"La Dance"

I got a private dance teacher to avoid complications with basic temple dancers. Who hasn't got a crazy dancer story, right? As an impounded virgin deity, there wasn't much i could do at all in fact except parade my tail, and it was already an actual tail by then, up and back on the wide ceremonial terrace overlooking the visitation gardens, as well as being looked upon by them, up and back as a living sacred frieze and moving avatar of the the scriptural pendulum of whatever 12 times up and back in a pyncofiber headdress twice my height. But after a session with Mkidza Mlaf, ancient mistress of the dance, i'm just like any proper temple sprite who lives to dance the dance to live the life of dance to dance the dance of dance hopping in place clapping my hands in honor of the teacher and to express an opposing pleasure to all the pain she has just inflicted. For her to see me now with prominent inter-speciel features increasing by the hour, i see her differently as well: my display of even a hallowed tradition meant to celebrate Mrs. La Mkidza is now to her a horror disgust offense. Why does Mkidza agree to suffer through these "master" classes that a common fleke girl could teach just as well—and with more empathy? Sure, gold coins, and many of them. But more than that it's the sacred power of the dance of the sacred power dancing the sacred dance of power the sacred dance of dances the dance to live a life of dance to have the power to love the power of life to live to dance the power to dance to live a life of power dancing the sacred power of dance. "My name is Mkidza Mlaf," Mrs. once said, "...and my kids are every child anywhere who doesn't know La Mthyuh."

Ch. XLV, "La Dance"

from: 

I, An Impounded Virgin Deity

by Reptily

Shouting Moons

The Shouting Moons are simply whichever moon or moons are prominent at the time of the regulatory shouting, which is always conducted during Days of Destruction, which can be announced at any time by the Mthyuh Preservation Society.  

Important shimmering of the regulatory codex happens between partisan representatives either in different parts of heavily wooded areas or at the edges of adjacent cliffs or even sometimes in abandoned bone nests, which can hang from the cliffs as long as the rock can hold them. 

K's peering from the occupied nests lounging in caves or soaring above keep mostly quiet during Days of Destruction. Legend holds that the festival was designed for that reason: to hypnotize Mthyuh's hosts.

They wanted and needed to hypnotize K's not to have a big party but so that they could get done all the doables they couldn't do as random prey owing to the burdensome and costly precautions they had to take in order to take turns in an orderly fashion to calculate who can have a chance to be eaten next, and so on. 

Plus, even a single K's earsplitting HAHAHA and its wingspan against the sun, creating temporary climactic changes and blinding darkness, all of that had an effect on overall sanity, even of pets, and this was the most caring respectful traditional way possible to get Ks to just stop. 

Flekes themselves of course don't make critical inquiry upon their own generational habits and mostly consider the rather low chance of a violent, live blood sacrifice the least of their worries. The specter of living to a very old age is the greater terror.

The partisan fleke representatives shimmer the codex during the Shouting Moons from forest meadow to forest meadow or cliff to cliff and they must conduct the regulatory negotiations only by shouting back and forth as loudly as they can. This tends to keep the messages short and heartfelt. They all know the festival is only a weekend long. But they have needs, which tend to be generously met if they can get them across and back again, sometimes heavily depending on the winds. 

The partisan fleke representatives must wear very bright robes as a sign that they are vulnerable and evocative to Ks and that their spiritual duties always come first. Again, these details are not on their minds at all. It's just another day for them. Some might find all of this fascinating and even life changing if they ever sat down to reflect on or read about it if, no that isn't fair: reading's not a thing for them. Maybe they might talk about it with another fleke on a break or, it is said, share it with their faces only. 

During the Shouting Moons it's very important that you remain as still and quiet as possible. Ks nodding out during DoD can wake up. The whole idea is that everyone cooperate at this time, even guests. Allow Mthyuh's hosts to feel the tingling in their spines and pyncos. They say the regulatory shouting first started when the early flekes figured out how to distract a K for a few minutes by shouting at it simultaneously from adjacent hilltops. Eat me first! That is how that famous chant became part of the fleke daily parlance, especially during volca, when one may shout out Eat met first! and it's never a non sequitur. This wish must be at front of mind. 

RE-CAP'M18: He sweated it

 

Always ask yourself: how is this moment auspicious
Then remember who sweated all of it for you
See when he dropped it shook loose some shit and
Made him less valuable as bud (blood was 33%)
But more for humanskind to gather from lily pads
And cough up for Volca in the form of a shiny coin



from "Good Graciousness: Ilyn's Perspiration as Nourishment"
Children's Myth of Mthyuh

Better psych care

At some level they all knew they were bad and that the only good would be to wipe each other out and to enjoy doing it. 

There was also thanks to the shiv an intense respect for the individual spirit in each putrid violent body, sprites who were challenged to but could not become angels and were unavoidably and irredeemably sucked into the gravity of their hollow pelves, long fingers, and tiny manus.

"List of lists, I've lost my license." Jan spoke with her mind only, but it was real language. 

Peg: "You funny."

"I mean I really los... oh, damn."

"Ya they make them so thin they can get lost in a clump of pycnofibes on your ass."

Both: "Hahahahahaha!"

Jan: You know, Peg: I could just swoop around with you forever. 

Peg: That's what this is, this moment.

Their wings were on slow beat two, three times. There were no peaked or valleyed panoramas, just some yellow mist and greenish floor which both stretched out and curved down as if over a globe through all the angles they could see out of. 

My dorsoventral flap is really chafed. 

I like the vet-mix salve down at Friends' Urgency Hangar. It's practically a spa. 

Ya, I need to get my W.A.S.T.E. stamped soon anyway. I'll get the lavender. I know which one you mean. 

The day they started giving out Waiver and Acceptance of Social Toxicity Estimates to K's was the day they say we got our freedom. 

Better psych care anyway. 

I say volca to that. 

K's fly spread eagle.

 

Trans. by Phyliss (embedded)

Workspace

I burned these hairs on the stove
I remember reaching over the flame
Now the brittle curls slough off
And drift throughout my workspace



by Phyllis

Circle of caring

So completely sober, or as sober as i ever am, i started this project where i auto-stim a psychedelic journey from which i can learn.

I'd been reading wacky but reasonable versions of the plant-induced variety with accompanying sides of terror and physical revulsion.

But why? All of that only goes to show that the brain is perfectly capable of doing that all on its own, and that it may actually be always doing that anyway without our ever noticing.

So I surrendered to the colors and shadow anyone might notice with their eyes closed or partially rolled back into the head, relaxing.

The trip reports had mentioned being carried along on a current that you can't stop. I thought of the swollen stream rushing past right outside my door and what it would be like to be on it.

Distracting thoughts for me, a ruminator, don't have to be chased down, and my morbid imagination is not afraid of and indeed occasionally produces scenes of carnage and destruction, as does any red blooded. So i was not afraid, but that did not happen. There was lucidity as in partial dreaming.

But then i remembered my own last experience with a bio-halucinogen: the very real sense of another presence, not a cartoon guide frog sitting on a stump, but something round that was just next to me and actually overlapping into my own head, so like my head was a Venn diagram, except both halves living and potentially aware of one another, at least i of it.

Now tho as i hung my head in frustration, wishing for the ego obliteration splinters of which were variously described as lighting, ants, fractured bisected perspectives, no instead my hand on my head became the hand of that thing. It was my left hand and the thing had been intersecting with my left brain.

The hand was familiar and maybe it was someone i knew who is dead and earlier, even before the experiment, i had been experimenting with prayer and reflecting on how it's different from talking to the dead, and whether or not talking to the dead was more dangerous than prayer. Which assumes more agency? etc.

The hand not only held my head while I wept but let me bury my face in it and felt my face as if it had not felt it for many years and wanted to remember. It's not like i never feel my own face.

Lately also i've been saying thanks to my previous self: "Thanks, past self," and really meaning it. I do something that will help out later like putting the groceries where I can find them again, and it's a pain in the ass while i am doing it but i feel like i need to say thanks to that person for going to the trouble because so often everything seems like a lot of goddamn trouble but sometimes i find the energy to do it anyway because i respect my future self that much at least or at least have the optimism to expect there to be a future self.




Dr. Donna Thong
"Doing my time on the Chang K. Chang Chank Drunk Tank Chain Gang."

He Sweated It

Always ask yourself: how is this moment auspicious
Then remember who sweated all of it for you
See when he dropped it shook loose some shit and
Made him less valuable as bud (blood was 33%)
But more for humanskind to gather from lily pads
And cough up for Volca in the form of a shiny coin



from "Good Graciousness: Ilyn's Perspiration as Nourishment"
Children's Myth of Mthyuh

Petting zoo

CONNIE: Aren't flying reptiles and volcanoes and/or their unexpected ancestors genre if not hackneyed fiction?

REPTILY: No because this happened. It's retro-journalism, historical reenactment.

CONNIE: So nothing new.

REPTILY: The part that the K's never went extinct at all, that they'd been kept and mutilated and tortured surreptitiously for all these ions by secretive corporations and rich perverted human moral monsters-- that is pretty new or at least since it actually did happen then whoever might have made it up either did just that or based it on uncited reports of what we've got firsthand knowledge. Also the voluntary interbreeding-- through religious sanctions, the hideous scarring rituals-- that's not made it to the big screen, anyway has it? With reptiles? Maybe birds like Lydia + Swan but no. Mythology other category.

CONNIE: What else is new.

REPTILY: I don't know if any of this is new, bitch. Sorry about it. Just saying we've got a right to tell our story no matter if it suits you entertainment wise. This is not a lap dance, no it's all T baby. No shade.

CONNIE: Ok bitch you get to work, sell the product.

REPTILY: K-Bai.

CONNIE: Bai now.

REPTILY: Bai.

Her father was not Satan

Jan tries to convince a panel that her father was not Satan:

Anyone with a key to the mill is suspect, first of all. There's work to be done there; you can't make a watch list of everyone that leaves a fingerprint knowing the beast doesn't prolly even have one, do you know? And it's not because I wd be the Daughter, assholes. Whut wd that mean, anyway? Spawn of the devil indicates... are you good bad neutral. That's not been nailed down. A demon wd hang around and try to assimilate someone willfully or situationally ignorant, don't you think? OK I'm evil and I'm going to wear you because you are a sensitive searching self tortured hotty of a mess? I mean even after his cuticles became rotted with nail fungus Daad was irresistibly naive and focused on traditional virtue as a hair shirt, tio. OK, so I can speak the language of the Inquisition, and that was handed down to me by some sort of gothic nazi antihero that fits the cascading style sheet of the gift shop down at yr local lyric-opera joss house?

Jan Janzdaad: Plea of Patrimony
An Annual Public Oracle Dispenser Volca Series Event
"Only double red moon in recorded history."

You Pray

She got a gold-hoop earring big as her coffee-can curlers, awbe rocking wal she make somebody dead.

Chamatilly lay down on her feathers an brooding about the life of a forced priestess an how empty.

She imagine back 1000 WD to Reptily. Prolly robbn and theivn. Stop to chat.

You still there in my heyud? You know now I laik to die but am Mos Beloved Woma instead. They preparing me for a remote control where after I go my body and soul will operate forever, an even betr. Whut would you do if you were me nau Reppie. Jump in the Mthyuh is not a option because that's feed the Shiv and the shiv is the medsin make erybody twitchie. They could jus clip awdats hangin onda mens an a red shiv onda hormonz of da bitches but they wanna controe awda flow of that shit an how an whenit cum an go."

Reptily right then cut a man troat in the street, straddle him on the little-stone pavement, hold him at the collar, jus about ready to drop him and check for coins when she hear Chama cutting in. Reptily hear through holes in the sides of her heyud. She got a big gold hoop earring that be rocking wal she make somebody dead. Nau pausing in the pool of a street light, she look up proudly, speaking to a dark filthy cave hole where in the futr could be her later sef. Imagine she say:

"Nau Chama, you seem all holy an really clean an yor bress be poppn. They give you a steam shower in the Purl Falls and show you pruisnear all the tention any grl can get at da oracle an you prolly takn care of Moms in a high chank with furs and meats. You sad nau; you thinkn volca will be so painfol. Onee one thing you can do woma an that is pray, get down, get down and pray. Get down Chama. Get down, get down..."

Chamatilly interrupt Reptily rustic song from the firs WD:

"You pray, Mthyahphka. You phkn pray. You get down and pray."

One thing Chama know now is awda captivity an torcher an brainwashing also have some character building effek like if you survive, religion seem like booshia.

Reptily, back in oltimey land clutch a bluddie collar, make a ded man hed bob backward laik his neck is talkn wal she check his pockets:

"Get down, you got to get down, get down, you got to get down..."

Nau she laf'n walk away an you can see her spines down the neck and back, flip a liberty coin in the air an catch it.

"Bastards and your easy wages. I take your future!"

Whus yor Brank Tace Laik?

I stayed home, had lots to do, but sat instead
in th' middle of the flo wunning cuddle so bad.

when biology and geology mesh, you have oil,
or you have something like the Pegyuh, both-

ered by metallic scales and minerally salivar-
y mucosae. They've fixed it so it grows out o-

f her but remains viable for years beyond de
-ath. She's the first we'll have the chance to w

-atch nearly shrivel and be driven, in essenc
-e, by her own hearse, the product of her ow-

n body, like a toenail, cum or hair. We inserte
-d the programmable chips shortly after birth.

As her brain dies, the RC signals will increase.
Her hideous exoskeleton will finey b in r hanz.

No scientist can give me what ahm illin fo this
eve: a barl-chest'd man t' put m'arms around.

Cuz I say Volca at vespers an will gonna have
d' will of awda peoples, dey think i can replace

her. What dey don't wanna hear is how i've alr
-eady fayld by sendyn red shiv to d'opposition.

My brank tace laika bright copper penny, but t
-hat means it's cutting my yung perfek tongue.

Peggy's Last Chance

If someone would marry me, I'd come back. I'd take a high cave near Mthyuh with her steam falling across the front holes like curly bangs. Before the grafting my perp and me we'd have a nest of K's right there in the window box and send them out looking for my little ones. The four of us could briefly live as one before taking over each a hill or shivbar. We can pimp each other out as models and spokesmen. We can pose at the oracle for Volca. I would need to come out of my skin and sleep inside his shell at night.

The Craw

Chamatilly warm up the room:

Nau, yall come to me and you know which ones, who you are, every day i see ya cumup t'me nau, yu cumonup t'me nau and yu sez:

Chama, Chama I tellya i wanna, wanna
an i say y'don't hafta hafta, cuz the way
the rose grows chillun, what's the word
I'm after? Mozis. MOzis. Mozis. When t
-he rain hit da barn anda elemental hitd
-a ethereal farm that the misunderconc-
luzhuns begin to happen, happen. The c-
ment duss be mixing witda offrins an in-
sence and pity pie? is wenda sky start t'
open, open. Can it fly, they wanid t'no. C
-an it take to d'winan leave dem chiluns
behine, and of course you and I can say
cuz we livd to see the day when her life b
-ecame a way, chile... for every woman n
-au, every lady grrl lovin b'be womachal.
We know the sun went down and it stay
-ed that way for a wal. Mo longa than a h
-dred day, boyz. Ahm swe'in bullets whe
-en I try to tell you bout the tam when t-
he heavens met the seas but because no
one believed, baby oh yes: it didn't happ-
en. So when I tell you that by Peggy, she
, that monogram of womanhood in a form
-fitting and pressed uniform, except a re-
al doctor? It was inspiring to everyone. M
ost of all, Rick: who has given his life a nu
mber of times up to her, and finally, all up
in her. They say there is an "eschew"; so-
me call it "The Craw," where one day you
will come out. No, not born again, but real
-ly uglier. It will be another chance at life
for you, but with much more pain from sc
-ars that look as if you had thrown yours-
elf into a live volcano. Oh, wait-- I forgot.
You did throw yourself into a live volcano.

The entire congregation was standing and
applauding, even as they stooped to wipe
their tears on a co-worshipper's shoulder.

It was something came out during Volca years before, and they let her keep telling it now, as if she had earned tenure or had passed a rite of gases and would no longer have to suffer by torture but rather, now, and she preferred it, the torture borne of being a major source of pain for others, and beyond the pleasure of that, the building and maturing ability to self flaggelate and blood manage with no supervision. Because Illyn had taken it upon hiself to self-feed the Mthyuh, he had now lost any sort of nose terror over the Chama. She had always known and had been planning, at some level, his return and her rightful slow retribution: the collection of his debt to her being Top Bitch: he forced her to be moral by feeding drugs intraveneously that gave her a conscience, then convinced her to be true to her lying and theiving background. It made her stronger, but it had not created loving between them.

Albino Slave Sport a Red Afro

Chamatilly old slave Ilyn who legend say went over the edge in Volca, somehow he return. Chamatilly think about covering her ears so her brains don't sputter bloody out, think about that and roll her head around and screech, but instead she just weep in he lap.

"Illyn you my slave always and always come back cuz i own you till i die not till you die." Reptily

Sinewy [the Mp3]

sinewy

sinewy bitch prad chal!

Chamatilly Begin da Volca

songs are prayers;
prayers are shit;
shit is gold;
what of it?

oaths are prayers;
prayers are bold;
cowards lie,
or so we're told.

God is dumb;
Dumb is loud;
Can love speak
In a crowd?

Push is shove;
God's above;
or if he's nuts,
fire will bless us.

K's Rule my Emotion Sickness

Reptily because she developed the incompatibility early on before her shivpowers were implanted against the K-Names her force shield would now remain up always, even though the K's were again taking blood with the local alliance.

"Even standing facing one o' them full on, I feel a nauseation. I have to turn away and pull feathers over me."

Prepping now for Volca, only a few months away, unsettled matters become a concern. But then what wud scarification rites be without a scar. She shuddered thinking of the letter and where it would be place.

Swarm of Eaters

Chamatilly, a topless and comely African-American woman, 35, bowed from the waist and allowed the tip of her tongue to dab at the inscribed shivplate wafer sewn into the bottom hem of her skirt. When she stood up, all of her thoughts were gone.

She began to chant:

?u-bri' nitu' uhznao'? u-bri' nitu' uhznao'? u-bri' nitu' uhznao'?

She was practicing for Swarm of Eaters. Nearly her entire left side was covered with a dense forest of SOE scars. She had stepped up to the box, paid her tithe, and submitted to the ravenous creatures in the tiny, decoratively-shaped openings three hundred and eighty-eight times now, voluntarily.

I Blow Life Out My Ass

http://www.history.rochester.edu

"Why do you come to me now Tom."
"I don't know, but it may be just your improbability. Sometimes I go where life is least likely to be, and tonight I saw your fire. I also snapped the axle on my hooptie driving over some unexploded ordinance. Someone else might feel lucky to be alive."
"Why do you turn from life Tom."
"It's trying to rub me out. It doesn't want me except as a host, and I do not accept that."
"Life is all you have."
"Life is cheap. It can't afford me. Life is a Bolshevic revolution. It wants to break me up into small, poorly-appointed apartments."
"Do you believe in the Shiv."
"I do not."
"Do you have health insurance?"
"Only if I take the shiv. And only for pharmashiv."
"Auto Club?"
"Yes."
"What does your shiv priest say."
"You are my shiv priest."
"I only do Volca and sing. I am strictly ceremonial."
"I want to stay and hear your song."
"I am in a bad mood Tom. Volca did not go well. I cannot sing now."
"Maybe you can refer me to a shiv priest who gives a shit."
"Tom. You are a leper. I care for no one else."
"One song, Chamatily."
"Then will you call AAA and accept life's plan?"
"I will accept your song Chamatily. Life covers me in boils. I blow life out my ass."
"Very well. I sing. You bleed and ooze. We die together. Then we see about a truck."

10. Time is a Liar

Reptily sat on a footstool before a fire she'd made. Her specialty was burls, but she could also read the heat spots and Burnt Issue of cones, ashes and legumes. This oak burl had burned through the eve of and into the first morning of the new W.D. It was disturbingly reminiscent of a six-hour vision of hell she had experienced using wood from the same river bed the winter before. It's sandy, but it's cured. Miss Sprint just must not have been hosing them down. But fire's eye knows all. It can still carve its message.

She poked at the chunk of glowing wood and lifted it trepidatiously, as if she expected ugliness. "Yes, it's all written there." Reptily let the sandy, helmet-like shell of bark fall back on its tortoise legs of cinder. "Now it must burn up from the bottom. There will be a mark in the sand."

"All year, I do nothing good. I am a samurai against all best choices. I want this WD to break, and in her last flame, for the Mhuthya to roil up and bring home her bad daughter. Bad hunger to good. Vol-vol. God is pleased."

"All year in my pain I treat others bad. The world is my suffer. I am your food Mhthyuh, is me to take to your bowel. Vol-vol.

"All the days I eat I say I have something bad. Vol-vol. Vol-vol.

"I am only so sweet to get birds in the trap, and they rot. Because I have too am too much Mhuthya. Vol-vol.

"My children are lost. I have no children. Take my children. You are their path. But eat them last. Vol. Vol.

"Even temple mascots chew their own bones for me to complain vol. Even my babies have crawled away.

"I put my hair in fire to feed you, vol, I am gorged with lush diseases of lust and mimesis, horror and disgust, fear, misrepresentation, betray, go over, don't listen, TV all time, wastebag, simpleton, hypocrit, make death.

"I am fresh and livid and salt regret, vol. This day. Last day. You ate them all. Vol. Vol."

Reptily's spiny forehead rested on her knees now. There were more items, but why.

"The sloth, the fool, the reaper. I can only see myself, but I cannot see..."

It would be soon now. If she got the 2-spear sign, she could fight and run ahead. Trapped at home was a murder to her.