from fallen heavens she shoots

requests post!

2008-09-14T04:15:03Z

So. The sequel to The Pinkish Green Saga will be an anthology of one-shots based in TPGS AU-verse. Savvy? Right, awesome!
There are, of course, a few rules--

1. Of course I won't accept Sasuke/anyone-but-Sakura and vice versa. I will do SasuSakuSai if you really want, but it'll be mostly introspective and Sakura will end up with Sasuke anyway, so... um, yeah.

2. No smut. This is because, um, I can't write it. I have nothing against it, I just physically am very crap at writing it. It would burn your eyes.

3. Any characters who have already established they're straight can't randomly go gay. Because that's kinda weird, yeah? (For characters who haven't established it, as in characters who are only mentioned, I will. It's just a question of how well. Haha.)

4. I will accept pairings of other characters, as in, characters who were only briefly mentioned in this story and didn't actually have any part in it, like Tenten or Hinata or Neji or Shikamaru or whatever. It'll probably have SasuSaku in the background, but I will do that. Because it would be totally fun to include other characters and not just stick with the main five!

So here's what you do--

1. Post a comment with:
Name:
Pairing:
Prompt:

2. Wait until I post your one-shot, and then you can send me a fantabulous review detailing my awesomeness. YAY! Okay, not really, but whatevs.

YES, ANONYMOUS COMMENTING IS ALLOWED, SO GO FOR IT! XD

XOXO
dance of isis

P.S--prompts can be basically anything. Lines from a song, a few random words, a quote, a movie, a book, anything. It makes it so much more fun that way, don't you think?

princess without her castle (chapter one prt2)

2008-04-07T08:35:49Z

I kind of sort of despise the "post too large" message, that's all I can say.

Through the gates of insanity, on the edge of humanity.

…I’m thinking back to the first time I met him.

I remember it being really cold. Usually I associate memories with the weather, because it makes it easier to remember how I was feeling. When it’s warm, nothing can hurt me. And when it’s cold, the whole world comes crashing down.

That’s when I saw him.

I was waiting for the train home––back to my wonderful one-bathroom, two-bedroom mansion, might I add––and he was suddenly leaning against the railing across from me. If I was going to be completely clichéd, I could say it was love at first sight.

But it wasn’t.

(I’m sorta cynical. I think that love is something that gains more substance with maturity. Like cheese. Or wine.)

No, I saw desperation. Not the kind that entails someone debating suicide, or someone dealing with the weight of the world, but someone who was not themself. Someone who was hiding. And I could relate to that, because it’s an art I’ve practised my entire life.

Weak people can identify each other on sight. It comes with noticing the signs, I guess, and being able to conceal them.

“Got a light?” were the first words he ever spoke to me.

(I could make some deep metaphorical insight right now. But I won’t. I’ll merely comment on how smoking is actually hazardous to your health.)

We’re too pretty for God to let us die.

“Got a light?” the dewy light of mid-afternoon captured his face in its grasp as he smirked. He was holding an unlit cigarette, evaluating me again, as if I was suddenly enough worth to warrant his notice.

I shook my head demurely, and tightened my grip on my school bag, fingernails cutting into the cheap fabric.

“Too bad,” he noted. I must have looked as frightened and awed as I felt, because he held the cigarette out to me as a peace offering. “You never smoked before?”

Orpheus, I noticed, had eyes the lightest shade of green. It gave them a quality of constant restlessness, as if life moved a little too slow for his liking, and he was in desperate need of a distraction from its pace. His eyes found mine, and I found they could be quite overpowering. I was trapped before I knew that there had even been a chance of a cage.

I shook my head again, more vehemently this time, and noticed his eyes flicker. Black filtered through from iris to pupil, before fading again.

“Are you mute, too?” his voice bordered more on vague and uninterested amusement now. It suddenly lacked its endearing quality.

Before I had the chance to respond to his question, Kamilah herself appeared at the top of the stairs. Her glance had flickered to me then, as if surprised. No one socialised with Orpheus. If they took time from their lives and endeavoured to address her, it was always meaningless. Oh, your hair’s so pretty! This surprise propelled me forward.

“Your girlfriend,” I bowed my head, staring fixatedly at the slightly broken clasp of my bag. It seemed incredibly childish now, covered in badges and stickers of old passions that were caked in dust on the shelves of my mind now.

Orpheus smiled privately, like my comment had struck a chord somewhere personal. “Of course,” he responded, and for a long time I tried to figure out what he had meant.

Kamilah’s eyes never left my back as I walked away.

(I wanted to hide, and be one of Them again. Only for a moment.

Then she melted away, and for another moment she was not the Princess.)

Tear at the darkness all around you––

(When I looked back at the diary years later, I found mention of myself within its pages. This thrilled and horrified me at the same time, for Kamilah Ray was not someone who mentioned in passing the goings-on of an insignificant schoolgirl. Kamilah Ray was of godly status, even now, and to me that would never change. Forever in my mind she would be great because she grew wings and became extraordinary from complete triviality.

Oh, how I envied her sometimes so much my soul ached.

And then I felt like the most superficial person in the world.)

––because who else is going to fight it?

I saw a girl on the front steps today. I’ve never noticed her before––but she stood out to me today, maybe because I wasn’t being completely selfish for once. She was talking to him, or at least looking at him like he was important. This made something, somewhere inside me, wonder.

She looked like any other girl from the grade. Short brown hair, dark eyes, and a too-fake smile in place. (Is anyone happy for real?) And she was clutching schoolbooks like they were her only protection.

It’s funny.

If I ever found myself in need of protection––and lately this desire for safety has increased significantly––then I would most certainly run as far away from school as possible. But this girl seemed to know the world, and seemed to have drifted absently away from an inescapable crowd.

It made me wonder.

Did I have any power over her at all, or was I finally finding someone real?

Don’t stop breathing,

(The answer was yes.

I’m not sure to which question.)

Because you might die.

princess without her castle (chapter one)

2008-04-07T08:33:53Z

So I have chapter one of "Princess Without Her Castle". I actually think this is a really interesting idea of mine (shock horror!) and that it's cool I actually managed to think of it myself (double shock horror!) without restorting to copious amounts of Mountain Dew and doing horrible things with FF and Naruto characters.

PART I
A parade of hope,
A dead man’s prayer,
And when the dam’s confines break

If I could wish upon a star, I would wish for a time machine.

I think it’s better to start at the beginning. When things were simple, and she was perfect without consequence. When we worshipped blindly.

Those were good times.

…those were the only times we had.

(And let the curtains open so we may lay our scene––

That bloody battlefield we call high school? That sounds dramatic enough.

Survival of the fittest.

Darwin, your philosophies were greater than you ever imagined.)

When we dance, look into my eyes. I want you to see me. And then we’ll fall.

Kamilah Ray was a beautiful creature.

There was absolutely no doubt in this claim. Blonde hair mirrored wild yet refined cerulean orbs that dwelt within a milky-white pasture. It spread out to the slightest tinges of crimson on a distant horizon, marking her cheeks. She rose as if out of a fairytale story, and we kept that fantasy to ourselves in the deepest parts of our minds.

Yes, she was beautiful. What I wonder now is just how much that statement might have insulted her. Her eyes––I always saw them to be the sort of eyes worn by those at the edge of desperation, those that debated jumping from a large cliff into a swirling chasm of darkness.

She was always so lonely. So separate. And the only way you could ever tell was by stepping back and really looking at her. Not at the lavish magnificence that trailed after her doggishly, not in her stunningly beautiful features, and not in the superficiality of mankind. No. If you really looked at her, really saw her, then you could see that familiar devastating loneliness that yapped at her heels all too enthusiastically.

Maybe it’s better to be alone when you’re surrounded by other people. A glorious excuse.

Kamilah Ray was an Untouchable from the very first time you met her. It took no time at all for her to establish her queenly presence and to initiate her kingdom.

Kamilah Ray was someone you aspired to be. Someone who you wanted, with every fibre of your being, to notice you. Insignificance was measured by how often she spared a glance in your direction. Existence, and proof of it, depended on her.

When I look back on it, I wonder how it happened––but now I know there’s no possible reason that could describe her ascension to Hell. No. That was human nature alone, and maybe we should be thankful that we were only ever in the background.

Spotlight tends to blur reality.

I remember stumbling across one of her old diaries, and being too tempted to hand it back to her. I remember opening the pages with a trembling hand. Because it was too great a thought that I might actually be getting a glimpse into the psyche of the Princess, the Untouchable, the almost-Queen––

When I found her diary, I distanced myself from Them.

(Them, them, them. I used to be one of them. But now, now I’m not, and I bear this brand. This mark on my soul.

I am myself.)

Begin––

Sometimes I wonder why I bother. It seems to me like every time I try to remove myself from this position, the attempt fails without anyone ever acknowledging its existence. Maybe they’re all just too pathetic to see how wrong I am, how I shouldn’t be a role model or be considered better––

But maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m pathetic for letting this charade continue.

And I’ll tell you something––

I kind of enjoy it.

It’s such a perfect place to be. Where everyone blindly worships. Where everyone places me on a pedestal so high up it could touch heaven. Because if I can do no wrong in their eyes, then I can’t be a bad person, right?

No. That can’t be right.

But, see, I’ve had this idea in my head since I was a little girl … I remember constantly dragging out this dress-up costume of my grandmother’s. A princess costume. And I remember knighting my dolls, and running around in a tiara, and wishing––wishing that I could be great.

Wishing that I could make my own fairytale, have my own knight sweep me off my feet, and have my own ending and ride off into the sunset. Live happily ever after.

So maybe this is my fairytale; a story destined to ruin. Something doomed before it even began. And maybe when I had my chance I leapt at it, because it’s so much easier to be worshipped and idolised than it is to be ignored. They always need someone popular, something great. They need me to look up to, to secretly hate, to want to emulate–

And that, that is just me.

Yeah. That sounds saner.

And maybe, just maybe, if I pretend I never think these things––and that I never think anything at all––then I’ll start to believe it someday myself. That things really aren’t complicated, because it’s simple.

I’m the Princess.

This is my fairytale Kingdom.

(Because if enough people believe it, then it’s the truth. Truth is relative. If enough people have faith, this is their religion. Worship the Princess, for she is great. And it’s insane, and it’s crazy, but it’s something to cling to.)

…that sounds more human.

I can’t be evil, because I’m just like everybody else.

Kamilah Ray only had one person that she really trusted.

(And I didn’t gather this from her diary, but after its existence had been revealed to me, I began to see her in a different light.

And then I began to hate her.)

We called him Orpheus. You know, I realise now that nobody ever knew his real name. But the fact that our Princess trusted him caused us to trust him, too. Place trust in a stranger with an alias. Yes, that’s the foolishness of humanity.

The darkness of night.

Kamilah and Orpheus seemed to connect in ways that I hadn’t thought possible. While I’m not sure it was love, or even kindness, their souls were intertwined in something stronger than first loves and crushes. It was friendship, but I think out of desperation they were brought together in a terrible clanging symphony of an out-of-tune orchestra. It was their time, and they danced together.

Always together. (Always alone).

Orpheus made me understand Kamilah, because he was a shining beacon of hope that lit her darkened path. No, he wasn’t that. He was more.

“He tainted the light I had,” she’d written in her diary. “He tainted the light I used to charm everyone, and he made it real.”

I remember––and it seems so far back now that it was almost in another lifetime––seeing the two of them together at lunchtime, and he was closer than the Princess had ever allowed anyone to be. He was inside her circle of glory and power, and he made her weak. But this weakness blossomed into full-fledged reality, and I think for this he made her just a little more human.

No one else seemed to like Orpheus, because he stood tall and proud and skated around everyone else like they weren’t part of his universe. Which they weren’t, and they knew it, but insults cut deep.

Love at first sight, I could hear the whispers of the underworld, yeah, that’s what she must think it is. She has to be in love with him––why would she have him around otherwise?

But Orpheus and Kamilah were so much more.

We accepted this––they accepted this––because she was our Princess, and had reigned since the very beginning, so every decision she made was watched with grudging respect. She was ours, and Orpheus took a piece of her that he didn’t return, but no one ever thought to ask him to replace it.

No.

(Because we watched her crumble, and we shuffled away into the darkness of our minds, thinking over and over that it was never our fight.

Never our fight to lose.)

Survival of the fittest, they say. And our Princess must stand her own.

That was the first principle of high school. Distance.

Orpheus broke this rule.

Love me, or the world will end.

I woke up this morning, and felt like I was gonna die.

It wasn’t just a feeling, I don’t think––it was a sign. Then again, I’ve always been superstitious, so maybe it was an overreaction. It was a feeling that was so strong in my mind I was dizzy. And maybe it wasn’t giving me a literal meaning. They say that dreams are on a different level of thinking. So maybe it symbolised birth or cake or a pond or something like that.

I never really got it, and I’m not sure whether I ever wanted to.

…I stopped dreaming properly years ago.

An endless loop of nothing. That’s what you are to me.

The Princess never had a real personality. Not one that was ever analysed or talked about. The Princess was the figurehead that birthed our own identities, but she was a backdrop. Something important, but something inconsequential. When I found Kamilah’s diary, I found her soul along with it, and the face behind the mask was fearsome and unsightly.

It’s not fair to say that she was a horrible person––the judgment of someone being a horrible person is reserved for those who are soaked through with the kind of evil that comes in weight. No, Kamilah was more than a horrible person; she was a flawed person, with a flawed mind, and this made me hate her.

I hated her.

Yet that never changed the fact that I could never erase her magnificence from my mind. She intrigued me, and with misguided curiosity I attempted to unravel the enigma that was her popularity. I wanted to know how someone so hideous could be so adored.

And perhaps it’s not fair to say she was hideous. She was just like me; a girl with average ideologies, average values, average morals. But I wasn’t her, because I was just someone, and she was Someone. Is it fair for someone so normal to be so greatly praised?

I hated her, the Princess. Her, the Idol. Because she was everything I was, and perhaps a little less, and I had always wanted to be Someone.

Someone that people noticed, if only for a fraction of a second.

I could bleed tears, but then what would that leave my eyes?

Orpheus must have noticed how I didn’t look at Kamilah the same way as the others did, because he began to spare me the occasional curious glance. It was a vacant expression with the slightest hint of boisterous masculinity, like he evaluated the whole world on a scale of one to ten. Instead of being at one, I had progressed to three or four. Orpheus had no time for us mere mortals––maybe we disgusted him––but somehow he made time in his universe to acknowledge my existence.

It angered me slightly that Kamilah was the only person he ever knew. It was on the very outskirts of my mind, but it was a hot burning fury that encompassed every negative feeling I’d ever withheld for the two of them. They were like planets out of sync with the rest of the galaxy, but were excused because they were powerful.

(And how powerful could one broken person be?

Maybe that’s why they fit together so well.)

And I was becoming someone terribly superficial and obsessive, on account of the fact that a fifteen-year-old teenage girl can’t be trusted. I still firmly believe this. He asked if he could borrow a pencil, and my heart thudded against my chest with alarming frequency, and with such violence, that I suddenly found myself unable to answer him coherently.

“Orpheus has this effect on me,” were Kamilah’s words chanting in my mind again. “For most people he’s part of the scenery, like a garbage truck or a tree. But to me he’s a pillar of something. Something I haven’t quite figured out yet.”

I became attuned with this something, and it frightened me a little. Maybe it was my sudden impulsive hatred of Kamilah, or maybe it was something more. But I ignored it, because it was fearful.

Orpheus can’t be accepted, said the voices of my peers. Them. If he’s accepted, then it’ll mean we actually like him. And we don’t.

They all loved the Princess, and kissed the ground she walked on. She could do no wrong, and it made them all better people to think of it like this. If they had someone superior to them, it made them feel safe. Secure. I wanted to disagree, I wanted to fight. But instead I loathed Kamilah in the quiet of my own mind, because it was the safest place to think. Or at least it had been. It had rescued me so many times in the past. Now it contained the first glimpses of corruption, like a bud blossoming mid-winter.

Corruption. Corruption, I think, is also relative. Can people who are on the brink of adulthood really be corrupt? I suppose that to think of ourselves as children makes it easier to think at all.

I wanted to disagree with them about Orpheus.

Was I being childish?

Or was I more of an adult than them?

(Because Orpheus was someone that possessed no openly bad qualities. But he was someone who was as close to Kamilah as they all wistfully believed they should be, so their minds turned green. From winter to spring. No flowers this year.)

I had my own special membership. I could be one of Them any time I wished. And before it had suited me, because I could blend and think like them, know them, see them. Now––now I wanted to break away, and not only because of Kamilah.

No, I think it had a lot more to do with Orpheus.

princess without her castle (prologue)

2008-04-05T03:47:32Z

So I wrote a Naruto fanfiction that had the same name as this. Unfortunately, this isn't that story. But I liked the same so much, and it fitted, so I put it for this original story.

PLEASE GIVE FEEDBACK.

(Inspired by The Great Gatsby.)

i. she is great, she is powerful, she is perfect.

She sits there in all her glory and I almost envy her.

What stops me is the way she always has to keep her posture perfect, her smile brilliant, and her face radiant. What stops me is the way she has to be in faultless harmony with every inch of humanity around her. What stops me is how all that falseness, that contemptuous form of evil blossoming from almost-sincere intentions, must kill something deep down inside her.

She is the Princess, one mile too short of Queen.

The sun seems to reflect her importance, casually streaming down in ribbons of yellowy splendour to greet her each morning. Her easy disdain for everything not-perfect, everything slightly-wrong, reaches out widely on either side of her, capturing you in its potent grasp. You can’t help but feel extremely insignificant and perpetually blackened by her purposeful magnificence.

She is great. She is powerful. And she rules over us, the denizens of her kingdom. Plays us like pawns in her eternal chess game, knocking competitors out of the race, and putting knights and castles in our path.

We’re the indispensable truth of her heralding ruin.

Yet, she still manages to maintain her own window of shadowy glory.

ii. shall we dance, sir?

The snow against mottled blue lips looks strangely endearing.

The crimson-soaked whiteness of the tundra stretches out in spindly patterns, criss-crossing in the shadows. It’s here that evil truly lies, in the secrets of our own blood. The blood of brothers and sisters, dying for causes that have been not-quite forgotten, flitting on the edges of tunnelled visions.

The body is stretched out, arms wide and legs pressed gently together with a sort of wistful prim politeness. There’s a look of surprise, and certain aliveness to his eyes, wild and crazed by dried blood. The crowd distances itself from the corpse, as if slightly afraid of contracting something contagious from the rotting flesh. And maybe that’s it; maybe it’s much easier for people to believe death is contagious.

Emotions swirl, opening up a large abyss of forgotten feelings and misplaced tears. I almost cry, but stop myself at the last moment. A practical stranger, a figure carved into the snow, forever twining himself with the land where he met his demise. From dust to dust, ashes to ashes. The fire at the edge of mind and heart signify many more choking cradles of deadness.

Isn’t it just a continuous ritual of funeral pyres and eulogies?

The Princess stands closest to the corpse, still hovering a few feet from the mutilated vessel. That’s all it is, really. A vessel that has failed its master, sending the soul into an everlasting and deadly afterlife.

Hot tears teeming with a certain sort of dedication froth expectantly at her eyes, spilling over with a round of proverbial applause from her audience. Everyone is watching the tableau, frozen with a mixture of sympathy and uncomprehending horror.

Is our Princess weak? they seem to say. Why is she crying? There are no tears for Royals.

Then the Princess sinks to her knees, and crawls––Crawls! the crowd cries. Crawls! Like some common animal!––towards the dead man, choking sobs filling her body to the brim and bubbling like carbon dioxide from her mouth. Her hair hangs around her face thoughtfully, as if debating whether it should join in on the momentary lapse of her façade, if it should play its part in her humanity. Her last, lingering moment of humanness.

Then it flies out with the oncoming wind, showing the angry red streaks that trail down her too-white cheeks. She is bent over the corpse, like an old-beggar woman, letting the moisture from her eyes shower the man’s blood-soaked jacket. It is in this I see the evil be born.

When a person’s eyes turn black, I remember my mother telling me; it means they are truly gone, truly evil. Truly soulless.

And her eyes are devastatingly dark now, as she temporarily forfeits her rule over her brilliant perfect kingdom, and lets the pervading sadness capture her.

Sadness is a funny thing. If you immerse yourself truly in it, it comes with a sense of a far-off embrace, like giving up is the most wonderful offer in the world. And letting sadness overtake you in the fast lane, while you drive your old beat-up truck of glimpsing-happiness, can be exhilarating. Yes, the Princess’ eyes are dark now, like midnight and the flicker of burnt out candles.

She cries, and she breaks, letting her kingdom see.

How could she––? How could she be so weak? She is our Princess, she must be strong! The audience does not sympathise, because we are the pawns in her game, and have nowhere else to look. We’re drawn to her almost-perfect façade, and her mind games, because she is the Princess.

She is our Princess.

And one day will we make her Queen.

(If we don’t destroy her first).

She looks up now, hair wild and face in desperate need of rearrangement. And she seems naked now, like her perfect garments of silk and satin have been torn and ripped. Like her beautiful dress has been stolen from her, and she faces us now without any semblance of her station marking her.

Unblemished, I would say. A disgrace, says the eyes of the remaining people.

Her lips part and a guttural sound escapes them.

“He’s dead,” she screams, and you can hear her heart shattering for miles.

And this is when reality sinks in.

iii. you know you love me like i am. you know you want me badly.

Yesterday seems an eternity away, and everyone pretends to forget.

Our Princess seems to have a bigger shadow today, a bigger secret. And she is smiling at everyone, letting her too-clean barriers sink into place. There is always distance between her and us. And she is perfect.

Her steps echo against empty halls as she stares straight ahead, serene and powerful. She is so horribly disconnected from the dirtiness of reality, yet she is involved in it. There are still the hesitant few whose thoughts travel back to the momentary weakness; those who are plagued by the Princess’ display of imperfection. But they quickly learn to salute and praise as always, because it’s never been any other way.

I almost envy her.

Yet something stops me.

Everything stops me.

So there we go!

establishment

2008-02-17T01:33:31Z

So I have finally gotten myself a proper writing journal. My other journal will be only personal entries from now on (I bet you're all glad, right? You can just ignore the other journal now).

I LOVE THIS LAYOUT.

PAINTEDLAYOUTS IS WIN.