LOGINShare
Poetic Refrain: The Vulture Queen and Other Songs
The Crane Wife - In which Queen Jarngrimr contemplates her love for Turiel
They said I should have loved a crane wife, her bleedingout in snow, onto ivory ice, I would give her my cloak andshe would be the female Christ, her blood stain my kimono,and as I carried her home to rice paper walls, on bent back,she would sing the sister stars down, and those souls departedwould flock around me, and I would know something of the afterlife,offering up my pain and beauty to death, and as her wings marriedmy mind and marred my pain stains into something quixotic, I wouldquicken, and Hell would have no place in my palace, and I would makea thousand like her, all for one wish of peace, after Hiroshima bombedme quite starstruck and desolate, and the grave of the fireflies wept.They say I should have loved a crane wife instead.BuRelated chapters
The Troll Queen's Bride The Rape of Rind
We were in Yolanda’s cozy bedroom - as cozy as a tiny berth twin bed in a ship of keratin and bone could be.The sea swelled, and I curled up under thick blankets in my girlfriends’ arms as she drew interlacing figure eights on my slim, muscled white arms. Dressed in linen nightshifts like the lindworm bride giving her wyrm prince a bath in milk and lye, we talked of quiet nothings, watching sleet fall onto the gray, bone graveyard of the Seething Sea.Skadhi’s Bow shined bright on the horizon, Northern Lights sparkling as the stars of our ancestors, the female Disir and male Alfar, spackled the black luxurious mane of Nott like white eggshell.“Do ancestors look down on us from above, Yola?” I wondered, wide eyed and curious as I watched Mani the Man in the Moon glow.“Yes. They all do, every one of them, good or bad, small or tall, woman or man, damned to Nastrond or handmaiden in Freida’s halls,” Yolanda
The Troll Queen's Bride In the Midnight Hour, Roses and Sweat
I awoke to a ghostly beam from Mani's boat, god of moonlight, piercing me. It is said he saved two abandoned children starving at their parent's well, condemned to eat dust and mud, and adopted Hjuki and Bil, brother and sister, as his fosterchildren. Now, they guided stars across the sky under sweet lipped, black haired Mani's gentle dozey watch, spilling sweet magick milk to feed cats of ink, whose paws and sweet tongues lapped the milky starlight up, causing darkness to ink out the ancestors.Without the cats of Nott, the night goddess, and the sun queen Sunna and night king Mani's esteemed mother, who she gave to Mani when he turned thirteen, the whole sky would be the milk of Audhumla, our sacred auroch who nursed forefather Ymir, whom Wotan, Loki, and Mymyr had slain to make all the Nine Worlds.Yolanda gently dozed, and I imagined all the Hakkonsdottirs and Ynglings - my mother's surname, supposedly sired by fertility and beer and rain god Ingvi with his wife Ga
The Troll Queen's Bride The Song of the Dawning
It was daybreak, so early, the sky was tinged dawn pink, the snow seals froliced on icebergs out our tiny glass window, and a morning dawn chill had set into the berth.Yolanda fluttered her hazelwood eyes open. They always change, from hazel to bark to black. Her cinnamon skin smelled like frankincense and violets."Ten more minutes, my queen," I stirred, half awake, drunk off moonlight and her firm belly and middle sized breasts like a broodmare wolf that swell like a psalm under my nightshift.Yolanda drabbled awake, murmuring, cuddling - wanting.A violet flame lit in her eye, and she mussed my hair. "Little shieldmaiden... you just called me your queen," she teased, pecking my cheek.I looked deep into her eye. "You have always been queen of my heart..." I said sleepily, eyes fluttering closed as I listened to her heartbeat, reawakened by the amethyst godstone. "Oh Yola, stay with me all your days. Once this terrible war is over, and we have b
The Troll Queen's Bride A Stolen Amber Kiss
Yolanda and I sipped Shamayim coffee sweetened from the sugar mills of the South as Jarngrimr whistled a skaldic lay of Freida and Ottar the Boar. She seemed to fancy Hyndla, the dwarven giant crone who helped Freida and Ottar, once her human champion, now in her service immortally like Adonis in Meditteranea to Cybele. Jarnja sang of how Ottar and Freida met:Freida Rides OutTo be like the Great Sow, Mother of Battle.they say I have gold tears that hide smiles,my teeth are bright as tusks, my breasts bemountains, little one, my thighs crush menand as I strangle their necks, they grin,pour wine into my lap, and drink down blood.See me on the battlefied, bright armor shining,See me in the bedroom, resplendent as a pearl,See me High Seated, prophesying Valraven’s fall,Wotan may be Frenzy, but I am the Blade, see mecut the Norn’s hair and spin it on my fingers.
The Troll Queen's Bride Jarnja Sings, Wondering
Jarngrimr sang us away:Freida and Ingvi rode out into the sun-dappled woods,bows and falcon-fletched arrows ahand, aback boars,the twins wore cloaks of wolf, fall was at its apex,the smell of loam and Nerthus’ autumnal perfume rosein mist like an intoxicating oracle past oak and ash.The Golden Twins were hunting the white hart, dashingthrough Vanaheim aback war sow and hog, spilling rubyblood of Ingvi’s sacred antlered stags, Freida saw aspiderweb woven of gold, and as Ingvi roasted the hartshe strayed in her feather cloak and moonlight dress toa dwarven hollow, where a soot-rough duergar smithed abeautiful bracelet shaped like the sun, Freida swelledwith gold-lust, for Gullveig is her witch-name, and themetal of morning and dawn is her domain. Freida spokewords of want to the blackened dwarf: “Lay with me thisharvest tide, and you shall mine gems and fin
The Troll Queen's Bride Poetic Refrain: Song of the Oni Gods, or How the Spice Kingdom Came to Be
A Winter’s TaleMei moves with her family to the hinterlands,where cold gods reign, and colder climes drawhoarfrost on her coal black hair.This is the first time the girl, barely a young woman, Has seen snow. The peaks of the mountains are likeicicles piercing the sky, and at night, the moonis the brightest she has ever seen, like a brightsilver coin, nestled at the crest of the ridges.One night, the Bear that Swallowed the Moon comesand bids her “Ride my back, Mei. I am Bei Ling,the Moon Incarnate, and I shall show you themajesty of my frozen kingdom.” It is a wooing of love, and Mei climbs aback Bear -they rush through pine and red panda up theslope, in his throat is the lunar disc, shiningevery time he growls or opens his mouth to speakin a tongue not human, but bestial. That night, Bei Ling digs her a bed of snow and mos
The Troll Queen's Bride Song of the Light Elves
Yolanda and I alighted on the light elf terrain:Alien glimmers of the whitewashed, satin blue, finely featured elves, who towered over us in silken, slender forms, held out pearl gray mushrooms and glowing yellow fruits, circling us in a whirlwind as their crystal palaces and strange, arcane stone temples blurred as they fractaled.The tribe of Ljossalfar splintered like ice.Terrified, I looked up into Yola's arms. She put her plush eagle wings in a vice around me, the cinnamon and cloves of her skin darkening my vision. She cried out, as if a stabbing pain from the light of the dead - as the dark elves and light elves had spirits of the disir and alfar, our ancestors... transformed into something forbidden - was crushing her lungs and spine.Her flesh grew hot, and we both screamed.Suddenly, silence, and eldritch cold."Is this an initiation into the Land of the Dead, Helheim? Are we trespassing?"I kept my eyes shut, shrouded by
The Troll Queen's Bride He Kindly Stopped for Me
I cried, sinking to me knees amongst the graves of rune stones.Yolanda rocked me, cursing."I feel like something precious was stolen from me, at a terrible price," I moaned, Gullinkambi cooing as he preened my hair. He was the only one not shaken, my immortal cockerel.Yolanda hugged me so hard, she nearly crushed my back in like a caving glacier. "I'll sing you Hakkon's song on sweet Aslaugh's deathbed. He always sang that to you as a lullaby. One of his only acknowledgements of Wotan. Your father was a traitor, but he loved all five of us."I crumpled in her embrace: "Sing me with the song of days past, Yola - so that we may please the ancestors, whose sacred ground we have raped."Yolanda's brown eyes flashed amber: "Then I shall sing the dead."Her melody poured forth, eviscerating, yet quiet, like a tender morsel of perfumed, candied roses, baked with apple pie:Sanctuary of autumn, a cairn of stones.D
Latest chapter
The Troll Queen's Bride Blooming Thorn
The Troll Queen's Bride Full Circle
The Troll Queen's Bride In the Heat of the Moment(um)
The Troll Queen's Bride Sterile as Snow
The Troll Queen's Bride Beasts
The Troll Queen's Bride Tears of Lilit
The Troll Queen's Bride Swan Down Arms
The Troll Queen's Bride Porphyry
The Troll Queen's Bride Enough
