside a fig. After everyone has finished the amuse-bouche, Adam addresses you in a jolly tone. “Sorry about all that business with Azutech,” he says, referring to his acquisition of one of your holdings. “Just business, and all that.” You raise a glass of wine and say, “What’s a little cutthroat competition between family? Keeps the knives sharp.” What Adam doesn’t know is that there is a massive tax liability hidden in Azutech’s ledgers—something for him to contend with the next time the corporation is audited. You’ve got something like that planned for each of your siblings. Let them have their small victories over you; it’ll only make the eventual comeuppance more confectionary. Or it might have been. If Anya wasn’t a petty bitch in possession of your most salacious secrets. Now you can’t assume that any of your plans are secure. What you intended for your siblings would provoke a fraternal war if they became aware of the scope of your schemes, but you’re more of an assassin than a general. You wade through the soup course, nibble on the deconstructed salad. Your own art regurgitated back at you. Somehow, you survive all the way to the main course: whisper-thin slices of seared venison laid atop a thick honeyed cream, dressed in candied walnuts, arugula, and a tamarillo puree, topped with truffle shavings. Accompanying the venison is a dish of seasonal vegetables, roasted with honey and lemon. The intended effect is earthy sweetness, the essence of a harvest bounty. To highlight that sweetness, you’ve prepared cocktails made with a good Irish whiskey whose malt offers up the taste of honey (privately you nicknamed this presentation A Triptych of Honeys). It’s a shame what you’ve done to it; no one tastes the methanol, but you know it’s in there, adulterating what would otherwise be a fine beverage. Anya serves the drinks with the same facade of humility as everything else, demurely accepting praise for the fine presentation of it all. The food and wine have been flowing for over two hours now and your siblings’ voices have grown thick with intoxication. Even Anya has indulged, taking sips of wine between meal service. Her cheeks are red and glossy in the candlelight, her face flushed with pride. It’s as though she forgets that she didn’t actually cook all this food; she looks for all the world like someone in the throws of a job well done. You discreetly consume several tablets of activated charcoal while dabbing around your mouth with a linen napkin. You had no way of knowing which of the drinks you would receive, but you’ve habituated yourself to wood alcohol and you sip your cocktail slowly. The charcoal should absorb the worst of it. Your siblings are more voracious in their consumption; in fifteen minutes, most of the glasses are empty. You know from your research that methanol poisoning can take up to an hour, so you aren’t surprised when your siblings don’t all go blind and vomit at once. What does surprise you is the dessert course—instead of lavender sorbet with sea salt and honeysuckle flowers, Anya presents to the table a single covered serving dish. Do you feel faint as she approaches the table? Do your heartbeats come faster, less precise? Are the corners of your vision going dark? “I decided to go off-menu for our final dish of the night,” she says, her beatific smile turning shrewd and foxlike. “Some of the keener palates might have detected something stronger than whiskey in their cocktails. May I present the perfect compliment to methanol poisoning—” She pulls the lid off the serving dish, revealing a small saucer loaded with activated charcoal capsules. A suseruss of controlled panic ripples up and down the table. You wring your hands, chew your lower lip. Your breath comes faster and fainter. The air won’t go all the way to your lungs. You feel as though you should jump up onto the table and scream, stomp your feet, bellow. You tell yourself this is panic. You’ve been found out. You tried to frame your sister for poisoning your siblings and now they’re about to know but it’s okay, you’ll run and hide for your life. You have friends—or at least people who you can get high enough to help you out. You have your accountant, who as far as you know is loyal. You have places to hide, people to protect you. You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. “I invited you all here under a bit of a pretense,” Anya says as she circles the table, distributing charcoal to your agitated siblings. “I can’t take credit for this expert meal, nor any meal you’ve enjoyed in the past several months.” She stops just short of your place at the table, so that every sibling but you has received charcoal from the dish. “The credit for that goes to our dear sister here,” she says, gesturing at you with the serving dish. “I misused her secrets for my own insipid amusement. I abused her art, used it to carve out a niche in this family that doesn’t rightly belong to me.” “Anya…” you gasp. You can’t breathe. Cold sweat pools in the Cupid’s bow of your upper lip. “Call. I. This isn’t.” Your sister smiles sweetly at you. “You’re a rat, my dear. A poiseless rat with a coke problem and aimless ambitions. And you tried to gently caress with my siblings.” You can’t muster enough breath to fabricate an excuse, mount a denial. Your body spins in place and black gnats swarm across your eyes. Something is lifting you up out of this place, out of your lies, out of the horrible smallness of your life. Something. Something… Your sister seems to intuit the implicit question in your dying eyes because the last thing you hear is her voice softly forming a word: “Cyanide.”
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Jan 15, 2024 09:10
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In
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Feb 3, 2024 08:15
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Prompt 1 - Apex BUSTED: Dispelling Five Myths About Integration Ta feh! You have made the kindly decision to integrate with Abode Cedar. The purpose of this document is to dispel common misconceptions about the immigration process. 1) Abode Cedar is a hivemind FALSE. Abode Cedar is a distributed biocomputing network. Your thoughts and memories are not available for public access*. 2) Citizens are liable for crimes committed against the Abodes prior to integration FALSE. All newly-integrated citizens are granted complete amnesty**. 3) Citizens are forbade from venerating the Holy Sianad FALSE. Anasiani is the second most common form of veneration; most venerative scholars agree that Centralism and Anasiani are not mutually exclusive. 4) Citizens are restricted from contacting aberrant family members over the tangle FALSE. Citizens enjoy unrestricted tangle access***. 5) Unsuitable bodies are forcibly placed in nodes FALSE. Nodes provide disabled citizens an opportunity to contribute computing capacity to the Abodes. Nodal integration is never compulsory****. *Central may review your intellectual materia when there is a reasonable cause **Certain crimes of extreme moral turpitude (e.g. the forceful removal of a citizen’s implant) are not eligible for amnesty ***Central may interrogate tangle access when there is a reasonable cause ****Certain conditions preclude full ambulatory integration; if nodal integration is rejected, the application may be denied.
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Feb 4, 2024 23:37
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prompt 3 Proof This beach inhabits the root-bound clutches of Yggdrasil. Death squishes up between our toes as we traverse the humps of rotting kelp, mounds of fallen sea-bodies reanimated by the TV static of sand fleas. You’re precontemplative in your sobriety, but for now we drink from a naked sack of wine and smoke sodden cigarettes, careless of the gods who hurl shards of rain in our eyes. When the time comes to cook sausages, I eye the weather and say it can’t be done. Laughing, you ignite yourself at both ends and we eat and eat until the ethanol in your blood has burned away.
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Feb 5, 2024 01:01
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 00:17 |
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hmmm in
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Feb 7, 2024 10:31
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