Thanks!
Greek? I guess I can see that. I mostly think of that colour combination to be reversed in Greek art, though -- the orangy/brown/red is the background while the figures are black.
Alternate armor design for Star:
http://www.unowen.net/tegaki/dblog.php?u=18912&e=320860I feel leery about using Native American art as MMX character inspiration. I kept arguing it back and forth in my head when I was drawing it, why I was feeling weird when I would cheerily do worse with Christian mythos and art, to say nothing of the whole Ivory's Restaurant concept where everything's free game.
Finally decided that I was feeling guilty because it's
Native American, which is not a good reason. I don't believe things are inherently sacred (or profane) and untouchable by my grimy little fingers. So there you go.
And that's my navel-gazing for the day. Time to read about gay gunslinging cowboys.
Posted on: 14 October 2008, 15:46:44
Trying to write fruity flowery Elven folklore for the DrowLove roleplay, I instead ended up with this. It's a bit depressing and entirely the wrong tone for a froofy fairytale. Also
very unedited.
[spoiler]
A soul who was well-loved in life, or crossed in love, or, perhaps, left a task yet to be done for those they cherished, will sometimes manifest after death as a tree that sprouts from their burial site.
Often, a bird will appear in the tree, and through it the spirit will communicate with the world, using it as its voice and eyes. Dead mothers have left gifts for their daughters, and dead brothers revenged themselves, in this manner.
Once, from the graves of two lovers unfairly separated and even in death were buried apart, two peach trees grew in an arc until their branches touched and intertwined. Soon, the crowns of both trees were so tangled together that none could tell where one began and the other ended.
The basilisk that wended its way through the forest floor had never been loved, whether truly or falsely. When it had hatched, its noxious breath had killed the cockerel that fostered it; wherever it went, it scorched the grass and withered the trees; and any man or beast that met its opal eyes was instantly turned into stone.
Before the creature had lived a year, the land had turned barren. Those that it had not killed had fled, partly out of mortal fear and partly from hunger. The basilisk's poison ruined crops and leeched fertility from the land. Only the hardiest trees and plants could withstand it. There was no strength of body or mind that could defend a person from a basilisk's gaze, and so the people fled.
The basilisk did not mourn its loneliness, for it had known nothing else. It slithered through the grey forest, leaving curlicue marks in the dust like letters in a lost language. When it slept, however, it dreamed in fits and starts and woke in shudders. Anxious hazy visions filled its nights, not quite dreams, not quite nightmares.
One such fretful night, the basilisk roused to noises outside its burrow, and it looked out to investigate. It was the deadest darkest hour, but in the faint starlight it saw a woman who had lain down to sleep. Some people say she was a fairy or a celestial, others say she was a traveller lost in a parched land, and still others believe she might have been a little of both. Whatever she was, she lay so close to the burrow that the basilisk could feel the wind from her breathing.
The basilisk had not seen another living creature for many years, and had it been fully awake, it might have made a noise or been startled. But it was in the smoky hinterland between sleeping and waking where nothing is a surprise, and it simply curled up by the woman, not quite touching her, and drifted into dreams once more.
And maybe because of some magic, and maybe because of the gentle cadence of the woman's breathing in its ears, the basilisk's dreams were still and calm through the night.
When it woke, it was midday, and the woman was long gone, her trail cold.
The next night, the basilisk's dreams were no worse than they had ever been, but it suffered terribly, remembering the easy sleep of before. Though it scoured the borders of its forest home, it never saw the woman or any other person again.
The years passed, and its scales began to grey and flake and scatter, when at last, under one of the few living trees left, it dug a burrow that spiralled down, down, down. There, curled in on itself in the earth, it died.
As its flesh withered and its taint faded from the forest, the tree above it (little more than a sapling) began to spread its roots further and deeper, until at last it touched its bones.
Perhaps, as it wrapped around the basilisk's corpse, the tree fed on the creature's solitude and desolation. The heart of a tree not given to strong emotions, but as the tree grew, it changed. Its bark became greenish and pebbly, and it no longer grew straight. It sent branches to wrap around the trunks of its neighbors, at first whip-thin, then they broadened and split to wander further afield.
The basilisk tree was still searching, though it did not know what for.
Eventually, its branches consumed the entire forest, and could explore no more.
Each trunk that the basilisk tree twined around did not wither, as they might have with a strangling vine, but went as hard and brittle as baked clay. When their leaves fell, they shattered; a heavy storm stripped their branches as efficiently as autumn would.
Over the centuries, the strangled trees crumbled into dust, but the basilisk tree still lives.
Sometimes, regardless of season, the basilisk tree gives fruit: Rock-hard green fruit in the shape of teardrops that no animal would touch. When they fell to the ground, they were left alone. When they were rotted by rain and absorbed by the ground, no grass would grow there.
The wind blows through the whirling curlicues of its empty branches where living trees once stood, and sometimes it sounds like a keening mournful song, and sometimes it sounds like a woman breathing.
Deep below the curling branches and within the tangled roots, better guarded than the highest of kings, the basilisk's bones are waiting still.[/spoiler]
Posted on: 16 October 2008, 23:53:35
Hey guys! Check out what I'm painting today!
Nuckalavee and Mouse (WIP)
I don't know if Mouse is offering or asking him for candy. I kinda hope it's the former...
Author
