Ma'am- how dares thou leave us off on a cliffhanger for both Empires on the Horizon and Kingdom Collisions V >:L I demand to know whats going to happen next!! (also take your time to write them lol )
Ah my friend you are right I am sorry for being so rude😭👀here's a Kingdom Collisions update. Please forgive me?🥺
Y’all know the drill by now. This is a fic i’m writing to try incorporate more descriptions into my writing. I do not have pre-written chapters so we’re both lost on what comes next or when the next update will be?! Please enjoy!
masterlist
TW: Suicide mention
Kingdom Collisions VI
Once upon a time in a land known for water and jewels there lived a young boy. He had skin the colour of soil and eyes the colour of oceans and were your gaze to ever fall upon this little figure you knew the earth was created just for him. The boy lived in a white-stone castle, surrounded by guards in clanking silver armour and blue-feathered helmets. Swords gleamed with their newness. They are decoration, a rite of passage. They only reflect the water. Children darted between their legs as they swoppeed shifts and if you looked closely the boy was often one of them. The castle stood proud and tranquil in the kingdom and gave the people hope.
If the white walls stand tall the queen will rise above all.
A piece of poetry long since washed away.That single line ran through the city streets like rain water. Ran into people's homes, and under the wheels of rumbling cars. Generations had forgotten the poem to time but that line for it's power and rhyme had weathered the changing tides. If you listened closely the trees still knew the words. But nobody ever heard. The world was too busy and the day too new to remember what it was like to become one with evergreens.
Percy Jackson wakes up with a gasp, heart beating like conga drums. His fingers curl into his chest, leaving red marks as he winces sleep away. The world is still pitch black; stars hidden behind a blanket of storms. He wonders if they find comfort wrapped in the clouds. If those white puffs feel as soft as they look. Sleep is faraway, a distant friend stuck at a cold airport terminal. So he drifts to the window, ignoring the wind prickling his skin and sits down at the bench. The chiffon curtains rustle softly, talking to him in a language he hasn't quite yet learned. He knows they're saying something important. They must be if they brush against his legs every few minutes. Everyone is always trying to tell him something important. Something life changing and groundbreaking. He wishes he could pause time for a little while. Stroll through the gardens and into the ocean without anybody running after him.
The curtain drifts towards him again and he sighs as if the universe has made him designated driver. An unwanted, unwilling task.
Somewhere a bird caws and he snorts softly, "Okay, okay. I'm handling it."
He let's the sounds of the wind take him through the endless corridors, let's it carry him like a dying flower, like autumn leaves, like bonfire embers. The stone floor is cold under his bare feet and his body is littered with bumps. He misses the warmth of his castle. Misses the warmth of the hearth in every room and the smell of the sea that drifts in through open windows. Mostly, especially, he misses his mom. There is something distinctly missing from the Castle of Caelum. He hasn't quite put his finger on it but it doesn't feel right.
He doesn't have time to delve into that thought because all at once everything goes quiet. A large door looms before him.
"So this is it huh?" His voice is soft, afraid to disrupt the silence.
Taking a deep breath, filling up his lungs with the air of the Kingdom of Wind, he knocks on the wood. It is gentle and solitary and he's almost certain no-one heard it but his ears perk up anyway. He knows you can't pick up footfalls on stone but it doesn't stop his heart from racing in anticipation. The door opens with a soft click and tired eyes look at him.
"Percy," Jason's voice is raspy with crying and his heart shatters.
"Hey, can I come in?"
The blonde looks at him, brows furrowed and tear stains carved into his cheeks. Percy can see the tiredness in the prince's bones, like x-rays of exhaustion. He's about to say nevermind, about to walk away, walk past his own chambers and into the lifeless night. But the Prince nods once and moves aside.
He feels almost disappointed that he couldn't escape. Disappointed he couldn't just go back and never return. His mother's voice flitters into his head.
When your people are suffering you must lie down with them and ask them to tell you their story.
Why mom?
Because little one when the time comes you will know what to do.
How momma?
We are made of stories little one. We are made of all the things people tell us. Our dreams and hopes and memories are just threads in a tapestry and every person is connected to it.
I don't understand momma?
She smiled at him, perfect white teeth and dark blue eyes: When you think of me little one, what comes to mind?
Ten year old Percy frowned, Chocolate chip cookies, and your bedtime tales, and the beach, and hugs.
And what do you think about Grover?
Percy's green eyes had lit up like the sun: Play time and movies and ice-cream!
She laughed: And what about Dad?
His little brows furrowed: Fancy clothes and swords and paper and cuddles.
And Princess Piper?
His nose scrunched up: Cooties! He squealed and then he was running around the room; the world a flowing river, him a little fish learning its current.
You see little one, you didn't think about bones or skin or blood. You thought of memories and stories. Do you understand now?
He nodded as he scrambled into her lap: I think so momma. So if my people tell me who they are I can use their stories to help them when they're sore?
Almost little one. Half of hurt is because nobody listens. If you just listen to what your people are saying they will not hurt so much.
Is that because we have to tell our stories momma?
"Exactly. That is how we live. And live on."
Prince Perseus Jackson takes a deep breath and steps into the room. Immediately he can feel the icy wind, so much colder up here, stinging his bare arms, chest, legs. Save for the small silk boxers covering his most sensitive parts his body is exposed to the brutal temperatures and he cannot hide a shiver as he settles on the couch. The fire has died long ago, maybe not even put on for the night, if the grey ashes and lack of heat are indication enough.
"What are you doing here?" The blonde prince looks at him.
"The curtains told me to come."
"What?" He can hear the confusion, but more than that the weight of a thousand heartaches.
He wonders if every person who has their heartbroken feels like they're the first to ever go through it. If that feeling is so perfectly human it feels unique and special to each one.
"Sometimes the world talks to me and sometimes I listen."
"I don't really know what game you're playing but I'm not in the mood so if it isn't an emergency," Those eyes are ice blue, "And I honestly wouldn't care even if it was, please get out."
"I cannot." He shrugs and pulls a velvet blanket over him.
"I'd appreciate," Jason's teeth grit, "If you respected my boundaries enough to leave. I am not in the mood."
"The window is open, there is paper sitting on the desk and many crumpled pieces on the floor, and I can see you haven't even sat on your bed, never-mind slept in it. What do you plan to do Grace?"
"You know what." That voice is hard, malicious with fear, pain.
"I will not leave. And you will not either. You can sit there on your bed hating me till the sun graces us once more. You can punch me until I am the same colour as the dusk but I am not leaving."
"I hate you. Leave me alone." He can hear the tears hit the cold stone. He doesn't react. A shadow blocks the moonlight finally peaking through the clouds.
"I said leave me the fuck alone!"
"I cannot do that Prince."
"Don’t call me that." He snaps, pushing his face into Percy's, "Go away! I want to be alone."
"I can't Jason,"
"JUST LEAVE!" Golden fists pound at his chest, droplets of salt soaking into his skin, as if trying to wash away the bruising.
He grabs his husband's hands gently and pulls him to the couch.
"I'm not going to leave you."
"They all left." Jason gasps, "They left. HE LEFT!"
The scream draws blood from his ears, pulls oxygen from his veins.
"I'm here. I'm not leaving. I am here."
"Please," Sobs wrack that broken body, and Percy can feel the first cracks in a kingdom. "Please don't leave me. Please, please please."
He rubs his hand over a shaking back and mutters over and over again, "I will not leave you."
Prince Jason Grace cries a new ocean and he names it after the fire that caused it. When the sun peaks over the horizon, fracturing a wall of crystal, and attempting to warm those cold grey stones, Percy Jackson takes his husband to bed and ignores the fissures running under his feet.
Once upon a time in a kingdom known for storms and gold there lived a little boy. He had eyes of lightning and skin the colour of sunlight and if you ever caught a glimpse of him you knew only the darkest nights could ever produce something so beautiful. The guards are bathed in riches, weighed down by diamonds cut from dreams and earrings weighted with the pureness of gold. Swords are varied and prized. Bred for fodder. Used at will. He lived in a castle made of grey stone and it loomed over the kingdom like a black cloud. The people looked at it and shied away. For they too had a poem about their crown but they remembered every line.
Those who fell under the shadow of stone were sure to be left to ruin by their king and cursed forever alone. A young boy with hair spun from starlight is trapped inside. Who will save him if he cannot hide?
Forgetting was a death warrant.
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Fresh Listen - Various Artists, Si, Para Usted: The Funky Beats of Revolutionary Cuba, Vol. 1 (Light in the Attic, 2010)
(Some pieces of recorded music operate more like organisms than records. They live, they breathe, they reproduce. Fresh Listen is a weekly review of recently and not so recently released albums that crawl among us like radioactive spiders, gifting us with superpowers from their stingers.)
A piece of music rarely comes across to me as greater with repetition. Beautiful music tackles you, jars you, arrests you. It does not require you to have coffee with it to get to know it better. Beautiful music compels a visceral reaction upon first listen. Nevertheless, repeated engagement with albums sometimes can provide insight, especially when it sets within you an unfamiliar vibration.
Critics will sometimes go on about how many times they listened to a particular record, in an effort to make their endeavors appear as real work. I like to think that multiple, befuddled listens may bring one closer to identifying a thematic or musical through line in a long-playing audio recording, perhaps only to pinpoint some buried layer of appeal or pleasure. Perhaps to reveal an artists’ secret message in all of its intricacies, delivered only to the listener at hand who has the heart to surrender.
When your average modern rock fan walks cold into the middle of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, they may find themselves mystified, adrift. Musicians squawking at one another, in alternating solos, in an alien language several steps removed from traditional chord changes and instrumental melody lines. The magic, for the listener, may not be apparent the first time around. But A Love Supreme rewards, and continues to reward, multiple revolutions over time, multiple experiences. Regardless of the sophisticated architecture of A Love Supreme, the music, being in itself a supplicant’s devotional, is not a frozen piece of art designed to be admired--it exists to be comprehensible to everyone, to be related to less as a jazz masterpiece than as a life force with a bloodstream of bass notes, hopes manifest in full-fingered piano chords flung upon the rapid progression of time, the single wailing question “Why? Why? Why?” metamorphosed concurrently into keening saxophone notes of pressure and air.
While some pieces of music will hit you on the head with a blackjack and proceed to rob you blind, there exist other more complex expressions that require patience and substantial metaphysical dream power in exchange for an album’s worth of transcendence.
Given that the compilation record Si, Para Usted is composed of the work of artists from Cuba, I had no immediate affinity with the music beyond a recognition of electric guitars and disco beats. I had to grapple with what was being communicated to me, since I’m less than familiar with the Spanish language and would not be parsing the lyrics for thematic interpretations. I am equally green to the most basic Cuban/Latin musical aesthetics (though I have been, many times, moved by them). Beyond this collection propelling me into a raving dance frenzy, I thought I might delude myself into understanding how some of these songs worked on a universal level (through my primitive filter of British/American rock-based music), what the songs themselves were referencing, and what an album like this could mean to an American listener with a moderate grasp of Cuban history and politics, though zero grasp of its language and arts.
I can only go partway toward explaining why I think Si, Para Usted is a nifty collection full of sonic surprises and a ceaseless rhythm that defies you to experience it stationary, without surrendering to the organic energy of your body in sync with the perpetual beating of drums, cajon, congas, and cowbells. Suffice it to say it is among the most natural marriages of rock music and dance music, a favored expression among many indie bands today that is generally unsuccessful.
My first question, formulated while the horns and guitars blasted through my ear buds on the King Street bike lane while my pedals, their resistance lifted by the music, turned effortlessly underneath me, was “how did they determine the songs for inclusion on this record?” In his experiential and exceedingly sensible Uproot: Travels in 21st Century Music and Digital Culture, Jace Clayton casts a suspicious eye on “world” music that has found some popularity in the United States. Clayton argues (and here I would quote the author if I did not press the book onto a friend) that international artists popular in the West are sometimes neither popular nor representative of the musical environment in their home countries. The reason for their notoriety in the West has to do with the narrow grasp Americans and Europeans have of the music forms of other countries, or a predetermined aesthetic that non-Western artists either consciously or unconsciously incorporate into their music that translates easier to the expectations of the Western listener.
When I consider how Si, Para Usted was curated, I wonder about the through line that ties these selections together. Are they all, as the title suggests, “funky?” (Primarily so, though there are some pieces, especially near the end, that exude “funk” not in their rhythms and basslines, but through a timeless kind of strangeness). Have they all to do with the revolutionary messaging of the Cuban state apparatus? (No, given that several of these tunes are instrumental, and those with lyrics don’t espouse explicitly Communist beliefs). I myself assume that choices were made--and wisely so-- to provide the American listener a survey of popular Cuban dance music over a period of years, with especial emphasis on effects-laden electric guitars over smooth basslines, hovering above the scummy confines of rock and roll by a percussive sophistication that challenges our samba-deficient sensibilities. On Si, Para Usted, an angular experiment like “Sondeando” can coexist with a straightforward disco number like “Con la Luz del Manana .”
Fortunately, not all the songs on Si, Para Usted reflect the neutered production values of dancefloor-ready “ Con la Luz.” The collection kicks off with the seemingly lazy horn riff of “Son a Propulsion,” before the insistency of an electric guitar carries the simple arrangement to some dark funk playland, its shadows enhanced by a noir-ish 70′s soul progression. The forceful, almost intimidating energy of “Bacalao Con Pan” is the result of its layered, heavy rhythms battling for sonic supremacy of the track against chanting back-up vocalists spurring on--enraging, almost--the sweaty yells of the lead singer, who commands as much as persuades. In contrast, fleet drums allow “Y No le Conviene” to sneak up on the listener like a pickpocket, and the track’s equally covert strings suggest rock classic “Inna Gadda Da Vida” alongside a prominent bass.
Except for “Amor Mio,” a love song in Spanish not so congruently shoehorned into a soul-funk arrangement, the collection is heavy on beats and light on melody. "De la Fiesta Mejor," maniacally driven by what seems to be an amphetamine-fuelled obsession, is a race between instruments to oblivion. Composed of one chord, its late key modulation does not carry the proceedings to a higher level, but squeezes them closer to total chaos. The title track, "Si Para Usted" doesn't strike me as one of the stand-out recordings. I wonder if the secret to the song is some lyrical content I can't, in my ignorance, comprehend. The English translation of "si, para usted" is "if for you," a meaning that to me seems equally cryptic. "Rompe Cocorico" revisits the single chord non-progression, the chord stabbed repeatedly by a clav figure, punctuated by laser beam synths. "Baila Ven Y Baila," with its shouted choruses and guttural spoken verses, is the overseas cousin to "Mongoose" by New York psychedelic band Elephant's Memory, split in the middle by an extended wah solo.
The last batch of songs on Si, Para Usted are the most musically diverse. Here the Latin rhythm conventions function as a step into another kind of music altogether. "Pocito 11," which begins with a deceptively simple cowbell tattoo, evolves rapidly into a kind of sharp, precise jazz, harmonic complexity modulated by swift changes. "El Tino" is the aural equivalent of a nocturnal adventure along the lines of Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out." Slowly building horns and keyboard pattern pull the night down over the city--and the streetlights, the window lights, are ensconced in mystery.
"Sondeando," its rough sonic texture the result of an aged tape or bad mastering, is red meat for listeners like me--its hazy production emphasizes its exotic spark, its flutes evocative of a fantasy space that exists in Cuba and simultaneously exists all over the world, that headspace into which we all retreat to remind ourselves of the magic.
The final track, "Casina Y Epidecus," suggests a shining temple slowly revealed in a clearing after a long jungle journey, sitars and chimes in concert with the dawning dread and ecstasy, the somewhat menacing sounds overcome by the god-like voice of an omniscient narrator. Her secret and its meaning is lost as the album reaches its end.
Si, Para Usted is not necessarily a dance record. It doesn't rock particularly hard. It's not rich with hooks and catchy choruses. it isn't practical--it strains against expectations, it doesn't apply to a strict category of music. What makes the record so remarkable is its humanity. The musicians here, distilling their inspirations into Latin-accented funk rock, impart upon the listener the happy message that if you step out of your comfort zone and pay attention closely, you will find in the alien the universal, and that the heart of music will beat through any instrument at hand.
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