Xiren as a child

Started with some possible sketches of his Black, Maryam (I like mounts having names that start with 'M' for some reason...), then I tried to draw him running without a reference. Pretty fail, but I think I captured his happy go lucky and his crazy wild hair. First portrait of a dragon in flight without reference...not too bad.

Xiren was a Dragonrider with no mother (died) and an extremely difficult father. He was a Dragonlord, and therefore had extremely high expectations of his happy-go-lucky son, who was kept isolated to cut off his cheerful streak and make him into a serious man. When he got his Black (a traditionally unlucky color) from a hatching, his father was disappointed in both his mount and his ecstatic attitude about getting her.

He grew up in the mountains then and made lots of friends, where his father couldn't limit his growth, but he was always close by, harassing him, physically abusing him, etc. Having no other parental figure to turn to, and the only model of adulthood being one of violence, his mind began to break and he began to have violent thoughts. These in turn twisted the mind of his dragon, and they spiralled downward together until, one stormy day after a particularly brutal display of abuse from his father and the assurances that he would both never make Dragonlord and was to be immediately transferred to the far reaches of the world, away from those he loved...

He killed his father and his aides. All of them, innocent or no. And he felt nothing.

He flew away on Maryam and went further crazy with guilt and the fact that he sometimes felt nothing but numbness. He started thirsting for power, resenting the other riders for branding him as a murderer so unjustly. He killed anyone who tried to take him, he took what he wanted. He had a bastard son by an elf, who she kept and named Karimo. He one day grew up and put an end to the killings of the father: the first and last time he met him, they were both on their Black mounts, weapons in hand, and Karimo left with blood on his hands and a sense of ease in his conscience.

And all this, from the smiling, happy youth who just wanted to play with his dragon.

Some Takeshi sketches

My Takeshi. Sorry for the lack of posts, crazy homework. These are actually from last week.

Rain at a Funeral

Audio Recording

Note: I'm not nearly as confident with my Texan accent as I am with my British, so there's a couple parts here where it slips. Forgive me.

This one's about Rick, at Mellissa (his girlfriend) and her family's funeral. A little sadder, even though I've had a great, happy day today.

Rain at a Funeral

Fuckin’ rain.

It shouldn’t even be allowed. My whole life’s just turned into a pathetic fallacy. In multiple senses of the phrase.

It also shouldn’t be allowed to rain at funerals. So movie-typical bull, people in black with their black umbrellas and their sad looks, the rain streaking their cheeks and masking their tears. Except their eyes, their red eyes, they give it away. Rain doesn’t have anything like salt in it to sting like that.

Everyone’s got black umbrella too, except me. Mine’s purple, go figure, the only one I could find in the house. So here I am, sixteen, bawling my eyes out with my purple umbrella in a sea of black suits and ties and veils, wearing my last year’s costume for our school’s musical: a navy blue suit modeled after the ones they had in the 1960’s, since that’s the only one I got.

Dammit. She was in that musical, too.

They’re burying an empty casket. Cas…Caskets. Her and her brother. The bodies weren’t found. Some part of me wants to desperately hope that they weren’t there, but James never left the house, and Mellissa’s been seen nowhere since. They probably burnt past recognition and got mistaken for a piece of furniture…

God, look at the rain, look at the suit and tie people, anything but the mind’s eye image of their blackened, burnt bodies lying on the living room floor.

D-Dorian’s here? I probably wouldn’t have noticed him if I hadn’t been so intent on looking at my ... Dorian? Really? I guess they were acquaintances…I shouldn’t trash him now. I mean, it’s a funeral.

Is he looking at me? He looks…He doesn’t look like anything. But he’s here, so that’s got to say something.

The woman to my right sobbing. It’s her English teacher. I have her for English next semester…She’s good, Melissa said she likes opinionated students who aren’t afraid to speak their minds. Just like me…

Melissa…What happened? How could this…happen?

Shit, Dorian’s still looking at me, isn’t he? I bet he knows it’s not just rain on my face. There’s red in my eyes too, after all.

Fuckin’ rain.