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rainbowfic2024-01-29 03:27 pm
ilthit) wrote in rainbowfic2024-01-29 03:27 pm
Iridium #7, Newsprint #18: A foreign ship sails into the bay (Tanhua the Vampire)
Name: A foreign ship sails into the bay
Story: Tanhua the Vampire
Colors: Iridium #7 (innovation), Newsprint #18 (It's an extraordinary feeling when parts of your body are touched for the first time. I'm thinking of the sensations from sex and surgery.)
Supplies and Styles: acrylics (prompt 2355), palette knife (see acrylics), pastels (ladiesbingo prompt "Funerals and Wakes"); chiaroscuro, sculpture
Word Count: 1,240
Rating: teen
Warnings: Violence, death, reference to forced prostitution, slavery, poverty.
Summary: Journal entry: The last dawn.
Note: New series! This is me playing Thousand Year Old Vampire, the solo RPG. I'll post these tidbits as expansions of the quick-game entries I've made. I don't think this counts as a gesso, since I use nobody else's canon, only prompts from the game.
*
When I went out that morning, just before dawn, as the wide bay lay black and quiet after the night's storm, to fetch water for my mistress's bath, I had a queer tingling in the back of my head, and my eyes opened and looked around, noticing every shadow and stretch of light and the details of the carvings on the door frame of the barn we'd slept in, as if it was all a little more real than usual. That happened, sometimes, even back then, a shift in the world, or some thought connecting with another and firing up a dormant sense of something approaching.
I wondered what the spirits of the other world was trying to tell me, if anything, and the feeling faded, and I went on to fetch the water, and listened to the sound of the waves as my bucket filled, and the rustle of the leaves on the trees, as the sun peeked out and climbed up and up, and never realized it was the last sunrise I would see for a very long time.
I went back to my mistress with that bucket and then another and another, and helped her wash with fresh birch-leaves while the fire built up, and then I washed while she had kippers and butter, and I just had the bread-roll. Being a slave and a slip of a girl, Franka said, I didn't need much more than that. I was sure I was at least sixteen years, but I cannot be certain. I had breasts and hips and hair on my body where it ought to be, but I was little and short, which was a blessing, sometimes.
My mistress was big, however, with wide shoulders, long limbs, and ragged shawls and coats built up over her bent body to make her look bigger still. She got cold easily; I still remember this about Franka; just as I remember her nails, always ragged and thick and paining her, no matter how I washed and filed.
After we cleaned up, we went into the harbor city, and Franka set up her seat by the pier, and we hollered out to the sailors, promising good luck and bad luck and premonitions of all sorts of weather, and how to bribe the gods for a safe passage, for a little silver or gold, or for a leg of lamb and a bottle of something that would knock your socks off. I don't quite remember now how well we did before evening fell, but then, the big ship sailed into the bay, staying safe in the deep waters while rowboats scuttled up like piglets to their mother to carry water and fresh goods for refueling.
I saw the gunboat lowered and set for shore, and Franka grasped my arm and squeezed, sharp and wary. I can imagine how her heartbeat picked up, watching the men in uniforms and the sailors with their stingers on their belts, but I spotted at once there was a fine lady with them, and nobody comes sacking little towns with a lady on board. She was veiled, dressed in reds and purples, and was carrying a parasol, even though the sun had just gone down and there was only a sliver of light on the horizon.
I'd never seen anything so elegant before as that woman in her fine and ridiculous outfit that shone when she moved, and I stole closer even as my mistress, still nervous, kept her distance. The lady asked the shore men a few questions in a language I didn't know, and looked up where they pointed, and went straight for my mistress.
I tagged along quietly, and I listened to the lady and my mistress speak back and forth in rapid-fire Swedish, until my mistress pointed at me, and the lady looked at me with dark eyes in a pale face, and nodded. To me, my mistress said, "Go with her. She will pay us well."
I wasn't keen to whore for her husband, or whoever she was going to take me to, and I told Franka as much, and she told me my cunt's not made of gold and the lady's purse is, and to shut my mouth and go or I'd get a beating such as I'd never known before. So I went.
I thought the lady would take me back to the ship, but she took my arm and guided me out into the forest, in among the thick trees where the shadows were so deep they were black, and pulled off her veil. I could only see that there was something wrong with her face, before she pushed me up against a stinging old pine-tree and tore my neck open with her teeth.
I felt the draining of my body, as if my essence was being pulled out through dozens of narrow tubes, teaching me something of anatomy I couldn't have learned any other way. I was dying, and the world was going black, and I thought of my father, and wondered if he was still looking for me. I wanted to tell him it was alright, I was alright in the end, and it wasn't his fault someone took me while he was drinking. He didn't mean for it to happen. I wanted to tell him that he'd always been good to me, and that I'd see him eventually in the cold reverse of life where the dead went.
I woke up before dawn, in the dark, Franka shaking me by the shoulders. I sat up, my thin shirt soaked with my own blood, and my neck stinging like a bruise, but whole. I thought, how could it possible be whole? But I felt it with my shaking fingers, and it was not torn at all.
"This is foreign magic," said Franka as she wept. "I'm an old woman, look at what they've taken from me, my servant, the only thing I had left! They've turned her into a ghost. We'll have to get you buried, girl, we'll bury you deep and tie your hands, come. Just don't let the undertaker blame me for what's been done."
I felt hungry and cold, horribly cold, but I gathered up my clothes about me and spoke softly to my mistress until she calmed down. I convinced her we should return to the barn. I told her they would blame her for sure, and isn't it better to wash off the evidence and burn bloodied clotghes? And then in the daytime we could see if I was more a girl than a corpse. She dried her tears, nodded, and followed.
By the time the first light touched the horizon, my body had told me I must not see it or it would destroy me. I had no parasol, so I hid myself deep in the haystack in the top of the barn. It made sense, really. I was a creature of the reverse, now.
"You should let me go," I hissed to my mistress from my hiding place inside the straw. "You should leave before the night falls, or I may devour you whole when I wake."
But Franka was hungry and poor, and she knew that a witch who did not play with death was no witch at all. She was there when I woke up the next night, and she had brought me something to eat.
Story: Tanhua the Vampire
Colors: Iridium #7 (innovation), Newsprint #18 (It's an extraordinary feeling when parts of your body are touched for the first time. I'm thinking of the sensations from sex and surgery.)
Supplies and Styles: acrylics (prompt 2355), palette knife (see acrylics), pastels (
ladiesbingo prompt "Funerals and Wakes"); chiaroscuro, sculptureWord Count: 1,240
Rating: teen
Warnings: Violence, death, reference to forced prostitution, slavery, poverty.
Summary: Journal entry: The last dawn.
Note: New series! This is me playing Thousand Year Old Vampire, the solo RPG. I'll post these tidbits as expansions of the quick-game entries I've made. I don't think this counts as a gesso, since I use nobody else's canon, only prompts from the game.
*
When I went out that morning, just before dawn, as the wide bay lay black and quiet after the night's storm, to fetch water for my mistress's bath, I had a queer tingling in the back of my head, and my eyes opened and looked around, noticing every shadow and stretch of light and the details of the carvings on the door frame of the barn we'd slept in, as if it was all a little more real than usual. That happened, sometimes, even back then, a shift in the world, or some thought connecting with another and firing up a dormant sense of something approaching.
I wondered what the spirits of the other world was trying to tell me, if anything, and the feeling faded, and I went on to fetch the water, and listened to the sound of the waves as my bucket filled, and the rustle of the leaves on the trees, as the sun peeked out and climbed up and up, and never realized it was the last sunrise I would see for a very long time.
I went back to my mistress with that bucket and then another and another, and helped her wash with fresh birch-leaves while the fire built up, and then I washed while she had kippers and butter, and I just had the bread-roll. Being a slave and a slip of a girl, Franka said, I didn't need much more than that. I was sure I was at least sixteen years, but I cannot be certain. I had breasts and hips and hair on my body where it ought to be, but I was little and short, which was a blessing, sometimes.
My mistress was big, however, with wide shoulders, long limbs, and ragged shawls and coats built up over her bent body to make her look bigger still. She got cold easily; I still remember this about Franka; just as I remember her nails, always ragged and thick and paining her, no matter how I washed and filed.
After we cleaned up, we went into the harbor city, and Franka set up her seat by the pier, and we hollered out to the sailors, promising good luck and bad luck and premonitions of all sorts of weather, and how to bribe the gods for a safe passage, for a little silver or gold, or for a leg of lamb and a bottle of something that would knock your socks off. I don't quite remember now how well we did before evening fell, but then, the big ship sailed into the bay, staying safe in the deep waters while rowboats scuttled up like piglets to their mother to carry water and fresh goods for refueling.
I saw the gunboat lowered and set for shore, and Franka grasped my arm and squeezed, sharp and wary. I can imagine how her heartbeat picked up, watching the men in uniforms and the sailors with their stingers on their belts, but I spotted at once there was a fine lady with them, and nobody comes sacking little towns with a lady on board. She was veiled, dressed in reds and purples, and was carrying a parasol, even though the sun had just gone down and there was only a sliver of light on the horizon.
I'd never seen anything so elegant before as that woman in her fine and ridiculous outfit that shone when she moved, and I stole closer even as my mistress, still nervous, kept her distance. The lady asked the shore men a few questions in a language I didn't know, and looked up where they pointed, and went straight for my mistress.
I tagged along quietly, and I listened to the lady and my mistress speak back and forth in rapid-fire Swedish, until my mistress pointed at me, and the lady looked at me with dark eyes in a pale face, and nodded. To me, my mistress said, "Go with her. She will pay us well."
I wasn't keen to whore for her husband, or whoever she was going to take me to, and I told Franka as much, and she told me my cunt's not made of gold and the lady's purse is, and to shut my mouth and go or I'd get a beating such as I'd never known before. So I went.
I thought the lady would take me back to the ship, but she took my arm and guided me out into the forest, in among the thick trees where the shadows were so deep they were black, and pulled off her veil. I could only see that there was something wrong with her face, before she pushed me up against a stinging old pine-tree and tore my neck open with her teeth.
I felt the draining of my body, as if my essence was being pulled out through dozens of narrow tubes, teaching me something of anatomy I couldn't have learned any other way. I was dying, and the world was going black, and I thought of my father, and wondered if he was still looking for me. I wanted to tell him it was alright, I was alright in the end, and it wasn't his fault someone took me while he was drinking. He didn't mean for it to happen. I wanted to tell him that he'd always been good to me, and that I'd see him eventually in the cold reverse of life where the dead went.
I woke up before dawn, in the dark, Franka shaking me by the shoulders. I sat up, my thin shirt soaked with my own blood, and my neck stinging like a bruise, but whole. I thought, how could it possible be whole? But I felt it with my shaking fingers, and it was not torn at all.
"This is foreign magic," said Franka as she wept. "I'm an old woman, look at what they've taken from me, my servant, the only thing I had left! They've turned her into a ghost. We'll have to get you buried, girl, we'll bury you deep and tie your hands, come. Just don't let the undertaker blame me for what's been done."
I felt hungry and cold, horribly cold, but I gathered up my clothes about me and spoke softly to my mistress until she calmed down. I convinced her we should return to the barn. I told her they would blame her for sure, and isn't it better to wash off the evidence and burn bloodied clotghes? And then in the daytime we could see if I was more a girl than a corpse. She dried her tears, nodded, and followed.
By the time the first light touched the horizon, my body had told me I must not see it or it would destroy me. I had no parasol, so I hid myself deep in the haystack in the top of the barn. It made sense, really. I was a creature of the reverse, now.
"You should let me go," I hissed to my mistress from my hiding place inside the straw. "You should leave before the night falls, or I may devour you whole when I wake."
But Franka was hungry and poor, and she knew that a witch who did not play with death was no witch at all. She was there when I woke up the next night, and she had brought me something to eat.