THE WINTER SCHOOL by Fireblossom and Hedgewitch

Darlings, I'm taking a departure from my usual unicorns and sugar fairies this morning, in order to bring you this collaborative effort from the almost illegally talented Hedgewitch and (for ballast) Yours Truly. Blame her for the absence of anime bunnies. I would have included them. And now, without further tedious ceremony, our poem...

THE WINTER SCHOOL



At the Winter School,
Classes were held at night--
Girls on the left,
Spirits on the right;
Our elbows scratched lessons on frosted windows,
And our teachers sang us lullabyes
While appearing to us as crows.

But they were not as kind as crows.
They cawed and pecked at living and dead--
We learned to cover the eyes, and stuff the nose
Inside a book, reading through our fingers, pass or fail,
Fettered with sweaty palms and liquid sighs,
Dancing with dragons and jumping from their tails
Was all we knew to do to see the sky.

But girls have their ways, and we had ours.
We hid tar in our traveling bags,
And stars in brown deserted bowers;
When the time was right,
We crept down the stair and into the night;
No stay or whalebone could keep us there--
Not with our summer-drunk dragons in sight.

I would be Circe and you dark Medea,
Me for the luring and you for the kill.
It was all a game, though we knew that such pastimes
As crows put together are contests of will;
Chaos would call us to fight their knight goblins, stranglers
With garlands of weeds, green gilded with lies
Gifting masks of agreement we knew would not fit us
So we called the black dragons to come from the skies.

_________

image: Medea

PS--fans of the ongoing Fireblossom-G Man grudge match have GOT to click HERE!