As when Gorsann on the day of wrath
raised his sword and sank it to the hilt
in the fertile earth of Nan Dornon,
commanding the island to sink,
so did the captain plant his blade,
thrusting it up between the man’s ribs
to nick the heart of his former friend
so his blood flowed like sand in the glass.
Too late, the healer’s hand wrapped the wrist
that clasped the hilt of the long, bright blade.
He opened his mouth to spit curses,
but as tides bring in only driftwood,
so did the healer speak foam and blood.
Life began ebbing from him at once.
The fingers loosed their rigorous grasp,
he coughed and the steel cut him inside.
“You threatened my ship and my whole crew,”
said Inaradd red-bearded sailor
to friend who’d helped him kill a dragon,
but betrayed him for a king’s envy.
With one rough knee to Tendiel’s chest,
Inaradd jerked the blade free from him—
the Jade Robe who wore the healer’s blue—
and kicked his surprised face overboard.
He sank into the Mother’s wet arms,
blood boiling from his mouth and gut.
Sea tugged at his blood-stained linen-folds,
and water became murky with red,
while Tendiel’s face, white as spindrift,
sank into Mother Ocean’s embrace.

Experimenting with Journler, the program recommended. So far, I’m impressed. It allows me to write offline — which will be useful, dangerously so, at school — and then send things to LiveJournal later. Also seems to save journal entries automagically, so even if I lose power suddenly, it will retain the entry. I can also keep multiple categories of journal, so I can keep one for poetry, and one for Epic, and one for school stuff, and one for fencing… the possibilities just begin to unfold.

Conversations with Mom among others, have brought it to mind that writing the epic longhand is going painfully, laboriously slow. I understand that it makes it ‘cooler’ to do it in ink before I do it digitally. But it’s also slowing me down. A LOT. I wrote this short piece of it in maybe 10 minutes, where it might take me an hour to think it and compose it and write it down. I’ve written parts of it before, digitally. I might think about doing the rest of Book II, and Book III, in type, and see how that goes, if it goes faster or slower or about the same. Finishing it sometime this decade would be good for me.

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