Forbidden Love: A Fetch Flash Fiction Haibun

Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

Princess Ondina walked along Rsevfha Beach as the larger of Zecor’s twin suns followed its small companion below the horizon. Three of the planet’s seven moons had risen, but they were outshone by the presence of the little man who stood at the monarch’s side.

“Serab, I am selfish,” the Princess confessed. “I am sorry my brother took you prisoner but pleased that he made you my bodyguard. His joke backfired on him. I never felt like this before. You are the best friend I could imagine and more.”

impossible dream

small, strong hands and stalwart heart

my forbidden love

~cie~

notes

This Flash Fiction Haibun features the Princess Ondina, reluctant captive monarch of the fascist regime of East Zecor and her bodyguard and secret love, Serab, a common thief captured by Ondina's cruel brother King Qweh and presented to Ondina as a jest. The joke backfired when Ondina not only accepted Serab as her bodyguard but fell in love with him.

The image I chose to illustrate this piece is nearly perfect except for the size of the people shown in the silhouette. Ondina was six feet tall and Serab stood around five foot four.

The people of Zecor have an elflike appearance. Qweh and Ondina are half-siblings. As Ketil Nagel explains to his friends in Team Netherworld's first published novella, Ketil and Yitzy's Adventures in the Xura Dream House, the dark-complexioned Qweh's mother was of the Wxzca line and the fair Ondina's mother was from the Welryv line. The pair's father is from the Welryv line.

The ruling race of Zecor, regardless of subtype, is tall. King Qweh was seven foot seven while Ondina was six feet tall. Serab, on the other hand, was an Ahprizite hybrid. The Ahprizites were a small, elflike race. At five foot four, Serab would have been very tall for an Ahprizite.

For the sort who would quibble that a Haibun can only be non-fiction:

1. I don't care.

2. Not according to Poetry Soup.

3. See 1.

If you enjoyed this little WIP excerpt and liked reading the background of the people of Zecor, please consider picking up a copy of Team Netherworld's Fetching first novella.

I hope to be back to sharing excerpts from Ketil and Yitzy's adventure next week. I am continuing to make headway on The Ballad of Gerry Clifford despite personal setbacks.

November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2019: Day 19: Another Antonymic Bomb: Loved and Despised

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Admirable - Awful

Beautiful - Boorish

Compassionate - Cruel

Darling - Deplorable

Enlightened - Egocentric

Fantastic - Foul

Genuine - Gruesome

Heavenly - Hellish

Innocent - Irredeemable

Just - Jealous

Keen - Kinky

Lovable - Loathsome

Marvelous - Malevolent

Noble - Nasty

Obliging - Oligarch

Pure - Pretentious

Quaint - Quarrelsome

Resourceful - Ruthless

Sagacious - Sadistic

Tender - Terrible

Unaffected - Unjust

Valiant - Vile

Warm - Wicked

Xenial - Xenophobic

Yielding - Yellowblooded

Zany - Zealot

Princess Ondina

Notes:

Today's November PAD Chapbook Challenge prompt asked for a protagonist or antagonist poem, or one that incorporates both. I was inspired to do a character study through the eyes of Princess Ondina, a long-ago incarnation of Pepper Baiij.

Princess Ondina was the reluctant captive regent of West Zecor on the doomed world of Zetar 6. She was held in the thrall of her brutal half-brother, King Qweh. One night, Qweh slew Ondina's bodyguard in a drunken rage. The next day, he brought the princess a diminutive thief whom he'd captured as a replacement bodyguard, thinking himself terribly witty. Ondina, however, stated that the little man would make a fine bodyguard and asked Qweh to leave her laboratory. 

Ondina and the thief, whose name was Serab, established an immediate rapport that quickly turned to love. There was little time for amorous moments, however. The world's binary suns were engaged in a battle with one another that would soon turn deadly, and there was no way that the cruel and jealous King Qweh was about to allow his oppressed sister to find joy with a common thief.

In this character study, Ondina compares the attributes of her beloved and her brother.

Zecor or Zetar 6 is the planet from which the malevolent Lights of Zetar of the original Star Trek series originated. I always wanted to write a backstory for this episode and, nearly 40 years later, I finally pulled the trigger on the project. 

The Lights of Zetar are the creation of the late Jeremy Tarcher and the late Shari Lewis. 

All the characters mentioned in this post are the creations of Team Netherworld.

Fetch is the flagship story in Team Netherworld's Yadira Chronicles.

November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2019: Day 14: A Fetch Story Poem: Man Becomes Myth

Image by vishnu vijayan from Pixabay

he thinks that

he's a simple man

but he is

a legend

he is a million deep dreams

I a silent sigh

A Shadorma for Gerry from Pepper

Note:

Today's November PAD Chapbook Challenge was to write a myth poem. It didn't have to be about an established myth. I wrote another Fetch story poem. 

Gerry Clifford, the story's male protagonist, came from a working-class background and became a successful and well-paid musician. He never thought of himself as a rock star and made a point not to indulge in "rock star" attitudes. 

Pepper Baiij, the story's female protagonist, is a troubled woman whose family always wanted to be wealthy and instilled the belief in her that if you are anything but a member of high society, you are nothing. Pepper believes herself to be fatally flawed and can't understand how Gerry could feel anything but disdain for her.

Gerry sees himself as a very simple person and can't imagine why anyone would take the least bit of interest in him outside of his skill set. To Pepper, Gerry is a legend and impossibly high above her.

The image references another part of the story. Pepper and Gerry met previously in an ill-fated lifetime on a dying planet where she was a powerless princess of a ruthless dictatorship ruled over by her brutal older half-brother and Gerry was a lowly thief captured by said half-brother and presented to the princess as a replacement for the bodyguard her brother killed in a fit of rage. This gesture was intended as a jest on the part of the king, but the princess accepted the diminutive, elven thief as her new bodyguard and the pair formed a powerful though ultimately ill-fated bond.

Five Line Fetchy Fragment: Hunger

Image copyright Skeeze

I'm so hungry for something I haven't a recipe for

I want to believe in magic

I want to believe in dreams

I want gentle ghosts to haunt my graveyard

And my house and my carousel

Cie for Gem

Ondina for Serab

Pepper for Gerry

Prompt Used:

You can stop right there and just read the poem, or you can continue on and read the long and rambling notes.

Notes:

This story poem was created for Team Netherworld's longest-running WIP, Fetch, which is a Lovecraftian paranormal romance.

Fetch's protagonist is Gerry Clifford, a Scottish musician raised in London's seedy Crouch End borough from the time he was twelve years old. (As inspired by Stephen King's Lovecraftian short story, Crouch End, which can be found in the 1980 anthology, New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos.) As Gerry's cognitive and physical abilities deteriorate, he is placed in London's Candlelight Ridge Care Home. Gerry's spirit begins to go AWOL from a body which no longer works properly, and he discovers that the unfortunate residents at Candlelight Ridge are not simply succumbing to the ravages of age and infirmity, their souls are being harvested by Yadira Root, an ancient high priestess of the notorious Cthulhu Cult and the daughter of Nyarlathotep himself. Pursued by a hostile hive entity, Gerry turns to troubled American medium Pepper Baiij for help.
Many millennia previously in another star system and possibly another dimension, Gerry was a thief named Serab. Serab was a member of a race persecuted by West Zecor's tyrannical King Qweh, who captured the hapless thief one day and presented him to his sister Princess Ondina, an empath whose primary function was attempting to ameliorate the destruction and chaos caused by Qweh.
Qweh hoped for Ondina to be irritated when he gave her the tiny, elfin Serab as a replacement for her slain bodyguard, but Ondina did not react as Qweh hoped. She treated Serab respectfully. There was an immediate attraction between Ondina and Serab, although Ondina was statuesque, stately, and a member of the ruling class while Serab was small, rough, and a member of an oppressed race.
When Serab was brutally murdered by Qweh at the end of the doomed planet Zecor's existence, Ondina sent his soul to "the realm of the yellow sun" with the admonition that the pair must never meet again. Ondina hoped to protect her beloved from Qweh's threat that he would destroy Serab in any lifetime where he and Ondina reunited.
Serab eventually reincarnated as Gerry Clifford while Ondina reincarnated as Pepper Baiij. The star-crossed lovers were finally reunited when Gerry's spirit or Fetch began leaving his body in search of help.
It's doubtful that Fetch will ever be published in any kind of cohesive form. It remains Team Netherworld's favorite WIP.

Disclosure: If you purchase the book through this link, I earn a small commission.

Carpe Diem Summer Love 2019: Day 5: Beach Love

Image by Reimund Bertrams from Pixabay

Walking on the beach

Lonely ghost of a lost world

Remembers a day

He walked with his princess

Beside the now toxic sea

For Serab, the Thief of Hearts

Notes:

This poem is part of the Fetch universe, which is part of the Yadira Chronicles.

Serab was a thief who was a member of a persecuted race in the totalitarian kingdom of West Holpry on the planet Zecor (Zetar) 6. The diminutive Serab was brought to the long-suffering Princess Ondina to replace her slain bodyguard as a joke by Ondina's churlish and cruel brother, King Qweh. Ondina, however, did not treat Serab as a joke. In truth, she fell in love with him from the moment of their first meeting. Their story ended tragically as Qweh's ill-advised magic prompted the small sun of the binary Zetar star system to begin consuming energy from its larger companion, eventually causing itself to go nova and flooding the entire system with deadly gamma radiation.

Serab later reincarnated as Gerry Clifford, the primary male protagonist in the Fetch stories, and Ondina reincarnated as Pepper Baiij, a troubled medium and Gerry's love interest. Star-crossed as always, Pepper and Gerry don't meet until the point when Gerry's body is failing and Pepper encounters him astrally.

The story was inspired by several factors, one of them being my decades-long desire to create a back-story for the unfortunately almost universally panned Star Trek episode, The Lights of Zetar, which fascinated and, frankly, scared the living hell out of me. Like the majority of my works, Fetch is primarily a Cthulhu Mythos-based story.

Like the Legend of Seacliffe, Fetch is one of those stories which doesn't get nearly the amount of attention that I'd like to devote to it.

Tan Renga Challenge 2019: Day 17: LIfetimes Ago

Image Source

evening sea fog

descending into sun-dried grass

sweaty lovers

So long ago, my dearest

But like it was yesterday

You sent me away

Across the silent starfield

Told me to forget

Many lifetimes come and go

But you never left my heart

Jane & Cie

Notes:

I can't help myself. I go where the muse takes me.

The simple explanation is as follows:

The initial Hokku stanza was created by Jane Reichhold (1937 - 2016). The remaining stanzas were written by me. And if that's all the more you need to know, thanks for stopping by!

However, if you are feeling brave or bored and want to follow me down a rabbit hole...

The remaining stanzas were written in the voice of Serab, one of the incarnations of the male protagonist in my current longest-running WIP, Fetch, which was created at the end of 2014.

Serab was a small, elf-like humanoid whose people had been all but wiped out by the brutal ruling class of West Zecor. He was a thief who had suffered many losses in a life which he often questioned the purpose of. 

Although Serab was extremely agile and clever, one day he became careless and was captured by the sadistic King Qweh and his merry band of thugs. Fortunately for Serab, Qweh thought it would be an extremely funny joke to present the diminutive thief to his sister, Princess Ondina, as a replacement for her bodyguard, whom Qweh had slain the previous night in a fit of drunken rage.

To Qweh's dismay, Ondina did not have the hoped-for reaction of dismay to Qweh's little joke. She accepted Serab as her bodyguard and assistant, stating that he looked to be capable of anything he might set his mind to.

This was the start of the powerful though ultimately tragic undying love between Serab and Ondina.

OctPoWriMo 2018: Day 29: Three of Swords

At the Beginning of the End Version 6

Photoshop Manipulation by The Real Cie

In unity were we well met

But that was before

My soul was crushed by the duality

Of everything and nothingness

When my soul was still filled with belief

In things spiritual and mystical

Now nothing is left but pain and sadness

Within this empty human life

You were perfection

I was lucky to find you

In a life full of suffering

You were a gift of great auspiciousness

I was destroyed when I lost you

And now all I have

Is loneliness

And nothingness

Eternally

Ondina Rvaga

Regent, Lost Zecor

Notes for Nerds: 

This is one of the story poems for Team Netherworld's WIP, Fetch.

The story, at its core, is Cthulhu Mythos fan fiction combined with elements from an original Star Trek episode (The Lights of Zetar) which gave me nightmares from the time I first saw it at the age of ten years old. 

Ondina Rvaga is a reluctant princess of Western Zecor on the planet Zetar 6. She spends her time working in a laboratory, using her empathic gifts to heal the victims of her violent and sadistic brother King Qweh if she can, compassionately dispatching them to the realm of spirit if she cannot. 

The people of West Zecor love the Princess Ondina and know her to be kind, but they also realize that she does not have much power to help them. Her brother is extremely powerful and controls the armies of West Zecor. Brutal soldiers happily do his bidding. 

Ondina is miserable in her existence. She does not expect to find love. She had been expected to marry her twenty-four-year-old half-brother, Prince Qweh, when she was twelve years old. She was resigned to her fate, believing herself blessed until she discovered Qweh's true, brutal nature. At that point, she used her healing gifts in reverse and destroyed her reproductive organs so she could never conceive an heir for the corrupt regime. 

Qweh knew that Ondina loved her people and couldn't bear to see them in pain. Over the years, he reveled in watching her suffer as she attempted to heal those devastated by the brutal attacks of his armies.

After Qweh groped her during a scouting mission, Ondina attempted to commit suicide by jumping from a precipice. She was encouraged by the spirit of Serab's twin brother Joub to repair her injuries. He promised her that someone who would bring the love that she could never have imagined was about to enter her life.

Days later, Serab was apprehended by King Qweh's lackeys and brought to Ondina as a joke. The king laughingly postulated that the tiny Serab, who stood approximately five feet three inches tall, replace Ondina's previous bodyguard, who had been slain by Qweh in a fit of rage. Ondina, however, did not see the suggestion as a joke. She claimed Serab as her bodyguard and assistant and treated him with a compassion which he had not thought possible from a member of West Zecor's wicked royal family.

Serab and Ondina were smitten with each other from the start but initially attempted to keep their feelings in check.

When the ill-advised sorcery of King Qweh under the direction of Yadira, High Priestess of Nyarlathotep, caused the demon sultan Azathoth to trigger the small sun in Zetar's binary star system to begin consuming the large sun, the majority of Zecor's residents fled to other worlds. Ondina, Serab, and Ondina's longtime friend and caretaker Xegran along with Qweh and his most devoted lackeys were still on the planet when the gamma rays rendered their spaceships useless. 

Ondina had planned all along to take herself, Serab, and Xegran through a gate to "the realm of the Yellow Sun," a peaceful, primitive world many light years away. Qweh demanded that Ondina bring himself and his toadies along as well. When she refused, he beheaded Xegran and brutalized Ondina. Serab was slain when he stepped in to defend his beloved. In spite of his protests, Ondina dispatched his spirit and that of Xegran to the Realm of the Yellow Sun.

Although Qweh and his lackeys were unable to invade the new world, they were not doomed to an inevitable death. Utilizing scientific and mystical abilities taught to him by the powerful High Priestess Yadira, Qweh caused the astral bodies of himself and his companions to form a community of pure energy; for all intents and purposes, a giant, malevolent brain. The hive entity sped away from the doomed world, leaving Ondina to her fate.

The traumatized Ondina believed herself to be at fault for the death of her old friend and her beloved. She tenderly lay each of their bodies in state beside her and spent the next six hours dying with only her regrets for company. She resolved to stay well away from Serab forever so that Qweh would not punish her by harming him in future lifetimes.

The heartbroken Serab never forgot Ondina. In lifetime after lifetime, he attempted to find her, although he forgot the exact nature of his original purpose. 

Serab was reunited with Ondina during his most recent lifetime, although they did not encounter each other in the flesh. He was, for all intents and purposes, part of the spirit world. Although his body still lived, he was no longer able to function properly through it. Gerry was a Fetch, an Irish term essentially describing a ghost which has a body that still lives but through which it is temporarily or permanently unable to interface.
Ondina had reincarnated as Pepper Baiij, a troubled woman with strong mediumistic abilities which she tended to write off as delusion. Pepper knew who Gerry was. Along with his brother, Paul, he was a well-known musician whose work she admired.
Pepper was the only person who could help Gerry, who was being pursued by Yadira Root. This left Gerry in a precarious position. On a good day, Pepper believed strongly in her abilities and in Gerry's affection for her. On a bad day, her self-deprecation caused her to believe that she was merely insane, and/or that Gerry was yet another cad who would use her to get what he wanted and then leave her high and dry.

The story is far from finished, although it has, sadly, had to be back-burnered recently. These story-poems are, I feel, a valid form of keeping it viable.

OctPoWriMo 2018: Day 6: Heart Full of Doubt

Ruby Eye

Creator Unknown

Content Warning:

Dark and depressive subject matter. 

If you would prefer to avoid such, click the back arrow to return from whence you came.

Was any of it worth the fight?

Not a thing was put to right

No battle has been won

Forever on the run

Love clearly does not conquer all

There is no victory in sight

Blind struggles in eternal night

We will never see the sun

Love clearly doesn't conquer all

Together only in our plight

Without a spark of hope or light

When all is said and done

Nothing has been won

Love clearly doesn't conquer all

Princess Ondina for Serab the Thief

following his death at the hands of her megalomaniac brother, King Qweh

From the original WIP, Fetch

Created by The Real Cie, Gem Moondreamer, and Rose LeMort

Lovingly crafted by Team Netherworld since late 2014

Serab's Senryu: The Ghosts of What Was

Zetar's End Version 13

Photoshop Manipulation by The Real Cie

Sometimes I sense ghosts

From a world long dead and gone

I weep for what was

~Serab~

Cie's notes:

Serab is a past incarnation of the musician Gerry Clifford, the main male protagonist in Team Netherworld's eternal WIP, Fetch. Serab was a resident of Zetar 6 (Zecor), a world with a binary star system where the smaller sun began pulling energy off the larger sun, setting off a nova which destroyed the inner planets and rendered the sixth planet incapable of sustaining life.

Serab in spirit form viewed the nova just before being relocated to a place which his beloved Princess Ondina, a powerful sorceress, referred to as "the Realm of the Yellow Sun." 

In her grief and guilt over Serab's murder by her brutal and jealous megalomaniac brother King Qweh, Ondina believed it necessary that she and Serab should never again cross paths. Serab's longing for Ondina eventually overrode her spell, and, near the end of his lifetime as Gerry Clifford, he found her again. She had reincarnated as Pepper Baiij, a medium living with major mental illness whose life had never gone quite right.

As Gerry and Pepper became reacquainted and their love rekindled, memories of their past incarnations on Zecor were awakened, and an old and dangerous foe re-emerged in the form of Yadira Root, a powerful high priestess of Nyarlathotep, whose plans for Gerry were most unsavory.

TL:DR

We majorly deviated from the prompt given today.

OctPoWriMo 2016: Day 17: Savory Love

Copyright: danifoto / 123RF Stock Photo

 One fool has fallen for another

He is piquantly pleasant to her mind

She thinks he is so very kind

And so she takes him for a lover

Anyone with sense would find him unappealing

But she believes he sets her spirit free

She finds him morally exemplary

His ugliness she cannot see

Because she is floating on the ceiling

Has she yet tasted his kiss

Does she find it pleasing to her lips

Has she felt his hands upon her hips

She carries out her duties with a skip

A woman with sense would surely give him a miss

King Qweh

Regent, West Zecor

Regarding his sister, the Princess Ondina

and her bodyguard, Serab

Form:

American Sonnet

http://thepoetsgarret.com/2016Challenge/form20.html

OctPoWriMo 2016: Day 14: Shameful

Copyright: darkbird / 123RF Stock Photo

Shameful

King Qweh

Regent of West Zecor

Rapist of many women

Including your younger sister

Your victims feel the shame

But it is you whose acts

Are shameful beyond

All imagining

Author: Xegran, Adviser to His Majesty

Form:

Free verse, shape poem, dramatic verse

OctPoWriMo 2016: Day 13: Lament for Zecor

Copyright: fyletto / 123RF Stock Photo

Lament for Zecor

Zecor, my home world

Beautiful you were

Your pristine waters flowing

Like the hopes in my young heart

Beneath the gentle glow of the twin suns

The reign of an evil so extreme

Corrupted everything 

Hatred took its toll

The small sun began to feed off of the larger

A malevolent haze glowed constantly in your once beautiful skies

Lost forever were you, Zecor

And lost with you was I

Unfortunate Princess Ondina

I always thought that I would never find love

Then one day love came quickly

And was as quickly taken from me

I died with you, Zecor

On the day the larger sun went nova

But my heart died at the moment

That I sent my love away

Far across the galaxy

The ghosts of Zecor still roam

Damned, restless spirits, attempting to invade

Destroying the unfortunate minds of their victims

In attempt to fulfill the insane quest of a madman

Spurred on by the vain hope of pleasing

The crone who serves the malignant master

In whose veins flows blood as cold as death

The joke will be on you when you discover

You were nothing but his pawns

I was drawn many miles from Zecor

Across time and space by a need so extreme

My love could be alone no longer 

My broken heart could not resist his call

Fear not, Serab, your Ondina will never allow

You to be enslaved by the one who made the king a jester

All the riches in this world can't save you

Any more than Zecor could have been saved

The love in my heart will be your salvation

Your Ondina will not be taken from you again

 Zecor is dead

But our love remains forever

For Serab

From Ondina

Form: Epic/Narrative, Personification

OctPoWriMo 2016: Day 6: The Dramatic Monologue of King Qweh of West Zecor

Copyright: selena087 / 123RF Stock Photo

The Dramatic Monologue of King Qweh of West Zecor

Ondina, does my intuition deceive me?

Can it be that you are finding tantalizing

That ridiculous mockery of a man

That abomination brought to you in jest

In his presence, you seem flighty

Behaving in a manner not at all befitting

A princess of West Zecor

I assure you that misery is in store for both you and he

If you continue behaving as a lovestruck maid

We should have been wed, my sister

Once you dreamed of bringing glory to Zecor at my side

You would have been my virtuous virgin bride

You chose the voice of misguided conscience over ruling our world together

Do not believe for a moment that my heart is broken

I believe not for a moment in such folly as true love

Your idealism will be your downfall, Sister

If you think you have found true love 

With a lowly thief dragged from the gutters

He is less to me than excrement

I would not hesitate to send him to his grave

With me, you could have had everything

I care not for such foolishness as love

But you dishonored me, foolish Sister

And now my only goal is to destroy

Everything dear to you

Ondina, before this is over, you will beg me for mercy

You will swiftly discover that there is no mercy to be had

King Qweh to the Princess Ondina

Form: Dramatic Monologue

Misunderstood

All the young girls in Zecor

Say that they would adore

The way their lives would transform

If only they could adorn

Themselves like Princess Ondina

Picture-perfect Ondina

It's such a shame, the girls say

That Ondina turned away

The advances of her half brother

They say that he would be such a fine lover

Compelling and mysterious Qweh

Mighty and powerful Qweh

Ondina sits alone in the wood

Feeling lonely and misunderstood

Her brother is a brute whom she fears

She'd like to swim away on a river of tears

None know the truth of Ondina

Sorrowful, frightened Ondina

A young nymph in lovely finery

Is what the envious girls of West Zecor see

A defiant bitch who denied him a heir

Is what Prince Qweh sees in his sister fair

None see the true Princess Ondina

Every day is a fight for Ondina

A frightened girl who sees no good end

A sweet lost soul without a friend

Misunderstood by those whom she wishes to free

She has nowhere to go even if she could flee

People only see the glory of Ondina

They know not the fear of Ondina

CIE

Note:

I couldn't brain today, so I wasn't able to work in the prompts from withrealtoads.blogspot.com or napowrimo.net although I was inspired by them.