Uleni’s Collections Options

[Uleni Athram]

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00:
Purple Prose (1):
Gangster Glamour
YLENNO
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Skin the color of amber; hair the color of smuggler’s gold; cabochon eyes as glittering and as unfeeling as the grey-iron surface of a prison knife ready to wound. Born from metal, the way he bends light around him; his entire being is liquid imperfection, chrome fire tamed and beaten into a seamless vessel worn by this thug, this lowlife who recalls the repugnant beauty of those exiled kings and cruel kratocrats.

Pale-snake trophies openly on display; across his nose, below his left eye, just above his lip, a hundred more in other places— medals, he says to himself, medals gifted to him by the underworld through endless gang feuds, alleyway bushwhackings and urban war-waging he openly embraced before the age of fifteen.

He is proud of these scars. They tell his courage and story.

His every movement is wild lightning. His every smile is cut with poison; it shines like baby diamonds in the dark and carries a thousand different secrets. When he speaks, he speaks with the weighted wisdom of the street-meats and the demonic persuasiveness of the drug dealers; he can talk you into tying the noose around your neck, he can talk you into snorting the white sugar off the table, he can talk you into selling yourself for strangers — and you’d do all these things with a smile, if you let him.

Ink. He wears his victories on his skin. On his back sprawl the Prince of Cats and the Goblin King, locked in eternal combat and hateful intercourse— his reward for four hundred straight wins in the underground fighting pits of the Cheydinhal Orums. Across his chest rise the spindly Towers of Miscarcand, five wretched things with Stars at the top of each; one Tower speaking for a year in prison, one Star signifying a successful escape. On one side of his neck, a decapitated Boethiah; on the other, a Fleur-de-Lis pierced with a dirk; on his throat a cracked Amulet of Kings — sigils. Sigils of syndicates now extinct by his hand. Under his right ear a Dragon pierced with eleven arrows; his quota of assassinated legion captains. Under his left a Rose with four Crying Eyes for petals; the number of whôres he liberated from abusive pimps. A smiling mouth shaped like a tear just under his right eye — a gift from his inmates when he turned eighteen inside.

He is proud of these tattoos. They proclaim his power and authority.



This post has been edited by Uleni Athram: Jun 24 2018, 01:18 PM

[Uleni Athram]

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Wot dis, you say? An update? A thread about Ylenno changing titles? Into Uleni’s Collections? Woooooot?

First off, HA! I wasn’t kidding when I told you guys earlier that my posting rate would be abysmal, eh? It be like that, tbh. Inspiration is hard to come by nowadays and my muse, though inelegantly persistent in her ways to motivate me, was just ... so dry. She still is, if I’m telling the truth, but once I really thought about it, part of that dryness was that me focusing on a single character just invited quick burnout. Enter the reason why the title changed. From now on, this thread would be just that; a shared collection of short stories of my various characters (entities inside my head that have been stirring around for years, finally given voice) in my take of Tamriel.

Second, *absolute* gratitude for your comments and just passing by to read my rough pieces. I appreciate it tremendously. In fact, let me address you individually.

@Acadian: Thanks, Paladin! It’s good to be back here, sporadic though my participation is, LOL. Hopefully this little thread of mine would finally make me dig my heels in and just be a little more permanent eh?

@KatManDude: You say that with your own poeticism? Gratitude, however. I hope my works would continue to elicit such high and deep praise from you. *bumps fist on chest twice in salutations*

@mALX: D’awwwwwwwwww! Stop it with the mushy-mushy stuff, you. You’re making me beet red and all that. And about that hair; funnily enough I was supposed to write about it too but got too deep into my own purple prose. HA! Curious how that happens. Who knows though, with Ylenno being vain as he is, we’d probably see his hair crop out in the future (we will).
****

SO! The next installment would be cut into several parts, long as it is. (I don’t think people can stomach more than 1.5k words in one sitting). Without further adieu, here it be. The next update would be posted at Wednesday, next week. See you until then!

———————

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01
Only Easy Day (a)
LLEMORYN, BRYNLAITH, YLENNO, CYLAISE
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Llemoryn collapsed face-first on the straw mat, his whole body shaking with pain and fatigue. He tried to get in as much air as he could, ignoring the coppery pain in his throat as he did so.

By his side knelt Brynlaith, her hands on the floor and her hair hanging limp, equally flushed and starved for breath. She came out the bloodier out of the two of them; her knuckles were bruised and her forearms were a canvas of criss-crossing scratches and cuts.

“Ysmir’s beard, Blue,” she croaked out in between gasps, “what were we thinking?

“I know,” he replied lamely, his voice barely above a whisper, “I know.”

For the umpteenth time since they began the hellish training, the Dark Elf cursed himself and his own suspect state of mind when he took up that other elf on his offer. ‘It’ll be fun,’ the damnable Bosmer had said. ‘It’ll fix dat pen-physique o’yers right quick if ya and Brinny join me an’ da ovver fellas, ey?”

He thought it would not be so bad and agreed. Brynlaith was of the same thought, already boasting that the Blades’ morning regimen would be a cake-walk. And admittedly it was reasonable at the start—just a few simple laps around the Temple, first with no gear and then with full kit.

In their naïveté, they thought that that was the only thing the exercise had entailed.

That had been their first mistake.

His second mistake was showing off in front of the Nord, exploding from his position and leading the pack as they finished off what he thought was the tenth and final lap.

He should have read the signs.

Ylenno and Cylaise, smirking at him as he passed them by? Two of the most cantankerous members of the Ten who would in a heartbeat pounce on one another with the slightest of provocations, allied against a singular target with sinister joy?

Soon he found out why.

Captain Steffan called for another lap... and another lap after that... and continued to roar out ‘another’ until it became the dirtiest word in Llemoryn’s vocabulary, until the northern wind became banshees’ blades that burned his throat and lungs and eyes, until his legs numbed into jelly, until all higher thoughts were erased from his mind and all that remained was an animal desire for rest.

When he thought he was about to faint from sheer exhaustion, the Captain suddenly did an about-face and bellowed out for the troop to climb the steps back to the Temple proper. In his exhaustion he interpreted that as the end and thanked the gods this mistake was over. He had forged ahead and sat at the base of the steps, waiting for Brynlaith so they could get some water together, when the others returned in a formation that forced out an unbelieving groan from the Elf.

The troops had paired up into twos and adjoined themselves in a cruel and unusual position.

It was the wheelbarrow and the duck-walk combined, he had realized numbly. One was crouched and held the legs of their partner upon their shoulders, the other led the both of them forwards with only the strength of their arms.

He had watched, nerveless and gaping, as one by one they climbed up the winter-slick steps with no hesitation. Ylenno, clearly enjoying the view of Cylaise’s ‘perseverance’ as she led him up, winked at his Dunmer counterpart when they ambled past him. “Bes’ part of da whole shindig if ya’as me,” he said, pointing at the crawling Breton’s skintight trousers with his pursed lips, a dreamy appreciation coloring his eyes. “Like a ripe peach! Now git goin’, ya mook! Cap’n’s about ta be here and i’onn think he’ll appreciate ya sittin’ on ya rump.”

Llemoryn had found the energy to roll his eyes, though what the other elf had said was true. So when Brynlaith arrived, sky-steel eyes wide in disbelief, Llemoryn had forced himself up on weak knees and approached her, eager to get this done fast. But as he neared his companion, Captain Steffan, brushing past them, roared out that each person had to rotate roles and scale the steps top to bottom five times.

Llemoryn and Brynlaith had taken one look at each other before cursing their own stupidity and pride.

This post has been edited by Uleni Athram: Jun 18 2018, 04:24 AM