because if anyone knows about porcupines, it's Sahi.  ::nod::

I'll be home tomorow, and before that I can't work on the pic very well, so don't stress yourself.

For the background I thought of some field of those black roses. Gonna take me hours for sure  ;P

That sounds really cool.

-X

It's a bit longer than I thought, but here it is:

She does not make her dwelling in Qul-na-Qar, although she has long claim to a place of honor there, by her blood and her deeds — and by deeds of blood as well. Instead she makes her home on a high ridgetop in the mountains called Reheq-s'lai, which means Wanderwind, or something close to it. Her house, although large enough to cover most of the ridge, is a dull thing from most angles, as is the lady herself. Only when the sunlight is in the right quarter and a watcher's face turned just so can crystal and skystone be seen gleaming among the dark wall-stones. The house cuts deep into the rock, with many rooms below the light of day and a profusion of tunnels extending beyond them like the roots of an old, old tree. The windows are always shuttered, or seem that way. Her servants are silent and she seldom has visitors.
Some of the younger Qar, who have heard of her madness for privacy but of course have never seen her, call her Lady Porcupine. Others who know her better cannot help shuddering at the accidental truth of the name — they have seen how in moments of fury a nimbus of prickly shadow flickers about her, a shroud of phantom thorns.
Her granted name is Yasammez, but few know it. Fewer still speak to her. Her true name is known to only one living.
The lady's high house is called Shehen, which means "Weeping." Because it is a s'a-Qar word, it means other things, too — it carries the intimation of an unexpected ending, and a suggestion of the scent of the plant that in the Sunlight Lands is called myrtle — but more than anything else, it means "Weeping".
* * *
She stands in her garden of low, dark plants and tall gray rocks whose twisted shapes are like terrified dreamers and looks out over her steep lands. The wind is fierce, as ever, wrapping her cloak tightly around her, blowing her hair loose from the bone pins that hold it, but it is not strong enough to disperse the mist lurking in the ravines which gouge the hillside below like claw-scratches. Still, it blows loudly enough that even if any of her pale servants were standing beside her, they would not be able to hear the very ancient song Lady Yasammez is humming, nor would they even believe their mistress might do such a thing.
A voice speaks in her ear and the old song abruptly stops. She does not turn because she knows the voice comes from no one in the stark garden or high house. Secretive, angry, and silent as she is, Yasammez knows this voice almost better than she knows her own the only voice that ever calls her by her true name.
It calls that name again now.
"I hear, o my heart," says Lady Porcupine, speaking without words.
"I must know."
"It has already begun," the mistress of the ridgetop house replies, but it stabs her to hear such disquiet in the thoughts of her beloved, her great ruler, the single star in her dark, cold sky. This is the time for wills to become stony. "All has been put into motion. As you wished. As you commanded."
"There is no turning back, then."
It almost seems a question, but Yasammez knows it cannot be. "No turning back," she agrees.
"So, then. In the full raveling of time we will see what new pages will be written in the Book."
"We shall." She yearns to say more, to ask why this sudden semblance of weakness in the one who is not just her ruler but her teacher as well, but the words do not come; she cannot form the question even in the silence of shared thought. Words have never been friends to Yasammez; in this, they are like almost everything else beneath the moon or sun.
"Farewell, then. We will speak again soon. You have my gratitude."
Then Lady Porcupine is alone again with the wind and her thoughts, her strange, bitter thoughts, in the garden of the house called Weeping.


She rides down out of Shehen on her great black horse, letting the animal pick its way down the narrow hill paths with scarcely a tug on the rein, although in places the drop is so great that it is hard even to see the birds flying below her. Yasammez has no need for haste. Her thoughts are traveling before her, winged messengers faster than any bird, swifter even than the wind.
She descends from the hills and turns toward the oldest lands and the greatest city of all, which stands on the shores of the black ocean just outside the great northern circle of frost and ice. There are Qar-folk living in the northernmost lands beyond Qul-na-Qar, strange ones who walk in that permanent darkness, but they have lived apart for so long that most of them have little to do with the rest of their race any more. They scarcely even think about the lost southern lands, for they never lived there, and thus of all the Twilight People they have suffered the least at the hands of the enemy. They will not serve Yasammez: she must muster her armies from Qul-na-Qar and the lands that lie south of it, all the way down to the Shadowline.
The northerners may not care, but those who live below the icy lands do. As Yasammez rides, they come up from the cavern towns of Qirush-a-Ghat, which means Firstdeeps, and out from the forest villages in the great dark woods to see her pilgrimage. The starlight dancers pause and grow silent on the hilltops as she passes. Those who do not know her — for it has been long since Yasammez left her house at Shehen — know only that one of the great powers is passing, and although they fear and respect such might, they do not cheer her, but watch in troubled silence. Those of the Qar who do recognize her of old are divided, because they all know that where Lady Porcupine goes, she is blown on winds of war and blood. Some return to their families or villages to tell them that bad weather is coming, that it is time to put away what is needful and strengthen the walls and gates. Others follow her road in a quiet but growing crowd, their numbers swelling behind her like bride's train. They know that the bridegroom to whom she goes is death, and that her husband and master will not be careful of who he takes, but they follow her anyway. Centuries of anger and fear push them together, clench them like a fist.
Yasammez is the blade that fist has raised before. Now it will be raised again.
* * *
Her arrival throws Qul-na-Qar into confusion. By the time she rides through the great leaning gates at the head of a silent flock of Qar-folk, the ancient citadel has already broken apart into camps, into her fanatical supporters and equally fanatical opponents, and a party larger than those two put together whose only shared philosophy is resistance to either extreme, a willingness to wait and see the shape that time takes. But none of this is obvious, and to the casual eye — if there were such a thing in this place — the great capital would seem to move in its usual deceptively calm way, its immemorial ordered disorder.
The servitors of Yasammez within Qul-na-Qar, some of whom have been born into that service since the last time she has visited the city, have scurried to air out her chambers on the sprawling castle's eastern side, heaving up the shutters and opening the windows for the first time in decades to the chill winds from the ocean and the ceaseless noise of its movement, moaning night and day like the breathing of a vast animal. Everywhere they rush to make things ready for their mistress, for this is a day that all know will someday form a chapter in the Book of Regret.
But as she makes her way through the Hall of the Gate, passing beneath its living sculptures without an upward glance, she is surrounded not only by her own minions but by all the dark city's excitement-seekers as well — those bright-eyed ones who dabble in the showier magicks, others who pass their time refining the arts of war and the arts of courtship until they are scarcely distinguishable from each other, all the planners of secret campaigns and delvers of forgotten secrets. The believers surround her too, all those who have yearned for a voice to echo forcefully their own talk of catastrophe, to satisfy their yearnings for an all-smothering doom, now come singing and calling out questions, some in languages that even Yasammez herself does not speak. But she pays none of them any attention, and passes instead from the Hall of the Gate to the Hall of Black Trees, then on through many more, the Hall of Silver Bones, the Hall of Weeping Children, the Hall of Gems and Dust. She stops outside the Mirror Hall but does not go in, even though the blind king and silent queen wait behind the doors, aware of her coming since before she even left her high house.
Instead she tells the robed and masked servitor who guards the entrance, "Outside the gate there are thousands of our race who have followed me here from the countryside. See that they are well-treated. Soon I will speak to them."
The masked figure does not reply, but bows. Yasammez turns away from the Mirror Hall and makes her way to her old chambers overlooking the sea and the dark twilight sky. The crowd that has gathered inside Qul-na-Qar and followed her through the halls like ants through a rotting tree are left to stand, to wait, to stare at each other in glee or shame or madness, and eventually to disperse.
It does not matter. There will be a time for all of them, Yasammez knows.
* * *
She has donned her plate armor. The black spikes cover it like the quills of her namesake, a dark bristling that is obscured but not hidden by her cloak. Her head is bare: she has set her featureless helmet on the table beside her, as though, like a favored pet, she wishes it to watch the proceedings.
Seven other figures sit at the round table in Lady Porcupine's chamber. It is dark in the room, only a single candle burning, the flame a-tremble before the open windows, but Yasammez and her allies do not need to see each other.
Some of what they say is spoken, some passes only in shared thought.
"Eats-the-Moon, what of the Changing tribe?"

You're welcome. You might just be finishing one of the tasks on my 101-list. :)

Yalahii.

ui.. took me longer then expected, seemed to be forever while drawing. But I finished it just in time, 'cause tomorow I will be gone to visit my granny and only return on tuesday.

Here's the pic.

I've decided on white hair an pointy ears. Seemed to fit better into the scenery. I hope you like it ^_^


Edit: yeah... fixed the URL

[ July 21, 2006: Message edited by: Kamiko ]

Wow.  That's really cool.  Nice work.

Thanks ^__^, always happy when someone likes my pictures.

@GenesisX: I'm often jealous when looking at other peoples work. But it sort of keeps me going.

Cool!

I love the look of the black blossoms too!

It's my desktop now as well ;)

-X

Hey, whaddya know! didn't even notice!

-X

That's really cool, Kamiko!

wish I had drawed more over the last years, completely out of practise *is jeaslous too*