Tag Archives: The Daily Post

Precipice

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She stands at the precipice.

The dark blue of the ocean stretches out before her, so calm and deep.  The first whispers of the breaking dawn, in the far off horizon. Even the Baracelanra wind, usually brisk this early in the season of Karisnaan, is gentle.

Far off sounds, hidden in the early morning mists of the Asiv forest, loomed nearer.

She couldn’t decide which was worse.  The nightly terrors of the forest, of which she had never encountered before this waning night, the known dangers of the same untamed, dense forest in the daylight, or the far off sounds which she knew better than her own heartbeat.

She breaths deeply of the air, heavily scented of the marlesh blooms native to the nearby mountains.  Even in the near dark the presence of the Mount Lanig could be felt.

For centuries, her people attempt to cross over the near razor sharp edges of the mountain; many die in the attempt. For centuries, her people attempt to pass through the mountain; many die in the attempt. For centuries, her people attempt to till the land at the foot of the mountain; all flora and vegetation except the marlesh died in the attempt. Her people have learned that the Lanig will not be easily crossed over, passed through or tilled on.  Yet, the marlesh thrives.

She listens again to the sounds breaking the quiet of the dawn.  She has time yet to enjoy this view, and sits on the still dew damp grass of the precipice.  Her feet mere inches from the sheer drop to the ocean below.

She had been born on this precipice.  She had frightened her family to no end during her early youth, with her constant wandering to this place; at least until she grew older were certain she would not go over its steep edge.    Here in the Second Coming of her Etol N’gavet she still cannot fathom her attraction to this place.  Like the Lanig – it just is so.

The once far off terrors of sound are now fully upon her and she slowly rises to face its source.

No words are spoken between them.  The time for words had long since passed, when she tore through the horrors of the Asiv itself in her attempt to escape the inevitable.  The expressions exchanged between them however spoke volumes.

Submit!

Never!

What choice have you?

She glanced at her surrounds.  The ocean, an unnaturally brilliant blue in the rising sun of this new day, is to the right of her.  The Lanig, to her left with it beautiful flowers and jagged edges, glinted in the sunlight. The Asiv behind her? She had barley survived her flight through as is trying to reach this precipice.  She knew she would not make it to the terrors of the forest this time, let alone through it again.  And finally, that which she could not escape, unabashedly enjoying this moment of triumph, waited patiently to claim her.

What choice did she have? The alternative was equally final and eternal as far as she was concerned.

Sighing deeply, resignedly, she feels her soul depart from her body as she takes the final step towards her fate…

And leaps…

She relishes in the screams of frustration coming from above her as she sails through the air to the rocks and ocean below, she couldn’t help but smile.

It was a beautiful place to be born, and a beautiful place to die.

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The Daily Post | Daily Prompt – Precipice

A Chance to Heal

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It is necessary to watch
Far in front of ourselves
To understand that we are lost
Alex Nevsky – “Jeter in Sort” (“Put A Spell On” – English translation)

It is necessary to watch
Where healing eyes have spoken
Healing braced in the ocean of tears crying
Grateful just to know we still feel
For in sadness is a chance to heal

Far in front of ourselves
Where healing time is forever frozen
Healing in prayers for the dead and the dying
For days like these when we simply cannot deal
And give ourselves a chance to heal

To understand that we are lost
Where healing hearts are ever broken
Healing we must always keep on trying
Giving our all to make the compassion real
Perseverance of faith for a chance to heal
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National Poetry Writing Month (NoPoWriMo) 2017
National Poetry Writing Month 2017 – Day 8
Write a poem using repetition

The Daily Post
The Daily Post
The Daily Post | Daily Prompt – Heal

A to Z Challenge - G
A to Z Challenge – Letter G
G is for Glosa –
This poem is written in a modified glosa

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Mindlovemiserty’s Menagerie – Friday Music Prompt
“Jeter un Sort/Put A Spell On” by Alex Nevsky

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On her knees, she reflects on her days up to these moments of her life. Say what they may now – she has earned this. The slurs of her heritage were a weight heavily carried on her back.  The vitriol flung her way because of the lower caste into which she was born, a constant susurrus in the back of her mind, no more. The drive to disprove the mocking stereotypes subjected to her kind a crown of thorns that gave cold comfort. Some let the burden of them wear them down. Today she would show a different way to wear those labels – with pride.

She bows her head one last time, as the mantle of the choices that brought her here become a different kind of weight. Lifting her head, she rises from her knees before the vicar with grace, as he proclaims her to all. She begins her life anew with the only appellation that mattered now, Queen.

To what you answer
Will always outweigh the things
To what you are called

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dVerse ~ Poets Pub: Open Link Night #192

senseless

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Nine and seven years
You abandon us here
In this world
Mad with anguish

Skipped to the words
Take them
Spoken in hate
Go away and die
Because of him

The need to spite
Mattering more
Than to live for us
Your own daughters

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A week before Mother’s Day. Trying to make sense of the senseless. She had been saying for months that if he kept pushing her she’d leave him permanently. We were all praying she would. None of us thought it would be like this. Leaving a note and two daughters.

From some of the comments below I see I need to clarify something. The above poem is from my muse, taking the view point of the two daughters. The pain feels real to you, because it is real to me. This past Monday night/Tuesday morning,  I lost a friend, the girls lost a mother to suicide.

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dVerse ~ Poets Pub | Quadrille 8: Skip

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The Daily Post | Abandoned

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Real Toads : The Tuesday Platform

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Slice of Life Writing Challenge : Two Writing Teachers

The Daily Post: Secret Santa

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Today’s The Daily Post is a good one:

You get to choose one gift — no price restrictions — for any person you want. The caveat? You have to give it anonymously. What gift would you give, and to whom?

No price restrictions? For me, this prompt is such an easy one as I literally had this conversation with another friend just yesterday.

My best-friend lives in a one-hundred plus year old, five-story walk-up that is owned by her and her family. Its age has caught up with it and the building has been in some date of construction/renovation for the past three years or so. Every apartment unit in the building is in or needing some state of repair. Not to mention maintaining the building structure itself.  It’s all necessary work, but lack of funds and family like her 90-year-old mother still living in the building during it all it has been a really stressful few years for the entire family trying to get anything done piecemeal.

In an ideal magical world, everyone would move out en masse, she would gut the building, have it renovated bottom to top and then everyone could move back in to an issue free residence. The major problem being where would everyone live during it all. Without the magic of  one hell of a mega/power ball type lotto where she could afford to arrange temporary housing for all the tenants and the rebuild itself, the ideal magical world is never going to happen.

Essentially, the gift would be move-in ready, elevated apartment building. Every one in the current building would simply move in to the new one.  It has been a dream of mine to do exactly this for her if I ever hit that mega/power ball type lotto any way, so it is absolutely perfect. Yes, I know this benefits more than just her, but family is everything to her. The ability for her to be able to provide a stable, issue free building that she would not the daily worry of Oh God what now? for her and her family would be such a tremendous gift. Even though she would never know I had anything to do with it, the ability to remove that worry from her would mean so much to me.

The Daily Post: Secret Santa

Come see how others are slicing it up for the week at Two Writing Teachers

Slice of Life - Two Writing Teachers

Slice of Life – Two Writing Teachers

 

Weekly Writing Challenge: Writing Backward – Old Man

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“Good bye old man.”

Hand still on the headstone; Delilah lifts her face to the light rain that has fallen intermittently all day. She has as umbrella, but does not want to use it. Well aware she will likely pay for this by catching one heck of a cold as she is slowly soaked, she does not care right now. It feels oddly soothing. The cool rain mixing in with the hot tears that continue to run down her face try as she might to stop its flow.  They all knew the old man was in his final days, still knowing Death is coming does very little to lessen the blow of the final strike of his scythe once he arrives.

It is fitting, she thinks. It is fitting that it has rained most of this day; it matches her mood as she opens the car door, when they pull up to the cemetery.  Taking her hand as she exits the vehicle, her husband Henri gives her a reassuring hug. A gentle reminder of his presence though he is otherwise silent, leaving her to her thoughts.  She knows he understands, she needs this visit to the old man’s grave.

The rain damped lawn yields gently as they walk back over the grass to the waiting car. A bittersweet smile crosses her face as she remembers how the old man walked her down the aisle on her wedding day.  Showing signs of his advancing age, he was just starting to become unpredictable in his behavior. She had let family convince her that it was perhaps better if she walked down the grassy aisle on her own. But in the end how could she deny him this? She was happy she stuck to her guns, having faith in him knowing how important this was to her. That he would do his very best.  And he was what he had always been, regal, charming and such the perfect gentleman.

The same gentleman he was when Henri, in front of the entire family, showed him the engagement ring and asked his permission to marry Delilah.  The old man gave a good-natured protective growl, but then his playful bark of approval, soon followed. Even her own father laughed hard at that, as Henri then inquired the same of him, fully knowing Henri had asked permission in the correct order.  Eventually, he got around to actually asking Delilah herself to the delight of everyone.

The old man was sitting by her side as always the day she met Henri at the outdoor café.  New to the city, he was lost. He placed a map in front of Delilah asking directions, without really looking at her nor the old man. She smiled removing her shades as she pointed to the then not so old man and teased that Henri was better off showing the map to him. Only then did Henri notice the harness, realized Delilah was blind and began to apologize profusely at his “oversight”. Delilah laughed at his use of oversight and introduced Henri to Oberon, her fourteen year old, canine service companion.  Delilah smiled as she heard Henri squat down and give the dog a friendly scratch behind the ear.

“Well hello there, old man.”

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Weekly Writing Challenge: Writing Backward

Daily Prompt | What A Twist!

The Bitter With The Sweet

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It was my third week back at work after my husband’s passing. Still early in my path of grieving, the okay days were the ones spent staying one step ahead of the tears in want of falling at any given moment.  The better days were the ones I got through simply by rote. This particular day was a cross between the two and only I knew why. Thus, it was something of a surprise when early in the afternoon a flower delivery guy stops at my desk.  My mind was understandably elsewhere and it took a moment for it even register that the flowers were for me.

I remember being perturbed as I signed for them.  I was thinking who in their right mind would send me condolence flowers, at work, a solid month after the fact. I mean what else could they be? And why today of all days?  I open the box to reveal two dozen red roses in a silver vase. They were lovely and smelled heavenly.  After getting fresh water and arranging them, I finally read the card that came with it.

Because you thought I never would –Posslq

I loved my husband dearly, but it was a running point of contention/running joke between us on how he was not a flowers giving kind of guy. The compromise being that I received flowers on Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day; that was it. And that was the way it remained. Still, in our nearly twenty years together, never had he sent flowers to work for any reason, until that day.

The signature “Posslq” -pronounced “poss-el-que”- stood for People of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters.  It was something we got from the late Andy Rooney of “60 Minutes” fame, where in his not quite jokingly curmudgeon way stated the IRS should add POSSLQ to the Married/Single/Head of Household options on the annual tax forms, to reflect couples who live together, but are not married.  We had turned it into a silly term of endearment for each other, which we had stopped using, quite correctly, once we married.  It is the only reason I knew they were from him, as no one else would have known we called each other that.  I then knew why they arrived on that specific day – it was our wedding anniversary.

I learned later on in the day, after a few phone calls, that he made the arrangements for the flowers the Friday before he died. The guy at the florist shop remembered him and how he was making jokes about messing with his wife (me), on a random whim. None of which was surprising at all to those who have had the pleasure/torture of knowing my late-husband. But at that moment the incredulous reality of it set in and I burst into laughter.

I had not laughed that hard, that sincerely, since before my husband passed.  One of my co-workers popped his head over the low barrier of out joined cubicles. He was smiling, happy to see me laughing and wanted to know what was so funny, so I told him.  “My dead husband just sent me flowers for our anniversary.” Suffice it to say, that wiped the smile from his face, which made me laugh even more.  I explained it to him and then he understood. Granted it took some convincing before he would believe that I really was all right; that my laughter was not from hysteria and I was not about to lose all it in the middle of the office floor.

My husband was the reason I lost my laughter. It made perfect sense to me he was the reason I got it back. Surprisingly, and yet not, I really was okay with it.  Now, seven years after his passing, there’s always a twinge of the bittersweet in my smile when I use that vase.

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Daily Post: Secret Admirers

Daily Post: Bittersweet Memories

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Slice of Life Weekly Writing Challenge – May 21, 2013

Thai Like It

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View of a Glass of Thai Iced Tea from Above

This mouth watering goodness is a simple glass of Thai Iced  Tea. Usually I take drink pictures from the side, but this was truly a more interesting view. I’m going to consider this angle more often.

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Daily Prompt | Weekly Photo Challenge From Above

Daily Prompt: Second Time Around

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Tell us about a book you can read again and again without getting bored
— what is it that speaks to you?

I list Piers Anthony Incarnations of Immortality series first because his On a Pale Horse was the first book that I read, finished and came back to happily for several years after its release.  As the remaining books of the series were released  (Bearing an Hourglass, With a Tangled Skein, Wielding a Red Sword, Being a Green Mother,  For Love of Evil, And Eternity, and finally Under a Velvet Cloak), the wash, rinse and repeat process would ensue.  I know I reread at least one book from the series every couple of years.  In fact, now close to – if not past, some twenty years after my reading it for the very first time, I think I’m ready to enjoy On a Pale Horse again.

Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality world is set in a future, but parallel earth where magic is as accepted as technology.  Thanks to various mythologies we are familiar with the personification of the concepts Death, Time, Fate, War, Nature etcetera, all of whom are immortal. The twist here is that the beings that hold these positions only do so for certain amount time depending upon their “office” and they are very human indeed.  For example Chronos (Time), lives his life in reverse to the rest of the incarnations, his future is actually their past and holds office only until the day he is born. Thus, if he is say 49 years of age when he takes office, he can only hold the office for 49 years and then must pass the job to his predecessor.  Each incarnation’s struggles/exploits with themselves, with the world at large and with each other as humans and as office holders to these supernatural positions make for some very interesting reading.  Imagine God as an office that you’re voted into. Gives you a little something to think about there doesn’t it? I concede that the world, society in general, has grown much more sophisticated in the passing years since these books were written. Purposely a little light-hearted at times, yet still thought-provoking, the books may not hold up to the more jaded, serious-minded adults, depending on literary tastes, but many will still delight in them.

The Kushiel Legacy series by Jacqueline Carey is a different animal.   The novels are split into three sets of trilogies. In publishing and storyline chronological order are Kushiel’s Dart, Kushiel’s Chosen, Kushiel’s Avatar – the Phèdre Trilogy,  Kushiel’s Scion, Kushiel’s Justice, Kushiel’s Mercy – the Imriel Trilogy and  Naamah’s Kiss, Naamah’s Curse and Naamah’s Blessing – the  Moirin Trilogy.  It is set in a detailed, fully developed alternate world very akin, but not quite like our own medieval past. This is a world of alternate religious, lands and people hold some similarities to ours, but not.  Not one of the heroes or heroines is perfect, not even close it. What is moral for our world takes on a different context in this one. With “Love as thou wilt” as a blessed precept of course there are some damn good sex scenes tossed throughout, but the protagonist lives are very much full of war, political intrigue, magic and of course love.  Carey creates faraway lands with their own characters, flavors and intrigues that excites and frightens, that draw you in always wanting more, but never becoming so far out of reality as to disdain believability and that is what works for me. In spite of their amazing adventures the characters here remain so very real.

I discovered the series when the second book was released.  As I read Kushiel’s Chosen, I quickly became so enthralled with the characters that I bought Kushiel’s Dart because I just had to know the details of how it all began.  It was not that I curious and wanted to know about the characters …I. Had. To. Know.   I have missed many a train stop as I became entrenched in the stories.

I love the Kushiel Legacy series so much, that not only do I have the physical books at home, but I also have the digital versions as well.  I can now pull up and re-immerse myself into the world of the Kushiel Legacy whenever I like.  If you love the Songs of Fire and Ice (Game of Thrones) series, trust me, go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble and pick up Kushiel’s Legacy to tide you over until R.R. Martin finally sits down and finishes the next book.

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Daily Prompt: Second Time Around