one rook's lovesong

she had once loved a man who was whiskered and beautiful

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Fixed: The secret to staying young is never growing up.

27 September, 2010 (08:02) | A Lovesong of Rooks, The Beacon City | By: Gabihime

Lauren (one of the several I know) recently made a comment on “People of our generation refusing to grow up,” and included a humorous picture to illustrate her point.

Reading the comment and seeing the picture, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own strong feelings on the subject, which I had addressed, some time ago, in a short story about Gabriel’s children. I thought of the story, and of my own strong feelings, and decided that the best way to say what I felt was to share it.

This story takes place in the Beacon City epoch, that is, after the events of the Final Days and the defeat of the Creeping Dark. It is the summer of 2010, and Demeter Serraffield and Matthias Eisenreich have four biological children and one adopted child. They are Rachel S. Eisenreich, the angel of Benevolence, their firstborn son, eight years old, Jibreel Eisenreich, the angel of Mercy, their eldest daughter, seven years old, Zadkiel Eisenreich, the angel of Forbearance, second son, six years old, and Samand’riel Eisenreich, angel of Fertility, the baby, four years old. They adopted Adam Konrad Decker, Amatiel, angel of the Verboten in 2007. He is eight years old, like Rachel.

In any case, I think it requires absolutely no familiarity with the characters to enjoy this story, as it is a story about Peter Pan, on the page and on the stage.

Here you are then, Fixed: The secret to staying young is never growing up.

All children grow up, except this one.

Canto I – Whistle in the Dark: The stars fall

21 September, 2010 (19:59) | A Lovesong of Rooks, The Final Days | By: Gabihime

So, although it ended up being a little muggy this afternoon, a storm appears to be rolling in. Outside, walking into the wind, I caught the smell of something dead and rotting, faintly sweet and very foetid. I couldn’t find what made the smell at all, although I looked around for it.

A mysterious smell of rot.

There were high fences all around which might have concealed the source of the smell — a dead cat or rodent perhaps — and I might have discovered it if I had methodically pressed my face to the cracks in each of the fences. I looked in one yard, and then another, but I saw no dead things. Perhaps it will have to remain a mystery unsolved.

Anyway, today I’m posting the first text chapter of Lovesong, entitled Whistle in the Dark: The Stars Fall. This chapter is nearly finished, but not quite. I still have three more sections to write before it’s done, but since this blog is an attempt to track my progress as I work, there will probably be plenty of things posted in the future that are not quite finished.

The rain has started. Here it is then, Canto I – Whistle in the Dark: The Stars Fall. This comes immediately after the prologue. Please enjoy the introduction of Oswald Blake.

Finally, a sanitized version of the prologue

21 September, 2010 (02:20) | A Lovesong of Rooks, The Final Days | By: Gabihime

For some months I have been pressing a half-finished, messy, and deranged set of ramblings on people and claiming it’s the prologue of Lovesong. I have not yet drawn the prologue, as I should, but it’s eleven pages, and that’s pretty intimidating. Not much of Lovesong is actually in sequential art format, just the prologue and then a few other interior pages, more or less meant as additional illustrations of dramatic points, unlike the prologue which is meant to stand entirely on its own.

But the prologue is meant to be sequential art. I cannot imagine it in any other way.

At last I present it to you, organized and paginated, in a way I hope is reasonably easy for you to follow. Ultimately, it needs to be drawn, but until it is, please make use of this, the formal script of the prologue of a Lovesong of Rooks.