Jerad Bitner

           In the eye of the beholder?
  Maybe.                                                    Not?
                      Well...?
           For sure, are my wants.                  Love,
beauty - I behold.
                            You?
           Oh! Matters to me, what you think.
  Love me?                   Love,     me?
                                Yes!
       For a long time, ifn't life.
Teach: Spirit, love; new, responsibility.
                                     pain; past, New way of thought.
                                                      Discipline.
  SPECIAL are YOU!
         i am?
Comprehend...
                       hard to.
       Comfort are you in a rocking world, in a storm
          of sin.
                    Stability...
                              *mind
                              *soul.
                   For sure.

The young appearing warrior elf moved with gentle but fierce and deadly grace. He swooped around to my left and right with his ever-glowing sky blue sword. I swung around to face him at each turn, then suddenly shifted my great sword to my right hand and took an expert chop at the small bright-eyed elf. He jumped over me and with a fleeting glance at my defenseless back, sliced at the belt on my loincloth, which subsequently fell to my knees.

Although I had thought that the elf and I were alone, I heard a gruff snickering coming from behind the bushes and trees surrounding us. I tried to look and see where exactly the laughter might be coming from but the elf and my loincloth took up most of my attention. It was sort of drafty without my loincloth and the hysterical elf made matters worse, so I bent over to pick it up when I was suddenly pounced upon from behind by strong but short beings; dwarves. I hate dwarves. Probably more than this elf, my he burn in the underworld. Before I could get the creatures off my back, I was covered with a thick black net and being wrapped up tight, was rendered helpless though I struggled with my sword. My left hand was still stuck somewhere in the vicinity of my knee.

The elf was still laughing and finally managed to get himself under control as he said something to the dwarves in a strange tongue. Though I didn’t understand the language, I knew and elf sneer when I heard one. I couldn’t see through the thick netting, but I felt myself being lifted up and carried for a distance before being thrown down. Then we started moving.

It was a long and bumpy trip, and many hours later until we stopped, with no rest upon the way. I was really starting to cramp in my position when the dwarves hands suddenly shot through the net and tied my hands and feet together. I managed to bite one of their fingers off before they got my hands tied though. Blood spurted all over me and the offended dwarf cursed aloud and kicked me repeated in the head. Then the net was lifted and I finally saw some sky blue light through my now blackened eyes. The light was strange, surrounding me though I couldn’t tell the source. Sitting there on the wagon, observing my surroundings, the only thing I could see was a blue void all around me. No trees. No ground. No dwarves or elf. Nothing but blue and the wagon I sat upon.

I knew the wagon had to be sitting on something, so I wiggled myself around to ask the elf, or perhaps the dwarves, but they were simply gone, nowhere to be found! Where could they have gone? Why would they have taken me here and tied me only to leave me. Then, I saw it. A trail of blood leading away from the wagon. How had I missed that? It must have been from the dwarf whose finger I had tasted. My hands and feet were still tied, so I couldn’t just run after them. Though, something was poking me in the back. I turned to find a nail sticking from the wagon. The means of my escape!

I wiggling around a bit, putting myself into position until I could get my hands near it the nail and sawed with it for what seemed like hours before the ropes finally frayed enough to give way to my strength. With my hands now free I looked around for my sword, but it was nowhere to be found. I couldn’t just follow these mad creatures off into an unknown landscape without some sort of weapon, so I ripped one of the larger planks off the wagon and tore at the end until I had fashioned a splinter big enough to impale a small dragon.

With my little wooden spear in in hand, sweat and blood upon my brow, and no minor headache from the blows to my face, I jumped from the wagon to follow the trail of blood, hoping that whatever held up the wagon was going to hold me as well. I had not even taken three steps when I looked back and found the wagon had disappeared into the cold blue haze. I stood there, alone and bloody, spear in hand, encompassed by blue and nothing else to see but this small trail of blood.

Darkness quivered in the back of Draken’s mind, threatening to disperse his current spell, still held in his commanding thoughts. He could feel the attack coming before it hit and struggled to get enough mana harnessed in order cast the protective one that he now held in preparation.

“Just a little more”, he thought to himself. Then just as the darkness was about to overwhelm him, he case his spell, feeling forces gather around him and cling to his mind, shielding it. A sharp gong sounded as his head reeled from the mental force of the impact from the blast he had just barely been able to sheild himself from.

Rubbing his cambrinth ring, shaped as a scorpion, he began to draw mana from it’s reserves as as the diminishing resources around himself. The darkness, still oozing the in the back of his mind, grew as he added mana to it. Draken had been saving this spell for just such a battle and planned ot use it to it’s fullest deadly potential this time. He’d used it in experimentation before, against the likes of wood trolls and creepers, but never to a lethal extent.

“Now would be the time”, thought Draken. For his foe was indeed powerful, maybe more powerful than himself, and he hated anything that was more powerful and destroyed those that were with trickery and deceit. With this newly learned spell, he didn’t exactly need to be more powerful or more learned than his adversary. He just needed the right opening.

Draken saw such an opening as his opponent closed it’s eyes for just a second. Mana started flowing toward his foe and Draken knew what was coming.

“Just a little…”, he took a breath through clenched teeth, “… more”. Draken could feel the other almost at it’s fullest and held that darkness in the back of his mind in check, ready to be unleashed. The other reached his maximum harness and just before the cast, Draken released the darkness from his mind, quickly slipping it past his enemy’s defenses. His opponent gasped and his eyes flared open in shock. It’s arms straightened and went rigid, fingers flexed. Shadows began to form around Draken’s feet and flew to his opponent and down his throat. More shadows seemed to materialize from nowhere and stream into every opening of his foe’s body, filling him like a balloon.

Standing there bloated and so fat it couldn’t move or even fall over, the shadows stopped and it’s mouth closed and opened like a fish as it’s eyes bulged. It’s skin crawled with the shadows as they seemed to move just beneath. Tears streamed down it’s fattened face.

Draken strode over to the bloated live thing and flicked his nose. He laughed a little chuckle to himself, pleased at the outcome of his new spell. It had succeeded in a most pleasing manner, using the victims own mana stores against itself to complete the effects. Helpless now, Draken’s foe stood where he was, tears still streaming. Darken pulled skinning knife from his belt and waved in it from the the bloated thing. His enemy watched every move of the knife, eyes moving back and forth, in shameless fear and not a small hint of anger. Draken took the knife and pressed the top to the thing’s nose, wiggling it’s nose just a little. With a smile, Draken sliced the nose down the middle and the shadows started pouring out of the wound, ripping the flesh bigger and bigger. The shadows poured forth which such force, the creature was ripped apart in a matter of seconds, the shadows disappearing as quickly as they had come.

Draken chuckled to himself once more, wiped the blood spatters from his face and walk on down the trail.

Jenney and I moved from Austin to Carolina Beach, North Carolina and the past three.5 months have been amazing! It’s been like a working vacation. We were right on the beach, with beautiful views, and a personal walkway to the beach which was in a premo-spot. Not a ton of people, lots of waves, and lots of sunshine. We both worked hard, and played hard. It was great and I can honestly say I’ve lived my ‘beach life’ dream for at least a while. Chalk another dream up to ‘accomplished’!

Today marks the start of ANOTHER adventure. We packed up our life once more and left beautiful Carolina Beach behind. Tonight we wait at Jenney’s best friend’s (and Maid of Honor’s) house before our flight tomorrow for San Diego where we will be for a week, staying at her mother’s house before we are wed on Saturday, September 25th. We’re both so so so excited to see our friends and family and to celebrate what we’ve held true in our hearts for the last year; our commitment and love for each other.

After the wedding we’ll be flying back to North Carolina to pick up our belonging and drive to Colorado Springs where we will continue our life together. Jenney took the opportunity for a Pediatric job in her field of Occupational Therapy and will be doing more of what she loves. She went to school specifically for pediatrics, but the job market has, until now, dictate she work in Geriatrics instead. As you can imagine, the field of Geriatrics is a bit more sobering than getting to play with children all day, which is part of what she’ll be able to do at her new job. The new job is not quite as lucrative as a traveling position, but we will still be doing fine and loving our life.

My past year with Jenney has been the best year of my life, and I’m so looking forward to many, many more with her by my side. – guess I better write my vows ;)

For some of the great pictures we took on our travel this far, check out our photostreams on Flickr.

Jenney’s Photostream Jerad’s Photostream

I had a pretty in depth adventure in my dreams last night so I downloaded ommwriter to capture them in the wee morning hours as soon as I awoke. Ommwriter is pretty nice, the music and the interface really helped for this kind of writing and I think would inspire me to write more poetry. I’m still listening to the music as I type this up in my blog. Anyway, here are some notes on the things I remember from the dream. Should turn this into a short story.

• start out searching for lost people down a dark hallway
• hole in the wall
• go through to find a vampire playing pool, trying to make crazy shots, like off the table, off the wall
• knock off the cue ball from a precarious position
• pisses off the vampire and I run
• fall down a story, over a banister, into a pool of water
• notice the missing childrens possessions
• notice the missing children, wrapped up in cacoons made of the green weeds lining the bottom of the pool
• pull some of the cacoons to the surface
• free the children
• vampire comes and i set her on fire, first her hair, then with gasoline
• throw more gasoline up the stairway and onto her brothers
• light the trail and run
• i am vampire
• they search for me
• they find me, and we run from the mother, scatter
• i am alone, running through backyards, pissed
• there is a pool made of runoff, collected rain in a tarp, redneck pool, in which a male and female human lounge
• i am pissed, redneck floating is pissed i’m in his pool making waves
• i jump out, apologise, he threatens me
• i am pissed so i tell him to hit me with whatever he has, a couple huge bottles
• i warn him i may have some vampiric blood in me and need to feed afterwards
• he doesn’t really understand what i’ve said and is rearing to hit me anyway
• my brother appears, a werewolf and hairy, fangs bared
• he bites into the male human and the woman turns to scream
• i catch her and make he look into my eyes
• draw her mind into mine and tell her all is well
• remember well looking into her eyes, connecting with her mind, how it felt to draw her in, how she looked as i became her world, how it felt to have control