Climbing the Hill

I'm afraid I'm starting to get creative with these sonnets. This one uses alternating lines, the first one goes pyrric, spondee, anapest, anapest, the second is anapestic trimeter, rhyme scheme ABCB and the couplet uses the complicated meter.


Climbing the Hill

It’s a hard climb to the top of the hill;
I’m not sure I can make it up there.
It’s a long way to the end of the road;
It’d be easy to simply despair.

If my weak legs had a little more strength
I could make for the top at a run,
But I’m dead tired and I’m thirsty and lost
And I’m burned by the fiery sun.

If this hill’s crest doesn’t show me my home
I’m afraid I won’t make it alive,
I’ve no faint clue where this road that I’m on
Is to take me, or where I’ll arrive.

To my great joy, from the hilltop I found
I could see clear to my house on the ground.

Spotlight

Just a little poem I wrote. Actually it's a sonnet, except I used ballad verse for the stanzas (though I used ABAB instead of ABCB.) The final couplet is in the more traditional iambic pentameter, though. All a sonnet needs is 14 lines in 3 stanzas and the final couplet, though.

A little light that falls on a spot can make it special.


Spotlight

Outside the clouds hang low and grey,
The wind roars all around.
The sun with just one slender ray
Illuminates the ground:

A ray that finds a single spot;
A lonely patch of earth,
And lights it up, both bright and hot
As any house’s hearth.

And as I stand I feel a pull
Toward that empty light,
To stand in it and be made full
Of feelings warm and bright.

But as I watch the clouds have shifted place:
The hole is gone, the sunny spot erased.

Ouch.

I twisted my ankle while studying for biology today.

Yeah. My class was playing a silly 'Cranium' study game, and one of the tasks was 'go out and bring back two different kinds of carbohydrates, and no bringing back people,' so I was running down the stairs to the cafeteria and twisted my ankle quite badly. Not cool at all. It hurts, which is mildly annoying, and it makes it hard to walk, which is extremely annoying.

Oh, and I won the Cranium game. Well, my team did. Well, I answered 9/10ths of the questions. The secret is to start with the assumption that you know all the answers. Actually that's half the secret; the other half is to know all the answers. For some reason I have a near-perfect test-taking mind; the things that stick in my head are all the things that are important for school (as opposed to, say, people's names, or appointments, or homework assignments (which I invariably forget the moment I leave the school building.) But I'm top of an ordinary class in a pure knowledge contest (not so much top of my old gifted classes, though.) I did jump on one question I didn't actually know the answer to, but in my defense I was kind of in pain-shock and it threw off my reflexes.

If I'm being cocky, please feel free to throw things at me. I have a bit of a problem with that sometimes. I'm quite proud of winning this time, though, because it was at least partly because I did some studying this time.

Code Blue (don't ask me, I don't know either.)

It was blue. It was rampaging through the building.

It was a strange thing; adjectives refused to stick to it like water on an oily surface. It was definitely blue, though. Though, when I really looked at it, I couldn't say exactly what shade of blue either. It wasn't, for example, cyan or teal or navy, nor was it dark or light blue, nor was bright or dull blue, but everyone who saw it agreed: it was definitely blue.

I wracked my brain for a better description. I couldn't say it was opaque, because I could see the forms of the other attendees of the meeting through it, but on the other hand it wasn't translucent either, and it certainly wasn't transparent. For a second I thought I had it; it was like a chameleon, imitating the shapes behind it, but then something changed and suddenly that seemed wrong as well. It must have been big, because it was throwing chairs everywhere and the table had cracked under its weight, but at the same time it could disappear behind a single person and it moved as if it had no weigh or substance at all.

The people closest to it had what I would call scratches or bite marks if the blue thing had claws or a mouth. One man threw a chair at it. The chair vanished for a second, then reappeared in several pieces with one leg missing. Then the missing leg reappeared, held aloft by a tendril or mandible or mist, and began waving around wildly. A woman narrowly missed having her head bashed in, another man took a hit to an arm with an audible crack and sunk to the ground cradling his injured limb and moaning. Then, without warning, the chair leg rocketed away from the blue thing and struck the first man in the side with an unmistakable sound of fracturing ribs. He cried out and collapsed.

The blue thing shifted or turned or distorted and I had the horrible feeling it was looking at me. I brandished the pen and binder in front of me like a sword and shield and tried to summon all my courage as it moved toward me. I was backed against a tenth story window that opened onto rush hour traffic below; there was no escape. The thing drifted or pawed or skittered or marched closer. I swung the binder at it and felt like I had hit something at least semi-solid. The thing emitted what sounded like a burst of static and flinched away, then it touched me on the arm and I felt a bolt of pain. I had a huge, spreading bruise in the center of my forearm. I moaned pathetically with the agony.

"This is a Code Blue. Please remain calm," said the intercom with a distinct overtone of hysteria. "Please remain calm," it repeated, "Several test subjects have escaped. The Research Department has dispatched a team."

Several? Were there more of these things. This line of thought was interrupted by another advance by the thing right in front of me. Instinctively, I jabbed at it with the pen in my uninjured hand. My black pen. Incredibly, it seemed to pierce something in or on the thing, and then was ripped out of my hand. The blue thing backed away, looking shrunken and lowly and giving a strong impression of severe pain. Irregular, fluctuating static filled the room. I noticed that where I had stabbed there were little wisps of blackness diluting and darkening the indescribable blue. Could ink poison it? Or was it the colour...

Seeing what I'd done, the first man rose, shakily, clutching his side, and began pelting the thing with pens of all colours, except, of course, blue. A few other people, including the first woman, joined him. A few of the pens stuck, and soon bits of black and red swirled within the blue. The blue thing crackled with pain and anger and fought back, sended the missed pens flying in all directions with the force of bullets. One landed deep in a older man's chest and he fell over hard, blood spreading all around him. A young, smartly dressed lady who had been attending to the man with the broken arm turned toward the blue thing with a murderous expression, produced a large set of gel pens from a briefcase, and began flinging them at the thing with pin point accuracy. Green and yellow and purple and gold joined the other colours; the blue thing was now more of a muddy brown. It's static cry had grown feeble and it had stopped launching the discarded pens.

The door opened and an oddly dressed man with unkempt hair and askew glasses traipsed in holding a large and cumbersome-looking gadget. He looked at us, and at the dying blue thing, and tilted his head in astonishment.

"Well, you folks did a pretty good job here," he said. "Did you have to kill it, though? A lot of money went into that thing." "Oh, never mind," he continued, forestalling several angry objections. "I'll just take it back now. Sorry for the inconvenience." He pointed the device and pressed several buttons. There was a yucky green flash and an obcene sucking sound. The first man fainted (to be fair, it was probably blood loss.) About two minutes later the paramedics arrived. The man who was shot was already dead, but everyone else would be ok.

Afterwards, I had a hard time getting people to believe my story. It didn't help that nobody there could describe the thing properly. After three days, I started telling people that a bookcase fell on me when they asked about my injuries. It was definitely blue, though.

More beasties.

Blog is a funny word. That doesn't have to do with anything, I just felt like saying it. Now some things that will bite your head off if you get too close.





This is a mated pair of Lasters. Lasters are large, highly intelligent catlike predators. They eat most any freshly killed meat they can get and have been reported to use rudimentary food-preservation techniques, most notable smoking their meat. Unlike cat tails, Laster tails are prehensile and used as manipulators.

Lasters have extremely acute hearing particularly in hearing slight variations in musical pitch. As they have a much smaller capacity for making sounds than is normally required for language, their spoken language revolves mainly around pitch. Their normal voices sound like singing to humans. Very few non-Laster creatures can speak their language (Cave Sirens and a few other sound-imitators can) but it can be understood, and the Laster can learn other languages as well, though there are a few concepts that most Laster cannot comprehend (likewise, there are a few Laster concepts humans have great difficulty grasping.

Little is known about Laster society, mainly because the Jungles they inhabit are extremely hostile to humans. Lasters mate for life in the same sense humans and other intelligent species 'mate for life,' though Laster breakups are reportedly much less common than human ones.

The sitting Laster to the left is male, the one to the right is female. Male Lasters are in general slightly larger and more darkly coloured.

These are Silver-Blue Lasters, Lasters also come in Ice-Blue, Aqua-Blue and Green. The colour phenotypes are spread much like human ethnic groups, with one being more dominate depending on the area.

Lasters have a powerful sense of smell and the ability to discern emotion in most creatures based on this; they can also detect falsehoods. Because of this superstitions of Lasters possessing psychic powers have arisen, these superstitions are not correct.


A group of Lasters is a ken.




This is an Elisst (double 's' pronounced as a hissing sound longer than a single 's') Elissts (and people with lisps are advised to not try to say that plural) inhabit dark, rather scary forests where they avoid their many predators by being both very intelligent and incredibly fast. They (and I'm rather overusing my brackets here) also have remarkable eyesight and hearing.

Elissts are omnivorous; they eat small rodents, insects and berries. They are about the size of a fox on land; flying their wingspan fully extended is about 5 feet (however Elissts very rarely fully extend their wings, as it makes them a large target and makes it hard to maneuvre in dense forest.)

Elissts are, as mentioned, very intelligent, but their intelligence is primarily prey intelligence and therefore very difficult for most other intelligent creatures to understand or relate to. They form groups based on mutual defense and sleep in shifts.

Elissts are not trainable, however they are still highly prized, not as pets but as bodyguards. Nesting Elisst females bond with their hatchlings on sight and then protect them until death or until the hatchlings undergo a coming of age ritual; it is possible to make a captive nesting Elisst bond with a human or other species, in which case the bonded Elisst will defend it's new ward to the death. There is no creature in the world more paranoid than a bonded Elisst, therefore they are mainly prized by rulers who fear assassination. Assassin's guilds charge double or more fees if the target has an Elisst guard. However, they are very rare--their very paranoid nature makes it almost impossible to capture them and even harder to keep them in captivity.

This is a male Elisst. Females are larger and have no crest on their heads. Mating does not create emotional bonds in Elissts, though often a pair will stay together for an extended period out of convenience. Male Elissts are never dangerous to humans, Females are incredibly deadly if their eggs or hatchlings are threatened.

A group of Elissts is a asylum.






This is an Ekoofkn (e-KOOF-kun) (and I admit, I created that name by bashing aimlessly at my keyboard. It's kind of a reference to Lovecraft. Although I haven't actually read that stuff.) If you're lucky, you will lead a full life without ever encountering an Ekoofkn. If you do encounter one, you will probably not live a full life. Ekoofkns are generally between 200 and 800 meters long, although the longest have been estimated at about two kilometers.

Ekoofkns are very interesting predators. For one thing, a single Ekoofkn is actually two organisms which have now joined in a permanent symbiotic bond. The single vestigial eye of the passenger is seen in the red dot on the Ekoofkn's snout. The passenger organism is dormant while the host is active and vice-versa. While the host sleeps on the bottom of the ocean floor the passenger waves it's many tentacles to feed electromagnetic and pressure data into the host's brain. If it detects a source of food anywhere above it the passenger activates the host, bringing it from a comatose state to full alertness with remarkable speed. A source of food for an Ekoofkn means a large whale, a pod of dolphins, a large group of sharks (

At this point the passenger goes dormant, but it remains attached to the host's nervous system and continues feeding it sensory data related to the target it detected. The Ekoofkn swims after that target with incredible speed and invariably attacks and consumes it unless the target proves to have no edible components. If an Ekoofkn locks onto a ship it will destroy the ship and consume every person and every scrap of wood, unless they can quickly be removed from the water or the Ekoofkn or it's passenger organism is destroyed.

The passenger organism is the easiest target. If you are attacked by an Ekoofkn, your only real hope is to strike the passenger in it's vestigial eye with a bladed weapon, ideally a harpoon. Once the passenger is destroyed the Ekoofkn is no longer able to track it's target and it will return to the ocean floor. It is believed that Ekoofkn can replace their passengers, because Ekoofkn with distinguishing scars from past battles have been seen again after their passengers were destroyed.

Ekoofkn are cannibals; they cannot detect the difference between their own kind and other sources of food. In a fight between Ekoofkn the attacker always wins, even if the defender is significantly larger. In some cases the attack reaches the defender before the defender consumes it's target, in which case the defender's passenger will not feed it sensory data regarding the attacker and the attacker will be unable to defend itself. If the defender has finished consuming it's target it will defend itself, but in a distracted, ineffective manner; it will invariably be consumed by it's focused, relentless attacker. Only other Ekoofkn are known to prey on Ekoofkn.

Ekoofkn have very keen senses and are actually quite intelligent in their pursuit of prey, however their intelligence is single minded and destructive. They have very strong vision and smell, and in addition they have an almost super-natural ability to detect pressure waves and electromagnetic signals in water.

If such a thing existed, a group of Ekoofkn would be a maw.

Falling

Alright, here we go! A quick sample of the first paragraph of Connexions. I am totally on top of this thing.

Then, I was falling. The floor had made good on its promise and simply dissolved away beneath my feet and, with a lurch and the wet crunching sound of rotten wood giving way, I fell. I fell about ten feet, just far enough for the terror of sudden weightlessness to really take hold, and hit the floor in a impact that left my back and left arm numb. That floor gave way as well and I was falling again. The second drop was exactly the same distance as the first, but for some reason it felt much longer, like I was floating instead of plummeting rapidly toward the ground. I even had time to perceive my surroundings a bit; I saw the dust, the falling bits of wood, the people starting and shouting and milling about from the shock of my sudden appearance. I hoped I wouldn’t land on one of them, since I might hurt them. I hoped I would land on one of them, since it could break my fall and lessen my injuries. I was not very worried about myself dying; I thought it was possible, but the idea didn’t seem real to me somehow. I was more worried about how much it would hurt when I hit the ground and started to feel things again.

Imaginarium Bestiarum Vocabulum

As I have already mentioned, writing posts = hard; posting old stuff = easy. Therefore, I hereby treat you to the products of my theoretically stunted imagination. Unfortunately they don't really fit with my colour scheme, but what can you do?

(Oh, and that Latin basically means "Bestiary of the Imagination." And I used the dragon mark because there are dragons in this post; that's all it means here.)

So, in groups of three and in no particular order, I give you:


This is an early one. You can tell because the name actually means something.

The Flameborn is a remarkable fireproof bird (the plural of Flameborn is Flameborn.) It inhabits a fictional environment; a forest growing around an active and ceaselessly erupting volcano. Much of the energy in said forest comes from lava heat. Naturally, there is a great deal of heat and fire; the Flameborn specializes in catching the burst of glowing gases from a flame geyser and using it to rocket hundreds of feet in the air. It descends from that height in a tightly controlled spiral dive, tucking it's wings back to achieve incredible speeds (they've been clocked at over 120 klicks (that's kilometers per hour.) At that speed, with their wing-surfaces still superheated, it aims for a body of deep water, sights with it's specially adapted eyes, enters the water like an Olympic diver and grabs onto a particular kind of fish. The Flameborn is the only predator that can catch this particular fish.

This is a male Flameborn. Females have larger head crests and slightly duller colouration. All Flameborn are flame coloured.

Despite being smaller than most raptors, Flameborn are easily trainable, so long as you have fireproof gloves. They are very profitable to train as well, since the fish they hunt is quite a delicacy. They can also be trained to attack, in which case they are extremely deadly since from the moment a Flameborn is launched from an artificial flame geyser to the moment it hits it's target it never slows down enough to be targeted or even clearly seen. In full speed flybys their wings can cut through anything even slightly flammable and badly sear flesh.

A group of Flameborn is a prominence.

Whereas this later one has a gibberish name, and an actual background.

This is a Seelis. Seelises are the dragons of the surface and upper canopy of the Dark Forest, while the Elissts control the lower two levels, any dragon that wanders into the wrong territory will be quickly attacked and killed. A Seelis is somewhat larger than a vulture.

The upper canopy of the Dark forest has 'ground' created by moss and vines growing on a layer of densely entangled branches. Small, non-flying creatures that can't survive the carnivorous moss on the actual ground find refuge on this false terrain hundreds of feet above the ground. Seelises are adept at spotting prey from above the thick foliage that divides the upper canopy from the surface and diving through that foliage to skewer unsuspecting prey on it's viciously barbed and hooked tail-spike. Seelises use their feet for gripping, their clawed arms for defending themselves from other predators and their own kind, and their tails for killing.

Seelises spend their entire lives flying. Even when they are perched on a branch, they can't stop flapping their wings because their lower bodies can't support the weight of the muscles they need to fly. Their senses are average except for vision, which is at the same exceptional level as most raptors. They are cunning and mischievous and like to play pranks. Unfortunately for upper canopy explorers, one of their favorites is leading such explorers to hidden gaps in the upper floor, sending them plummeting hundreds of feet to the ground (although, owing to the nature of the Dark Forest, they'll probably die long before they hit the ground.)

Seelis have no significant social behavior, mainly because having more that one or two in one place means that prey will become scares and all the Seelis in that area will starve. Also for this reason they are very territorial and attack predators that might compete with them for prey.

Seelis spent most of their time gliding above the surface, catching updrafts to avoid flapping and searching for prey. They mate for life, and after mating a Seelis will attack a Seelis of the opposite sex on it's territory with the same ferocity it previously reserved for it's own sex. They also drive their children out as soon as they reach maturity.

This is a female Seelis. The flying one is male. Males are a bit larger and have bigger horns. Males and females defend their eggs and their young with equal viciousness. Seelis range from sky blue to blue-green in colour.

A group of Seelis is a squadron.

And now for some cow thingies. And purple mountains. See, the further in the background you go, the purpler things get. I might have overdone it a bit this time, though.

These creatures are called Gnostons (silent G, pronounced NOS-tons). They are grazers that greatly resemble very small cows; however they do not travel in herds. Instead, they stay together in family groups like the one shown here. Gnostons mate for life, which is necessary because both parents are needed to protect their calves.

Gnostons are very fast and agile for herbivores of their size, and in addition to their obvious armour plating they have a thick glossy epidermal layer that is extremely difficult to bite through; because of this they are ignored by most pack predators. Their main predators are dragons, particularly the Raptor Dragon, which is adept at bypassing their best defense by picking them up and killing them with a hard impact by dropping them.

The Gnoston that is sleeping is female. Females are slightly smaller, have udders and lack a nose-plate. The standing one is male. The drinking Gnoston is a calve; Gnostons are calves until about 2 years, at which point their plates and skin darken and acquire the glossy layer.

Gnostons are clever than cows, but only by a little. They can be trained to haul heavy loads, but other animals are more effective for pure strength. In war situations, however, Gnostons are often used as they are unphased by loud bangs and fire (their skin can sustain direct contact with flame for about a minute before the gloss vaporizes and they catch fire.)

A family group of Gnostons is a pod. A larger group is a siege.

And there you have it. I have a bunch more of these in reserve, so expect more soonish. And I am working on a new one, albeit slowly.