History is written on lies; what archeology reveals gets tainted in the politics of the backers of the expeditions

There had been a written language

no history research can tell you this because the language had been outlawed and any writing too

Everything written had been destroyed by the Romans but the pride of the people remembered anyway and told each of their children the true story.

Hid secrets in knots

Secret codes.... wrapped in a maze of design and woven into the memories

What is in the DNA?

what does get passed down? Darwin suspected the secrets and is it not all about survival?

But if we forget the knowledge learned how much loss for the knowing that it first took? How many seas were crossed? How many mountains .... how much was sacrificed along the way

The pirate with the vampire eyes

Yet he does not demand anything

Elan sees him go to other women. She sees him do this each stop they make. It is at villages they stop by to trade at. He never touches her, he only protects her from the others. Yet Raoul keeps her nearby and makes sure to keep  one eye always on her; he keeps watch of her and as he goes behind the doorway with the kind who give their bodies for something he sells 

he says,

“stanna här,” and points for her to sit at the bench of the proprietor’s stall

she hears them through the doorway as she waits.... hears the sounds the women make and sees the way they look at him after 

She always averts her eyes when he steps out

It is one of many times that he sees her washing by some fresh water and stays concealed behind trees

The perplexity of his face as he watches the girl. The way his eyes stare

The early days they kept a respectful distance of each other as they traveled or when side by side having a meal that sometimes she asks if she can prepare because it is something she would always do for her father. The first time she asked this he gave her something that had been hers from her father’s trunk. A leather bag of herbs

When she looked up at him for this he smiled

and then very slowly.... she smiled back

That was the first time

Something kept her in his stare and she stared back. It was a look she had never known before but it was mixed with a look she had known all too well

But she did not pull back

After that, each time she waited outside a proprietor of that kind she felt a feeling that she did not fully understand

It made her angry at him and she didn’t understand why

He noticed it though the first time when he motioned and told her to put on the cloak which she did with a cold look ....and it made him smile

She was angry all the way back to the boat and all through the voyage to their next stop and each time it happened hence 

intrigue Film Noir

“How did you get involved in spying?” I ask him shivering in the car as he drives. I don’t ask him about the car which is an SUV but I do notice it is a Volvo

Jörn grimaces, and shakes his head,
“....spying....”

“You’re trying to deny it?”

He sends me an icy look that is meant to scare me but I don’t feel scared. No. I suppose in a way I am intrigued

“Well....” he shrugs now and says, “it was during my rebellious stage— you like research, you’re always digging things up on Google.”

“I like archaeology. I liked it even before Google.”

“Yes, archeology.... I was more interested in the science angle,” he glances at me, “how biology tells its own story.”

“Pathology?”

“Yes—but even more than that. So.... at first I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a musician because everyone in my family is and I was always interested in things like what can be learned of a person’s life through their diet or biology or their .... remains.”

“I see. Gruesome.”

I see his smile even as he keeps his head straight and his eyes on the road

“It’s interesting, min lilla duva.... anyway, I studied at university for awhile and a friend of mine invited me to one holiday at his family’s summer house. His father happened to be an investigator.... is still actually....”

“What kind of investigator?”

“For the government.”

he says this simply with a shrug

I turn to look at him but still his head remains straight and his eyes stay focused on the road

“And?”

Only now does he glance at me. He draws his brow,
“and?”

“There is more to that,” I say to him

He looks back at the road,
“Hmmm.... you think so I’m sure.”

“Obviously.”

He shrugs again,
“well.... obviously I am a musician so I did end up following the family path.”

“I’m not sure if you’re really insulting my intelligence or if you think I can’t see through this.”

“No, I just don’t feel like talking about it because I just dragged you out of the Hudson ....so why don’t you tell me about that instead of trying to think you can distract me?”

“I don’t think that.... “ I say but then I add, “I just don’t feel like talking about it,” I say

Jörn, the drowning sea & the loss of reason; A mermaid’s drowning voice

“Our conversation earlier has disturbed me greatly,” he tells me

My mind is blank and fights through the morass, I stare into the Hudson; it goes to several of many conversations but I still

....well I don’t know

Jörn stands there in front of me and I have to look way up at him

“You told me about your dream, min lilla duva....” he squints into my eyes from up there because the sun is in his eyes; the way the sun glitters into them has me caught in the memory of something else

That he has come here makes me rethink what I may have....

I cover my face

“What were you planning to do?” he pulls my shoulder to look at him; he is now knelt down next to me where we are now by the rock ....it is nearly submerged now slick with water like I am and so is he

“Look at me!” he shouts this

I don’t look

Instead I realize what dream he is referring to. The one about the angel of death that has kept me up every night since

It has been almost a week

“You have been avoiding me all week staying up here....you say you are disappointed in humanity?” only this he whispers

“How did you know I was here?” I whisper back at him

“You posted on IG....” then he says, still with the intimacy of a whisper,

“don’t disappoint me....”

but why do I almost hate him now.... for saying that and finding me

“Plus, you haven’t finished your story,” he says in a gentle chide

I remember he is a father. And I remember he has a daughter

.... it makes me angry

before I find a retort he throws me over his shoulder like a bag of swords

first edit; JM chronicles of the Vampire Pirate; the early memories of the vampire and the priestess

Raoul knew some words from other languages from his trading in different places; enough for some crude and basic communication and this way they learned each other’s names and began the basis of some initial conversations

at first she only stared into the water and barely noticed nor responded when Raoul tossed a hide to cover her against the winds from the sea

It did not occur to her to be afraid. Not at first. She only stared into the water

It was only when the other men on the boat started to notice her. When they would reach to steal touches of her body; when the raiding leader wasn’t looking and then, she became resentfully aware of another kind of danger when she kept hearing them refer to her as “Slav” and choosing not to show fear, from which she would raise her head up higher and look at them with disdain because she knew what that meant and knew her people were not of those parts

Sometimes when they said that she would spit with a sneer at them and reply with another word to clarify that she was, instead, from the other lands and spat,

“Keltoi!” at them because she remembered hearing about the lands of the Pyrenees from the ancient stories her mother told where the people were marked by the red of their hair like Elan and what her mother had too. And how her father had first come by her mother on his travels as a bard. Her mother had traveled with her Druid husband. He was come from the distant isles to the west from Tintagel; he was of the Cymry people with the dark eyes which Elan also had. Her face was a hybrid of cultures which caused men to stare because it gave her an exotic look

and so from place to place they had traveled often by mule with bags on their backs and sometimes by sea when her father had found passage with the peoples they traded with.

She knew of the Slavs from their travels and had seen how their people were often smuggled; kidnapped as slaves 

But many times her father devised a way to help some escape the clutches of the Rus by putting them in the trunks they traveled with. Being a magic man he threatened curses as the means of protecting his property during those fearsome encounters with the Rus

....and she would slip potions in their ale 

during the hours of the bard’s story-telling by the fire 

when she had been required to sing and dance 

and dangled like a toy by her father; the old Druid who told his news of the world through stories told sung through his song

her father would take out his harp and oblige her to dance and sing the chorus 

as the warriors watched her; as her father dangled her

Those warriors who expected more than just her voice nor just to watch 

She had little faith in the Druid spells of incantations but she had learned a lot about the plants —which aided to confuse during necessary times. She knew the healing plants too and the plants that could both give and take life

Once the shock wore off that the warrior had killed her father she began to be aware that her life was to be drastically altered. She had never imagined a life free of her Druid father beyond those childish dreams of youth that long vanished ....those dreams of rescue and of finding a good man that she had had glimpses of during those stops at towns where they traded. But those dreams were destroyed when her mother died and her father turned to his daughter for his lustful needs in his drunken and twisted grief. She had learned shame. And her dreams died with that shame. She had learned to feel a loathing for that kind of act

Freed of her father’s dirty intrusion of her body but replaced by the threat of a ship of savage warriors, even as she was not the only female on board, she was the one most prized and favored

Raoul was the leader and respected by the others but there were some who resented him, she quickly found and then.... it began to dawn on her ....that pirate who claimed her would expect more of that kind of shame.... that act of what she had learned to despise

Yet he would guard her during that voyage that continued to other trading villages 

but he could not always be there

It was on such an event of being dragged by one at such a village .... it was on the event that she began to associate Raoul with safety 

when he stopped a brutal encounter —one of his shipmates who stripped her of her dark blue robes; when she nearly lost her life as she fought the hands that invaded her body

Raoul had saved her

After Raoul killed him it began a kind of tension among the others from the ship and they all watched her with sidelong leers and called her the spawn of Loki.

JM chronicles; memories of Raoul

Raoul


He watches her from the market when she goes to the water to watch the waves and searches for moonstones

Jörn sits at his piano and plays as the memory plays back, thrown back from dreams in his mind

He creates

Recalls from dreams

He plays. The music where he is conductor. Conductor of all. In control

He’s in control

Always in control

Of all his emotions....

She goes to the water to wash. To wash the blood from her clothes.

He stayed to watch her because earlier he had heard her screams. The father’s shadows on the stall wall behind the curtain he watched....

The Druid with the silver and gold; the crystal ball.... they were going to sack the market but he convinced the men otherwise. To trade instead his hides.... to sell his swords he spent all winter at his craft

They were going to sack the market

Instead he watched her red hair escape from the hood of her dark blue woad dyed robes

But as he watched her the men back at the market were drinking.

There was blood on his blade.... things turned when he heard her scream in the shadows and his blade found the reason for her screams and .....

He saw relief in her face as he dragged the Druid from her

 And as he watched her wash still stunned she searched the shore for moonstones, washing the blood from her clothes

the screams from the market reached them. The look on her face reminded him of his dead sister and he ran and hauled her over his shoulder like his sack of swords. Her robes wrapped around and falling in drapes down his back as he ran to the long boat with her

His music on the piano goes mad as his fingers slam down on the keys

JM Muse Chronicles Film noir Jörn scene continues

Jörn: I did not know who you were when I first saw you in the lobby

Beth does not reply. She waits watching him. Her face obscured and just the set of her shoulders expresses the sense of something like a bird waiting to take flight

Jörn: I found out from the doormen who you were

Beth: the doormen?

Jörn (shrugs and inclines his head downstairs): so I read your blog.... going back a few months and....

Here he stops to reflect as if only just recalling an observation

Jörn: I started to dig around. I half suspect that is how they figured out .... yes, min lilla duva, I do have some connections with.... secret intelligence

Beth: some connection?

Jörn (does not reply but rather stares st her and shrugs)

Beth: I see.... you mean you are a spy?

Jörn: I wouldn’t say that

Beth looks at him and they trade looks

Jörn (with a reluctant sigh): not.... exactly

He is caught by her look

Jörn (Again a shrug): not .... per se.... so to speak