Author Archives: Swor

The unforgivable

Posted on by under Shorts

“Damian stop. Don’t do this…”

“Or what? What will happen if I do? What will you do?”

The blond man looked at the one who had been his friend for so long. He wasn’t expecting a reply, he knew it would not come, and when silence engulfed the room for a whole minute he smiled. It seemed as if the world had momentarily stopped, holding its breath as it waited for an answer.

“That’s what I thought.” He finally said. “You can’t do anything to stop me, you have never been able to.”

He turned around, his coat floating airily behind him, and walked to the huge screen under which stood a control panel before placing both his hands on it and leaning forward.

“This is it. This is my victory, your defeat. And even your lord can’t do anything about it Michael. I will finally repay what I owe them.” He said in a low voice as he looked at the screen.

Michael couldn’t see his face, only the large shape of his back, but he could feel the fire burning in his eyes, he could feel the hate consuming his soul. He had been fighting to prevent this from happening for so long, he had tried to help, done his best to save him, but nothing had worked. Damian had gone down the dark and lonely path he had locked himself into and now it was too late. Still, he found the strength to hope, to continue trying.

“Damian.” He called, trying to free his hand to get his long dark hair out of his face, but the guards didn’t let him move, he was completely restrained in their iron grip.

The blond half-turned his head as he heard his name.

“You can’t do this… For the love of god, please stop this madness. They can still forgive you…”

They had been friends for so long, he refused to simply abandon him like this. He refused to give up, no matter how many times he was told it was useless, that it was a lost cause. There was still a way to save him he knew it, if only he could find out how… As soon as he said that the blond turned back to the screen and started laughing.

“They will forgive me… They will forgive me?!” He shouted, turning back quickly to face his old friend. “No Michael, I will not stop this. I don’t want their forgiveness. I want them to suffer, I want them to writhe in agony just as I have. I want to destroy every single one of them! I want them all to die!”

His eyes had completely lost their usual cool blue color and now seemed as red as blood, as the inferno that was consuming his soul burned through them.

“Please…” Said Michael, his voice strained by the pain he felt, not being able to do anything to save him. Dont make me do this…

“No. I will not have pity. I will not let remorse rob me of my rightful vengeance. This is what I have been working towards all this time and I will have what is mine!” He turned towards the monitor and pressed a single button before speaking into a microphone. “Activate phase three.”

“Damian…” Michael started, but as he was about to try one last time his old friend gave the order.

“Now.”

At the same time as he spoke, the dark-haired man heard a deep sound that resonated in his mind for what seemed like an eternity. Then, he knew. It was over. Damian had done what could never be undone, nor forgiven. He had doomed himself. He saw the dark shape, standing before the huge monitor, become smaller and smaller as the guards dragged him ever farther away from the gigantic room. The man he had once known as a brother was now a stranger, a dark and twisted existence who had been consumed by his desire for revenge.

As the archway leading in and out of the huge space grew ever smaller he felt something break inside him, the minuscule silhouette was still standing, so far away, unmoving. He desperately wanted to free himself of the strong grasp they had on him, to run back there and try once more. Surely this time he could convince him, surely he could put a stop to all this. But he knew this fantasy would never come true. Damian had made his choice and he had lost himself by doing so. A lone tear ran down his face as he felt the searing wave start to spread through his body.

It was over. Whatever he had felt towards that existence, whatever bonds they had shared, none of this mattered anymore. Michael closed his eyes. It was his burden, his mission. It was what defined him, the sole reason to his existence. And it was the only thing he couldn’t fight. I’m sorry… I haven’t been strong enough. I wish I could’ve saved you… I wish I could’ve saved all of you. That was what destroyed him a little more each time, knowing he was powerless, the knowledge that whatever his thoughts were he could never go against his nature.

You who have been touched by his light,

Have committed the unforgivable,

The hand of justice shall punish you.

Come walk into the night of end.

As he opened his eyes again the two guards were nowhere to be seen, as if they had vanished into oblivion. He noticed the white flames that had engulfed his body and the bright light that gently caressed the stone walls around him as the power surged inside him. He stood up straight and looked at the faraway arch that glowed in a faint blue light. He took a single tentative step before slowly starting to walk towards it. I’m sorry.

In the order of things.

Posted on by under Poetry

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*

A beautiful cascade descending endlessly from gorgeous halos,

Infinite jewels knitted lightly, moments never over,

Paradise quest resting solely, totally, upon very weak xistence;

Yours, Zoa.

*

So yeah, a little experiment of mine, not perfect but that little idea popped into my head this morning and I found myself more inspired than I would’ve imagined. Hope you enjoyed it!

Look, I Found the End.

Posted on by under Poetry

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Life is like a box of chocolates,

Life is like a rollercoaster,

Life is like a bunch of baby cats,

Life is like being in a toaster.

You never know what you will get

And it does have its ups and downs,

But it can take away all your frowns

As easily as it makes you fret.

Of what foretold

Posted on by under Poetry

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Not those of gold

Not those of old

Neither the kings

Nor the younglings

None of the sold

None of the bold

Not one of those

Who ever rose

Not those who told

Not those who mold

For when the chime

Is upon time

They will be cold

And they will fold

But who will then?

The son of men.

Why I love randomly learning more about languages – Part Deux

Posted on by under Thoughts and other ideas

Part 1 over here!

At least we have and equivalent to these words, you might say. True, we could have had nothing at all (which I doubt because we’d have a hell of a time describing these things without appropriate words), it is still unnerving though. But here comes the worst part! We don’t, and I must insist in the don’t, we don’t have a word for dusk. Nope, nothing, nada, njet.  We can say tombée de la nuit which literally means the falling/fall of the night (just as we could say lever du jour instead of aube) but that is just a phrase, not a precise word. Even wikipedia doesn’t have a French page for dusk… So yeah, you might say its poetic, and I’m not saying it isn’t (it is!) but it’s a bit annoying when you think about it.

Yup, I know it’s completely trivial but it annoys me. And when it annoys me I can’t stop thinking about it until I find a way for it not to annoy me anymore… And I did quite a bit of thinking last night, here are some of the things I thought about. First, a small resumé of what I just explained in an easy way to visualize:

Night > dawn > twilight > sunrise > day > sunset > twilight > dusk > night again

Nuit > aube / levé du jour > crépuscule > aurore / levé du soleil > jour > coucher de soleil / couchant > crépuscule > tombée de la nuit > nuit encore

See?! We have ways to say it but not single words… But I am not here to whine. So, as you might have noticed, I added a word in French for the coucher de soleil (sunset) and that would be couchant. Apparently it would work to describe the sunset, it’s a single word and I like it (the word and the concept) so I decided to add it. I think it would be a good (and cool) way to say coucher de soleil, so at least I found a possible solution for that. But the big problem remains with dusk/tombée de la nuit, which has no single word for it. What I would like to find as a replacement for tombée de la nuit would be a word as cool as aube and that feels as poetic because wouldn’t something like aube / aurore / couchant / [insert cool and poetic word] be extraordinarily awesome?!!! Yes, it would.

From what I have heard (more like read, but who cares?) around the internet (and especially this article, which was a good part of the fuel to these thoughts and which you should go check out if you read French) one word that could be used instead of tombée de la nuit would be brune (or brunante). From what Reverso and Sansagent say it can mean dark hair, dark skin or tombée de la nuit/dusk. I’m not sure if I really like that word yet but I know I find it interesting, it’s quite poetic (much like what I would expect from an antonym of aube) and easy to remember, even if it has other meanings. I haven’t really found any other words that could suit my needs so I will have to think about it. I don’t know if I could ever place it anywhere in a text though, but I’ll try.

Now, with the addition of couchant and brune/brunante, we would get something like this :

Night > dawn > twilight > sunrise > day > sunset > twilight > dusk > night again

Nuit > aube > crépuscule > aurore > jour > couchant > crépuscule > brune / brunante > nuit encore

It’s a bit better than earlier, not perfect yet but better. This does give my mind a bit of peace. So yeah, now you know the precise terms both in English and in French, it’s up to you to use that knowledge wisely!

But, because there always is a but, even if I wanted to talk about this subject a lot (yup, sunrise and sunset are fun!) this is not the only time I have discovered terms that exist in one language but not in the other and, since it is the subject of this post, I must talk about them. I have to admit, it is quite annoying not to be able to translate exactly what someone says, with precise words and all that. The most obvious example I could give you would be with the words sibling(s). There is not single word to describe that concept in French. We either say frères (brothers), soeurs (sisters) or frères et soeurs (brothers and sisters) but we have no word for siblings. I believe you can imagine how frustrating that must be at times…

On the other hand, and this time its a win for us frenchies, we do have expressions you don’t in English (haha, take that yous suckers!). Two of these I can think of are bon appétit and l’esprit de l’escalier. The former being what you say to wish a good meal to somebody before they eat, which roughly translates as have a nice meal I believe. And the latter being the situation you find yourself in when you think about a good comeback too late, after the moment to say it has passed (it comes from the fact that Diderot, a philosopher, said he only found a good comeback to a remark that was made after he had climbed down the stairs to leave). These two expressions are found in French but have no real equivalent in English.

These discrepancies in the languages and the bridges between one language and the other make it, in my opinion, all the more interesting to learn foreign languages. These little facts, these little details, are what I thrive for, I try to always have the knowledge that somebody else won’t have just to impress because I’m like that. It’s a lot of fun being able to explain things when you are at a party, or should I say a soirée, and to be the know-it-all (which literally translates as le je-sais-tout, which would, translated in English again, but literally, be I-know-it-all or I-know-everything and not just know-it-all) from time to time. It has un je ne sais quoi* that makes it a lot of fun!

Well, that is about all I had to say, thank you for reading, I truly hope you enjoyed this (not-so) little post and I wish you a god day. See you later people! ;)

PS: * As I was writing this I just realized un je ne sais quoi (literally : a something I know not, or less literally “a small detail that I can’t quite explain“) is also a unique expression in French, it doesn’t appear to have any real equivalent in English… So, yeah, hurray for us!

Why I love randomly learning more about languages – Part Un

Posted on by under Thoughts and other ideas

If I had to name any reason why I love studying and sometimes look up words or meanings in French or in English (less in other languages, though sometimes I do look up some Japanese or German, because I’m only fluent in the first two) it would be because it’s always surprisingly interesting to learn about the history and the evolution of a word. Where it comes from, what it meant, what it means now and how you’re supposed to spell/pronounce it, I find this exercise to be quite fun! Most of the time it happens because I’m not sure about how a word translates from a language into another or what the words means or how it’s spelled, but sometimes I do just think of a word and look it up and then keep looking at other words, and that goes on and on until I finally remember I have other things to do…

The reason I am telling you about this is because recently I have made a new discovery (well, actually I think I had already realized this before but it became blatantly apparent yesterday) which adds to the irk I have when I can’t find the right translation/equivalent from one language to the other. So yesterday I discovered that… there is no word for dusk in French. And it unnerves my to a point where I might even say that I can’t even. (Yeah, that much.) I believe you all know the word dusk, its spelling, pronunciation and meaning, but still let me give you the details here.

So dusk is the moment, in the evening, just after the sunset, when the sun has disappeared below the horizon but when you can still see its light, it’s basically the moment when all light disappears just before night. The equivalent for the morning would be dawn, the moment when light starts to come back at the horizon. In a day, in order, you have night (no sunlight), then dawn (sunlight but no sun), sunrise (the sun appears), the day passes, then the sun sets, sunset (the sun starts to disappear below the horizon), dusk (no more sun but still some light) and then night again. The moment in between dawn and sunrise or sunset and dusk are called twilight, when you can see the light of the sun but not the sun itself, which means that dawn and dusk are literally the first and last lights of the day. So there can be a morning twilight and an evening twilight.

Now that knowledge in itself is quite interesting, especially for a writer, when you want to write about the beginning or the ending of the day. I realized, while reading the articles about that subject, that I, myself, had often thought sunrise and dawn to be the same thing for sunset and dusk, I even mistook twilight‘s meaning. Now, however it is ever so clear, and I feel all the better for it! Unfortunately, knowledge comes with a price, and a second realization followed this first one. I did of course look up all this vocabulary in French, being a multilingual writer and reader I had to know for myself, and oh despair! I didn’t find a word in my mother tongue that could be considered and equivalent to it.

There are words for the rest though, but not as ‘cool’, if I might say so, as in English. What I mean by this is that we use phrases or expressions and not single words to describe these events.

Night is translated into nuit or la nuit. Day is jour or le jour. Twilight, I found out, is called le crépuscule, which is a nice word I have to admit. Dawn is l’aube, which is also a cool word to have. Up to that point it’s quite straightforward and the same but then it gets harder. Sunrise and sunset are very simple and easy to understand words but in french we don’t really have that. We have lever de soleil, which literally translates as the rising/rise of the sun, for sunrise and coucher de soleil for sunset, so yeah, you might say that it is also quite nice to have phrase/expressions like this but having a single and precise word for  these things would be way cooler in my opinion. Well, I’m not being entirely frank about all this, we do have a word for sunrise: aurore, which I find extremely beautiful and poetic (just as aube) and which is awesome, but yet, nothing for coucher de soleil…

Part 2 over here !

Evol

Posted on by under Poetry

I love you, but I don’t know why,

I love your voice, your face, your thigh,

I adore your smile and your laugh,

Of you I can never get enough,

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But why when everything seems high,

Does it all come crashing back down?

All around us only a frown,

As the end of us seemed to be nigh.

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We love, we fight and we make up,

We sleep, we fly and we wake up

Yes I lie babe, sometimes I lie,

But I try, I swear I really try.

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Forever yours as you are my,

We are meant to be together

Be it this world or another,

Where only the laws of love apply.

Enough music is never enough!

Posted on by under Thoughts and other ideas

I couldn’t live my life without music, this is an absolute truth. I don’t simply like music or enjoy it, no, it’s something much deeper than that. Music is a bit like the weather to me, as strange as it may seem it influences my emotions and my attitude much more than most other aspects of my life. When the sun is up and the sky is clear I feel extremely happy and motivated to do whatever I want to do, whereas when it’s raining or cloudy I almost automatically feel depressed or unmotivated/lazy.

The difference between night and day also impacts my writing, I’m a lot more inspired to write during the early mornings or the late evenings, when the sun is either rising, setting or completely down, like during the night. I don’t know why but it seems to stimulate my mind and my imagination. That can be a problem from time to time as I finally get inspired to write when I am completely exhausted… (Yep, that’s annoying when it happens.)

Well music also plays an equally important role in my life. With music I feel happy, emotional, inspired, I feel alive and free somehow. I don’t know why or how but some songs just have this deep effect on me, they touch something deep inside my mind and they give me strength, imagination and love. I just realized that I had already made a post about this subject a few weeks back, you can find it here : Music is love, music is life, so I wont expand too much on this subject since I believe I’ve already said a lot back then.

I will simply say this : today the song that makes me feel alive and free is Louder, Harder, Better by Galantis, that I just found yesterday on SuicideSheep’s Youtube channel, it’s really an awesome piece of sounds. I don’t know why but it resonates within me and it make me smile. In these sort of situations the only thing I can hope for is to one day be able to make people feel and smile with my writing, just as this song makes me feel and smile!

Enjoy! ;)

So I just watched Game of Thrones S05e10 (no spoilers)

Posted on by under Thoughts and other ideas

No spoilers for the finale of season number 5 but BE WARNED : some spoilers for the rest of the show so don’t read if you haven’t watched!

Yeah, just as the title says, I just watched the last episode of the awesome TV show that is Game of Thrones. The finale to the fifth season.

And, how to explain, at the end of season one I was enthused, at the end of the second I was amazed and excited about the show. I had just begun watching it as season three started coming out so I sort of consumed the first two seasons really rapidly. The third one was, to me, the first real season of GoT where I followed it from beginning to end in the regular way : one episode a week. And it was also the season that had marked me the most at that point (especially with the red wedding and all, plus the music). At the end of it I was impatient to see season four, I really wanted to see how things were going to play with all of these beloved character dead, the ones already there evolving and the new ones that were introduced.

Well, even if I was a bit blazé by the first two or three episodes of season four (well, it’s not entirely accurate, I really enjoyed the first one then I sort of, I don’t know, lost the connection with he show that I had built up. I think the long wait between seasons did that.), it quickly came back as things started to move again and I managed to get completely back in the story and even fall in love with the series even more! The death of Joffrey (that bastard!) by poison and the epic duel between the Mountain and the Viper (my god, I still tremble thinking back to that moment) got me really rilled up!  Then at the end of season four, with the death of grandpa Lannister by the hand of his half-son Tyrion and Arya leaving on her quest, I was soooooo excited, I was jumping everywhere as the credits rolled!

I desperately wanted to watch season 5! Then, this season, as the show started again, the same thing happened as during the beginning of season 4 : I somehow got bored after the middle of the second episode and almost stopped watching the show for a whole month. I only agreed, and reluctantly at that, to start watching it again for my girlfriend, who also is a fan. And boy, what a mistake I had made! I got back into it and the hype came back, it was so awesome and fun to follow! Plus the story was finally starting to get really interesting with Jon becoming the head of the black thingy (edit : I just remembered it was the Nightwatch… -_-), Arya becoming a disciple of the many-faced god and Tyrion en route to meet Daenerys. it couldn’t have been better! Then the winter started coming (bothering Stanis in his conquering) and the white walker arrived and raised their army.

The show got even better from that point on and everything built up and built up to get to this last and final episode of the season and by the old gods and the knew and all the others : I was sitting on my arse by the time the credits rolled and my mouth was gaping wide… I swear it took me a few minutes to register all that had happened, to comprehend what it meant and I am still, at this moment, as I am writing this, trembling with excitement from what I have just witnessed! I think this episode easily goes in my top three (the best still being the one with the Viper and the Mountain and as for the other of the three I don’t really know, but definitely top 3!) favorite episodes of Game of Thrones! Easily!

I don’t really know what to say about it (plus I can’t say much if I don’t want to spoil it) but I feel so much emotions inside right now, most of them being along the lines of this :

And something like this :

This :

Or this :

But definitely this :

And this :

Yup. That’s the best I can do to illustrate my feelings and reaction right now. Just imagine a mix of all of the gifs up there and you’ll get something resembling what I feel right now. And it’s AWESOME! :D

Anyways, I can’t say much more unless I start spoiling but DAMN! That episode! :O