NationStates Improviser: Summer 2014

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.

The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.�

-Sylvia Plath

Editors Editor-in-Chief

The New World Oceania Prose Editor

Aquitayne Visual Arts Editor

Aelarus Copyeditor

Elemental North

Finalists Cover Art

Aelarus, Corvus Metallum Fiction Finalist

The Autumn Feast – Rhodevus Poetry Finalist

Unconventional – Page Visual Arts Finalist

Bitter-Sweet – Canador

The NationStates Improviser Summer 2014 Table of Contents Fiction Aillt y Gawywffon – Glasgia 6 Gone in the Morning – Super-Llamaland 8

Poetry Unconventional – Page 11 On Second Thought, No – Respubliko de Libereco 12

Visual Art Swan Song – Corvus Metallum 1 Bitter-Sweet – Canador 5 Stanley and Paul – Creative Vikings 10

Non Relevant – Rumek 13

Acknowledgements Editors & Finalists 3 Sponsors 15

Fiction

“Bitter-Sweet” Canadora

Aillt y Gawywffon Glasgia Fiction Finalist

Ætheling. It was an insult really. A prince in name, but by no means in nature. I squirmed uncomfortably to let the hunk of meat, so keen to flaunt such names, past. Even if it rid me of these monsters, I would not wish to find myself at the heart of such a battle – Not entrapped the horror that those front ranks would soon became.

Past the shoulders of those before me, my eyes met with the enemy beyond. They were far greater in number than the men with whom I fought, yet it probably mattered not. They were raiders, young men like him who had, unlike I, looked for adventure on foreign coasts. Most likely Ffriseg or Daneg,

the irony of which stabbed at my heart.

The sea wolves themselves being hunted by fresh packs.

My muscles twitched into a form of grimace, too raw and battered to force themselves to the point of a smile.

who had been left to rot on a field with no blessing or confessions to save their souls.

These men did not think of that. They did not think. The drank and when they did look towards the afterlife, it was only to think of how they would drink their The spear chafed at my halls of sin just as they hands as it was shunted did so in their twisted again. Hadyn, ddihirod, mortal lives. fastard, nihiryn. The brutes that surrounded I looked back, towards me were just that and the wagons behind. no more. Brutes. They Eithne stood there, fought and they drank hidden from my view and they slept and little yet clear in my mind. else, so god forbid if She may have been a they tried to put their Saxon in blood, but was brains to the same no such creature in rigorous use that their mind. I appreciated bodies so easily that, my last glimmer of endured. None would appreciation that I ever set aside their could salvage in this ways to think of the heathen pit. It was with warriors who they had her, she a mere slave in slaughtered, whom my company, that I had they had condemned run from my father's to purgatory, those fate.

The eyes of wolves did hundred yards away not rest and therefore now and both sides we did not either, a produced a few vain attempt to escape ambitious throws, their the ever encroaching javelins and angons submission to foreign falling well short of the foes. A smattering of first ranks. Tywysog my father's men had Cadoc map Cyndyddan, come too, their Cadoc de Ætheling. My chances for survival kingdom for a spear, few in harsh lands. though it had not been Even the peasants my choice. detested us, their words swayed by sermons corrupted with the power of money – with the power of a victory and with that power history could be rewritten. They had rejected us, left us to starve rather than accommodate men they saw as demons, and so my own guards rejected me. They preferred payment to loyalty, and such a choice was one that I now accepted too.

“Wyrstotsen!” An unfriendly cry forced me onwards, though it did not cut through my thoughts. The enemy were no more than a

Gone in the Morning Super-Llamaland and awoke to a low buzz. A cricket chirped outside. He blinked, looked at the clock (2:08, it read) and yawned dully. He tried to sleep again, heard again the buzz, now accompanied by a dull thudding, and got up and stumbled in the direction of the bathroom.

great opportunity to slip a bag over his head and rip the drawstring shut. Todd clumsily pitched over in drowsy shock, and another man quickly trussed him up.

reeling spin down the long staircase. All the way down he screamed, spinning dizzily into the arms of a third kidnapper, who knocked him unconscious

Survival kicked in, Despite this, he left no adrenaline surged into trace that he had left. It his mind, and Todd was the perfect crime, bravely began to roll utterly unsolvable. away, to the amusement Thirty-two seconds A violent noise, best of his abductors. after the door described as thuPowerfully flopping by shattered, a solitary pow! with notes of one man, grinning and white van drove off into kririsch and crash, sweating, he surged the sable night. exploded from the forwards and rolled downstairs door and down the stairs.

Todd awoke twice in knocked the boy over. the next twenty-four He blinked, ears "Ow!" he cried as he hours. ringing, and stumbled bounced off the third back up. He remarked step from the top, At the first, he blinked in sleep-induced waves of pain surging awake. It was still pitch drowsiness that the up his leg as he black outside the van, racket sounded a lot somehow flipped careening as it flung like the door being around and landed on itself off various cracks kicked over. his head. and potholes in the country road, kicking Todd froze in His arm cracked on up prodigious clouds of realization, giving the the seventh step, dust as it did so. man behind him a sending him into a

Everywhere hurt.

Aches spread themselves throughout his body; infernos pitched against his mind. Even when he yawned, a fiendish agony unraveled against his face. As his head slowly cleared, he overheard something in the midst of his muddled mind.

"Shut up, Johnson, it's not like you pay us." said the second from the seat in front of him.

"What?" Johnson asked slowly, reaching for his hip. The driver coughed nervously "I said, 'Shut-'"

With a deafening crack, Johnson's pistol went off, sending blood "So, where are we spraying into the air. taking this kid?" the Todd gagged as a first man, possibly the splatter hit him square driver, asked. in the face, while the man in the second row "Don't know what the slumped back into his Institute thinks," chair. Johnson casually replied a second. pocketed the gun and opened a window.

Todd blinked and Terrified and continued to listen. desperate, Todd swore that he would not allow "Have no idea what them to capture him, they do to these kids." whereupon he fell asleep again.

"Don't you feel bad? I hear they get tortured." But by the second time he woke up, they "Eh, it pays well for already had him. you," muttered a third, "just get on with your job."

Poetry

“Stanley and Paul” Creative Vikings

Unconventional Page Poetry Finalist Creatively unstable, beyond description in my way What should I do with all these days?

To be high on life what would that taste like?

I think those hits I take aren't so pure.

Someone should make me a bracelet of thorns.

I'd be the savior of the lost.

Each fresh cut would remind of the cost as I write.

And I've known love, I've felt accomplished but when I'm selfish and thoughtless I always am consumed by my worst.

The most vibrant color, the great outline, a work of art, but a tragic design.

Still, I don't mind.

To be unafraid and my debts repaid, where to go from here, the question.

I need a cipher To decode life lessons.

Someone should make me mechanical hands, I'd have a handle on the conventional.

But I'm in love and want no life of settle down, take-or-leave it price of complacency. That'll never work out for me.

I want to give more than I take, I'll hope for good luck with glass to break and to be remembered, whatever of my life I make.

On Second Thought, No Respubliko de Libereco Your writing's abysmally horrid; it's purple, and too fucking florid.

If you call someone's eyes "Orbs as blue as the skies" then you rightfully should be deplorèd.

[Editor’s Note: This poem, originally written in the Writing Discussion thread, was preceded by Respubliko de Libereco’s comment, “Perhaps you can add a false layer of joviality to your criticism by presenting it as a limerick.”]

“Non Relevant” Rumek

We thank you for reading this Summer 2014 edition of the NationStates Improviser!

About the NS Improviser The NationStates Improviser is an NS–wide literary magazine and a publication of artists in the Arts and Fiction board on the NS Forums. Created in 2013, The NS Improviser is fueled by a passion for the written word and artistic expression.

The NS Improviser is the strongest example of our forum's mission to study and disseminate the crafts of creative writing and visual arts. A staff of scholarly, aspiring, and professional artists compile original work submitted by writers and artists from across the site. We publish four online editions per year, in February, May, August, and November, exhibiting the best art NationStates has to offer.

The NationStates Improviser literary magazine accepts original fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, screen writing, plays and visual art from all NS users.

We aim to produce four online editions per year, and one full compilation each October/November. We seek original, innovative, creative and nuanced work from around the world.

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