Sun and Wings, or, Stuff I Think About

I’m going to tell you a story about llamas. It will be like every other story you’ve ever heard about llamas: how they are covered in fine scales; how they

Give it a read.

laliberty:

Disaster Relief | American Red Cross

The tornado devastation in Oklahoma and surrounding areas is a horrific tragedy beyond words. At least 145 people reported injured with the death toll at 51, including 20 children. 

Please give what you can to help those who need it.

Also consider Oklahoma Baptist Disaster Relief, Salvation Army, and United Way of Central Oklahoma.

(via crispyfishsticks)

Who am I?

and

What am I?

are not necessarily the same things.

Designing some armor based off a dream I had. It’s basically a FIRST FRC competition mashed up with the Hunger Games, and it makes exactly as much sense as it sounds (which is to say not all that much). Armor is fun to play with, though.

gingerhaze:

thehawkeyeinitiative:

I recently received an email from an anonymous fan sharing how she pulled a Hawkeye Initiative themed prank on her CEO to illustrate a problem with some artwork.
My personal compliments to her and her accomplice on a mission well done; they perfectly took they perfectly took the concept of The…

This is MAGNIFICENT and HILARIOUS.

This is entirely the best.

Playing with my squid-faces.

I’m toying around with different head shapes and ways to work with the lil’ feeler things. There’s a half-baked idea that the older an individual is, the more deedlybobs (I’m recovering from stomach flu, you’ll get the technical term later) they have on their feelers and wattles.

 I’m also trying to figure out how their eating works. On one hand, I might give them a beak like an octopus; on the other, they may extrude acid/enzymes from barbs on their tongue and then slurp the whatever-it-was up like a smoothie.

Broke out my acrylics yesterday and did these. It’s been a long time since I’ve used traditional paint, and it shows. These are much less polished and controlled than any of my digital work. I’m pretty sure I messed up the faces a little.

That said, it felt really nice—much freer and more… what’s the word… visceral. I’m hoping to be able to get some GIANT PAPER and paints today to work with, but it’s looking a little doubtful—day’s sorta wasting and I need a parent to help me get to the art store. 

Tomorrow I will stop by the U Bookstore and get butcher paper and cheap paint. And I will set up in my garage court with this on Sunday and just do art out in the sun. And it will be messy and amazing and not look very good but I will have done it.

This is happening.

There’s turning and twisting, over and under and through again—bones slick-sharp against flanks sliding smooth smooth smooth sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide like water. Run your hands along them—feel the muscles coiled under golden skin.

Swimming through an ocean of memories, blood, guts, gore, beautiful little daisies in the grass and children running through streets and catching you up by the hand by the waist twirling with you—there are flowers in your hair, and I can still remember the scent of them. Are you speaking—am I—eyes catch and hold. Look at you, you’re beautiful.

Still can remember how it feels when you bend down to listen to me, the warm puff of my breath against your neck and I can feel the soft heat of your skin against mine. Vibrating, waiting, here whisper whisper whisper.

I read the black ink splots across the pages. Feel the sharp burr of words against my fingerpads. Pages vanilla-hued and coiling, coiling around bodies of the same color coiling around the minds inside, the hands armed with clever fingers who can take apart everything if they only wanted to. There are stains of gold where she’s rubbed her head against them, like a cat wanting to be pet. 

I wake from a dream where there’s a wash of auburn. 

The lines that make up your body are glass-boned delicate things, they whisper snap shout. You’re breakable. Glass when shattered cuts. Do you want to test me? 

The old refrain is tired and I do not yell it very loud. I go digging through black boxes for the data stored inside like the sweet flesh under a fruit’s skin. I will gorge myself upon memories until the juice runs down my chin to gild my throat with peach juice, and my fingers will be stained with blackberries.

Somewhere in there I find myself, and I take the unknown and wrap it up and hide it again for a rainy day. Somewhere in there I find you, and our fingers twist together in knots and I loop yarn around the open holes to make a blanket to keep us warm. Slivers of bone light up like candles and we hang them up to spite the moon. Who says it’s bedtime yet? Not the far-wanderers and the dreamers and the poor little fools.

Ten years from now I will quote Shakespeare across a room. This even-handed justice commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice to our own lips. I want my nails to be painted red so I can slash the air to the words I am curling up out of my throat.

Feel the straightness in your limbs and then collapse around it because it is far too late to remember your initial beginnings. Coil back around and twist and transmute stretching stretching yearning my darling yearning—

—here are the wings and the thought-planes and the light gilding the morning. The bones are slick under our fingers, smooth to the touch, cool and hard and good to hold in the palm of your hand. They feel like something present. They feel like something to ground yourself. I fall backwards into their sea and sink into elanthium twilight with the morning star stretching out above, and we blot it out with the sunlight. The bones scatter shadow-patterns across the land.

 Here are the dawnings and I will paint you with them.