When Jupiter Sighs
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A moment between bittersweet lovers the Sun and the Moon. Flying over a river that goes beyond the present to just before the future where three mysterious creatures sit in wait. Travels into the dreamscape where unnatural musical machines are crafted by muses before the Erinyes come to bring such plans to a halt. These are a few of the tales you'll find in this collection about the fantastical.
Bethalynne Bajema
Bethalynne is a Michigan native who spent much of her early life chasing the fae around her grandfather's nearly mythical fairy tale garden. Where the fae weren't calling, the strange shadows in the closet were whispering. When it was finally suggested that she kindly bring herself down from the clouds (and out from those dark places) she turned her expansive imagination towards capturing her characters and their worlds through writing and drawing. The latter has led to her having a notable career as a professional artist for the past twenty years, as well as self publishing many of the stories behind her artwork. Bethalynne's art and writing have been published in Weird Tales Magazine, Dark Beauty Magazine, Cthulhu Sex Magazine, Gothic Beauty Magazine, as well as coffee table books Gothic Art Now, Vampire Art Now, and as a writer for photographer John Santerineross' books Fruit of the Secret God and Dream. Her work is primarily fantasy based with a healthy influence of neo Victorian, horror, and dystopian themes.
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When Jupiter Sighs - Bethalynne Bajema
When Jupiter Sighs
by Bethalynne Bajema
When Jupiter Sighs is copyright ©2000 Bethalynne Bajema. All Rights Reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact: legal@versacrumbooks.com
Foreword
I was a very dreamy young woman, immersed in comic books and strange fiction, and all I wanted to do was be among those people who wrote those stories and illustrated them. These ideas were my first fully realized stories in that regard. They deal with my air fairy imagination, my sprawling dream-space, and my over active imagination. These stories are the product of being told I needed to come down out of the clouds and move among the regular world. I put up a small fight.
I've written quite a bit in my day, but these are my very first short stories that I saw through to the end and I really adore the nostalgia they have for me. More than a decade ago I pulled them together into this collection. Since then they've had a bit of editing and other short stories added to create this finalized version of the collection. When you read them keep in mind I was a girl born in the seventies who spent her young years lovingly shackled to the eighties and then found a whole different world when the nineties came around. Comics that weren't just about superheros were finally a thing. The internet was just being born to the general public. It was a wonderful time for me.
A few of these stories are born of dreams, while others are just strange ideas that came to me when I was here or there. They're purely fantasy based. They don't ask too much of the reader except to sit back and hopefully enjoy them. And I hope you do exactly that! -- Bethalynne
Table of Contents
* * *
When Jupiter Sighs
Apples & Muses
Water
Snippets of Babble
Delirium's Nocturne
The Dreaming
Feathers, Flowers & Death
Baptista
*
When Jupiter Sighs
The woman looked dark and feral; like a long lost creature who acted as a guardian to a dead history that any one of us should have tried to remember, or at the very least made up.
She wore flowers and skulls within her headdress and her eyes were a pale shade of nothingness. All of her emotion was kept tight in the movement of her lips. Because of this, it was hard to place a proper understanding on what and who she was.
No one here would stand against her. All that was 'we' stepped to the side and allowed her to walk in. There was a very stark silence as she moved among us. I personally, could think of no words.
Her blanched eyes looked towards us before moving skywards. Her lips began to move as she whispered what we could only consider a curse in a language long since forgotten from our world. She spoke to a celestial body so far away many of us couldn't even claim to understand its influence.
When your false worlds find themselves at a pause, at a sigh, my planet Yuggoth is there to whisper to us all that the universe has forgotten. After all those dark whisperings I hear my own celestial being making suggestions while I sleep. They come to one place and I understand my being and where I am in this life. A world of porous creatures you could never understand...
I felt so small, so insignificant as I moved towards her. I fell down to my knees and felt an overwhelming sense of emotions overcoming me. I just wanted one creature to understand, whether it actually understood or not. I reached towards her and gave into my fears.
I waited so long to say this... to admit this... I understand. I have for so long listened to the night sky and only Jupiter's voice found me. So aggressive was his language that it has exhausted me. I waited for that one moment where I could lift my eyes from the sky... to look away. It took a moment when Jupiter sighed to break free of his language I cannot understand. It brings me to this point with you. Where I am happy to let go and maybe... just maybe... go back to as normal a life as I can hope for.
My words stopped there. I dared not look up in my fear. Had I saw what was taking place I would have seen a sympathetic set of eyes, ears, and an understanding.
I felt the presence of someone near me as I cowered. A hand that so lovingly touched me and felt my issues as they plagued me. This hand touched my hair and stroked my cheek. It spoke to me directly, silently, and gave me the response I needed.
So listen to a few of the small tales I have to tell and we will let you go. When the great giant truly sighs, you will be free of this...
Apples & Muses
The sun is whispering. This is a soft sound like the rumbling of a hungry stomach; low and deep. This an authority not to be messed with. I can take a hint, I see the threats very well. Unlike so many others, I’ll never be a sun worshiper, at least not in the normal sense. If I were to offer praise it would be quiet and respectful, politely offered from within the protective walls of my home. I’ll give him a nod and a thanks for all the wonderful things he helps grow and sustenance, but I won’t lose my mind in him.
You see, it’s his vanity that gets the better of him. The other men—Mars, Jupiter, Pluto and even Saturn— wear their beauty like a polished badge. But in the cover of darkness and sight too weak to truly see, those of us here on the good Mother Earth do not notice. It is he, Ra, Roshone, the Sun who is the most demanding celestial body in our heavens. And for this he will allow our adoring glances to no other. What of our appreciation, our praise? What reward do we get for our devotions? Skin that falls to tan leather or cancer that creeps under our covers. He rewards us with pain, as it is in his sadistic nature to do.
And still he whispers.
I cannot see her, but I know his lover is there, washed out in the others harsh light. She sits quietly alone, the woman hidden behind the man’s throne and she listens. She listens to his apologies, his promises of better things to come. These are false tales he’s practiced since god smashed his hands together and brought them into creation. She knows they are empty words, but they are pleasing to the ear. Making the brash man seem more humble, more like the warm creature she loves.
She might still his whispers by telling him she is faithful, for there are no words that she can utter that he would not believe. In all her long, so very long, time in the heavens, never had she truly forsaken him for another. She had humored the flirts and enjoyed the endless gathering of celestial men who had come to swoon and coo over her. Yet in the end, when her time in the night sky came to a close and that bright lover of hers loomed on the horizon, it was always him she thought of. It was always him she wanted to be near. How could she not? The sun's borrowed light was what made her glow.
I could only sit and laugh softly to myself. The lady night was my teacher, my tutor, a great creature who taught me—through her actions—how to ruffle the feathers of a man. And now she offered one more lesson on the nature of a pleading lover: Give him time to wallow in his needs, give him time to remember that lonely period before he met you. Only then, after the whispers have turned to pleading, did you give