Welcome, and thank you for viewing the third edition of The NationStates Improviser! We are NS's only literary magazine, and work to exhibit the very best artwork not only from our local Arts and Fiction community, but the entirety of Nationstates. We're glad to say that the NS Improviser is moving towards its goal to disseminate the visual and literary arts across a site namely concerned with hypothetical scenarios and ever-lasting conversation.
Welcome, and thank you for viewing the third edition of The NationStates Improviser! We are NS's only literary magazine, and work to exhibit the very best artwork not only from our local Arts and Fiction community, but the entirety of Nationstates. We're glad to say that the NS Improviser is moving towards its goal to disseminate the visual and literary arts across a site namely concerned with hypothetical scenarios and ever-lasting conversation.
Welcome, and thank you for viewing the third edition of The NationStates Improviser! We are NS's only literary magazine, and work to exhibit the very best artwork not only from our local Arts and Fiction community, but the entirety of Nationstates. We're glad to say that the NS Improviser is moving towards its goal to disseminate the visual and literary arts across a site namely concerned with hypothetical scenarios and ever-lasting conversation.
theling. It was an insult really. A prince in name, but by no means in nature. I squirmed uncomfortably to let the hunk of meat, so keen to flaunt such names, past. Even if it rid me of these monsters, I would not wish to find myself at the heart of such a battle Not entrapped the horror that those front ranks would soon became.
Past the shoulders of those before me, my eyes met with the enemy beyond. They were far greater in number than the men with whom I fought, yet it probably mattered not. They were raiders, young men like him who had, unlike I, looked for adventure on foreign coasts. Most likely Ffriseg or Daneg, the irony of which stabbed at my heart. The sea wolves themselves being hunted by fresh packs. My muscles twitched into a form of grimace, too raw and battered to force themselves to the point of a smile.
The spear chafed at my hands as it was shunted again. Hadyn, ddihirod, fastard, nihiryn. The brutes that surrounded me were just that and no more. Brutes. They fought and they drank and they slept and little else, so god forbid if they tried to put their brains to the same rigorous use that their bodies so easily endured. None would ever set aside their ways to think of the warriors who they had slaughtered, whom they had condemned to purgatory, those who had been left to rot on a field with no blessing or confessions to save their souls. These men did not think of that. They did not think. The drank and when they did look towards the afterlife, it was only to think of how they would drink their halls of sin just as they did so in their twisted mortal lives.
I looked back, towards the wagons behind. Eithne stood there, hidden from my view yet clear in my mind. She may have been a Saxon in blood, but was no such creature in mind. I appreciated that, my last glimmer of appreciation that I could salvage in this heathen pit. It was with her, she a mere slave in my company, that I had run from my father's fate. The eyes of wolves did not rest and therefore we did not either, a vain attempt to escape the ever encroaching submission to foreign foes. A smattering of my father's men had come too, their chances for survival few in harsh lands. Even the peasants detested us, their words swayed by sermons corrupted with the power of money with the power of a victory - and with that power history could be re- written. They had rejected us, left us to starve rather than accommodate men they saw as demons, and so my own guards rejected me. They preferred payment to loyalty, and such a choice was one that I now accepted too.
Wyrstotsen! An unfriendly cry forced me onwards, though it did not cut through my thoughts. The enemy were no more than a hundred yards away now and both sides produced a few ambitious throws, their javelins and angons falling well short of the first ranks. Tywysog Cadoc map Cyndyddan, Cadoc de theling. My kingdom for a spear, though it had not been my choice. Gone in the Morning Super-Llamaland and awoke to a low buzz. A cricket chirped outside. He blinked, looked at the clock (2:08, it read) and yawned dully. He tried to sleep again, heard again the buzz, now accompanied by a dull thudding, and got up and stumbled in the direction of the bathroom.
A violent noise, best described as thu- pow! with notes of kririsch and crash, exploded from the downstairs door and knocked the boy over. He blinked, ears ringing, and stumbled back up. He remarked in sleep-induced drowsiness that the racket sounded a lot like the door being kicked over.
Todd froze in realization, giving the man behind him a great opportunity to slip a bag over his head and rip the drawstring shut. Todd clumsily pitched over in drowsy shock, and another man quickly trussed him up.
Survival kicked in, adrenaline surged into his mind, and Todd bravely began to roll away, to the amusement of his abductors. Powerfully flopping by one man, grinning and sweating, he surged forwards and rolled down the stairs.
"Ow!" he cried as he bounced off the third step from the top, waves of pain surging up his leg as he somehow flipped around and landed on his head.
His arm cracked on the seventh step, sending him into a reeling spin down the long staircase. All the way down he screamed, spinning dizzily into the arms of a third kidnapper, who knocked him unconscious
Despite this, he left no trace that he had left. It was the perfect crime, utterly unsolvable. Thirty-two seconds after the door shattered, a solitary white van drove off into the sable night.
Todd awoke twice in the next twenty-four hours.
At the first, he blinked awake. It was still pitch black outside the van, careening as it flung itself off various cracks and potholes in the country road, kicking up prodigious clouds of dust as it did so. Everywhere hurt. Aches spread themselves throughout his body; infernos pitched against his mind. Even when he yawned, a fiendish agony unraveled against his face. As his head slowly cleared, he overheard something in the midst of his muddled mind.
"So, where are we taking this kid?" the first man, possibly the driver, asked.
"Don't know what the Institute thinks," replied a second.
Todd blinked and continued to listen.
"Have no idea what they do to these kids."
"Don't you feel bad? I hear they get tortured."
"Eh, it pays well for you," muttered a third, "just get on with your job." "Shut up, Johnson, it's not like you pay us." said the second from the seat in front of him.
"What?" Johnson asked slowly, reaching for his hip. The driver coughed nervously
"I said, 'Shut-'"
With a deafening crack, Johnson's pistol went off, sending blood spraying into the air. Todd gagged as a splatter hit him square in the face, while the man in the second row slumped back into his chair. Johnson casually pocketed the gun and opened a window. Terrified and desperate, Todd swore that he would not allow them to capture him, whereupon he fell asleep again.
But by the second time he woke up, they already had him. Poetry Stanley and Paul Creative Vikings Unconventional Page Poetry Finalist To be unafraid and my debts repaid, where to go from here, the question. I need a cipher To decode life lessons.
Someone should make me mechanical hands, I'd have a handle on the conventional.
But I'm in love and want no life of settle down, take-or-leave it price of complacency. That'll never work out for me. I want to give more than I take, I'll hope for good luck with glass to break and to be remembered, whatever of my life I make. Creatively unstable, beyond description in my way What should I do with all these days?
To be high on life what would that taste like? I think those hits I take aren't so pure.
Someone should make me a bracelet of thorns. I'd be the savior of the lost. Each fresh cut would remind of the cost as I write.
And I've known love, I've felt accomplished but when I'm selfish and thoughtless I always am consumed by my worst. The most vibrant color, the great outline, a work of art, but a tragic design. Still, I don't mind. On Second Thought, No Respubliko de Libereco Your writing's abysmally horrid; it's purple, and too fucking florid. If you call someone's eyes "Orbs as blue as the skies" then you rightfully should be deplord.
[Editors Note: This poem, originally written in the Writing Discussion thread, was preceded by Respubliko de Liberecos comment, Perhaps you can add a false layer of joviality to your criticism by presenting it as a limerick.]
Non Relevant Rumek We thank you for reading this Summer 2014 edition of the NationStates Improviser!
About the NS Improviser
The NationStates Improviser is an NSwide literary magazine and a publication of artists in the Arts and Fiction board on the NS Forums. Created in 2013, The NS Improviser is fueled by a passion for the written word and artistic expression. The NS Improviser is the strongest example of our forum's mission to study and disseminate the crafts of creative writing and visual arts. A staff of scholarly, aspiring, and professional artists compile original work submitted by writers and artists from across the site. We publish four online editions per year, in February, May, August, and November, exhibiting the best art NationStates has to offer. The NationStates Improviser literary magazine accepts original fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, screen writing, plays and visual art from all NS users. We aim to produce four online editions per year, and one full compilation each October/November. We seek original, innovative, creative and nuanced work from around the world. In addition to writing, we accept digital files of visual art including photography, drawing, painting, ceramics, sculpture, mixed media, and printmaking. As long as you can provide a high quality (200 dpi or higher)digital representation of your work, we are open to considering it. The NS Improviser staff selects pieces for publication using the National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE) standards. Simultaneous submissions must be noted and will be accepted at the discretion of the staff. Users may submit up to four pieces. Sponsored by:
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(Cambridge Studies in Opera) Victoria Johnson, Jane F. Fulcher, Thomas Ertman-Opera and Society in Italy and France From Monteverdi To Bourdieu-Cambridge University Press (2007) PDF