Dead, Mad, or a Poet

"Choose," she says. "You get one or the other. Which would you rather?" I look at her, study her, not quite understanding the task. She's always been both to me: the beauty of blooms and the sharpness of talons, a petal-soft being with a beak to tear flesh. "I am not the one you must choose for," she reminds me, feathers ruffling where flowers used to be. "I show only what is. We are yet to tell the story of what can be. That day is coming, but not yet." I look down again at the options. One: the soft beauty of petals and a shapely figure clothed in fine dresses. A life of being admired by many, of being pleasing to men.  Two: the warmth of feathers and freedom of wings. A life of hunting and relative solitude, of reputation as an ill omen. "These are truly the only options to aspire to?" I ask incredulously."What of other shapes, other forms? What of other ways of being?" Blodeuwedd shakes her head sadly. "I...

The cavern is low and rounded like the belly of a mare in foal. What light there is seems to come from the floor, a dim glow sprouting up in slices of white and black. It's been an age since he died, since the game began again. An age since the raven-shield was sundered and his path twisted from Annwn to this board Underhill. An age since all he's heard are the words, "Your move" over and over again. He still hears the whispers of lore on the winds, of course; his ravens see to that. They tell of a king asleep in a hall with his knights, ready to rise up from his cold slumber to defend the land. If only that lore were true—death would be far better if it were. A slumbering king is one without the thought or might to battle on the wood for the land.  For hundreds of years he lost. Lost pieces. Lost the game. Lost the battle. Hundreds of years of seeing his black stacked up on the opposite side of the board while his opponent's white pieces mocked him from the s...