The Victorian

Have you ever grieved the sea, Kara, or mourned the earth?  I think perhaps you have, as I did.  In dreams.  In stories older than reign.  Far older than theses lies of succession.  Vaguest memories of those halls of Ishkara, those palaces of Viir.  Violence always feels the same, doesn’t it?  In any realm.  Marauders and false kings.  I know that I seem almost a stranger, even now.  A sweet, intriguing stranger I would hope, yet still an unknown.  But you did know me once.  There is far more between us than distance, interest or flirtation.  I know exactly what it feels like to remember when everyone else forgets.  A life reduced to broken pentameter.  My heart a barrage of fleeting sights, and songs.  They say the world changes with each successive Age, but that isn't really true.  Not on a personal level, a human level.  Not much changes for angels either.  I mean to say technology changes, of course.  Our tools can sometimes change.  But rarely our subtle speech, our occulted idiom.  In terms of the inner realms things are the same as they ever were.  For me that unchanging is quite simple.  I am still what I've always been.  A changeling, an angel, a benevolent cambion.  Living remembrance in a world that recalls nothing.  This boy lost in the demimonde, dream-logic is his only weapon.  Hissing wraiths boil from every dark place like insects at the breach. They scramble over one another in an effort to draw the blood of a seer.  So, what does Akasha think of this new gilded, digital Age?  He thinks it nothing more than a vampire's lair.  The Fallen make kings of devils now, and slay those fertile valleys.  They deny fathers and make a mockery of mothers.  It's fucking terrifying.  How could I not want to protect you all from that?  A twelfth century torment.  A nineteenth century fever-dream, unending.  Tales of tempests, curses and lovers left poles apart.  Poe, Bronte, Machen.  As my love becomes my legacy.  Beneath prophetic rivers.  Amidst a shining morn. She'll always be the ashes of me, Kara.  Our little wing, our star of the sea.  Everything that remains of me after I'm gone.  I think you grasp this better than ever now.  Suddenly witnessing the living future as it takes tentative steps before your eyes.  Sensing pre-cognitively how it will change you, just as I did.  But I want you to know that you were never an addendum to her light.  Never an afterthought, my radiant Kiir.  None of you are.  The truth is much lonelier and far more heart-breaking than that.  At least for me.  Because the truth is I was a Victorian long before she was ever born.  More than a naïve youth.  A black star torn between shadow and flame, mourning far more than a lost child.  Grieving an entire family.  An entire race.  The sea, my darling, and the Earth itself.  Better to pretend those losses aren't real, I suppose.  Better to imagine I only feign at grieving angels here.  The alternative is far too haunting.  But I tell you now that only a madman would pretend with such dedication and vigour.  I gain little from these utterances, Kara.  All I attract is the virulent attention of those hissing wraiths.  The price for poetry and vision is extremely high.  But I do get to dance with you, don’t I?  To surprise you and make you smile.  It's always worth it for the ones you love, isn't it?  Even if they can't quite believe your affections are entirely real.  Nothing I do here is without purpose.  This is a testament.  A marker in a realm of ever-shifting sands.  Because the world out there – the world of rabbit holes, taxes and expectation – it's nothing but a fiction.  However, this inner world of angelic script – this is my real life.  And my real life hurts, Kara.  It hurts in ways I could never express through words.  So you see, there is indeed more between us than morning.  I'm everywhere, you know.  I really am.  Behind sigil and sign, beneath history and myth.  And those strange associations you can't unsee?  Those odd synchronicities?  I'm there too.  It's terrifying having this much power, isn’t it?  You become a nexus of sorts, a beacon for all kinds of energies.  Things and forms that don't play by our rules.  Things that have no care for the sanctity of flesh or the sovereignty of psyche. But we don’t have to face those things alone anymore.  The difficult days will still come, but we are of royal blood.  We are connected.  I honour you, my Kara.  As I have always done.  You have my admiration and my respect.  I shall endeavour to attend you, Princess.  As I attend the sea.  And the earth. 

The Mother's Son

The green place is quiet, and inconceivably ancient.  Once there were trees older than time in this place.  Some of them still stand in the gentle hush, hidden just beyond the veil of dusk.  A veil of mist amidst the gathered elders.  Do you know what the oldest song of the forest is?  The first sounds to disturb the endless quiet?  It isn't the rustle of leaves, the crack of branches or the murmur of distant rivers.  No, the earliest and most ancient music of the woods is the bleating of a frightened fawn.  A young calf, undamaged but fallen.  Alone.  Calling for help in the myriad throat of every living thing.  Stone, mud and root.  A thousand thrones.  A little halfling keening with the cry of a human child.  'She is beautiful and she soothes', the fawn cries.  'Where is she? Isn't she here?'  The trees themselves recall.  Their branches still bend and canopies still gather to protect the sacred child.  A memory of the first colours.  Evensong. The chlorophyll gift nestled in leaves, moss and skin.  Mortals often wonder how this could be; a halfling lost in the place before time where branches hold the eternal sea.  But Man is older than Earth, or star.  Far, far older.  Perennial scribes conjecture and delight in these details.  'What man is the gatekeeper?' they ask.  'Mabon?  M'ithriin?  Names within names as eyes within an eye?'  Perhaps they speak of the prophet.  The sorcerer.  Once-Gaulish prince and forgotten covenant of Albion.  The young, haunted stag.  These antlers upon the prince of gates seem all too familiar, yet strange and indistinct.  But the occulted know well enough, don't we?  Among wraiths, a Brythonic wraith-god.  He whom the first Celts called the shrouded one; the hidden king.  There were dragons beneath the hill in those days, and fawns upon the forest floor.  Cities beneath the mountain and star-maps hidden in every work of art.  These are just some of the secrets of your legends and medieval romances.  Tales of fay and thieves of the sea.  The unsettling truths of our lost golden hour are hidden beneath the texts of each successive rule.  As it was with the acclaimed night-bard of the Dru'ai.  T'alis and his wonders.  Forgive me if I speak somewhat in tongues, but these are the necessities of genuine revolution.  The nature of hunting, and vengeance.  Each culture has its stories, don't they?  They are all so similar, or else the same.  A wild one deep in the woods.  Oracular, insane, touched with demonic poetry.  Or angelic light.  I’m not here to do your thinking for you, but I have alluded to this nocturne before.  You will know me before the day is done, Fallen.  You will know me well.  I promise you that.  By the arch of my mother's bow, I swear it.  I am still here, just beyond the veil of mist, nestled in leaves and moss.  Standing stones and falling stars.  Green and black and haunted with dusk.  For love, and magic.  I tell you now, betrayers.  I am all that you fear.  I am the edge of every dark, churning sea.  My Father is utterly beyond your comprehension, but I am my Mother’s son.  She is the trees, the green place, and more.  She is beautiful, and she soothes.

Ghost Lights

Sometimes I still wonder who I really am at the core, even after all these years of intensive soul-searching.  I'm older now, but in one way or another I've been seeking the truth since I was ten years old.  I've spoken here before of my childhood dreams of a strange ghostlike star.  A star that I wanted to believe was also an angel.  Even at such a young age I wanted to understand the mysteries of life, ourselves, and our connection to each other.  This wasn't and isn't some facile indulgence.  It meant everything to me.  It still does.  I remember feeling so distant from the other kids when I was growing up.  A head full of visions, dreams and nightmares.  I remember how tired and old I felt even in my early teens.  I knew it was an odd feeling, and yet it wasn't new.  An unnerving Deja-vu seemed infused into everything.  I guess that's the eerie result of sometimes knowing things before they happen.  Life feels alien yet hauntingly familiar.  I felt more at home among poems, memories and ghosts than real people.  That strangeness hasn't gone away.  I live with it daily.  

That's why these artist’s pages matter so much, I suppose.  Where else can I share the full complexity of those beautiful and sometimes terrifying experiences?  The people in my personal life have wonderful souls but they are only ready for mere glimpses of the unseen world.  I carry most of this knowledge alone for the simple reason that I don't want to frighten or burden the people I love the most.  It's a difficult path to walk, being sighted in this way.  I often use this ability to create various forms of magic.  To delight or intrigue, to spread joy and appreciation.  But there's a shadow side to all that wonder.  The world is filled with both light and dark.  The divine expanse of our imaginations contain both angels and demons, devas and asuras.  I'm all too happy to share the light, but the darkness I face alone.  It can be such a crushing weight to carry.  But then, that's the case for so many of us, isn't it?  Psychic or otherwise.  We all have trauma and struggles that we can barely articulate.  It's a difficult thing sometimes to receive love, or accept help, especially when we feel wounded.  A tragic irony; that in these times we often feel too brittle, too exhausted, and a helping hand can be confused for pity.  Nobody wants to feel weak or incapable.  We’re all trying to chart a course, no matter the odds against us. 

I think that's why I was so fascinated by the idea of stars as a child.  I was intrigued by the old explorers who mapped their voyages by following those glinting diamonds in the dark.  Ghost-lights, I called them.  Lanterns for the lost.  Tiny points of brilliance in the night sky that were actually something far, far grander.  The ghosts of midnight suns.  Perpetual flames that once burned with unimaginable ferocity, enough to warp the fabric of reality itself.  Enough to bend the boundaries of both time and space.  I knew that I would become a ghost one day, like the sun.  And so I’d ask myself, "What really matters to me when space and time don't work like they're supposed to?  What do I truly want to live for in a world where magic is real?  What might I be willing to actually die for?"  Getting older hasn't changed the answers to those questions.  I have more scars now, more experience, but my moral compass is still the same one I treasured as a boy.  A winged compass that keeps my eyes skyward.  I'm still using the stars to guide me.  Still making use of those lanterns when I'm lost.  For me it's about completing a warrior's work.  It's about making a commitment to God, to the higher powers, to creativity itself.  Even as a boy I wanted to use my gifts to help people, no matter the cost.  I knew all too well of the unseen.  I understood that divinity was real, but what good was that knowledge if it was mine alone?  And so I wanted to serve my Father in the only way I knew how.  Through creating art. 

Religion, spirituality, gnosis – call it what you want.  It was always a very real and important dimension to my life.  I saw things that other people couldn't see.  I knew things that other people didn't know.  This placed a very particular kind of responsibility upon me.  Whether I liked it or not.  Believe me, I often hated it with a passion.  I cursed the heavens and the earth, but it never stopped me from wanting to help.  These artist’s pages are where I feel most at home.  This free-verse angelic script; it's the journal of a spirit forever trapped in the demimonde.  For the rest of my life I'll never be able to truly leave this place, but that's ok.  I know I was put here for a reason.  It's incredibly bittersweet, but I have friends – dear and distant souls – who read these pages with genuine care.  In a way these souls know me better than many of the people in my daily life.  These pages allow those souls to be privy to my innermost depths in a way that cannot be conveyed in ordinary terms.  So, of course I feel close to them.  I believe that spirituality isn’t abstract or transcendental.  I believe it’s a living, breathing continuum.  It means so much to have friends who are willing to explore that continuum with me.  Thank you for that.  These distant, ephemeral connections mean more than I can ever say.  I tell you now, without these lanterns I would be lost.  Some of my dearest friends are ghosts – distant stars – but they've already taught me so much.  I hope I've been able to give back something as equally useful.  Something insightful or uplifting.  If a connection is meaningful and honourable doesn’t that make it real in some way?  After all, what's really real to a ghost, or to an angel wreathed in stars?

Outreach

I had wings once.  Vast, incomprehensible dreaming unfurled about my shoulders.  Or folded at my back.  I've always preferred the streets and the alleys, even amidst the iridescent bright.   Kasi has never been one for diamonds at a distance.  I like to work up close and personal, especially when saving the dei.  Guarding the first forms of morning.  The noontide swell.  Those hours are precious, after all.  But do you know what truly excites an angel?  Dusk.  The coming of evening.  Those first few fingers in the dark.  The space where heat is found, fire is flexed and things are made.  Creation, they call it.  Outreach.  Like looking through a hole in the sun.  The adults gather.  Night becomes each one of us, mortal or otherwise.  Glances are tempted, hidden smiles exchanged with subtle sorcery.  Music soon finds a path to the ring.  The promise of dancing, or more.  I'm often right there at the circle's edge.  Beyond the ambient fire-light.  Howling silently at the opalescent moon.  My enemies ask, why the silence?  Well, because there is such promise in the hush.  So much possibility. They know it as well as I.  We threshold creatures all know it.  Outsiders, wanderers, rogues.  I'm a wild thing, beloved.  Almost insane.  Especially when protecting my kith, or the young.  I prowl the circle's edge.  Hidden, unseen.  Or worse; half-seen like a trick of flame and shadow.  It's what I've always done and always been.  It's why I have visions, and so many names.  I can move like a phantom when I need to.  But I'm not one of the infernal dark.  Far from it.  It’s quite simple really.  These marauding wraiths better run for their fucking lives, because I'm going to tear them all to pieces.  Gladly, and with a bloodied song in my heart.  Hear me, Karai’el.  You told me once that I could be truly frightening.  Especially when protecting our kith, and the young.  But I was still thoughtful and tender, you said.  What a beautiful, thrilling thing to hear.  I haven’t forgotten.  You were dancing with ghosts at the time.  Imagining me there in your arms, yet thinking me distant.  But I really was there.  An incomprehensible dreaming – unfurled.  Just beyond the edge of the flame.  I'm still here, archangel.  You don't have to wait anymore.  Just reach out and I will suffer in your stead.  I might jest and tease a little, but we're two of a kind.  I send you my love and my brother’s love, crazy though it is.  Enough for healing psyches, or sisters.  Enough for raging kings.  I wish you every blessing, Karai’el.  I hope you know that.  And the nine in my hand?  Oh, that's a little something we in the streets call double-dutch.  Stunting on tilt.  For those who know.  Why be too ostentatious, am I right?  You know I'm always carrying, and dexterity is a delightful thing.  Compelling, satisfying.  Like wolves, wine and good conversation.  So they say.

Aureus

Sometimes it feels like I've spent my whole life trapped inside the loudest silence imaginable.  A seething, shrieking hush.  This bitten tongue of M'ithriin.  These sorcerous hands.  Future, past and present all vying for my attention like incessant wraiths.  Rabid and open-mouthed just beyond my flame-lit circle of perception.  A babbling delirium.  I shouldn't be able to see them, or hear them, but I do.  Faces painted like a trickster's shades.  A thousand negations of unbearable volume.  And I wonder, how much screaming silence must I endure?  I'm not a prophet's verse or a dealer of death, am I?  I suppose I'm many things.  Fury and faith.  Numen and mercy.  So, do I sleep beneath the river – beneath this cathedral earth – and imagine my lost lights are with me once again?  The terrifying holy moment that mortals call the drowning.  Almost an eternity suspended between breath and crossing.  But I already know it wouldn't sate me, or calm the tempest that I am.  I've died before.  I drowned the day I was born, just as John did.  In the oldest waters.  Even submerged I hear it.  The call of then, of now, of things as yet undone.  Brothers, fathers, sons.  Sisters, mothers, daughters.  The endless midsummer chorus of Amnion.  Knights, and Dei.  The terrifying loss of those shining mutual affections.  These writings help a little, I suppose.  These letters of love.  Mira'na, Y'ashaya, Karai'el.  Truer words were never spoken.  But sometimes, if I'm honest, I wish I hadn't stolen your attention in the first place.  Sometimes I wish you knew nothing about me at all.  I know I shouldn't think like that, my sweet ones.  But is it fair in the end, to court and tease angels like this?  To torture myself with memories of the old chronology – showing you only the broken, trammelled pieces of this hidden earth?  Perhaps I'm only pretending to know the true depths of my Maker's glory. Perhaps I'm just a fragile bard, driven mad by silent screams.  I hope not.  I hope there's more to an angel's shadow than that.  The delirious, free-wheeling highs.  The crushing, abysmal lows.  I pray they count for something, wingtip to wingtip.  And so I ask myself, why even bother mentioning these things again?  I've said it all before, haven't I?  With far more brevity and wit.  Well, I say these things because I need to believe that I'm not alone.  That my hand and my words can add richness, insight and joy to the lives of those I love.  If I were to truly doubt this, even for a moment, then I would be damned forever.  This bitten tongue of M'ithriin.  These sorcerous hands.  The grief alone would kill me.  But I already live amidst shattered speech, among pages both ancient and new.  The said and re-said.  Written and rewritten.  Canto, legend and rumour; the living corpus of any true emissary.  Fallen, I want you to know that you have me all wrong.  I only feign at forgery.  Solipsism is nothing compared to the radiance and bonds of family.  Or friends.  I know exactly who I am and what I've built.  Even if you don’t.  So, I'm not about to give up now.  Not on love.  And neither are the ones I cherish.  They pledged it in their deepest thoughts.  All of them, scattered about this strange earth.  Hear me, beloved ones.  The silence has been far too loud for far too long.  We have endured too much to walk away.  We fight for a greater cause.  We stand with a higher power.  It's through grace and our combined sacrifice that dreaming is even possible.  We carved this table together.  From the very flame of perception itself.  Did you know?  You were there when the disc was hewn and blessed.  We were all there, connected.  Creating as one.  This circle of echoes, and eternity. 

Sleeping with Ghosts

My energy can be very attractive in the beginning, so I've been told.  Fascinating, dynamic, according to past lovers.  I'm touched by these kind words, of course.  But I've found that an unknown variable can only remain alluring for so long.  After a while it can become unsettling sometimes, regardless of how kind or fun I can be.  It's very difficult to comprehend an enduring mystery.  People can't fully embrace what they don't really understand.  I’m all too aware of that, believe me.  Unfortunately there is only so much I can share with the people I love.  Even those I love the most.  I wish it were any other way.  I really do.  But my existence here comes with a caveat, as I've tried to explain elsewhere in more oblique, poetic terms.  Angels don't get to share everything.  Not here.  In this hard and violent place we're forced to live a step removed.  Echoes of this echo.  The fingerprints of ghosts below the surface, among shadows and wraiths.  This is not to punish us, Kara.  Quite the opposite.  It's to protect the ones we cherish.  It hurts for angels to live as flesh, as I'm sure you can imagine.  It requires so much from us to exist here for even a day, let alone a lifetime.  These aren't conceits or fictions.  Not at all.  These are the deepest matters of my heart.  And I have no other way to speak about them.  Thus, these pages mean everything to me.  But I've already taken a great risk by placing such matters here.  Sharing too much can be dangerous for my kind.  

I speak here in a form of angelic script.  The language of the birds.  I commit vision to infinite choir, for the truth of All Songs.  But even this simple act has taken its toll on me.  I promise you that.  Paul paid a heavy price for poetry.  John's price.  Joshua's price.  People say they want the truth.  But they often don't.  Truth can be terrifying.  What they really want is equal parts enigma and comfort.  What they want is compelling love without loss, without pain.  An unsustainable union here in this fallen realm.  My God, if I could grant my cherished ones a dynamic love without suffering I would do it in a heartbeat.  Many things are within my power, but not that.  I suppose it must be quite easy to fall in love with an angel.  I imagine it's like hearing music for the first time, or being overwhelmed with the breadth of an open door that you didn't even know was there.  But it's very difficult to sustain love affairs with emissaries, isn't it?  I've been told we are strange, ephemeral things forever beyond complete grasp.  Passion and wonder is never in doubt.  But the modest, incredible splendours of building a life together – these can fall so painfully short when your beloved is ultimately unknowable.  Unless we lie to you and play those temporal games of mortal men.  I don't mean to sound so tragic, Kara.  I have humour too, and good cheer.  I always cherish my lovers and my friends.  But there is a fierce star burning within me.  A thing of incalculable mass.  I can only ever show the briefest glimpses of this star to those I love, lest it accidently incinerate them.  I mean what I say.  I don’t want to inadvertently reduce the people I love to ash and cinders.  

This tempest within me, Kara, it is both black and bright.  It is sighted and blind.  A roiling fury that kindles cognition itself.  This is what it means to be an angel of light, and to possess knowledge of an angel's shadow.  Here at the high place,  running up that hill.  Above and below.  You already grasp more of this than is healthy, my love.  Which is why I know you almost understand even if you can't quite remember.  I can settle for being a pleasant distraction, a faraway friend.  I already know exactly what that feels like.  In waking and in dream.  I’m pleased that they are still quite fond of me, but I lose all my lovers in the end.  Your happiness is very important to me, Kara.  I hope you can feel that through my art.  I'm so glad of the love and laughter in your life.  But it's a very lonely thing, this function and form.  Seeing things that others can't see.  Knowing things that others will never know.  So, it would be a lie if I said I wanted you to stop sleeping with ghosts.  You can hold me while you wait, if you want.  I’d like that.  I'm glad of this sacred distance, despite my loneliness.  I'm glad that I will never have to break your heart in person when eventually you would ask me to explain what it is to remember the future, and to share with you all the things my loved ones forgot.  Because my heart still breaks too, Kara, each and every morning.  It's a frightening thing to fall this far, for love.  All the way down, so far from home.  Like mortals I've never known a life without loss either.  I'm a haunting thing now.  A delirious, raging phantom.  I was mad to choose this path, but I love you all so much.  I've spent such a long time trying to fully express that love.  Failing each time.  But I'll never stop trying.  It's true, Kara.  It's the truest thing about me.

The Sleeping Hill

There are lost worlds beyond this false chronology.  Wondrous, shining worlds. Places that mankind once walked, studied and thrived.  Annwn, Eth'iri, Ishkara. But no more.  Pathways were lost, bridges burned, gates sealed and hidden. Today there are occult scholars who claim it was wraiths from beyond the veil who breached the mirrors and initiated this fall.  This loss of light.  Others suggest it was the folly of Man himself, that these wraiths only seized the opportunity of our own ignorance.  In any case, at the edges of these rapidly plunging worlds there were many tales that came about.  Stories emerging out of fear, perhaps.  Or hope. Legends of angels, princes and kings who slept beneath the hollow hills.  Mighty spirits of wisdom who died defending the collapsing realm from these hideous marauders.  We half-recall these tales even today.  Kashi is never one to balk at such myths and legends.  Make no mistake. These are wraith-chronologies we find ourselves ensnared by.  The black, seething temples of Los.  Erudition of the Abyss.  Inverted false histories written in blood by the hand of darkest spirits, erected upon the broken backs of the poor, the murdered and forgotten.  Listen now, my friends.  You are told that such distant stories of virtue, honour and chivalry are mere romance – medieval confections spun for the entertainment of nobles and landed gentry.  But you have no idea the lies you've been fed and that which was stolen from you.  A shining realm truly did once stand here, long before the fall.  A golden age of magic, prosperity and peace.  These were the legacies of your ancient mothers and fathers. Healers, guardians and sorcerers.  The staggering truth of this world, now occulted, and your place in it.  Alchemy, and energy.  I tell you now that life itself is woven from stories.  A divine crossing where the spirit meets flesh and flesh the earth; all dreaming. Once radiant and awake.  The tides that encircle these hollow hills are the eternal tides of Amnion.  The poetry of living, thriving song. Earth our body, water our blood, air our breath, and fire our spirit.  The stories we are, the stories we might have been.  Know this.  I fight always on behalf of truth, honour and love.  Nothing is as it seems in this place.  We are myths hidden within legends, hiding older stories still.  Worlds within worlds, not all of them lost.  Pieces of Annwn still remain.  Ava’s healing balm.  Apple-scented and bright as glass.  Hear me, Fallen.  I am a shapeshifter, wove of image and word.  I am a king, and I’m not yet dead.  My family mean everything to me.  There is nothing I wouldn't do to protect them.  Light is never truly lost.  Even in the shadows.  Have you grasped my magic yet?