The Black Blossom Blooms

Hello all you party people and welcome back to this handy dandy blog! I wanted to share something I’ve kept very close to me for the past year and a half. I’ve been writing a screenplay based in the Shadowrun RPG world. I was on the fence about writing it till I saw Netflix’s Bright, and thought to myself that now was a good time to write a fantasy/cyberpunk film. I’ll be posting excerpts here, written in a prose format for ease of reading. This stuff isn’t easy to write and finding an audience for it is even harder, so the suspension of disbelief has to be built in, though I know those of you who decide to read this will have no problem with what I’m throwing down. A couple of notes: The Rift is a tear in the fabric between the “real” world and the “magical” world. It’s how magic comes to exist again. La Flor Negra is an amalgam of a character backstory I created for another game that fit so perfectly in this reality, I couldn’t help but write her in. So here goes…

This first excerpt is a bar scene between one of the main characters of the film Erulasthiel, a trans-post Rift Elf Hacker, and a minor character La Flor Negra, The Black Blossom, a trans, human, brujas. Erulasthiel is lamenting the fact that she won’t be accepted into the elf kingdom, The Tir, because she is a trans, and elves have purity rules that dictate their natural identities are their true identities. For the Tir any deviation or alteration means they are not a true elf. This corresponds to gender identity as well. Erulasthiel was a man that was transitioning to a woman before the Rift, and became an elf after magic was released into the world. The Black Blossom is telling trying to convince her that this is all bullshit. You go where you are needed regardless of arbitrary rules.

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Erulasthiel looked up from her drink. “Though I can feel it calling to me I will never be accepted. I have appealed to the Tir council 3 times now and have been rejected for impurity. If it is my home, my home has told me in no uncertain terms that it does not want me.”

Flor leaned closer to Erulasthiel and looked deeply into her eyes.

“That is your home. The world over knows that the age of purity ended, though the folks in the Tir and the NAN don’t seem to have gotten the message. The rift changed everything. The rift was a rebirth, just as you and I have been reborn twice over, both of us as women and then you as an elf and I as a witch. But you are not a mistake. You are not impure. This is the 6th Age honey, and you need to go claim your place. But going there and taking what is yours will not be a picnic. I’m the Flor Negra, and I must return to Azatlan again, because it needs me too. But going home is not always the easiest thing to do…

Flor’s eyes seemed to go distant and look past Erulasthiel. Then she started to speak…

I know that my parents loved me. At least for a little while they did. I think everyone, regardless of their hardheartedness, when they see their baby for the first time they understand the possibility of unconditional love.

Laying in a transit hub conductor’s arms I think about how I tried to find that love in the eyes and sweat and cum of so many, only to realize time and again that there is only one, outside of me, who can love me that way.

My thoughts couldn’t help but wander toward family as I studied him sleeping. He couldn’t have been much past 50, though he was blessed with a virtually unlined face. The ones he did have were like the well-worn lines of the railway that he rode upon day and night only bothering to rest in a room like the one we were in, very rarely. I wondered what his life was like when he was at home. He only got to go there three times a month, or so he said. I bet he made the most out of his time when he was there. I know that he doted on his children. He had such lovely drawings of them in his pack. The picture of his wife on the other hand was not doting by a long shot. Though tastefully done I’m sure many a lonely man would have loved to spend time studying her naked curves and imagining her seducing them with the sweet, but lacivious look I’m sure she burned the artist with who drew her. Even with me he couldn’t help but talk about them, as only a loving father and husband would with anyone who would listen. I’m sure my human father only spoke of me to curse my name if he must speak of me at all.

My parents did not understand me; how could they? I did not choose this world. This world gave birth to me and I am my mother’s voice. They saw me as parts that made up a whole. For them I was a role to be played, not a person whose role was bigger than the show itself.

They called me trans, trannie, changeling, perversion, and I am none of those things. How can you transition when you’ve always been who and what you are? Does my penis makes me less a woman when I lay down with a man, how about when I lay with a woman, or an elf, or a cat, why is my womanhood tied to what I sometimes use to give and receive pleasure, or to expel waste for that matter. The point is not truly up for discussion, though many have spent an inordinate amount of time doing so.

Leaving home began my life. My true mother wants me to live. I have sung many songs in my travels. Seen many taverns and nomadic caravans. I sang as berserkers stormed the beaches, and lamented the lives I have taken with my own hands. Make no mistake, after you’ve been on this planet long enough you realize, my mother knows more than songs of peace. 

My true mother is La Tierra, my true father Muerte, and I want to be their most favorite child. 

I grew to understand my purpose and my strength on the day I returned to my village. I wanted to come home to show my family the woman I had become, and to sing them the songs that I had begun to learn. The world was open, clear and wonderful, and I needed my parents to share this with me. They had rejected me as a man who had “become” a woman. Of course I was naive. I knew that I was actually more than just a woman now, I was a brujas de la cancion, a song witch, and brujas are abomination in my village. But perhaps, just perhaps they would see that they were wrong about the first part and seeing me as a brujas would confirm that I had always been a woman. Unlike in my tiny village, brujas de la cancion are accepted in most of Azatlan, regardless, men in Azatlan can’t become one. 

What I had no idea about, though as I’ve grown to understand things I should have considered, was that my parents had me followed when I was banished… 

Tanik’s bulk was overwhelming not just in his weight, but also in the heat that he produced. The mixture of feelings overwhelmed me, the emotions coming from him and my reactions never settled. We were like the great flood consuming the earth, anger, sadness, catharsis, resignation, and indignation, swelling over the banks. My tears meant nothing to the deluge. He needed to humiliate me before he killed me. His whispered curses in my ear “half-man,” “demon,” “sinner,” only served to brighten the pain as he slowly slid the point of his dagger under my rib cage to penetrate my lung and my heart. 

In those final moments I actually pitied the cazador de brujas. In our previous life we were friends, never the best, but we played in the neighborhood together with the other kids. We ran barefoot through our muddy village streets after the rains, the cool slime sliding between our toes as we tried to gain purchase so we could move faster. Tanik, never the swiftest of us all was exceedingly clever and was the first to develop the skill of skating on the muck. I can still hear him laughing as he slid past us all, the clouds above burning away to let the sun illuminate his triumph: Tanik inteligente, Tanik salvador.

His hot breath carried the words of the destroyer. I thought that I should never have come back to that place. I should have listened to mother. The ferns and lichen cradled me and slowly enveloped my body as Tanik pressed me into the ground: Tanik el peso del mundo, Tanik salvador. For a boy that was so clever, he should have known to bind my hands. Brujas can use their hands for so many things. I could feel the dagger piercing the lower part of my lung, and my voice screaming out the last of my breath, “Tanik, please!” He reared his head back and looked into my eyes as he prepared to thrust the blade and finish his task. Dispel the Brujas, save the village.

“If you are allowed to live Flor you would kill us all.” He said, rage tears pooling in his eyes. As he flexed his arm to drive the dagger home his stomach exploded though his back as I cast the trueno rune. All of the strength left his body, but he was still aware and conscious enough to really see me for the first time. His weight blown away from me I could gain my breath enough to whisper to him, “I’m so sorry Tanik.” I pushed him off, and breathed deeply for a moment, only to cough blood from my punctured lung onto my chin. I drew a fuego rune from my pouch and held it against my body over the dagger. I grabbed the handle with my other hand and yanked it free while casting the rune to seal my wound. The simultaneous pains briefly took my consciousness away from the forest as I sank into the La Tierra’s cradle and disappeared into her infinitude.

I don’t know how long I lay there. In truth it may have been only moments. I slowly rose to my knees and looked over to see Tanik, very much dead, his abdomen exposed to the elements and his blank eyes staring at the sky as a gentle rain fell providing tears to fall down our cheeks, which was good because I had no more to give.

This was not the homecoming I had envisioned. Dragging an old acquaintance through a forest to leave his disemboweled body at the limits of our village. I would not be returning to my home after all, I would truly be saying goodbye forever. My parents would never know me as I truly am. They would never hear my voice in song. They would never embrace me again. This is all for its own good I suppose. A witch is needed by the world I told myself, not just one village. I told myself this, hoping that it wasn’t a lie, listening for mother’s advice as I slowly walked back into the trees.

Flor leaned back and took another sip of her drink, as her vision returned from that far off Azatlan village to Erulasthiel, and the sad karaoke version of the Ballad of Phillip being sung in the bar.

“I wrote this song you know.” Flor said as she sat back and let Erulasthiel take in her story.

“So you’re really going back?”

“I must. There is a great darkness coming, and the brujas must fight it, because the Azatlan leaders have lost their vision in a haze of money and power. Corruption thrives when ignorance becomes a luxury. I think your people may need you for the same reason.”