+angel, 14, china, they/them. personal blog. previously mayanqelou. // This blog is now inactive and any future personal content will be posted on my main blog, linhcindar.
okay so in 332 b.c. alexander was two years into his pissing contest with his dead dad when he realized that he had Seriously Miscalculated the situation and that oh surprise, the persians had ships and he had disbanded the athenian fleet bc he thought the athenians were untrustworthy pussies, and the athenians thought he was a short sunburnt virgin and also because he murdered a fucktonne of people and sold a lot more into slavery
and he realized, oh no! the persians are half way to macedonia and could possibly cut me off from the chersoneses and starve me out in persia! and if you’ve seen the princess bride you’d know: never get involved in a land war in asia. but not this kid! instead of DOING THE RESPONSIBLE THING AND TURNING BACK TO MAKE SURE THAT THE PERSIAN FLEET DOESN’T MAKE IT TO HIS HOME KINGDOM AND THEN SUBSEQUENTLY MURDER HIS OWN PEOPLE INCLUDING HIS ENTIRE FAMILY AND THE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WHO HAD PLEDGED HIM LOYALTY
HE DECIDES TO STAY IN PERSIA. WHY? because fuck greece, that’s why, he already did greece two years ago and if those motherfuckers have the bad sense to die when faced with a superior force when all their available men had been taken away on an idiot war to persia, that’s their problem and he really couldn’t give two fucks, kiss u miss u xoxo gossip girl
so he comes up with this DUMBASS SCHEME that wouldn’t have worked for ANYONE ELSE and decides to conquer sea by land; aka, take every major port on the eastern mediterranean seaboard so’s to cut it off from the persian fleet and starve THEM out
and one of these cities was a place called tyre; you might know it from the phrase ‘tyrian purple’ bc they manufactured the most expensive dyes in the ancient world
so when alexander showed up and was like, let me make a sacrifice in ur temple, also surrender? also maybe let me loot ur town bc im short on funds, ja feel?
the governor was like, um no, please, fuck off
and alexander got SUPER PISSED. like HOW DARE YOU NOT LET ME INTO YOUR CITY? WHEN I’VE RAZED THEBES TO THE GROUND AND SALTED IT AND KILLED 6000 SOLDIERS IN A DAY AND SOLD 30000 MORE WOMEN AND CHILDREN INTO SLAVERY? YOU DON’TTRUST ME??? THE OUTRAGE
everyone was like, bro
and alexander was like THAT’S IT THEY’RE GONNA DIE THEY’RE GONNA FUCKING DIE KILL EVERYONE LET’S GO LET’S FUCKING GO
and everyone was like, maybe chill first yeah? then we’ll think of something because a lot of people are gonna die and -
YEAH, AND? said alexander
so in his infinite wisdom, this kid, this short sunburnt virgin decides to build a LAND BRIDGE ACROSS THE SEA TO REACH THE ISLAND OF TYRE
this is what tyre looks like now
keep in mind that tyre used to be an island
so then
it takes seven months and thooouuuuuusands of people die bc alexander was SO PISSED! ABOUT NOT BEING LET IN! and when he finally takes the city, he crucifies two thousand people up the beach kills seven thousand more sells 30000 people into slavery and then razes the city
but he spared the descendents of the poet pindar, bc he might be an asshole but he’s not a barbarian he cares about literature you guys
and then when all this is over
he heads up to the temple of melqart in the razed city
and, possibly while wearing raybans with both middle fingers up - the historical sources differ on whether he was wearing a ray gun shirt or a snapback -
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahha this is literally my dissertation so buckle up lads
(i also want to make it really clear at the outset that when i’m talking about madness in tragedy, i’m talking about a specific, ancient literary concept which is distinct from both the ancient greek and our modern concepts of mental illness, insofar as the greeks can be said to have had a concept of mental illness as we would understand it. there’s a medical idea of madness, which mostly relates to imbalances of the humours, black bile, melancholia and so on, but the madness i’m discussing here is a phenomenon largely caused by the direct intervention of a god, rather than by any real-life condition that has been characterised as ‘mad’ in the modern world)
bacchae, euripides
so i’ve actually been sort of misleading by saying ‘mad hero’ bc in pretty much all these plays the mad character isn’t strictly speaking a hero and in the bacchae, there are no heroes, but there is the largest cast of mad characters in tragedy, all of whom express their madness in different ways. there’s pentheus, who is more of a protagonist than a hero, and he’s ‘mad’ in the figurative sense to begin with because he has made the irrational, illogical choice at the outset of the play to ban the worship of dionysus; in the world in which tragedy takes place, where gods really do literally exist, and really do literally intervene in your everyday life, and really do get fucking pissed over the stupidest little thing, the choice to not only insult one but bring your whole city along with you is not a rational one. and, of course, he is later sent mad in the delusional sense by the direct intervention of dionysus. there’s the maenads, who are also maddened by dionysus; their madness takes the form it often does amongst mad women in tragedy, by transgressing the boundaries of their social roles. they leave their houses, they remove their clothing, they hunt, they dance, they suckle animals instead of their own children. you know they’re mad at first not just because they’re suffering from any real delusions or irrationality, but because they are doing things they are not supposed to do and that is enough to be mad. and there’s agave, who is probably the saddest character in the whole play; she suffers the delusional madness that makes her believe her son is a lion, but also the transgressive madness that makes her want to kill the ‘lion’ with her bare hands and parade its head through town on a spear, which transgresses not only normal standards of female behaviour but also the bond between mother and son, in the worst possible way. i find a lot of mad characters interesting in tragedy, but agave is one of the few i really feel for.
Since it was pointed out about the misogynism in fairy tales, I can't stop thinking about it. All the tales I loved now seem so sexist. They all feel like they were written to show a woman's role in a patriarchy. Any woman who had goals other than marriage and being subservient are portrayed as witches or evil stepmothers. I understand the magic and myth that makes the beauty of them, but maybe it's time to put that good stuff into new stories and stop romanticizing the old stories.
Okay so I’ve got a few points I’m going to address in this answer and it may get rather long but just bear with me I have a lot to say.
I. Fairy tales were written in times when women were viewed as vastly inferior to men. They were written primarily by men in societies where women were meant to be daughters and then wives and mothers, and have no other roles. However they are still a significant point of development in literature and the history of storytelling. From fairy tales we have the Aarne-Thompson system which groups stories by common, identifying features and hence we have frameworks and patterns for plots which we continue to use today to tell new stories. There is a reason there are so many versions of Cinderella that it cannot truly be accredited to one sole author. The importance of fairy tales in the evolution of the way we tell stories cannot we disregarded.
II. As well as the advancements in storytelling tropes and plot lines there is cultural significance which must be acknowledged. Fairy tales and folklore are the stories that whole cultures have been raised on. To some cultures they run akin to mythology, and there is so much to be learnt from then. What better way to know how people in ancient times thought (as many fairy tales have been believed to be preserved orally from long before they were written down by authors such as the brothers Grimm) than to read the tales they told their children at night? My question for you is this: do you think Shakespeare’s works ought to be thrown aside because of how Desdemona is treated in Othello? Or Hero in Much Ado About Nothing?
III. A (SHORT) LIST OF FAIRY TALES WITH REALLY RAD FEMALE CHARACTERS (BECAUSE THIS POST IS ALREADY GETTING REALLY LONG)
The Snow Queen (Gerda is the protagonist and she is a fantastic heroine who saves the day after a long and arduous journey on which she has the aid of a variety of other really great female characters, many of them POC)
Scheherazade is the narrator of ‘One Thousand and One Nights’, and she is honestly the coolest person ever I love her. The story begins that every day the king would take a new wife and the next day have her beheaded. Scheherazade volunteers to be his wife and once in their chambers that night she bids her sister to come in for their final goodbyes. Her sister begs her (they have planned it earlier) to tell her a story, and so Scheherazade begins to tell the most wondrous story but when dawn comes she stops in the middle of the story, saying there is no time left. The king decides not to kill her as he is so eager to hear the finish of the tale. The next night she finishes it and begins another, only to pause again half way through. This goes on for 1,001 nights and at the end of the 1,001 nights the king has fallen in love with her and her stories and decides not to kill her anyway.
Snegurka the Snow Maiden - there are different variations of this but the one that I know most is that there is this couple who build a child out of snow and it becomes real and grows up quickly and she’s this very intelligent and clever child and when spring comes she begins to get very sad and nobody knows why and she doesn’t tell them and then one day they turn around and she is gone, there is nothing but a pile of melting snow and they - not realising she has melted - search all over for her and wait every day for their dear girl to return to them.
IV. People do take those wonderful, beautiful things about fairy tales and make new stories. People have been doing that for years. Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” is an adaptation of “Undine” by Friedrich De La Motte Fouqué. Walt Disney then took Hans Christian Andersen’s story and created another version of it, in a different media even, to entertain the audience of a new time. Throughout them all though, the one thing that always remains the same is the magic and the mystery and the idea of looking at another world with wonder and awe. The new film “Into the Woods” is an adaptation of the stage show by the same name which takes the stories from well known fairy tales and stays true to the original tales while also twisting them to provide new messages. “Witches can be good.” All of these fairy tales; decades and decades worth of ‘once upon a time’s where witches were always the unquestioned villain because back when they were written people demonised women with independent thought, and now we have a gorgeous film that takes those same villains and says, ‘they can be good.’
V. Yes, romanticising fairy tales to the extent that you take them as exact guidelines for how to live your life is bad. I don’t know why anybody would do that. I completely agree on that point, however, on no account should fairy tales be dismissed because of that problem because to do so would be to also dismiss everything they have meant for storytelling and literature and peoples’ cultures. It is possible to appreciate fairy tales while still being aware that they are problematic, just as it is possible to like films about serial killers or Greek mythology.
They are malevolent goblins in Southeastern European (Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian) and Anatolian folklore (Turkey). They dwell underground but come to the surface during the twelve days of Christmas, from 25th December to 6th January (from the winter solstice for a fortnight during which time the sun ceases its seasonal movement).
It is believed that Kallikantzaroi stay underground sawing the World tree, so that it will collapse, along with Earth. However, when they are about to saw the final part, Christmas dawns and they are able to come to the surface. They forget the Tree and come to bring trouble to mortals.
Finally, on the Epiphany (6th January), the sun starts moving again, and they must go underground again to continue their sawing. They see that during their absence the World tree has healed itself, so they must start working all over again. This happens every year.
Appearance
There is no standard appearance of Kallikantzaroi, there are regional differences on their appearance.
The Greeks describe them as:
Hairy bodies.
Horse legs.
Boar tusks (sometimes).
Tall.
Black.
Burning red eyes.
Goat’s or donkey’s ears.
Monkey’s arms.
Tongues that hang.
Huge heads.
Others see them as humans of small size smelling horribly, that are predominately male. However, different regions both have the similar description of them resembling a little, black devil.
They are, also, mostly blind, speak with a lisp and love to eat frogs, worms, and other small creatures.
Lore
The Kallikantzaroi are said to be the creatures of the night. There were many ways people could protect themselves during the days when the Kallikantzaroi were loose. They could leave a colander on their doorstep to trick the visiting Kallikantzaros. Since they could not count above 2 (3 is a holy number and by pronouncing it he would kill himself) the Kalikantzaros would sit at the doorstep counting, 1, 2… 1, 2… each hole of the colander, all night, until the sun rose and he were forced to hide.
Another method of protection was to leave the fire burning in the fireplace, all night, so that they cannot enter through there. In some areas, they would burn the Yule log, a large piece of wood, for the duration of the twelve days. And in other areas, people would throw smelly shoes in the fire, the stink repulsing the Kallikantzaroi and forcing them to stay away. Yet other ways to keep them away were to mark the door with a black cross on Christmas Eve and burn incense.
Legend has it that any child born during the twelve days of Christmas was in danger of transforming to a Kallikantzaros for each Christmas season, starting with adulthood. The antidote: Binding the baby in tresses of garlic or straw, or singeing the child’s toenails. In another legend, anyone born on a Saturday can see and talk with the Kallikantzaroi.
(According to a source) on the eve of Epiphany in Cyprus, villagers scatter pancakes on the roof to give the Kallikantzaroi something sweet to eat as they prepare to head out of town.
In Serbian Folklore
In Serbian Christmas traditions, the Twelve Days of Christmas used to be called the “unbaptised days” and were considered a time when demonic forces of all kinds were believed to be more than usually active and dangerous. People were cautious not to attract their attention, and did not go out late at night. The latter precaution was especially because of the demons called karakondžula, imagined as heavy, squat, and ugly creatures.
According to tradition, when a karakondžula found someone outdoors during the night of an unbaptised day, it would jump on the person’s back and demand to be carried wherever it wanted. This torture would end only when roosters announced the dawn; at that moment the creature would release its victim and run away.
In Anatolian Folklore
The karankoncolos is a malevolent creature in Northeast Anatolian Turkish folklore. According to late Ottoman Turkish myth, they appear on the first ten days of Zemheri, “the dreadful cold”, when they stand on murky corners, and ask seemingly ordinary questions to the passers-by. In order to escape harm, one should answer each question, using the word “kara“ (the Turkish word for "black”), or risk being struck dead by the creature. It was also said in Turkish folklore that the karakoncolos could call people out during the cold Zemheri nights, by imitating voices of loved ones. The karakoncolos’ victim risked freezing to death if he or she could not awake from the charm.
The etymology of Hecate/Hekate is unknown; some have suggested that it is from ἙκατόςHekatos, which translates as “she that operates from afar” “the far reaching one,” or “the far-darter” which would align with her abilities.
She’s the goddess of magic, witchcraft, the night, moon, ghosts, necromancy, the crossroads, a whole spectrum of things. She was the only child of the Perses (Ttitan-God of destruction) and Asteria (Titan-Goddess of the stars), and from them she received her power over heaven, earth and sea.
She is often depicted in triple form, falling under the catergory of a triple goddess which is defined as: “three separate beings who represent a triad and always appear as a group, such as the Greek Moirai, or a single deitiy known from literary sources as having three aspects, such as Hecate.”
Hecate’s aspects are represented by Selene (the Moon in heaven), Artemis (the Huntress in earth) and Persephone (the destroyer in underworld). She also forms the triple goddess group of the Mother Goddess, with Hebe (the Maiden), Hera (the Mother) and Hecate (the Crone).
She assisted the gods in their war with the Gigantes and slew Clytius. She accompanied Demeter in the search for Persephone, with a torch in her hand. When Persephne was found, Hecate remained with her as her attendant and companion and becomes a deity of the lower world. Her duty was to rule over the souls of the departed, and became the goddess of purifications and expiations.
Hey! Of course, I always have time to talk about my favourite lady killer (aside from Medea). First, a bit about her history; She was the daughter of Tyndaereus and Leda, making her Helen of Sparta’s half sister. She ended up married to Agamemnon of House Atreus. Her children with him were Electra, Orestes, Iphigenia and Chrysothemis with Agamemnon.
However, Calchas decreed that the goddess Artemis required a sacrifice before the Greeks set sail to troy, and that sacrifice should be Iphigenia. Clytemnestra resisted giving up her daughter to be slaughtered, but eventually, Iphigenia was murdered and the Greeks set sail.
The Trojan War, as we know, lasted for ten years and all that time her husband was away, her husband who had taken her daughter from her. She became involved in Aegithus (reasons for that are explained in more depth here, as well as more about her backstory) and when her husband returned from the war, with his war prize Cassandra of Troy, she murdered Agamemnon and Cassandra with the help of Aegisthus. She and her lover were later killed by her children Orestes and Electra, for revenge against her killing their father.
In the play Agamemnon by Aeschylus, Clytemnestra was driven to kill Agamemnon partly to avenge the death of her daughter Iphigenia, who had been sacrificed for the war, partly because of her adulterous love for Aegisthus and partly as an agent for the curse on Agamenon’s family, the House of Atreus.
δοίη τις ἀνδροκμῆτα πέλεκυν ὡς τάχος “Someone quickly bring my man-killing ax!"
—Clytaemnestra (Choephori, 889)
If you’re interested in her character and her bloody history (I often think Agamemnon would work so incredibly well as a Southern Gothic) I’d advise you to check out these poems:
the four horsemen of the apocalypse story originates from christianity. it’s in the bible, the book of revelation, specifically chapter six of that book.
the story goes that the apostle john, was given a vision by god about things that would occur in the last days immediately prior to the second coming of christ, so in a sense god “unveiled” to john what will occur in the future. god told john that a triune of judgements would bring great destruction to the world. ( ”apocalypse” is another word for “revelation”, and means “the unveiling or lifting of the veil” in greek. )
the first series of judgments are the four horsemen.
the first is conquest (he rides in on a white horse) ; many believe that this rider is the antichrist and that he promotes a false sense of peace and security that the people desperately crave.
the second is war (he rides in on a bright red horse) ; the rider carries a sword which signifies war breaking out throughout the world, the antichrist himself will be involved in these wars too. natural disasters will further damage the earth and create that much more chaos.
the third is famine (he rides in on a black horse) ; this rider came in carrying a pair of scales, the scales carried by the black horse’s rider represent a measuring system that will give a person barely enough to eat for a full day’s labor. and finally
the fourth is death (he rides in on a pale/white horse) death is the natural result of war and famine, with hades, said to follow the rider, representing the grave.
yeah the bible states that the only way to escape all this, and the rest of the judgements, is to put your faith in jesus christ.
well, one as rude as you might as well be as stupid, for “filipino mythology” does exist and people like you make me gag. Our stories might not be as well documented as the greeks or the romans or and god damn egyptians, but we have preserved them through oral traditions. We told them to our children before they sleep, we told them to young teens when they would need guidance, we told them throughout centuries and believe me: we are far from forgotten. so, you want some mythology, i’ll give you some god damn mythology:
anyway, regardless of what you think. filipino mythology is as valid as any other mythology out there and i shall protect it at all costs. normally i would have just deleted such a message but how you had told me of how invalid my culture was, well that angered me. to completely tell me that, i myself was invalid, a statistic. you are no better than the spaniards that arrived at our coasts. oh how they erased out existence from history’s books. let me tell you this, i will not be silenced. i will not be stopped. i will not be merciful. you come back into my ask like this again, i will meet you with a fury that even the gods cannot contain
I will school you, you ignorant imbecile. And to do that, I won’t even comment on the level of ignorance and rudeness evident in that kind of question. Just know that if you cross us again, I will destroy you in all the ways your puny mind cannot even fathom as destruction.
First off - while Keith (vespeir) has provided some links, I understand how most people might see Wikipedia as unreliable/unacademic. The thing is, though, Philippine mythology now is a product of generations and generations of Western brainwashing/colonization. It’s watered down, and basically just Greek/Roman deities translated. But you also have to understand that most of what we know now? It’s propaganda.
But anyway - there’s been extensive research regarding Philippine myth pre- and post-Western influence, both in the fields of literature and anthropology (most of them being from my university, with notable people being F. Landa Jocano from the UP College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, Department of Anthropology, and Damiana Eugenio, from the UP College of Arts and Letters, Department of English and Comparative Literature.
Both of these people show up when you google them, not only because of their body of work, but because of the citations awarded to them, Jocano with a lifetime citation by the Manila Critics Circle, and Eugenio - dubbed the Mother of Philippine Folklore - with a Centennial Award for Cultural Research).
Just a few of my favorite articles on Philippine myth:
Mythology as propaganda during the Marcos regime (just hints of it here, as an explanation/caption to an exhibit in the Vargas Museum, with Malakas and Maganda (PHL equivalent to Adam and Eve) replacing Kalak and Kabai (original equivalent to Adam and Eve) as Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos doppelgängers).
There would be more, but I have to go now. I might come back to add links, but articles are available everywhere, I shit you not. There’s also a lot of modern stuff coming out, one being a comprehensive encyclopedia focused on Philippine myth and lore.
And holy crap, I haven’t even touched on the gods! On the diwatas, and the malignos! Maria Makiling, for crying out loud!
You should thank whatever you believe in that typing this has cooled me off. But I’ll be back, and I swear to all that is holy, if I’m still angry by then, there will be hell. Masusunog ka sa impiyerno, gago, ako mismo magpapadala sa’yo doon.
I'm going to be a poop and ask for another story because they're super interesting to read... So I was wondering if there was a fairy tale with an unexpected plot twist, or something happened in a story that surprised you? :3
((okay frances, just for you, story time with ash again))
the red shoes is this story about this little girl who’s very poor and never has shoes in summer, and in winter has to wear these awful uncomfortable wooden shoes. a shoemaker in the village makes some shoes out of red cloth for karen - that’s the girl’s name - and they’re not great shoes but it’s the thought that counts, and karen’s like, ‘woah, red shoes! that’s totally rad i love how they’re red’. a while afterwards her mother dies and after the funeral she gets adopted by this old lady who looks after her well but throws her shoes away because she thinks they’re ugly.
one day karen sees the princess travelling through the country, and, oh gosh! she happens to be wearing some nice red shoes! they’re way nicer than the ones karen had but they have just as much significance for her because of the colour, and when karen is a bit older and ready for her confirmation she needs some new shoes and she finds in the store these red shoes exactly like what the princess had worn. karen’s a bit sneaky here because red is not the colour of shoes you wear to church but the old lady’s eyesight is fading so she doesn’t realise the colour of them and karen is so enchanted with these shoes that she ends up getting them, and she wears them for her confirmation. at church everyone stares at her shoes and later they all tell the old lady what karen did, and the old lady gets angry at karen and tells her she must never wear them to church again.
next sunday karen’s like ‘whatevs i do what i want’ and she wears the red shoes again, and outside the church they come across an old bearded soldier who asks if he may dust her shoes, and when she sticks her feet out he taps her sole with his hand and says ‘what lovely dancing shoes, they’ll stay on nice and tightly while you dance!’ (or something along those lines). now ofc the old lady may be blind as a bat but everyone else isn’t so once again they all stare at her shoes, and when they leave the old soldier taps her feet again and remarks on how the pretty dancing shoes and suddenly she starts to dance. she dances all the way home until she can kick her shoes off and only then do her feet stop moving.
now one night there’s a ball and karen decides to wear her red shoes only when she starts dancing her shoes carry her all the wrong way, and eventually she dances all the way out to the forest where she meets (surprise!) the old soldier, who it seems has cursed her shoes to stick to her feet and make her dance forever.
she goes to the church, hoping for mercy, but an angel stands in front of the door and tells her that she will dance till she dies, as a lesson for conceited children.
karen decides her only option is to have her feet cut off with her shoes still on them, so she asks an executioner to do so and her feet dance off without her. she tries to go to church a few times over the next few weeks but every time her entry is blocked by the red shoes, still with her feet in them, eternally dancing. sitting on her bed one day karen begs god to give her mercy and he finally takes her up to heaven where there is no mention of red shoes.
hello! i just finished reading the robert fagles translation of antigone for my lit class and i really enjoyed it (we read oedipus the king too and i loved it as well but antigone was too much). i was wondering if you were willing to share your thoughts on the play? your writing is always so delightful to read. (also are there any other plays by sophocles/any other greek tragedies you'd recommend reading?) thank you!
Antigone herself is the royal house of Thebes, reliquary of unsleeping ghosts: grandfather, father, mother, brothers both. She is her father’s daughter, child of Oedipus’ unhallowed love, inscribed with his flesh-curse, heir to the great and iron will that drove him down to ruin. Her bones and blood and breath are stained with sickness and death, all her life in their stealing reeky shadow. In Carson’s Antigonick she quotes Beckett: begin in the dark and birth is the death of us.
And like her fate-throttled father she goes unhoused and wandering, fugitive from hearth and city and polis. The law will see her brother’s body unburied, a treasury of meat for carrion birds. Her wild grieving love decrees that her own hands cover him with earth; and on this scant death-bed I shall lie beside him, dear one with dear one. Care of the dead is women’s work, but for Antigone it is more: a joining in the dark of womb and grave. she will have no living husband; bride of Hades, she names herself.
This is a drama of upheaval: old ways of blood and allegiance and retribution (physis) giving way to state and justice and law (nomos). Creon is a self-crowned tyrant. Antigone is only a girl, alone and seized with love for her brother; but she is also a revenant of the ancient order that will not go quietly, slipping through this new world to detonate herself with a little act of piety. A woman who does not submit to the law is poison: viper, Creon spits. Antigone does not bend for love or edict or threat, even when she stands on the mouth of a tomb, condemned to be buried alive. She is impossible, annihilating, a hot heart for cold things. The city, in whispers, praises her. The play is awed by the fatal glory of her.
She claws off all sanctioned female identity. She steps out of her soft skin. She makes herself prayer-sharp and steel. When Ismene cannot help her, she casts her sister aside; she can only love the dead. Martyr, she is absolute. Her conviction is ferocious. There is no choice, but Antigone chooses: she walks into the arms of death, and death reaches up to swallow her, sundering all she touches. Even her silence roars like thunder. You can imagine her eyes: unbearable.
