A Continent of Banalities

Theistr, the Charnel House Giant Scholars have deduced that giants must have been a mistake by a careless god. While they are not bestial by nature, they need such great amounts of food that they often go cruelly hungry in their formative years. This under-nourishment makes them weak of mind, in addition to being ravenous. Furthermore the giant physique seems a poor fit for this world. They are too large for any real interaction with humans, and animals tend to flee them. Ginats stub their toes on boulders and unknowingly tramples the fences and huts of humans, leading to enmity between them and us. These are the reasons that giants are nearly extunct, and that those who live on have grown twisted in their ways. Theistr is such a giant. He dwells in theValley of the Unfortunate Undead, in one of many charnel houses. Standing up straight he’d be six meters tall, but he is bent and hunched from his cramped living quarters. His face is long with a constant ha...

Into my heart an air that kills  From yon far country blows:  What are those blue remembered hills,  What spires, what farms are those?  That is the land of lost content,  I see it shining plain,  The happy highways where I went  And cannot come again. A.E. Housman

This is an older piece of fiction. I'm posting it here to save it from G+ageddon. I don't write fiction anymore. Dunno why. May 1st I had a dream last night. I was in this labyrinth. When I say labyrinth, you might imagine an intentional structure, like a hedge maze. That wasn't it, exactly. The labyrinth in my dream was something that seemed to have come together by happenstance.  One wall may have been made by dead shrubs, which tore my hands when I tried to force my way through it. Another was made of crumbling brickwork, another again of corrugated iron. At one point I had to worm my way through an old culvert, which stank of stale water and mildew. Now that I think about it, I can't remember noticing smells in a dream before. I was in a hurry in my dream. I am not sure if I was running from something or towards something. There was a sound in my dream though. A sound and a presence, really. It was a rattling sound. Or maybe scratching it better. Scratching a...

The Darkling Thrush BY  THOMAS HARDY I leant upon a coppice gate       When Frost was spectre-grey, And Winter's dregs made desolate       The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky       Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh       Had sought their household fires. The land's sharp features seemed to be       The Century's corpse outleant, His crypt the cloudy canopy,       The wind his death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth       Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth       Seemed fervourless as I. At once a voice arose among       The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong  ...