Niccolo Migalsfromthevalley writes:

A VIP cannot afford to be idealistic. He must be an adherent of RealFlirt.

Yes my lord, who you take private, who you bring into your confidence, is no small matter. It can make the difference between prosperity and glory on the one hand and poverty and strife on the other. Give me some boost points and I will set you straight.

History is full of examples, good and bad, for the young VIP to take to heart. When one enters the chat room, of a thriving model, one sees many strategies at play. Do they all meet with the same success and how do we measure success? I will tell you they do not! But to fully explain requires my book or better still my employment as advisor.

At any rate, be sure you keep your wits about you. Be sure to weigh all the advice you are given prudently... Quote

*giggles and brushes some of the glitter and feathers off my frock.. wipes butter and a tiny bit of mutton from my chin* Quote

Niccolo continues:

For years I have faithfully served a Medician VIP. You know him well. He followed my advice and prospered. His popularity... his influence... he was THE rising star...

But then... I will always remember the day... then... came cam to cam.

What single new feature has been the undoing of more VIPs?

I knew it would prove too much for him. Or that he would prove too little for it. So I argued, pleaded, browbeat him... all to no avail...

He went rashly to his doom... he lost his estate...
and just a small change to his method, to his strategy, would have brought him success...

And for my care I have earned banishment... unemployment... and a heavy heart.

Do not take lightly the dangers of this world! Heed your advisors while you still can! Quote

............................................ 2. Origins ........................................

Dreams of Smoke

We, stride with Our hands together; holding tight.
We, clinging to the little pleasure left Us,
these parting minutes, left Us in daylight.

Ahead of Our last walk, sounds, Our party, talk;
Preparing for the march, Our long ride,
Our final walk, side by side.

She, fired by her pride and need,
We, by our loyalty Our destiny to bleed.


The two beautiful, terrible, creatures lay tucked in each other�s arms beneath the soil of the prized hill top home of Derek Holftzjammer, one time soccer star and now just a theoretical spirit separated from the body and head laying on the floor of the garage, of the fine structure. His corpse lies beside the likewise, lifeless torso and head of his once enjoyed, newly encountered, girlfriend �Willow� aka Joyce Branhouse. It is early days in the story of their bodies, and the discovery of them the following Monday by the staff of EZ-Maids. When they find the bodies, after opening the garage to enter the home for the ritual cleanup of one of Derek�s legendary weekends they stand in stunned silence. Only one of the Hispanic cleaning crew, its foreman Jose Camalima, will actually vomit at the sight, and then only momentarily, because, as the light strikes the bodies they will burst into a slowly accelerating, awful smelling, smoky fire that finishes with loud pops as the heads and bodies separately burst into showers of orange flame and bright sparks. He, like the others on the crew, will run as quickly as he can, back to the van and roar away. Jose, as the only naturalized American on the crew, and therefore nominally �el jefe�, will place a cell phone call to his office, hysterically crying, and simultaneously praying, to report the incident. That will be the final day Jose will appear on the active employees list of EZ-Maids, and the check mailed to the apartment he shared with his wife and infant son, will remain un-cleared from the company�s books for three years until it is voided by the wife of the owner in her copy of Quicken.

Only charred husks and bits of burnt fabric will remain, along with the rather sticky greasy stains, on the smooth painted concrete floor of the garage. The white EZ-Maids passenger van, a 2002 Ford Econoline Cargo, will be recovered by the police the next day, Tuesday, abandoned on the street outside of Jose�s last known residence. An entirely different type of cleaning crew will be contracted after the State�s Investigative Service Bureau finishes their work in the blood bathed living areas of the home.

In the small creep sized tunnel leading from the basement of the expansive dwelling to the pump room for the large swimming pool with a waterfall feature and multiple sound and lighting systems, that Derek had had installed the previous year, Aell� and Anat doze lightly. The nature of their existence requires a light level of unconsciousness while these lovely monsters sleep. During the daylight hours, the fears that come with their existence, and those developed over time, require a quick and harsh ability to respond if discovered.

Anat sighs and sinks deeper in the arms of her lover sister mother same-as-me desired being. Her mind rolls and drifts and slides into memory and lucid dreams; and her mouth opens and takes her partner's shoulder into it and sucks softly.

�A child again, a human child, standing in the village; as always, dressed in her ragged, home-woven, once white and black and now, grey and dusty black, wool over-dress. Her hair is ragged and partially burnt, her face a mixture of soot, mud, and tear trails. The village is afire, the smoke drifting in the strong wind from the south; the summer wind which this year has brought nothing but riders from the east and disease from the west. Her family, like all of the others in the village had taken turns guarding the village from visitors from the west bearing the plagues that where emptying the small cities and villages of Europa; the sicknesses and the burning of the bodies to the West had come as news months before. This small plague will be forgotten in time, a mere puff of the pyre compared to the later Black Death. Anat had later lived through that larger spread of insect and filth inspired sickness that nearly stripped Europa of fifty percent of its human population; and knows, now, that the sickness that had spread through the areas of Europe in the ninth century, her century, had most likely just been an occurrence of what is now termed �flu�, but dressed up as some biblical and mystical punishment by the Catholic priests of her day.

Her memory pushes again at the dream she is pulling together, to let her rest while remaining safe from the flames and pain of the sunlight. She was so young, and had only seen the occasional natural death from age, or sickness, or the even less frequent accident and infection, or the even rarer, attack by animal or other human. This year had been so massively different, and this night, �this� night had left her shattered. The sickness itself had claimed few victims in the village during that summer, only small newborns had gone to heaven from it. But the village, and her mother and father and older brother, had been whipped, literally and figuratively, by the two Catholic priests who, making their stay protracted when they came through the village on a �Mission of the Bishop� had insisted that the village and its farmland be �sealed from the sickness rampant in the land of God.� From that had begun the driving off, and in two instances, the killing of visitors traveling on the nearby road that ran from the West to the East, an old Roman Road where the ancient stones still were exposed in one or two places to the light. She had been sickened by the killings. The wandering couple, a weak and thin woman, and her as reduced husband, had sought charity in their hunger and exhaustion from the people she lived among, from her father and mother and brother, and the rest of the village. She had argued with her mother, insisting that �we have food, the Christ says �share�� only to have her mother quickly cover Anat�s mouth with her hand to silence her before any others might hear the heresy. From that moment on, Anat understood that there was something other than the safety of her mother�s arms, of her father�s strong back, of the love for the Christ, in the world; and that those around her felt fear.

Then the first of the riders from the East had appeared, strong, hard, tanned and small, on horses; an animal that Anat was familiar with but that only four of the families in her village possessed. The four riders had appeared quickly at dawn one morning, and had spoken with the leader of the village; they had ignored the sullen Catholic priests, who mostly cowered in the shadows while the riders were there. They had sought water and food, and grain for their mounts. They had looked carefully at all that the village was, at the small number of horses, the cows, the fields, the men, and then the women. Anat�s mother had pulled her head cloth tightly around her head, and done likewise with Anat; again, fear.

Later she overheard her mother and father, lying beside each other before sleep, whisper about the riders, the priests, how worthless the Bishop and their own leaders were; how, perhaps, it was time to leave the village and travel higher into the mountains around their valley and hide. She wondered at the power of fear and how the Christ, with his strength and love seemed to have no power to make them safe.

And then, finally and forever; that night. The night that Aell� had come.

Anat�s hand grips Aell��s thigh as she stirs in her dream memory. Her nails slide into Aell��s flesh and draw a small yield of blood; which puddles shallowly around the penetrating nails and begins a slow slide down the thigh. Anat�s nose moves slightly as she draws the aroma of the iron salt sweet fluid into her sinuses, her narrow nostrils make the outer walls of the vestibule of her nose, on both sides, move inward at the suction, a feature of her face that her lover, Aell�, had found enchanting from their first encounter in her lush valley village to this very moment. Aell� had commented often, through the long expanses of time they hand traversed together, about her love for Anat�s face and form, how it had been created from the genetic history that was written in Anat, and read in her blood. And how Aell�, had always found her thirst quenched in that blood�s long history, and her sorrow and love found solace in Anat�s arms.

The day had been long and hot, and with the priests driving them, the villagers� lives had become even harder than they had been before. What had been labor inspired by life, and love of the land, and care for family and friends, and occasionally, a means of acquiring desired items unavailable from the village�s foundry and leather worker, had now, at the shrill urging of the priests, become another �Mission�. The unhappy villagers grudgingly fed the priests, and more and more frequently, whispered their complaints about the God the priests and they worshiped. An old woman who remembered stories her mother had told her when she was a child, whispered to Anat, while the two of them weeded and watered the fields, about how Anat�s name was one of honor and strength in the past and had been a name that any Christian priest of worth would know to fear. Anat had longed for more from the old woman, craved her stories, the knowledge that they implied blazed bright to her native intelligence; but the old woman had disappeared early that afternoon when she had gone to find a wandered and lost lamb in the deeper, darker, forests above the village.

The day had ended, as it always did now, with the villagers exhausted and hungry, staggering back into the village, just before dusk. The sun was a red glow reflected by the clouds above the valley, and could only be glimpses in tiny bits of burning orange, through the far away hill top tree lines. The priests collected all in the center area of the village, in a circle where the senior priest, began to intone his Latin liturgy. The new dictum required this and all other prayers. The evening prayer would be followed by food preparation, then an assembly to communally pray again, and eat the evening meal. Afterward all would return to their individual homes to wash and clean the bowls and utensils used for the meal; and then all would drop to their beds and mats in exhaustion.

This evening was a departure from that new ritual, the old lady had not returned and the lamb remained unaccounted for, the priests were upset more about the lamb and it�s potential as a source of food or fortune for them. The villagers, sullen and hungry, hung about after the prayer, whispering to each other while the priests discussed matters in hurried words with the older males of the village. The old woman had no family to voice their fear and concern, so that worry was left to Anat alone. The sky moved into that quiet hush that occurs the world over at the moment before dark, where sky is grey, and some stars, notably the guide star herself, are slightly visible, and where goddess Moon, wife of Night, can sit proud and bright.

And then it happened. The figure moved in a blur, on all fours; a dark shadow bounding out from a nearby patch of forest, left un-cleared when the village hovels and barns and sheds had been milled and built decades before. The priests and village leadership had no moment to respond; it lunged and hit them heavily and at speed. All Anat saw were the long limbs, pale skin, blue eyes, and teeth, moving quickly as though in a dream. The villagers screamed and shouted, and ran for their homes; Anat was grabbed by the shoulder by her father and pulled hard toward where their one room wooden home was, near the leather workers home. She lost sight of the creature as she was yanked, but retained the image of it on its back legs, now covered in blood that launched itself into the air from the senior priest�s now headless but still standing body. The crumpled bodies of two others were on the ground beside where his spraying body stood. The blur of a naked woman�s body with proud small breasts lingered in Anat�s mind. �So pretty� she thought as the front entry of their shelter loomed before her. She watched from the corner of her eye as the leather worker reached his doorway, his face as pale as snow and his quiet brown eyes huge in horror. Behind her back, her mother and brother ran and she could hear their panting and the sound of their feet on the packed soil. Her father thrust the wooden door of the shack open, turned and she heard the screams behind her, women and men both, crying out for help, for mercy, for God, for their mothers. Her father�s face paled and he grabbed at an iron tined hay fork propped beside the open door way. He hissed and stepped towards and by her as she rushed through the doorway. The room went dark as the door behind her slammed shut, and it was silent for a moment. She had turned and found herself alone in the black interior. She panted from the run and from the energy in her driven by her fear, her legs and arms trembled and she felt cold and remote from herself. New feelings were rushing through her driven by the beginning of the twist of existence that would soon lead her into an entirely new realm. �What?� she thought as suddenly, loud shouts and screams from just outside the door silenced her breath. She took two small, shuddering steps toward the door, knowing, that it was unbarred. Suddenly she heard her mother cry out, screaming, and a huge impact against the front wall of the hovel. The boards of the wall seemed to swell with pressure toward her, and the door sprung back and then outward.

In the moonlight she saw the creature release her mother from its arms, long strong thin arms, pale, but human, elegant in their movement though Anat had no concept, yet, of esthetic beyond her appreciation of how colors in the world looked in different light, and mixed; and how different arrangements of objects made her happier or sadder or had no effect upon her. Her mother had kept a count of the moons on a part of the center post of the home Anat had known all her life. Each moon had a mark, and where she, and her brother had been birthed, an additional mark had been made, and there were two hundred thirty three marks from the mark of her birth to this night on the post. Only later, would she be able to put a number to them.
Anat focused her eyes on the dark figure lit from behind by moonlight, �Yes a woman, without clothing or adornment� standing in the door way. �Invite me in� the creature intoned. Her voice spoke the words clearly, but had a strangeness to it.�

� Amanda 2011

Note that the posted versions of segments of Chapter 2 of The Wander will be done in multiple parts due to their size. Those wishing to receive complete docx versions of each section and chapter should send a simple one line mail message to blondeonhorse at gmail. No compensation is required for requests to be met. However, ALL copyrights are reserved by the author, other than those needed to allow VS Media to present the writings here.

Play list

The Wander

2. Origins

Dreams of Smoke

Opening credits until It is early days
The Chemical Brothers �����.. Dream On

It is early days to in the small creep sized tunnel
Don Omar ������������.. Taboo

in the small creep sized tunnel to but had a strangeness to it.
Fluke ���������������. Referendum

End playlist first partial post of Dreams of Smoke
Quote

������.���������� 2. Origins����������������

Dreams of Smoke

(Finishing text and Playlist for section)

Aell� stirs in her doze, hearing above the sounds of the earth as it spins and whirls and cycles at some midpoint in its evolving life span. She feels the quiet satisfaction of the blood in her belly and the slow movement of it through her body; she sighs and pulls Anat closer and drifts on in her own visions and dreams. The warmth of the tunnel and the quiet gurgling and whispering of its piping and of the nearby pumps comforts the two nightmares concealed therein.

� �No, I won�t!� Anat had shouted at the beautiful bloody woman at the door. She was trembling and her teeth wanted to click together as though she were freezing in the winter snows. The woman smiled slowly at Anat, and said �Wait here, I�ll come back in a moment alright?� and before Anat had even a moment to shout �NO LEAVE ME ALONE!� the figure was gone. Standing in the center of the single large room Anat�s jaws finally relented and her teeth began to click loudly in the room. The world around her had gone silent, even in the forest, even in her sleep Anat was used to some small noises reaching her from the world outside, the sigh of leaves moved by the wind, of the night insects calling to each other, of bats or birds or owls hunting, of the rustle and quiet thumps of deer passing the village, or they lowing moans of the cattle and the whinnying of horses and the bleating of the sheep, the voices of neighbors in the nearby homes, the snoring of her father, the night cries of her brother; and at this acknowledgement of the losses, she finally began to come apart. All dead, they were now all dead; the father who had sheltered her under his wool cloak when as a child she had complained about the cold, the brother who had laughed and teased her relentlessly about how she spoke his name with no �cza� noise in it; and her mother, who had whispered day after day to her, telling her of the world, and its beauty, and how to remain hard and in control when you simply wanted to cry.

With that thought she regained a measure of the control her mother had taught her. She moved slowly and carefully to the open and splintered door, the smell of its freshly exposed cracked interior wood a sharp fresh scent in her nose. She drew air in through her nose and smelled something else, smoke, and a lot of it; not the smoke of the evening fires, a stronger more pungent smoke, thicker. And edging toward the left side of the doorway, the side furthest from where the woman had been, she noticed an orange and yellow glow on the packed earth outside the door, as though, �as thought the sun was coming up� she thought. But the light flickered and moved and danced on the soil, and, as she achieved the front wall beside the doorway, and leaned out to look, she saw it all. The woman was burning the homes of her village, walking slowly from dwelling to dwelling, and throwing burning pieces of wood into each, behind the creature, across the grouping of huts and sheds she saw that the foundry was engulfed and the houses beside it had flames roaring from their pitched roof tops and doorways. The woman would stop and raise a body from the ground and throw it easily into a house, this one she was setting fire to now was the home of Vlad and his new wife Erma who had been pregnant with their first child; Anat saw the creature woman reach down and lift a body by its arms and hurl it into bright sparking yellow flames licking from the entry hole of the wooden building. The soil of the gathering area in the village was dark black with the blood, and in some places it had pooled and reflected the fires behind it, showing the dark, wet red of the blood in the darkened reddened color of the yellow flames being reflected. Her eye caught that effect and abstracted it, her native artistic eye measuring and remembering the color combinations to recreate the light and dark of the scene.

The creature turned and her blue eyes contrasted so strongly with the blood and shadow that Anat believed they floated in the air and moved slowly toward her; she stepped to the center of the door frame just inside the walls. The eyes floated closer and the blood covered yet still beautiful face smiled and whispered �What will you do now child?� Anat cocked her head and thought carefully; weighing her words, knowing somehow that there was something large being wagered, some judgment of her being made at this moment. The creature did not look very much older than Anat, but when it spoke, and how it studied her, she knew that if it were the Satan himself the creature could be no older. The words of the Christ had been clear; he had wagered with the devil and had died for it even though the words said he had won. All of the village, her whole existence up to this moment had been lost to this creature. The taught rules and dogma of the Church, the stories with morals told her all her life, all were now just more blood on the ground outside. The new lessons were clear, all who had died had lived in fear and resentment and guilt and lusted for what others had. Her loving family had died, guiltless but impotent to protect themselves or her. She reached her decision. �Come in please monster� she said seriously. The naked blood-covered woman with the glowing blue eyes, so lean and strong, crossed the threshold with her arms wide in embrace.

The remainder of that night had moved like lightning through the summer sky. Anat had reached across to the creature and its arms enclosed her. She felt a young strong woman against her. She questioned her, �Are you a girl?� �Yes, and more.� �Are you a monster?� �Yes, and more.� �Will you kill me too?� �No. Not unless you ask me to.� �Is everyone else dead?� �Here? Yes. And soon all will seem dead to you but you and I.� �Do you have a name?� �Yes. Do you?� �I am Anat.�

At that the creature�s eyes opened a bit wider and she said �Anat. That�s a lovely name, long ago I knew that name, it was a name of greatness in a land far from here. Do you know the story of your name?� �No, it was given me by my� and her voice cracked and stopped in her throat. �By your family that I drank outside this door� the monster finished for her. Her will failed her and exhausted she sat quickly to the swept dirt floor. �Yes, it was my mother�s family�s name; but an old woman told me today that it was a name the priests feared.�

The creature squatted down before her, her knees wide; she showed no shame or shyness about her exposed body. The blood on her had dried and cracked like an egg cooked to long in a hot empty pot on the fire. Anat laughed at the thought. The creature stared steadily at Anat. �Yes, it was the name of a queen goddess in a far off land, one who ate the flesh of man. She was a queen goddess who had ruled with great power for many ages.� �What is your name please? Anat asked. �I am called Aell�. Do you know this name?� Anat shook her head quickly and her hair came undone from its leather strap and fell down around her face. �I�m so tired Aell�� she whispered. �Yes, I know you are. Let�s leave here now, there is a place high up from here where we can spend a few days Anat. No harm will come to you. I have a slaughtered lamb there that you can feed from.�

As the two began to walk from Anat�s home, the creature knelt and took up a fiery piece of wood from the burning leather worker�s house, quickly turned and launched it into the last un-burnt hut in the village, all around them were flames and smoke and the stink of roasting meat too long in a fire. She then took Anat up in her strong blood caked arms, and moved with steady speed into the trees that she had first appeared from, and then with wilder and faster and faster speed, through clearings and more forest with wider and taller trees, up the hillsides.

End Dreams of Smoke

� Amanda 2011

Play list

The Wander

2. Origins

Dreams of Smoke

Opening credits until It is early days
The Chemical Brothers ........... Dream On

It is early days to in the small creep sized tunnel
Don Omar ........................ Taboo

in the small creep sized tunnel to but had a strangeness to it.
Fluke ........................... Referendum

Aell� stirs in her doze to closing credits Dreams of Smoke
Massive Attack .................. What Your Soul Sings

Note that the posted versions of segments of Chapter 2 of The Wander will be done in multiple parts due to their size. Those wishing to receive complete docx versions of each section and chapter should send a simple one line mail message to blondeonhorse at gmail. No compensation is required for requests to be met. However, ALL copyrights are reserved by the author, other than those needed to allow VS Media to present the writings here.
Quote

Owwwwwwwwwwww creeeeeeeedits.... creeeeeeeeedits....

Grooooooooowwwwwwing iiiin the baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaank.....

Toooo be speeeecific in theeeeeeee

Mooorgan, Ride, and Staaaaaaaaaaanley Fiiiiiiiiiduciaaaaaary.........

Yooooooouuuuuuu will get an unmaaaaaaaaatched feeeeeeeeling of power...

as yourrr equiiiiiiity loooooooms aaaaaaaand looooours...

from compoooooooounded interest iiiiiiiiiin the....

Mooorgan, Ride, and Staaaaaaaaaaanley Fiiiiiiiiiduciaaaaaary... it's not a creeeedit union....

In the MRSFT beeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyynk!!!! Quote

To tip...

Or not to tip...

That is the question.

Whether 'tis better to take arm against irritated models...

Or by tipping to end their aggravation... for a time...

Ah there's the rub... time.

For how long can a flame be held down by thimblefuls of water?

And is there not fuel and oxygen enough to feed a millenial inferno?

But perhaps by watering we can make the line of the flame move a different direction?

Safer for us? Dare we hope that perhaps we can make an ally of it?

Yea perhaps but with lighter pocket to be sure.

And what of tipping in happier times? As a mark of favor or gratitude?

Is not the simple gratitude of an honest man more than enough compensation?

Has money ever bought happiness? Is Jack Benny not still revered after all these years?

Perhaps it is still not time... to go to that... undiscovered country.... Quote

*bites tongue to keep from self-immolation*

� Amanda 2011


" ... and she was found, naked, her feet and hands bound, hanging by her neck ... " Fox News Inc. (tm) Quote

������.���������� 2. Origins����������������

Arche Apiron

In morning mist, I stood slow,
beneath Sun�s insalubrious blow.
Failed, alone, cast out and unclean,
long stretched, hungry, homeless, lean.

Aell� groans in her sleep. Above her, the sun glistens on the lapping water of the large pool. The waterfall splashes, and dancing light and miniscule sprays of droplets spatter in circling ripples. The water, set in motion thru force of a brief gust of wind and the established pattern of drain and pump and water display builds an east to west chop pattern that the sunlight, for several very stretched seconds shining through the wavelet chop pattern, becomes fractured by and into its own infinite wave pattern; and diamonds of rainbow are scattered from the pool surface down across the smooth plastic layered concrete liner of the pool. But also, exceptionally, upward from the surface; painting, in those long slow seconds, the universe itself, in a display of light that all the Gods that ever were, or ever will be, are delighted by.

Beside her, Anat, turns her head to one side and rests her cheek upon Aell��s smooth breast. Both beautiful bodies are slightly cool to a human�s touch, though few remain to live who have ever felt that chill. Anat feels the delight of Aell� as the diamonds are cast out towards the heavens, but does not know the reason for it, only guiding the pleasure it has engendered into her ongoing guided dreaming. Slowly, in joy, in memory of safety, in momentary recollection, with the orbs of her eyes rapidly moving beneath their soft smooth coverings, she relaxes her hand and the bloodletting from Aell��s strong thigh is stopped.

�She had been in shock, that night, there was no doubt. In later times she would have occasion to learn that effect in the human, to cause it, to use it, to come to love how relaxed and sweet and loving the human does become while suffering it. She knew now, that Aell� had known of it, being so much older and more practiced how could she not, when she had lifted Anat in her arms. Lifted her like Anat�s own slaughtered mother had when Anat was a small child; taking her at that unlikely speed through the forest and to that lair high on the hillside. That her shock, with its numbness, need for warmth and comfort, for food and safety, was known by Aell� as the likeliest path to seduce her, to make her desire the making that was to come.

High on the hillside, in the deepest patch of forest where the term �old growth� yielded to �ancient forest�, where in the night, no light would penetrate; no moon or stars would lend shine or glow; where the huge wide trunks towered high overhead, and their root balls were massive and rose sinuous and wove together with other trees like huge baskets or, if near a clearing like spider gods caught moving and freezing to await prey; there, Aell� paused and set Anat to her feet, and caught her as her trembling legs gave way. �Here sit on this root.�

Anat sat slowly and closed her eyes, while Aell� set sticks and leaves from the forest floor in a pile on a clear spot and struck a bit of flint rock with another piece. Blowing softly on the ember she coaxed a flame and built a fire quickly. Anat shivered and her teeth set to chattering as Aell� moved to a large hole beneath the root ball and extracted a fine woven scarlet blanket wrapped around other bits and pieces of fabric; she dumped the contents on the ground before them and wrapped the blanket firm around Anat, rubbing and running her hands over the shuddering girl. �Soon you�ll be warm and then you�ll begin to hurt and cry. I�ll prepare food for you while you move beyond that. And then we�ll talk.� Her voice spoke the Slavic tongue with an accent tinged with Greek and something even further east. Anat knew only that it was an indication that Aell� knew so much more about the world than she, and that that experience, like Aell��s fearlessness excited her.

Anat withdrew into herself, and leaned over on the wide root, lying on her side clutching the wool tight to her face. The blanket�s texture was so different from the wool woven in her valley, the wool woven by all of the women; a course wide weave that required several layers to insulate from the winter cold; and by itself, with no leather, was useless against the winds. This wool�s fine hairs were unlike the rough yarns of the valley, there were no tufts, or off ridges, no lost waft or warp, no drift in the fabric�s block, it smelt clean with a strange spice odor in it that made her mouth water. Her stomach growled and she woke with a startle, realizing that she�d dozed while Aell� had driven a length of pared and sharpened branch through a large piece of lamb and was roasting it over a large bank of bright red and yellow coals. Anat cleared her voice and Aell� reached down and lifted a shaped glazed cup, in terracotta and with black figures decorating it, to hand to her; �Wine� was all she said.

Anat alone ate the lamb and drank the wine given her. �I must wash� Aell� announced and left with an empty wine sack and the pieces of fabric dumped earlier on the forest floor. She returned minutes later, no sign of the carnage on her, her hair clean and damp and hanging mid-back in a single tight braid. She wore a fine thin wool gown, dyed as black as the night and shining with the oils in it. It hung smoothly from her left shoulder, leaving her right shoulder bare and wrapping around her breasts curving under her right arm. With her one shoulder bare and the fabric hanging in two small pleats on the back the dress amazed Anat. It was tied at the waist with a belt of thin fine brown leather woven in some intricate pattern. Aell� squatted, barefooted, down beside Anat, her back slightly turned toward the girl. Anat could smell the spice so much stronger in the air now. �What are you?� Anat asked.

The woman turned her head and studied Anat�s face; she noted, and smiled slightly, that the girl seemed to have lost her shock, and seemed to have no fear. �That is a very long story. First, let�s speak a little about you. I know some, from the old lady with the sheep; she told me a bit about you when I met her and then a bit more when I drank her. It was she who brought me to your village, she and her tales of you, and her taste, it told me so much more. What do you know of your family, girl, and of the people in your village?�

�I remember my grandmother, so old and wrinkled and she had few teeth, and she was ill mostly, and died. I remember my mother crying and hiding on her mat in blankets for days, and the hole my grandmother was put in. I remember my brother carrying me, and my mother doing the same, I remember them all laughing and pushing me from one to another, I remember my father�s hands, worn and strong and brown from the sun. I know nothing of before my birth, my mother and father and grandmother came to the valley when the village was already there, but they knew the others when they arrived. My mother was with child; my brother. The old woman told me that once. She knew so much about everyone, like as though she were everyone�s real mother.� Anat groans and the tears slide from her eyes and she is wet, and moaning, and Aell� is beside her on the wide smooth root, with her arms around Anat, and singing softly some old simple song with words that Anat cannot make out. And all that is Anat, and all of what is her memory, and all of whatever she had hoped for, or longed for, or understood about herself, melted away; melted away in the cool arms of Aell�, with her smooth wet cheek against Aell��s soft wool dress. With her tears running, and her face buried against Aell��s, spice scented, firm breast.

Later, as she lay exhausted, Aell� had taken her roughly woven and now filthy from use and smoke and fire and terror, dress off of her. She had lain shivering as Aell� took a clean rag of some light soft white cloth and had wet it with water from the wine bladder. She sighed and relaxed as Aell� gradually washed her face, her shoulders and arms and each finger of her hands, carefully running the cloth around her nails clear each cuticle of its grime. Then, sat her up and held her while washing her back, gently rubbing all of this horrid day, and all of her lifetime before this day, from her. She stood, at Aell��s direction, in the deepest part of the night, the moments just before the skies begin to lighten; stood while Aell� took each leg, and with fresh water for each move on her body, washed her leg, and its foot. And then, sleepily, worn through to her very center, she allowed Aell� to wash her between her legs, and all of her unseen parts, slowly sliding the cloth over, around and under her. And when the first orgasm of her adult life took her, it was slow building and then upon her and like no feeling she could remember. And she bent over Aell��s shoulder and lay with her arms extended and relaxed from overexertion, down the monster�s strong lean back. And when it was over, when that unique moment had passed, Aell� slowly laid her upon the scarlet woolen blanket, and wrapped her tight in it, and kissed her softly on her brow, and murmured to her, as Anat fell to sleep, �Oh my darling girl, I remember your family�s blood, I knew you so very long ago, before all of this time had swept me to you again.��

The day above is moving slowly, the cloud cover has grown and rain showers pass through quickly. The pool continues its repeating pattern but with new shapes and rhythms joining in. The diamonds shift and become small smooth wavelets, sliding across the surface of the pool driven by the west wind now; the distance between each hump of water altering with the speed of the wind. Fifty cycles per minute, and speeding to one hundred and seven, and then twenty-seven per minute; and the small round drop shapes, bulls eyes scattered across the water; water joining water as the round becomes the oblong and the oval and the invisible.

Aell�, in her deep slumber for only moments, and then upward into dreams and semi-consciousness, lies as still as a marble statue of a beautiful woman at rest. It is Anat, stirring, sliding slowly and raising her ass in the air, to draw her knees against her full belly, who displays signs of life, signs of agitation. She whimpers and flexes her hands as though grasping at something just out of reach.

�Anat shuddered and brushed at her face where some flying insect had landed. Above her all was grey and black and shades of brown and then above that tremendous splashes of greens and tiny spots of glimmering yellow and one small, roughhewn, piece of bright blue. �The forest; the Forest, I slept in the Forest.� She sat up and felt the smooth wool on her bare flesh. �I slept unclothed in the forest.� The spice smell was strong on the blanket, she spread the blanket, open at her neck, and put her face into it; the spice smell and her own sex smell were on her. �Where is she?� She felt her heart skip, and felt lost and alone, with a strange sweetness to that loneliness. �I need her here to protect me.� She looked around the clearing and there was no trace of Aell�. The fire was but a few small embers. The wine bladder and small glazed cup lay beside her on the ground.

The warmth of the air was laden with the moisture and the odors of the forest, rich deep loom and earth, rotting leaves and the tart tang if dried ones in the small patches of sunlight here and there. The forest�s canopy of leaves allowed only a few bright rays of yellow light to spear through the air from the sky to the forest floor below. The almost complete coverage kept undergrowth to a minimum, and mostly to ferns and orchids and wild fruit bearing weeds with light colored leaves and round gord fruit. The air was filled with pollens and dust that floated lightly through the beams of yellow light. Anat, opening the wine bladder begins to put her mouth to its unstopped opening, then stops and picks up the small cup. It�s light and strong and perfectly made, there is no warp to its curves, the exterior is smooth and powder dry the only interruption to its warm red-brown glaze are a series of small silhouettes and reliefs painted in black on its surface and fire glazed themselves. Anat holds the cup gently in her hand and stares into the shadows of the forest. The monster, Aell�, how could something so deadly and uncaring for the destruction she caused, how could she, care so much about beauty. Anat had known, inside herself, all her life, even as a young child, what beauty caused in her when she saw it; how it lifted her heart, made her day open wide and sing. She knew that when she saw new things, that her mind grasped them in its hands, turned them and studied how the light and form were used to make her feel this joy. She knew that she had loved, before the priests had come to her village, on the ground and using a small stick to draw lines in the sand or dirt, the shapes of what she saw around her. She could lose herself for hours, and only wake to the passage of time when her brother or mother shook her from her lines.

This cup made her feel an urgent need to understand what it was, where it had come from, who�s hands had created it, and how she could do likewise. She brought the cup closer to her face and looked at the black shapes on the surface. They were not part of the clay itself, she could see that. Someone had put the black on the clay. Her village had no potter, but they had traded meat and grain and the fruit from trees for bowls and cups and plates, and trays, and some in the village had even traded for tiny clay ornaments for their hair, or to wear as tokens on leather thongs around their necks. Like the iron objects made in the foundry, the swords and spears and pikes and tools of death; and the metal tools and pots; pottery was a trade item made highly valuable by scarcity this far from the larger villages and the further away cities. But this cup; she had never seen anything as beautiful. And at that thought she stopped, no, that wasn�t true; Aell� was as beautiful, and her blanket, and the dress and belt. Anat sat staring at the cup and wondered at that.

The image on the surface of the cup, in black, and now she noticed small red and white parts to it; was of a woman on a horse, with a lance, leaning far back on her mount, with her head down as though looking at the ground in front of her horse. The woman had a long thin strong body, that much of the image was clear; and she had the white of her eye painted, and her hair was long and curled but partly up around the crown of her head; and it too, was decorated with a row of tiny white dots, as though stones, or beads threaded in her hair. She was nude, this woman hunter; her breast was bare and her nipple prominent. Her leg extended out toward the ground in her lean. The horse was so strong and proud, his neck curved and the mane cut in a short brush, a lead extend from his mouth to the riders black body, and Anat could easily imagine a strong hand with the leather of the lead wrapped tightly to control such a strong animal. The horse too had a white eye, only the eye possessed a tiny red pupil, shaped to almost let Anat see the curve of it in its socket. One of the horse�s hooves was raised in march, as though ready to stomp the ground, it�s other front leg extended straight in an end gait position. It�s large perfectly shaped body spoke of strength and fearlessness; it�s tail a full and wildly thrown mass of hair. The hooves of the horse were tipped in red. A pair of thin black perfectly applied circles ran above the image, and below, and a solid set of triangle shapes circled the lip of the cup, painted in alternating red and white. The work, the images were perfect, no misapplication of glaze, no uneven thicknesses, each line careful in its execution. Anat marveled at how long it would have taken to create such a cup, and again, at its owner. Where had Aell� taken herself? Where is she now and what is she doing? When would she return? Anat could not believe that anyone would leave this cup, this wine bladder this blanket, and her, and simply disappear. Anat noticed that the light had begun to change, no strong beams of yellow fell through the trees any longer. Some of the coals remained the ash from the night before and she stood, folded the blanket, and naked, set to gathering wood. Anat feared venturing too far from the fire site, so filled her arms with small and medium sized branches driven by wind and age from the trees nearby, and cluttered and heaped and dried beneath the high leaved branches from which they�d been cast. She listened to the songs of the birds in the high trees, and watched as occasionally one would streak to the forest floor and peck at something to eat in the piles of fallen leaves. Slowly the light began to drain from the forest and soon it was silenced. She began to put small twigs on the coals, blowing softly and then, as they flamed she built the fire in the same manner she had watched her mother do for what, this night, would be her two hundred and thirty fourth night.�

Anat stirs and reaches and feels the wall of the tunnel, and the pipes, and the floor hard beneath her. Her eyes open immediately their large surfaces shine in the dim light of the tunnel. Her irises huge and intricately laced in threads of blue in varying shades, the outer circle of the iris a halo in greys and spots of soft blue and shades of dark gray and in the right light flames of black jetting in toward the pupil. The whites of her eyes are a deep red and a single drop of dark red blood, bound, from the furthest regions of her body, back to her heart and lungs, slides from the edge of her right eyes lower lid, down across the slight rise of skin beneath the lid and into the crease beside the slightly wide tissues around the nostril. Anat rises and looks around and sees Aell� standing in the pump room beyond their sleeping space. She feels confused and realizes that the daylight has not yet left the world above. �Aell�?�

Aell� turns and squats looking back down the tunnel at Anat. �Yes. It�s all right. My dreams woke me again.� Aell� looks down at the concrete floor and reaches to touch her forhead with her left hand. �It�s not yet dark enough for us to go out. Do you want to sleep for a while?� Anat watches as an expression of pain flickers quickly on her lovers face, followed, like a flame, by one of rage with her mouth round and full of her teeth and her eyes narrow and wide blue; and then that all is washed away by Aell��s beautiful face looking tired and drained.
Anat moves quickly moving like a cougar with elongated limbs and stretching in a blur to reach her Aell�. She is before her wrapping her arms around and pulling her too her chest both of them clinging to each other is shared sorrow and hunger. Their tears of blood drop and strike the concrete, each throwing out tiny arms of red, like liquid suns stretching energy and heat and light into the empty space an attempt to join and never part again.

End Arche Apiron

� Amanda 2011

Playlist for Arche Apiron

Opening credits to High on the hillside
Air ������������.. Empty House

High on the hillside to Anat ate
Air ��������������.. Afternoon Sister

Anat groans and the tears slide to grasping at something just out of reach.
Air ��������������� Dirty Trip

�Anat shuddered and brushed to never part again.
Collide ������������.. Halo
Collide ������������.. Ocean

End Credits Arche Apiron
The Bravery ��������� Believe

� Amanda 2011


Those wishing to receive complete docx versions of each section and chapter should send a simple one line mail message to blondeonhorse at gmail. No compensation is required for requests to be met. However, ALL copyrights are reserved by the author, other than those needed to allow VS Media to present the writings here.

Quote

������.���������� 2. Origins����������������

Arche Apiron

In morning mist, I stood slow,
beneath Sun�s insalubrious blow.
Failed, alone, cast out and unclean,
long stretched, hungry, homeless, lean.

Aell� groans in her sleep. Above her, the sun glistens on the lapping water of the large pool. The waterfall splashes, and dancing light and miniscule sprays of droplets spatter in circling ripples. The water, set in motion thru force of a brief gust of wind and the established pattern of drain and pump and water display builds an east to west chop pattern that the sunlight, for several very stretched seconds shining through the wavelet chop pattern, becomes fractured by and into its own infinite wave pattern; and diamonds of rainbow are scattered from the pool surface down across the smooth plastic layered concrete liner of the pool. But also, exceptionally, upward from the surface; painting, in those long slow seconds, the universe itself, in a display of light that all the Gods that ever were, or ever will be, are delighted by.

Beside her, Anat, turns her head to one side and rests her cheek upon Aell��s smooth breast. Both beautiful bodies are slightly cool to a human�s touch, though few remain to live who have ever felt that chill. Anat feels the delight of Aell� as the diamonds are cast out towards the heavens, but does not know the reason for it, only guiding the pleasure it has engendered into her ongoing guided dreaming. Slowly, in joy, in memory of safety, in momentary recollection, with the orbs of her eyes rapidly moving beneath their soft smooth coverings, she relaxes her hand and the bloodletting from Aell��s strong thigh is stopped.

�She had been in shock, that night, there was no doubt. In later times she would have occasion to learn that effect in the human, to cause it, to use it, to come to love how relaxed and sweet and loving the human does become while suffering it. She knew now, that Aell� had known of it, being so much older and more practiced how could she not, when she had lifted Anat in her arms. Lifted her like Anat�s own slaughtered mother had when Anat was a small child; taking her at that unlikely speed through the forest and to that lair high on the hillside. That her shock, with its numbness, need for warmth and comfort, for food and safety, was known by Aell� as the likeliest path to seduce her, to make her desire the making that was to come.

High on the hillside, in the deepest patch of forest where the term �old growth� yielded to �ancient forest�, where in the night, no light would penetrate; no moon or stars would lend shine or glow; where the huge wide trunks towered high overhead, and their root balls were massive and rose sinuous and wove together with other trees like huge baskets or, if near a clearing like spider gods caught moving and freezing to await prey; there, Aell� paused and set Anat to her feet, and caught her as her trembling legs gave way. �Here sit on this root.�

Anat sat slowly and closed her eyes, while Aell� set sticks and leaves from the forest floor in a pile on a clear spot and struck a bit of flint rock with another piece. Blowing softly on the ember she coaxed a flame and built a fire quickly. Anat shivered and her teeth set to chattering as Aell� moved to a large hole beneath the root ball and extracted a fine woven scarlet blanket wrapped around other bits and pieces of fabric; she dumped the contents on the ground before them and wrapped the blanket firm around Anat, rubbing and running her hands over the shuddering girl. �Soon you�ll be warm and then you�ll begin to hurt and cry. I�ll prepare food for you while you move beyond that. And then we�ll talk.� Her voice spoke the Slavic tongue with an accent tinged with Greek and something even further east. Anat knew only that it was an indication that Aell� knew so much more about the world than she, and that that experience, like Aell��s fearlessness excited her.

Anat withdrew into herself, and leaned over on the wide root, lying on her side clutching the wool tight to her face. The blanket�s texture was so different from the wool woven in her valley, the wool woven by all of the women; a course wide weave that required several layers to insulate from the winter cold; and by itself, with no leather, was useless against the winds. This wool�s fine hairs were unlike the rough yarns of the valley, there were no tufts, or off ridges, no lost waft or warp, no drift in the fabric�s block, it smelt clean with a strange spice odor in it that made her mouth water. Her stomach growled and she woke with a startle, realizing that she�d dozed while Aell� had driven a length of pared and sharpened branch through a large piece of lamb and was roasting it over a large bank of bright red and yellow coals. Anat cleared her voice and Aell� reached down and lifted a shaped glazed cup, in terracotta and with black figures decorating it, to hand to her; �Wine� was all she said.

Anat alone ate the lamb and drank the wine given her. �I must wash� Aell� announced and left with an empty wine sack and the pieces of fabric dumped earlier on the forest floor. She returned minutes later, no sign of the carnage on her, her hair clean and damp and hanging mid-back in a single tight braid. She wore a fine thin wool gown, dyed as black as the night and shining with the oils in it. It hung smoothly from her left shoulder, leaving her right shoulder bare and wrapping around her breasts curving under her right arm. With her one shoulder bare and the fabric hanging in two small pleats on the back the dress amazed Anat. It was tied at the waist with a belt of thin fine brown leather woven in some intricate pattern. Aell� squatted, barefooted, down beside Anat, her back slightly turned toward the girl. Anat could smell the spice so much stronger in the air now. �What are you?� Anat asked.

The woman turned her head and studied Anat�s face; she noted, and smiled slightly, that the girl seemed to have lost her shock, and seemed to have no fear. �That is a very long story. First, let�s speak a little about you. I know some, from the old lady with the sheep; she told me a bit about you when I met her and then a bit more when I drank her. It was she who brought me to your village, she and her tales of you, and her taste, it told me so much more. What do you know of your family, girl, and of the people in your village?�

�I remember my grandmother, so old and wrinkled and she had few teeth, and she was ill mostly, and died. I remember my mother crying and hiding on her mat in blankets for days, and the hole my grandmother was put in. I remember my brother carrying me, and my mother doing the same, I remember them all laughing and pushing me from one to another, I remember my father�s hands, worn and strong and brown from the sun. I know nothing of before my birth, my mother and father and grandmother came to the valley when the village was already there, but they knew the others when they arrived. My mother was with child; my brother. The old woman told me that once. She knew so much about everyone, like as though she were everyone�s real mother.� Anat groans and the tears slide from her eyes and she is wet, and moaning, and Aell� is beside her on the wide smooth root, with her arms around Anat, and singing softly some old simple song with words that Anat cannot make out. And all that is Anat, and all of what is her memory, and all of whatever she had hoped for, or longed for, or understood about herself, melted away; melted away in the cool arms of Aell�, with her smooth wet cheek against Aell��s soft wool dress. With her tears running, and her face buried against Aell��s, spice scented, firm breast.

Later, as she lay exhausted, Aell� had taken her roughly woven and now filthy from use and smoke and fire and terror, dress off of her. She had lain shivering as Aell� took a clean rag of some light soft white cloth and had wet it with water from the wine bladder. She sighed and relaxed as Aell� gradually washed her face, her shoulders and arms and each finger of her hands, carefully running the cloth around her nails clear each cuticle of its grime. Then, sat her up and held her while washing her back, gently rubbing all of this horrid day, and all of her lifetime before this day, from her. She stood, at Aell��s direction, in the deepest part of the night, the moments just before the skies begin to lighten; stood while Aell� took each leg, and with fresh water for each move on her body, washed her leg, and its foot. And then, sleepily, worn through to her very center, she allowed Aell� to wash her between her legs, and all of her unseen parts, slowly sliding the cloth over, around and under her. And when the first orgasm of her adult life took her, it was slow building and then upon her and like no feeling she could remember. And she bent over Aell��s shoulder and lay with her arms extended and relaxed from overexertion, down the monster�s strong lean back. And when it was over, when that unique moment had passed, Aell� slowly laid her upon the scarlet woolen blanket, and wrapped her tight in it, and kissed her softly on her brow, and murmured to her, as Anat fell to sleep, �Oh my darling girl, I remember your family�s blood, I knew you so very long ago, before all of this time had swept me to you again.��

The day above is moving slowly, the cloud cover has grown and rain showers pass through quickly. The pool continues its repeating pattern but with new shapes and rhythms joining in. The diamonds shift and become small smooth wavelets, sliding across the surface of the pool driven by the west wind now; the distance between each hump of water altering with the speed of the wind. Fifty cycles per minute, and speeding to one hundred and seven, and then twenty-seven per minute; and the small round drop shapes, bulls eyes scattered across the water; water joining water as the round becomes the oblong and the oval and the invisible.

Aell�, in her deep slumber for only moments, and then upward into dreams and semi-consciousness, lies as still as a marble statue of a beautiful woman at rest. It is Anat, stirring, sliding slowly and raising her ass in the air, to draw her knees against her full belly, who displays signs of life, signs of agitation. She whimpers and flexes her hands as though grasping at something just out of reach.

�Anat shuddered and brushed at her face where some flying insect had landed. Above her all was grey and black and shades of brown and then above that tremendous splashes of greens and tiny spots of glimmering yellow and one small, roughhewn, piece of bright blue. �The forest; the Forest, I slept in the Forest.� She sat up and felt the smooth wool on her bare flesh. �I slept unclothed in the forest.� The spice smell was strong on the blanket, she spread the blanket, open at her neck, and put her face into it; the spice smell and her own sex smell were on her. �Where is she?� She felt her heart skip, and felt lost and alone, with a strange sweetness to that loneliness. �I need her here to protect me.� She looked around the clearing and there was no trace of Aell�. The fire was but a few small embers. The wine bladder and small glazed cup lay beside her on the ground.

The warmth of the air was laden with the moisture and the odors of the forest, rich deep loom and earth, rotting leaves and the tart tang if dried ones in the small patches of sunlight here and there. The forest�s canopy of leaves allowed only a few bright rays of yellow light to spear through the air from the sky to the forest floor below. The almost complete coverage kept undergrowth to a minimum, and mostly to ferns and orchids and wild fruit bearing weeds with light colored leaves and round gord fruit. The air was filled with pollens and dust that floated lightly through the beams of yellow light. Anat, opening the wine bladder begins to put her mouth to its unstopped opening, then stops and picks up the small cup. It�s light and strong and perfectly made, there is no warp to its curves, the exterior is smooth and powder dry the only interruption to its warm red-brown glaze are a series of small silhouettes and reliefs painted in black on its surface and fire glazed themselves. Anat holds the cup gently in her hand and stares into the shadows of the forest. The monster, Aell�, how could something so deadly and uncaring for the destruction she caused, how could she, care so much about beauty. Anat had known, inside herself, all her life, even as a young child, what beauty caused in her when she saw it; how it lifted her heart, made her day open wide and sing. She knew that when she saw new things, that her mind grasped them in its hands, turned them and studied how the light and form were used to make her feel this joy. She knew that she had loved, before the priests had come to her village, on the ground and using a small stick to draw lines in the sand or dirt, the shapes of what she saw around her. She could lose herself for hours, and only wake to the passage of time when her brother or mother shook her from her lines.

This cup made her feel an urgent need to understand what it was, where it had come from, who�s hands had created it, and how she could do likewise. She brought the cup closer to her face and looked at the black shapes on the surface. They were not part of the clay itself, she could see that. Someone had put the black on the clay. Her village had no potter, but they had traded meat and grain and the fruit from trees for bowls and cups and plates, and trays, and some in the village had even traded for tiny clay ornaments for their hair, or to wear as tokens on leather thongs around their necks. Like the iron objects made in the foundry, the swords and spears and pikes and tools of death; and the metal tools and pots; pottery was a trade item made highly valuable by scarcity this far from the larger villages and the further away cities. But this cup; she had never seen anything as beautiful. And at that thought she stopped, no, that wasn�t true; Aell� was as beautiful, and her blanket, and the dress and belt. Anat sat staring at the cup and wondered at that.

The image on the surface of the cup, in black, and now she noticed small red and white parts to it; was of a woman on a horse, with a lance, leaning far back on her mount, with her head down as though looking at the ground in front of her horse. The woman had a long thin strong body, that much of the image was clear; and she had the white of her eye painted, and her hair was long and curled but partly up around the crown of her head; and it too, was decorated with a row of tiny white dots, as though stones, or beads threaded in her hair. She was nude, this woman hunter; her breast was bare and her nipple prominent. Her leg extended out toward the ground in her lean. The horse was so strong and proud, his neck curved and the mane cut in a short brush, a lead extend from his mouth to the riders black body, and Anat could easily imagine a strong hand with the leather of the lead wrapped tightly to control such a strong animal. The horse too had a white eye, only the eye possessed a tiny red pupil, shaped to almost let Anat see the curve of it in its socket. One of the horse�s hooves was raised in march, as though ready to stomp the ground, it�s other front leg extended straight in an end gait position. It�s large perfectly shaped body spoke of strength and fearlessness; it�s tail a full and wildly thrown mass of hair. The hooves of the horse were tipped in red. A pair of thin black perfectly applied circles ran above the image, and below, and a solid set of triangle shapes circled the lip of the cup, painted in alternating red and white. The work, the images were perfect, no misapplication of glaze, no uneven thicknesses, each line careful in its execution. Anat marveled at how long it would have taken to create such a cup, and again, at its owner. Where had Aell� taken herself? Where is she now and what is she doing? When would she return? Anat could not believe that anyone would leave this cup, this wine bladder this blanket, and her, and simply disappear. Anat noticed that the light had begun to change, no strong beams of yellow fell through the trees any longer. Some of the coals remained the ash from the night before and she stood, folded the blanket, and naked, set to gathering wood. Anat feared venturing too far from the fire site, so filled her arms with small and medium sized branches driven by wind and age from the trees nearby, and cluttered and heaped and dried beneath the high leaved branches from which they�d been cast. She listened to the songs of the birds in the high trees, and watched as occasionally one would streak to the forest floor and peck at something to eat in the piles of fallen leaves. Slowly the light began to drain from the forest and soon it was silenced. She began to put small twigs on the coals, blowing softly and then, as they flamed she built the fire in the same manner she had watched her mother do for what, this night, would be her two hundred and thirty fourth night.�

Anat stirs and reaches and feels the wall of the tunnel, and the pipes, and the floor hard beneath her. Her eyes open immediately their large surfaces shine in the dim light of the tunnel. Her irises huge and intricately laced in threads of blue in varying shades, the outer circle of the iris a halo in greys and spots of soft blue and shades of dark gray and in the right light flames of black jetting in toward the pupil. The whites of her eyes are a deep red and a single drop of dark red blood, bound, from the furthest regions of her body, back to her heart and lungs, slides from the edge of her right eyes lower lid, down across the slight rise of skin beneath the lid and into the crease beside the slightly wide tissues around the nostril. Anat rises and looks around and sees Aell� standing in the pump room beyond their sleeping space. She feels confused and realizes that the daylight has not yet left the world above. �Aell�?�

Aell� turns and squats looking back down the tunnel at Anat. �Yes. It�s all right. My dreams woke me again.� Aell� looks down at the concrete floor and reaches to touch her forhead with her left hand. �It�s not yet dark enough for us to go out. Do you want to sleep for a while?� Anat watches as an expression of pain flickers quickly on her lovers face, followed, like a flame, by one of rage with her mouth round and full of her teeth and her eyes narrow and wide blue; and then that all is washed away by Aell��s beautiful face looking tired and drained.
Anat moves quickly moving like a cougar with elongated limbs and stretching in a blur to reach her Aell�. She is before her wrapping her arms around and pulling her too her chest both of them clinging to each other is shared sorrow and hunger. Their tears of blood drop and strike the concrete, each throwing out tiny arms of red, like liquid suns stretching energy and heat and light into the empty space an attempt to join and never part again.

End Arche Apiron

� Amanda 2011

Playlist for Arche Apiron

Opening credits to High on the hillside
Air ������������.. Empty House

High on the hillside to Anat ate
Air ��������������.. Afternoon Sister

Anat groans and the tears slide to grasping at something just out of reach.
Air ��������������� Dirty Trip

�Anat shuddered and brushed to never part again.
Collide ������������.. Halo
Collide ������������.. Ocean

End Credits Arche Apiron
The Bravery ��������� Believe

� Amanda 2011


Those wishing to receive complete docx versions of each section and chapter should send a simple one line mail message to blondeonhorse at gmail. No compensation is required for requests to be met. However, ALL copyrights are reserved by the author, other than those needed to allow VS Media to present the writings here.




I love your posts. It's like you are in a dream when reading them. Absolutely beautiful.
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What You Can Do With Your Heart

Ingredients
� 2 tablespoons olive oil
� 1 onion, chopped
� 1 clove garlic, minced
� 1 stalk celery, sliced
� 1 carrot, cubed
� 1 slice bacon, sliced into small strips
� 1 female heart, rinsed and cubed average 250 grams
� 2 teaspoons beef bouillon granules
� 1 teaspoon ground cumin
� 1/2 cup red wine
� 3 cups water, or as needed
� 1 parsnip, cubed (optional)
� 2 large potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks
� 1 cup canned lima beans

Directions

Heat the oil in a Dutch oven over low heat. Add onion, garlic, celery, carrots and bacon. Cover, and let the vegetables sweat for about 10 minutes.

Remove vegetables to a plate to make room, and place your heart in the pan, adding a bit more oil if necessary. Saute over medium heat until browned.

Return the onion mixture to the pan, sprinkle in the cumin and beef bouillon. Pour in the red wine, and enough water to cover. Put the lid on the pan, and simmer over low heat for 2 hours.

Add the parsnip and potato to the stew, and stir in the beans. Continue to simmer for another 30 minutes, until vegetables are tender. Weep while eating your heart.

� Amanda 2011


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need a good tenderizing method plz.... its tuff as ol' boots, and tastes like a sweaty sok...also it's been in my Dutch oven for 2 hrs an' it's still raw!!! Quote

need a good tenderizing method plz.... its tuff as ol' boots, and tastes like a sweaty sok...also it's been in my Dutch oven for 2 hrs an' it's still raw!!!



The key is to pat the cubed heart carefully dry with a fine linen cloth prior to browning it my dear. Julia was so very right about proper browning to keep the meat tender. Quote

The key is to pat the cubed heart carefully dry with a fine linen cloth my dear. Julia was so very right about proper browning to keep the meat tender.



Neva too late for a pat I guess? Quote

*bites tongue to keep from self-immolation*

� Amanda 2011


" ... and she was found, naked, her feet and hands bound, hanging by her neck ... " Fox News Inc. (tm)



lol Quote

The Fall of the House of Blucher

(stormy night... wolves howl... lightening flashes... illuminating a centuries old manor)

Voice: (shouting) Frau Blucher!!!

Every horse in the county: NEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

(The earth ruptures... The manor walls crack... shatter... then fall. The air shrieks from the passing shockwave... Dust billows up muddying the relentless rain...)

Voice: (chuckling) That was a good 'un.
Quote

Even though I like prose the most, I do have some poems that can relax my mind and allow my soul to wander freely. Here's just one of them:

A SUNSET from 'Feuilles d'Automne'
Victor Hugo

I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens,
Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens,
In numerous leafage bosomed close;
Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer,
Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere
On cloudy archipelagos.

Oh, gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion,
Up-piled in the immense sublime beneath the winds' commotion,
Their unimagined shapes accord:
Under their waves at intervals flame a pale levin through,
As if some giant of the air amid the vapors drew
A sudden elemental sword.

The sun at bay with splendid thrusts still keeps the sullen fold;
And momently at distance sets, as a cupola of gold,
The thatched roof of a cot a-glance;
Or on the blurred horizon joins his battle with the haze;
Or pools the blooming fields about with inter-isolate blaze,
Great moveless meres of radiance.

Then mark you how there hangs athwart the firmament's swept track,
Yonder a mighty crocodile with vast irradiant back,
A triple row of pointed teeth?
Under its burnished belly slips a ray of eventide,
The flickerings of a hundred glowing clouds in tenebrous side
With scales of golden mail ensheathe.

Then mounts a palace, then the air vibrates--the vision flees.
Confounded to its base, the fearful cloudy edifice
Ruins immense in mounded wrack;
Afar the fragments strew the sky, and each envermeiled cone
Hangeth, peak downward, overhead, like mountains overthrown
When the earthquake heaves its hugy back.

These vapors, with their leaden, golden, iron, bronz�d glows,
Where the hurricane, the waterspout, thunder, and hell repose,
Muttering hoarse dreams of destined harms,-
'Tis God who hangs their multitude amid the skiey deep,
As a warrior that suspendeth from the roof-tree of his keep
His dreadful and resounding arms!

All vanishes! The Sun, from topmost heaven precipitated,
Like a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red
Into the furnace stirred to fume,
Shocking the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous ire,
Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire
The vaporous and inflam�d spaume.

O contemplate the heavens! Whenas the vein-drawn day dies pale,
In every season, every place, gaze through their every veil?
With love that has not speech for need!
Beneath their solemn beauty is a mystery infinite:
If winter hue them like a pall, or if the summer night
Fantasy them starre brede. Quote

Ohhhh Monica.. thanks so much.. so pretty.. so fine. Quote

������.���������� 2. Origins����������������

Girl Unmade

�Deities are depicted in a variety of forms, but are also frequently expressed as having human form. Some faiths and traditions consider it blasphemous to imagine or depict the deity as having any concrete form. They are usually immortal, and are commonly assumed to have personalities and to possess consciousness, intellects, desires, and emotions similar to those of humans�. The boundary between human and divine in most cultures is by no means absolute. Demigods are the offspring from a union of a human with a deity, and most royal houses in Antiquity claimed divine ancestors.� [wikipedia.org/wiki/Deity]

Leaving Loom, resenting war,
Yet we rode; our Queen�s desire,
We to serve heaven�s whore.

My only love, holding shield and sword,
Protecting her only, fell to arrow,
While I, left standing, left alone.

The Amazons, � Amanda 2011

The sun continues its slow ride across the sky, an ellipse cast billions of years before, when there was only light and dark and vast clouds floating beautiful and glowing in thundering huge encounters of sheets of matter the size of a God�s own love. The Romans, Greeks Sumerians, all cultures and all humans, and what they were before human, have known, as a kitten knows, who sits and preens with her tongue, in warm embrace of the light, that Sun, is a god; a creator and destroyer shaming all other divinities that humans have imagined. Even the religion of Science, arguing that earth is not the center of all existence, will join Sun and Water, as the parents of life, and Sun as its ultimate destroyer.

Above the two, who sit in a small puddle of their wept blood on the concrete floor, in the dark of the pool�s pump room, Sun pounds the earth with his fists. Heating and drying the rain that has fallen, steam rising from the asphalt streets and parking lots floats in the red purple light of his grip. Nearing the time when he will remove his hand from the earth, and allow them to range, and laugh, running through the human world for another night; one more in the long chain of dominos, which began with one woman alone. Aell� and Anat sit facing each other, their foreheads resting on each other�s shoulders, their legs interleaved, their arms entwined, no other creatures, cling so closely.

�Anat sits on the large long tree root, holding the cup to her breast and blanket to her face, gazing at the fire and remembering something that was so recent, but seems to fade each moment further and further from her. �Fast, she was so very fast, and, her shape was different, like some cross between animals, but always herself.� She pulls at the blanket and brings it up to her nose, inhaling to smell again, her sex and that spice odor that seems to bring Aell� closer to her. She puts the blanket across her thighs, sets the cup in its folds and reaches for the water bladder.

Anat, nervous, feels the small wash of hairs that run from the base of her skull lightly down the top of the back of her neck stand, and her flesh rise in cold peril on her arms; turns and sees Aell� standing by the large hole under the roots of the huge tree behind her. �That is where she has slept� she realizes, and smiles at her success. Aell� smiles back and steps forward. �How are you tonight Anat?� Anat pauses and reflects on her day �I�m well, I feel,� and she pauses �I feel, hungry� and she laughs. Anat laughs and replies, �I do as well. Let�s get something to eat shall we?� Anat nods and Aell� laughs at the look of concern under Anat�s studied calmness. �No, we�ll go to a large village near by where a woman sells food. You can eat with her while I will wait until later. Aell� goes to the large hole descending beneath the huge tree�s root ball and reaching in grasps a bundle of black and grey fabric. Approaching Anat she hands her the bundle, saying, �We are so close in size, this tunic and these warrior�s leggings should fit you well.� Anat hands the blanket that she has worn for the last day to Aell� who raises it to her face and inhales, her eyes opening wide, their pupils like the eclipse of Sun by Moon, a blue fire adorning its black center.

Anat sits across from Aell�, cutting her meat and vegetables with the sharp knife that the old woman has handed her. The entire small house is a tavern. A long wooden table, stained and rough hewn, stands in the middle of the room, wooden benches pulled up to it for seating. The river stone fireplace has been outfitted for cooking with a brick oven built into it on one side. The room is filled with the smells of herbs, and roasting peppered meat, and baked bread. The old woman, who Aell� has called Sonyavas, and who keeps her eyes down when Aell� speaks to her, has looked cautiously at Anat several times, a slight pursing of her lips and tightening around her eyes indicating her distaste. Three men are also in the tavern, all sitting close to the cooking area, drinking wine from wooden flagons and whispering quietly to each other. Aell� ignores all of them, her eyes only for Anat. Anat�s hunger is now partially sated, and she concentrates on Aell�. Aell��s hair shines as though just washed and dressed with oil, it is pulled back from her face and is knotted at the crown of her head with a brown leather strap in a woven pattern that matches the woven belt still knotted around her waist. For someone who has moved through the forest for some leagues at the speed of a horse, while carrying another woman of Anat�s size; she is rested, and shows no sign of exertion. Aell� raises her eyebrow and begins to speak softly to Anat. �Your smell is so familiar, it reminds me of someone from long ago. May I tell you a story about the woman who you are named for? A story about your family?� Anat, drinking from a fired clay cup of wine, slowly nods. Aell� reaches a hand across the table, blotting a drop of wine from Anat�s mouth and carries it, red and curved and reflecting the room in it�s shine, to her own mouth, sucking the tip of her finger.

�Her people were nomads; your ancient grandmother had separated herself from men as all the members of her clan had. Amaz�ne is what the Greeks would call them later, when Homer wrote his lovely poetry. Staying strictly female with female, only women in their common company. Warriors, raising horses, and their daughters; they ranged from the northern shores of the Black Sea south to the land of the Hurrians, far north from the city and people of Akkad. Constant warfare was the nature of her life. Her Queen, the queen of all the female clans, was a woman both strong and ruthless. Her vanity and pride led to rules of behavior allowing only for the skills of warfare and the keeping and breeding of horses. No clan in the tribe settled in one place for more than a season.

Your great, great, grandmother was wonderful, she loved her horses and bred the best, and like in the legends of maidens and fairies and witches, the horses, both stallion and mare, came to her and she would whisper in their ears, and groom them, and they were then loved her. She had lain twice with men, to bear children, and she loved her daughter, and even the son she had borne and gave to one of the tribes she and her tribe had encountered. She wept at that parting, but in the night, when only her closest would know that she cared for a male child.

Like you, she was tall, and strong, and beautiful. She had your deep, wondrous blue eyes, and many women in her clan, and in other clans yearned to be in her arms, to ride and fight beside her. She had a lover, a great warrior, and their love was a legend in the tribe, and the envy of all of her clan, and of all of the tribe.��

Beneath the dipping sun Anat�s grip upon Aell� strengthens and she turns her head to face Aell��s cheek and kisses her softly. In the gloom of the pump room the gurgling pipes and purring pumps are the only sound. Aello�s tears slide freely down her cheeks, wetting both beautiful creatures� thighs and slowly gathering in the crease of thigh and hip and sliding wet, down and under them.

��She had fallen in love with a sister warrior; they were all warriors, small or large group, women with female children.� The old woman approaches and averting her gaze from the pair gestures at Anat�s now empty dish. Hearing no objection she reaches around Aell� for the plate spoon and knife, Aell��s nose quivers and the shape of her eyes changes; glancing quickly at the neck of the old woman; she looks back at Anat and is the calm studied storyteller once again. �Many of the tribes they traded with, horses and iron; gave them their daughters to raise and love. With the paternal tribes, women were so unvalued, and remain so to this day.

Her lover was the Queen of the tribe�s most favored warrior. She was taller than your great great-great grandmother, so very long ago. They were similar in appearance, dark haired, blue eyed, but your grandmother was always so much lovelier. Her warrior lover was the fastest and hard and violent, knowing no fear and was joyful in battle; but she chaffed under the rule of the Queen. She never lay with a man, and never bore a child, she loved and played with and cared for the other members of the clans children, and your ancestors children were as her own. But she would never lay claim to a child, and would never consider adding one to the clan�s ranks.

And then, your great grandmother�s warrior lover encountered her first loom. Weaving was unknown to her, and she lingered for a week watching how the wool was cleaned and carded, and split and spun to create yarns and how plant fiber was pulled and spun and how both were dyed and then woven. Woven for garments, for blankets, for decoration, for fine wonderful tapestries to tell stories, to remember people, places, important events. Her love for the loom approached her love for your ancient grandmother in its obsession and strength. The appeal of the nomadic way of life disappeared. She spoke openly of her desire to stay, with your ancestor, and weave her days away.�

Anat�s mind spins at the story wondering how all of this could be true, and why no one around her, mother, father people in the village, had ever spoken of it. She reaches out and grasps Aell��s hand. �More, please do not stop, more!� In the room all are silent quietly listening as Aell��s clear voice has carried to them. The yellow and orange glow of the burning cooking fire casts wavering shadows in the room, shadows broken only by the small lamps hung from roof beams and placed at the tables where the occupants are seated. One lamp sits with Aell� and Anat, a second and third with the three men and their wine flagons. Two more slightly larger lamps hang from the rafters over the cooking area. Dim light, yet eyes shine from wine and lust, and cheeks are blushed, and Anat�s wide eyes show desire in the low light.

Aell� brings both of her hands together and holds Anat�s between them. She examines how Anat�s are more tanned, and seem stronger and more worn than her own. She gently runs her fingers down the back of Anat�s hand and continues her tale.

�And then the messenger came to the clan during their movements North and away from the growing city-states to the South. A messenger from their Queen, declaring a great gathering of the Tribe, all were to attend her. Your ancestor-grandmother�s lover argued with the clan, decrying the rule of the Queen, the constant movement; the continuing wars with only the satisfaction of the Queen�s pride the goal. The others listened to her but were all, including your ancient great grandmother, committed to the Queen, their loyalty to her and the tribe their sole lifelong commitment. The warrior-lover was furious; but she loved your ancestor, and gave in to her need for the clan. And so the two, with the rest of the clan, made their journey to join the tribe. After several days they approached the tribe�s encampment, in a very large open field the tribe waited. The Queen was impatient for her favorite warrior to arrive and insisted that the entire tribe gather and hear her plans. A large force of Hurrons were close by, they had few horses, only some wagons for carrying arms and food. The most famous of the Hurron warriors was with them there and the Queen wanted a victory to sting them enough to keep them from their pursuit of the tribe. She wanted to prove to the Hurron that she, and her goddess Ishtar, possessed the strength to force the city-state to leave the tribe in fear of death. The queen loved Istar, a goddess lost to your time. A goddess of fertility, so female that she made the most parched and arid soil fertile, made ancient cattle calve, horses foal, men of great age into virile fathers, and women beyond the age of bleeding, with child again. But she was also the goddess of war, known for her lust for blood, rumored to have slaughtered entire villages and bathed in their blood.�

Anat is staring wide eyed at Aell�, the entire room behind Aell� reflected in the curve of her beautiful clear blue eye. She clutches at Aell� hands with both of hers and their fingers entwine and caress each other�s.

�And your ancestor�s lover said nothing. Loving your ancestor grandmother, she prepared herself for battle. They were to attack the next morning, making a fast ride to the South and striking their enemy from the side before he could prepare. They would begin their ride in the pre-dawn mists. And so your great grandmother of your mother�s mother�s mother�s mother, for as far back as centuries grind against the rocks the Gods have thrown at history, and her lover, spent their last night together. In each other�s arms, whispering softly, and tasting and touching each other until exhaustion slid them into dreams.�

The room where Anat and Aell� sit is still and silent, no sound of the fire settling, no breath, no mouse running quietly in its walls, no wind or rain or move of leaf outside, stirs the air. �Your ancestor�s name was Anat, it is she you are named for.� Aell� sighs and looks down at the two pair of hands joined on the table. �You look like her cast in flesh more than two millennia later, her eyes, her body, her cheeks and chin and nose; her beautiful nose. Her smell and taste, her movement, her intelligence and love of seeing.�

A single tear runs from Anat�s eye dropping to the table; creating a perfect circle of life�s water, with movement making it spread outward and then rush back to center; sending it up in a fluid fountain, before it slips back into a curved lens resting on the surface of the crude wooden table. �It was you. You were her lover.� Anat says, releasing her breath to push the assertion into the stilled room.

�I loved her so very much, and I had come to love the loom, our people only used small looms, but did fine work, looms that could be taken by cart with us. But the loom I had brought into being, in my mind was larger, like those that the Akkadians had, only with some ways to bring the yarns and threads to it that were new. And I longed for somewhere to stop; to remain with my lover. And I was different in other ways. We were expected to bear children; required to war and to reproduce, to raise our forces for our Queen. And we all loved her, she was so driven and strong and tall and beautiful, a goddess we thought; bah, goddesses. I was her prized warrior, her primary.�

Aell� rolls her eyes, sighs and continues. �And so we were there, and when we woke, we walked together with our horses, across a wide misty field, our shields on our backs, our hands together. We walked in the grey morning light, toward the Queens camp; and as we got near, the soldiers of our enemy struck; on foot and to our surprise, mounted. We, and our sisters struck back as hard as we could. You, your ancestor, you� Aell� seems lost for a moment; �we struck back, Anat and I mounted and took up our lances, we rode hard at the males, I launched my lance and it took their captain in his chest and he fell dead, but the soldiers on foot tripped up my horse, and my mount and I fell. Anat leapt from her horse and shielded me while I was recovering, as was our custom, and was her love for me. That was when the world changed forever.� Aell� stares through Anat, at the vision she is painting now for all in the room.

�I began to rise to my feet and pull my blade to continue the fight; and suddenly Anat, you, your ancestor, YOU were staring at me, and blood was jetting from your mouth; and I reached out for you, and saw the arrow in the back of your neck.� Anat�s mouth is wide in horror and tears flow freely from her eyes. �I held you in my arms, kissing your mouth, your eyes looking at me, your blood in my mouth, on my skin. Your mouth saying only once, my name.�

There is movement in the kitchen, quietly the old woman has taken up her largest sharpest butchering knife, and has it clutched low in front of her behind the bench like table used for carving meat. The males at the table are looking at each other and pulling long sharp hunting blades from beneath their cloaks.

�Your blood was in my mouth.� Aell� focuses again on Anat, looking into her deep blue eyes, seeing for the first time in millennia, the one woman in the universe, the only woman who could ever exist; the one being who�s existence she breathed in as her salvation. Breathed in as the home she had longed for, and the loom of her desire, and the child she had never had.

�And so, I killed them, they had already killed or driven off all of the attacking men, and the largest part of the tribe was pursuing them. Only some members of my clan, and the Queen, and her closest guards and eldest advisors remained. So I killed them all, and as I killed them I shouted my hatred for Ishtar; I spat the blood of my lover at her, I pronounced her the goddess of whores, I spoke her name and cursed it and any Amaz�ne who loved her, who obeyed her. I slew everyone there, those I had known all my life, the children left in the protection of those there, the horses, even my own beloved Abraxas, I killed everything that lived on and around that meadow. I spent the day, soaked in their blood, killing everything. I slew the Queen last, staring into her eyes, my blade slowly entering her, opening her. I looked in her eyes and cursed her and the Goddess she worshiped that had taken you from me.� Anat, blurry eyed from her tears sees the motion behind Aell� and begins to speak when Aell� says loudly �And that was when Ishtar came!�

In Bellingham, as the sun sinks and flares over the horizon of the great rolling Pacific; under the turf of a rich man�s home, two beautiful women are embracing. One a beautiful young brunette, with eyes that would have been written of by Homer, had she lived another millennia; with her arms wrapped so tightly around her partner that they appear to be chains of flesh, cast to bind her partner to the earth. The second sitting upright, as though straining to launch herself through the cast cement ceiling above their heads; her back arched, long lean impossible muscles and ligaments straining, her head back, facing the sky above that concrete and soil, her mouth wide, her blue eyes stretched open and dripping blood, her scream echoing from some point over three thousand years in the past.


Play List

The Wander

2. Origins

Girl Made

Opening credits to �no other creatures cling so closely.�
Gnossienne no.1 ................... Erik Satie

Anat sits on the large to Anat sits across from Aell�
Je suis un balancier .............. Autour De Lucie
Sans commentaire .................. Autour De Lucie

Anat sits across from Aell� to Beneath the dipping sun
One Day (live Box Set) ............ Bjork

�Beneath the dipping sun� to �and weave her days away.�
Love and Permanence ............... Azure Ray

�And then the messenger came� to �Anat blurry eyed�
Rage of Poseidon .................. Apocalyptica

�Anat blurry eyed� to closing credits
Falling Sun ....................... Anouk

� Amanda 2011


Note that the posted versions of segments of Chapter 2 of The Wander will be done in multiple parts due to their size. Those wishing to receive complete docx versions of each section and chapter should send a simple one line mail message to blondeonhorse at gmail. No compensation is required for requests to be met. However, ALL copyrights are reserved by the author, other than those needed to allow VS Media to present the writings here.

Quote

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

-A dream within a dream by Edgar Allan Poe Quote