Category: lovejoy

• You Must Buy Your Wife at least as Much Jewelry as You Buy Your Other Wife, and Other Musing on Marriage and Life on the Great Caravan
• Hiding Amidst the Highbeards
• Dalliances in Durin
• Little Known Recipes of the Southern Realms
• Hop Upon my Steed: Nights in Her Lady’s Service
• Dark Dances in the House of Daggers
• Starshine: The Poems
• Ecstasy
• Is This My Blood?
• Fall Upon My Sword
• Melanie/ The Honeydew Twins/ Lady Dubious/ Bless You, Broomhilda/ Abigail Upon the Moors/ Anastasia/ Follow Me, Maria Free
• Shameless in the King’s Forest

Wisps of violet smoke undulate unctuously downward, splattering upon the worn and battled boards of the stage, building and reshaping into a bloated, desperate vagabond, Dirkwood Hammersmark. He stands in my shadow, claiming my name, and staining my reputation. These are his regrets:

…Scourge-light dappled tresses draped delicately over firm yet feminine shoulders, hardened by years willfully carrying her master’s burdens. As she turned to face Sir Reginald, she wondered: could she bear the weight of watching her venerable master shame himself as a broiling rage overtook him? In the tenebrous temple depths, she stood transfixed, bewildered by Sir Reginald’s nightmarish wrath, felling friend and foe in equal measure. Mancy was an armored rose wilting in war. Fear stayed her only for a moment, when a love born from years of unconditional service ultimately ignited her every muscle forward. Mancy braved a plague of animated mechanical defenders and lithely dodged ravenous green flames aiming to devour everything they touched in order to reach her master. With strides untouched by time, Mancy stood before Sir Reginald, eyes wet, pleading in riotous silence. His face alive with unnatural vibrancy, as if his demonic rage burned away the lines earned through time and victorious pursuit, stared unmoved. One beat, two beats…Sir Reginald’s blade struck tried-and-true, unwavered by air, by steel, by flesh or by viscera. The incipient meeting of blade and blood seemed to awaken knowledge buried beyond Sir Reginald’s eyes; for as his thrust plunged deep into Mancy’s chest, his face once drained of emotion was inundated with the weight of all human suffering. He let go of the sword. Fully lucid, Sir Reginald succumbed to the realities of his rage and the consequence it bore. The last thing he ever knew was the shame of his betrayal, and Mancy’s last thought was years of dedication built a home scorched by its muse.

– Benjamin Lovejoy