*tatterdemalioncandle

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About Literature / Student Premium Member Christina Hambleton18/Female/United States

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Coronach

ElThere were several things that one expected upon stepping onto a starship-- particularly one with such a prodigious reputation as Vinteuil's Phrase. Its archaic title, bold and euphonious, was perfectly suited to the most agile starship outside of the Martian Reserves. The giant loomed over the docks, which was a panorama of moving boxes, each equipped with a maintenance team and a beaming money-juggler primed to sell their wears. They hung off the dripping carbocomposite scaffolding and its sparking wires in white jumpsuits, the easiest to bleach, seeming pale spectres fleeing from the ship, which had presumably finished refueling. That ship, it was rusty copper and at least three decks high, designed such that the intricacy of its construction, those masterful inner workings, were apparent in the pipes and gears that crawled and gyrated over its surface-- some for show, some glittering with the autosensory software that characterized most new technological wonders.
In any caseEl by *tatterdemalioncandle

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Radical Part IHindsight is undeservedly notorious. The historian is derided for it, and the simple minds that commit that slander would also have us believe that it brings only regret.

The truth, of course, is that hindsight is the most beatific of humor. It brings with it the kind of gut-wrenching laughter that makes tears of joy and pain glide in harmony down rose-pink cheeks.

This is true particularly with ideas. The speculation of one generation is the amusement of the next. Doomsday predictions aside, this isn't because the projections that men make are a far from the truth, from their destinies. Far from it, such predictions are usually chillingly Radical Part I by *tatterdemalioncandle

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Radical Part IIThey found Rad lounging in a circular pit furbished with couches and a small basin of fire. It was sectioned off from both the machines he'd brought to life and his battalions of failed work by a bare, steel mesh platform that clanked loudly as the girls approached. Marching over it made Cinder feel as though they were advancing on Rad via the lurching hull of a battle ship.

He was ready for them, but was that true vice versa? Yura didn't notice that Rad was reading a pamphlet on revolution. She didn't notice how the mottled kaleidoscope of his features delayed as they slid from brooding to felicitation.

No, she saw only that he was a radicRadical Part II by *tatterdemalioncandle

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Radical Part IIICinder always had thought she was different. Most people did. But she didn't mean in the usual, angst-ridden sense of the word, didn't harvest the delusion that no one could understand; humans were equipped to fathom each other all too well if only they'd use their brains. Yes… rather than all that she had come to realize that in a world where others were actors on the stage, as a fine playwright had pointed out in mankind's woe-begotten past, she felt like a one-woman audience.

Others flitted about in their roles, and she saw them each for their virtues and flaws. There were, she had come to realize, no heroes or villains. Only Fate's ficklRadical Part III by *tatterdemalioncandle

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Short Stories

The ChamberThe city lay on England's coast , somewhere peering out toward the shores of Northern Ireland—it didn't matter much where. What mattered was that it had people, and it had a beach. Like many beaches of the twenty-first century it was cold, the sand crackly like frost and strewn with refuse, the waves lapping at its shore unnaturally frothy, and there were hazard signs studding its length. The green water itself twinkled in ignorant bliss under the sinking sun and heedlessly invited passersby to submerse themselves in its timeless, undulating fold.

Overlooking this beach was a row of shabby flats all linked by skeletal iron steps and the rubbThe Chamber by *tatterdemalioncandle

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GambitI.

The Colonel's regiment was marching. It was marching against an enemy no one would remember, in a time no one would remember, in a place that would be beyond recall or desire once its mines were depleted. Yet still the regiment was marching. Not together, because this was guerilla warfare-- a term that had long since ceased to bring images of banal natives and exotic jungles to mind and come, instead, to mean there were two kinds of men: careful and dead. They were lucky about as often as struck by lightning.

Thus was the regiment split into tip-toeing battalions creeping toward their destination. This was for the best. Grumbling was whaGambit by *tatterdemalioncandle

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The Virtue Of Deception Part I of IIITonight Elzio of the Quatronne family was stationed on Hickory Street. His short but muscled frame was terse beneath his trenchcoat as he melded with the city's grime. This was easier said than done in the southern half of Ghileswick where only the wealthiest Ashlanders dwelt, isolated from the extorted hell they'd furbished in the northern Shidaran half. Oh, the weightier crimes and high stakes criminals eventually trickled down to this, the seat of legislation, and they'd left their mark in the gritty residue that dampened the prosperous neighborhood's streets, fulgid and ghoulish in the lamplight. However, it couldn't compare to the hair-The Virtue Of Deception Part I of III by *tatterdemalioncandle

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The Virtue of Deception Part II of IIIThe scraping of a key in the door, a heavy slam, and a scream of frustration announced Farley's return that evening. Young Risk was flushed with indignation, his clenched jaw quivering dangerously, the fury of his expression as he rounded the corner to the parlor such that he seemed ten years older beneath all the ruddy anger and glinting eyes. Not that Miss Coombes, perched coyly at his desk with her skirt arranged neatly about her, noticed. She was concentrating most studiously on a sheet of parchment, her stately wrist affecting the most solemn decrees over it in black. At sight of her Farley's vehement scowl quickly reverted to a leer, aThe Virtue of Deception Part II of III by *tatterdemalioncandle

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The Virtue Of Deception Part III of IIIThe assassin within Investigator Ulisse was poised in the center of an underground chamber secreted beneath the Ghileswick Mariner's bank. His dissimulated features hadn't changed despite their surroundings, and his arms were crossed over his broad chest in an expression that admitted no fault for the relocation of his target, Desi Consentio. He had removed the deerstalker and great cloak, but his faithful pistol dangled from the holster at his side.

The seven top officials of the Quatronne family didn't seem to approve of his choice of weapons, but neither could they deny that he was their most reliable emissary. They were dressed, typicallThe Virtue Of Deception Part III of III by *tatterdemalioncandle

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Magnum OpusI wonder if there will come a time when man is surrounded solely by his own creations. Every year, every month, every day that passes man, in his insatiable curiosity, delves into the secrets of the universe. Learning is his opiate; it is his raison d'etre, to grow and change. But it was never enough to be schooled by the disciplines of science or philosophy. No, he must test his knowledge, he must be certain that the flower of the universe has opened its petals to him, has divulged every last, intimate drop of nectar from its tender blossoms. And what greater test, than to fashion the object of your studies by your own hand, what greater chaMagnum Opus by *tatterdemalioncandle

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Poetry

The Brightest Candles Always MeltListen, little soul, when they said we all belong
it was not a susurrance of any substance.
They weren't thinking for those tiny torments
dream by dream
that set your madness apart.

It might be that you keep this truth,
antimacassared in lace,
so that your grief, fragile and caring
like the tremble of a mother's lip,
mightn't pervade and be pervaded by
the callous surety of life.

It might be that you feared that unveiling
your scales of judgement might tip them,
and your shattered epoche yield no Ataraxia.

It might even be you feared you were...
wron--g...

But feeble soul, I think it more
that if you weren't to don the mask of rapport,
iThe Brightest Candles Always Melt by *tatterdemalioncandle

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i hate clichesWhen something touches me,
it doesn't go straight to the heart.
It settles at the bottom of my ribcage,
just below my breast,
and it warms this body I call mine.

And I don't think there's a rock bottom,
a gutter, or scum.
The way I figure it we all waste, and rot,
and say things we'd rather not have said--
Curses or no.
Sins or no.

And I don't think you're born any way,
so don't be who you are.
My dear, we're much stronger than that.
Be what you want, reach for everything,
and don't let these words, or others,
stop you.

Most importantly,
don't face the facts; there's no such thing.
Don't "dare" to dream-- that's easy, and i hate cliches by *tatterdemalioncandle

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Your NameNameless man is there a title for thee
Locked away in the boughs of my heart?
When first you came twas as a friend, you see.
You, too, had a soul set apart.

But your passage was brief through my life, my annals.
So you become as a dream and a light.
By your echoing words were my stains all absolved
To lay tracks for my path's lonely nights.

It's with you my that my soul has now tangled;
I don't recall what's yours, nor what's mine.
But it's for you that I cry when my spirits are mangled--
You, my stolid, sturdy ghost so divine.

Yea, though we aren't bound by breath nor blood,
Father seems a name for the one whom I've loved.Your Name by *tatterdemalioncandle

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An Aged LoveWhy do others compare their love to fire
When mine like dwindling embers glows--
Only rarely tasting of their God, desire--
And in tenderest mercy only shows.

For them a fluttering lash would suffice
And sweet longing for kisses and tributes of flesh,
Yet for us a wry smile, forgiving our vice,
And a burden twice shouldered our passions addressed.

So forgive me darling if I sing not of praise
For your childish whims and ignorance,
Because the rose tinted glasses I set all ablaze;
Your confessions, alas, were sweeter incense.

Let us hope that the ring we've held onto so long
Will, as youth's fervent dreams, prove just as strong.An Aged Love by *tatterdemalioncandle

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Critiques

PuffFunny now to think of then,
rain beating on plastic, the off-kilter metronome of nature and
its habit of not keeping time. The cigarettes are
being burned and the air is being brought in
and the mosquitoes are sucking blood from my back.
The light from the neighbor’s house is invading
my peripherals and every so often I think something
is interrupting them. I can hear the cows
nibbling at the earth and the dog chasing
moths in the garage. Is it too much to ask
that it stay like this forever, quiet night,
the world stopping to have a smoke?

Puff

by *MattVoscinar

And so I finally, and a little late, come to my promise to deliver you a critique. I have to say, I adored this poem. The form of it is...

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Orpheus and Eurydice story: A retellingI Am what I am.

In your world ones like me cannot be seen anymore. We are looked upon as lumber or paper. Fodder for your fireplaces and splinters to pick your teeth.

I am a dryad, a wood nymph, or forest faery.

However you wish to think of me, I am what I am.

What I am is dead.

I swirl around in the underworld in my own private torment for all time with no hope of being set free. Not anymore at least. Maybe I should start at the beginning. The same place I go back to day in and day out to relive over and over again. See, this is my private hell. To see my life, my hopes, my dreams flutter away on the wind like a butterfly's wings. That

Orpheus and Eurydice story: A retelling

by *TransendantVoid

I must say I am appalled this doesn't have more comments on it. Your writing is beautiful and flows quite nicely. "Fine Arts" indeed. I...

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Favourites

Instant Agent by *Canadian-Rainwater

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thixotropiait's getting a little too
non-Newtonian in here
gleaming
control from existential singularities
we had

the brilliant imaginations of children disturbed
and the uninterrupted powers of ancient gods

but reincarnation received
[and it was a culling]
re-birthed as ideo-
logical lackeys

and if we're going to keep looking
for needles we'll need
to build a bigger haystackthixotropia by *thesquareroot

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Trapped in the PresenT by *MRBee30

219 Comments

Grow Up"A turgid storm stomps over us,"
Tim tells it like it is,
trolling reality one universe at a time.
Mine? I don't know what it means exactly,
but can't help but think it's beautiful,
subversive purpose so discursive.

"Irony is bourgeois."

I'm exceptional in some way,
just don't know how yet: I
swim the gray areas turning dark, I
say, "This song sounds slower than I once heard."
You know, profound sh-t like that.

I fear oblivion. I'm
a nihilist with a purpose, an incurable romantic, I
love nothing, this totally confused hedonism: the lights
shining from out the buildings, they pulverize me. Eye
on the ball, how
how the mighty fall. I
don't pGrow Up by ~ianjolie

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Jun 15, 2013
5:44 am

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Jun 8, 2013
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*tatterdemalioncandle

Christina Hambleton
Artist | Student | Literature

United States

I'm an irredeemable cynic and a lover of words. I'm attending Denison University with a Philosophy and Chemistry Major and I intend to become something to do with hopeless idealism while writing on the side.

Oh, and you can buy a book with my work here---> [link] Or download it free on the website link.

www.smashwords.com/profile/view/tatterdemalioncandle

Interests

What to Expect

Journal Entry: Sun Jun 2, 2013, 4:54 PM

Friends New and Old

Allow me to reiterate, as I fear I do not often enough, how much each of you are valued. The help drumming up ideas, the criticism this young and sometimes vague intellect needs, and the support are appreciated on every count. Furthermore, something of an apology is in order. I confess that my writing can be scattered. I look back over all of it and it seems a loosely bound notebook of musings-- something which resembles a story only as a caricature. I, too, note how much of my adolescence imprinted itself upon those musings. Part of what you may expect from me are many, many new developments-- histories, mechanics, drawings and designs. I intend to discipline this scattering of dreams I've pooled about me and form something more tried and true, something which will be more worth your time to examine.

I would like to begin a deadline every Sunday. By this deadline's measure, I should have an update then. Something to post, some new aspect of the world I'm building drawn up.

Housecleaning

Because I am editing much of what I've accomplished thus far, please excuse the inconvenience of deleted deviations. If you are too enraged, then I beg of you, vent your emotions in the form of harsh critique of my newer creations.

Neglected Responsibilities

Matt, I know I still owe you a bit of critique. For everyone else, if I take some time to respond to your comments then it is due the fact I'm involved in summer research for the Chemistry department, teaching myself Japanese, and readings on theories of justice for later conversations with a few philosophy professors/history reading in order that I might better devise civilizations. (And fuel my obsession with law, but I digress.)

Here is to hoping that I may provide you with better propositions to mull over, brighter ideas, and much more moving inspiration.

Thanks as ever to:

and

for being my most helpful readers.

And to

for being my co-creator and dearest companion.

One More Thing...

To those of you whom are writers yet haven't picked up a Steven Erikson novel...

For the sake of not staring back down from the heavens when you pass from this Earth with tears streaming down your insubstantial face, do it now. You have not lived.

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