"Where is mine skin? Where is mine cruel crown? I have lost mine raiments. Who will help me retrieve them?"

I've finally broken down and made a Patreon.

Let me back up a bit.

Some of you people may not know me - and some of you may have forgotten - but a long time ago, I wrote a lot of stories here. Most of them were well received. So now it's time for me to try and make something of it.

This is my Patreon. I've been thinking about this for a long time, about trying to make money off what I write, and I think it's about time I do so. So what does this mean? First of all, all of my writing - save for gifts - are going to be taken off of TEF and my Tumblr. There are several tiers that are going up on the Patreon that'll give people an opportunity to win stories or characters and things of that nature, as well as a couple of other fun things, and access to my world-building work!

I thought a lot about posting this here, but it boils down to the fact that this game really helped me develop one of my favorite characters, and not posting here just seemed wrong.

So if people see stories vanishing from their bookmarks, there's no need to panic. It's just me doing a little spring cleaning, that's all.

Thanks, guys.

The King Has Returned. Long Live The King.

...love you to death.

There was nothing worth noting. There were no songs worth singing, no poems that needed reciting. She wasn't going to worry about looking nice when there was no one to impress. Nothing worth impressing, nothing impressive worth writing home about.

The world was a cruel collection of considerable buffoons, and none of them made her want to leap out of her skin to make a spectacle for. No one would stop for her passing. No one would stop for her dying.

Everything passing by was not coming back.

There wasn't a pelt pretty enough to make her want to stop and stare. There wasn't a mask she couldn't see through, a set of antlers she was interested in climbing. There were no stars in Sianna's sky. There were no wishes thrown in wells, no shoot stars to hang hopes on.

There was nothing she would race for, no one she wanted to run to. There had been no heartfelt goodbyes.

There was nothing - not a single savage solitary soul here - that she was willing to love to death.

...on my brain.

Curious inconsistencies, the sort that set teeth on edge, that was the way the Beast tended to work. There was no rhyme, no reason, no real way to tell what he was thinking. Deep behind the fires float in empty sockets, a brain was perpetually turning, churning, vomiting up thoughts and ideas.

None of them were meant to be taken home to mother. None of them were good - nothing good had ever come out of the Beast. Plenty of good things had gone into him though, little lights and lives he'd chewed up and spat out.

He was not in the business of caring; his was not a mind meant for mild-mannered thoughts. The only thing Bylah had to show for the way he acted was the corpses he'd left lying in his wake, a pretty little parlor trick to appease certain spirits that thought it was his duty to work.

Work? What was work to something that never stopped eating?

And so the Beast spent his time smiling - for one may smile and smile and be a villain - and could never quite stop, either. A skull, after all, has but one thing it can do.

Then here came this small thing, this white wonder that thought it knew better. Briefly, Bylah had thought of Nine, another white monstrosity, so small in his audacity. Nine had slipped and slithered, shoved himself beneath the rot-wet of Bylah's side, and had stayed there perhaps longer than he should have. You can't stay close to something that reeks for too long, before you, too, start to stink of sun-molten flesh.

Bylah considered the thing as he did all else - dispassionately, without care or consideration. What did he have a need for companionship for? What did he care about white things, and how eager they all seemed to sully themselves with him?

...but you're the same.

Once, in a long line of legacies, Bylah had watched white things float about, little bits of snow.

He'd always liked the white - because it was so much of what he wasn't, something simple, sure, pure and clean.

Bylah had never thought himself unkind - he never thought of emotions like whittled worries, something stirring in his head, but...

Nine had been white. Nine had been the first innocent thing Bylah had found worth his while.

And now, now, he watched the white wither, fade - it reminded him of parchment paper, of the way the old man's eyes go rhummy.

And one day, a once white thing waltzed by, and

"'I like you calm, as if you were absent:
distant and saddened, as if you were dead.'"

The deer paused, pondered, and turned his head to consider the horrific filth of the Beast.

Was that how the world saw him? As absent, gone? He cast the summer-sky of his eyes down, frowned, wondered what the world was coming to.

"I was absent," he agreed, well enough. "I was, perhaps, but the passing clouds.

"But now I am here - for here is where I need to be. What if I left my lovers? I'd rather be here, on the ground, than up high in the sky, leaving behind those that need me."

...come sit inside my bones.

...and you pulled away.

And so, having stolen the first star out of the sky, the Beast considered the work he’d had to do. So much work, even for such a great prize. Surely there was a way to simplify this process.

So the Beast sat and stewed, rested and mused, and thought about the ways in which one might reach the Heavens, with all of it’s bright, flickering lights. An epiphany struck him, lightening bolt bright.

“If but mine horns could scrape at the underbelly of the sky,” the Beast surmised, “then I could take all the stars I might want.”

But…how to make one’s self bigger? Another puzzle, another conundrum.

Beside the Beast, his ever persistent Shadow stirred and slithered, rippled and ran along the great Beast’s back, to pour his tongues into a tattered ear.

“I will help you,” the Shadow slurred, tongues twining in his mouth, behind the brilliant bright of his bear trap mouth. “I will pull one way and you can pull another, and you will stretch yourself so tall!”

The Beast looked thoughtful: it was not the worst idea to have.

“Alright,” he agreed, “but you must be careful with mine horns - they are terribly sharp, and it would not be hard to hurt yourself.”

“I promise to be careful,” the Shadow sang, and soon, the Beast bent and pitched forward to stand. His Shadow rose as well, making himself hands were none had been and when the Beast bowed his head, his Shadow reached out to grab at the endless sprawl of tines that served as the Beast’s horns.

The Beast started to back up and the Shadow started to tug and soon, the Beast started to lengthen. He grew and grew, the length of his body turning terribly long. Before the sun was set, he was so tall that his tines touched the sky with no problem.

When the Beast looked about, he was both pleased and puzzled. He was so terribly tall now, but something seemed to be amiss.