Dear S,
I hate that we’ve grown apart. I miss you. I miss living together, we had so much fun. It was like having a sister, I really enjoyed it. I wouldn’t have done have the things I did last year without you. You made me do it all! I trusted you, you minded me. Thank you =] I hope that we’ll grow close again, it’s been about 5 years since we became friends! That’s crazy! I love that we can talk about pretty much anything. I love that you’ve accepted me for who I am and don’t judge or anything. Let’s have lunch, we need to spend more time together!x
Haha that's from another thread!
This little lady is my life. She keeps me strong through everything <3
♫ I know I have a fickle heart and bitterness,
And a wandering eye, and a heaviness in my head ♫
..... ^^; My friend and I were sending links back and forth.
I may only seem to be a drunken,
vice-ridden gnome whose friends are just pimps and girls from the brothels.
But I know about art and love,
if only because I long for it with every fiber of my being.
J. (2003). Exposure to Violent Media: The Effects of Songs With Violent Lyrics on Aggressive Thoughts and Feelings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(5)960–971
There's always a light at the end of the tunnel. If you can't see it, just means your tunnel has a bend in it.
If you need someone to talk to, message me. You are important. I care.
The Runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes, formerly used to write Germanic languages, mainly in Scandinavia and the British Isles. In all their varieties they may be considered an ancient writing system of Northern Europe. The Scandinavian version is known as Futhark (derived from its first six letters: 'F', 'U' 'Th', 'A', 'R', and 'K'), and the Anglo-Saxon version as Futhorc (also so named after its first letters). The earliest runic inscriptions date from ca. 150, and the alphabet was generally replaced by the Latin alphabet with Christianisation, by ca. 700 in central Europe and by ca. 1400 in Scandinavia. However, the use of runes persisted for specialized purposes, mainly in Scandinavia and in rural Sweden until the early 20th century (used mainly for decoration as Dalecarlian runes and on Runic calendars).
The three best known runic alphabets are:
the Older Futhark (ca. 150*800)
the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc (400*1100)
the Younger Futhark (800*1910)
The Younger Futhark is further divided into:
the Danish futhark script
the Swedish-Norwegian runic script (also: Short-twig or Rok Runes)
The most likely candidates for the origins of runic scripts are the 5th to 1st century BC Northern Italic alphabets, Lepontic, Rhaetic and Venetic, all closely related to each other and themselves descended from the Old Italic alphabet. These scripts bear a remarkable resemblance to the Futhark in many regards. Background
The runes were introduced to, or invented by, the Germanic peoples in the 1st or 2nd century (The oldest known runic inscription dates to ca. the 160s and is found on a comb discovered in the bog of Vimose, Funen. The inscription reads harja). While at this time the Germanic language was certainly not at the Proto-Germanic stage any longer, it may still have been a continuum of dialects not yet clearly separated into the three branches of later centuries, viz. North Germanic, West Germanic and East Germanic. Most of the early runes from the Scandinavian countries are assumed to be in the Proto-Norse, the common ancestor language of the modern North Germanic languages. No distinction is made in surviving runic inscriptions between long and short vowels, although such a distinction was certainly present phonologically in the spoken languages of the time. Similarly, there are no signs for labiovelars in the Elder Futhark (such signs were introduced in both the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc and the Gothic alphabet as variants.
The sounds represented by the runes themselves began to diverge somewhat, and each culture would either create new runes, rename or rearrange its rune names slightly, or even stop using obsolete runes completely, to accommodate these changes. Thus, the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc has several runes peculiar unto itself to represent diphthongs unique to (or at least prevalent in) the Anglo-Saxon dialect.
However, the fact that the younger Futhark has sixteen runes, while the Elder Futhark has twenty four, is not fully explained by the some six hundred years of sound changes that had occurred in the North Germanic language group. The development here might seem rather astonishing, since the younger form of the alphabet came to use the same few runes to express an unusually great number of different phonemes that the older version had distinguished clearly. For example, voiced and unvoiced consonants merged in script, and so did many vowels. Later, this disadvantage was partly eliminated in the dotted runes of Dalecarlia.
The name given to the signs, contrasting them with Latin or Greek letters, is attested on a 6th century alamannic runestaff as runa, and possibly as runo on the Einang stone (ca. 4th century). The name is from a root run- (Gothic runa) meaning "secret" (c.f. also the chapters of the Kalevala, called runo, plural runot, a loan from North Germanic).
Norse
In Norse mythology, the invention of runes is attributed to Odin: The Hávamál (stanzas 138, 139) describes how Odin receives the rune through his self-sacrifice.
The Icelandic sources do not relate how the runes were transmitted to mortal men, but in 1555, the exiled Swedish archbishop Olaus Magnus recorded a tradition that a man named Kettil Runske had stolen three rune staffs from Odin and learnt the runes and their magic.
The runes developed comparatively late, centuries after the Central European alphabets from which they are probably descended. There are some similarities to alphabets of Phoenician origin (Latin, Greek, Italic) that cannot possibly all be due to chance.
However, other letters seem to be independent. The Old Italic alphabet is usually quoted as a candidate for the origin of the runes. Their angular shapes are generally interpreted as an adaptation to the practice of carving in wood (rather than writing with a reed or a brush). This hypothesis is supported by the inscription on the Negau helmet dating to the 2nd century BC. This is in a northern Etruscan alphabet, but features a Germanic name, Harigast.
Runes are a popular field for scholars, and many imaginative ideas have been advanced, such as a claim by Olaus Rudbeck Sr in Atlantica that all writing systems originate from proto-runic scripts.Another theory is that the runes originated directly from the Middle East, and are related to the Nabataean alphabet, a variant of the Phoenician alphabet.
The introduction of runes is in this scenario ascribed to the Roman legions, which left Syria Palaestina during the 2nd century. This theory is based on discovery of early runes on weapons, such as longbows, and arrow heads, characteristically belonging to these soldiers. (The historical Nabataean kingdom, spanning Jordan, Sinai, and South Israel, corresponds to early Arabia.)
The "West Germanic hypothesis" speculates on an introduction by West Germanic tribes. This hypothesis is based on claiming that the earliest inscriptions of ca. 200, found in bogs and graves around Jutland, exhibit West Germanic name forms, e.g. wagnija, ni¦ijo, and harija, and that these names refer to hitherto unknown tribes located in the Rhineland.
However, Scandinavian scholars interprete these inscriptions as Proto-Norse, but it should be noted that the differences between Proto-Norse and other Germanic dialects were still minute and that the classification is mostly based on location rather than forms. Any claim that the forms refer to unknown tribes must be considered highly speculative.In the later Middle Ages, runes were mostly used in the Clog almanacs (sometimes called Runic staff, Prim or Scandinavian calendar) that became standard equipment within Northern Europe with the introduction of Christianity. The authenticity of some monuments bearing Runic inscriptions found in Northern America is disputed, but most of them date from modern times.
Magic and Divination
The Björketorp Runestone. It is 4.2 m tall.The earliest runic inscriptions were certainly not coherent texts of any length, but simple markings on artifacts (e.g. bracteates, combs, etc.), giving the name of either the craftsman or the proprietor, or, sometimes, remaining a linguistic mystery. Because of this, it is possible that the early runes were not so much used as a simple writing system, but rather as magical signs to be used for charms, or for divination. The name rune itself, taken to mean "secret, something hidden", seems to indicate that knowledge of the runes was originally considered esoteric, or restricted to an elite. The eerie 6th century Björketorp Runestone warns in Proto-Norse using the word rune in both senses.
The same curse and use of the word rune is also found on the Stentoften Runestone. There are also some inscriptions suggesting a medieval belief in the magical significance of runes, such as the Franks Casket (AD 700) panel.However, it has proven difficult to find unambiguous traces of runic "oracles": Although Norse literature is full of references to runes, it nowhere contains specific instructions on divination or magic. There are at least three sources on divination with rather vague descriptions that may or may not refer to runes, Tacitus' Germania, Snorri Sturluson's Ynglinga saga and Rimbert's Vita Ansgari.
The first source, Tacitus' Germania, describes "signs" chosen in groups of three. A second source is the Ynglinga saga, where Granmar, the king of S*dermanland, goes to Uppsala for the blÛt. There, the chips fell in a way that said that he would not live long. The third source is Rimbert's Vita Ansgari, where there are three accounts of what seems to be the use of runes for divination, but Rimbert calls it "drawing lots". One of these accounts is the description of how a renegade Swedish king Anund Uppsale first brings a Danish fleet to Birka, but then changes his mind and asks the Danes to "draw lots".
According to the story, this "drawing of lots" was quite informative, telling them that attacking Birka would bring bad luck and that they should attack a Slavic town instead.The lack of knowledge on historical usage of the runes has not stopped modern authors from extrapolating entire systems of divination from what few specifics exist, usually loosely based on the runes' reconstructed names. Perhaps the most popular of these is the system created by Ralph Blum, whose Book of Runes comes with a set of runes on ceramic tiles, that are loosely based on the runes of the Elder Futhark. In his book, Blum writes the meanings of the runes "came to him" (that is, he either made them up, or else received them as a revelation, but did not derive these from scholarly research). Another author is Edred Thorsson, whose best known books are Futhark, Runelore and Runecaster's Handbook (originally published as At The Well of Wyrd).
Common use
Later runic finds are mainly monuments (rune stones) and often contain solemn inscriptions about people who died or performed great deeds. For a long time it was assumed that this kind of grand inscription was the primary use of runes, and that their use was associated with a certain societal class of rune-carvers.However, in the middle of the 1950s, about 600 inscriptions known as the Bryggen inscriptions were found in Bergen. These inscriptions were made on wood and bone, often in the shape of sticks of various sizes, and contained inscriptions of an everyday nature - ranging from name tags, prayers (often in Latin), personal messages, business letters, expressions of affection, to bawdy phrases of a profane and sometimes even vulgar nature. Following this find, it is nowadays commonly assumed that at least in late use, Runic was a widespread and common writing system. Gothic Runes
Theories of the existence of Gothic runes have been advanced, even identifying them as the original alphabet from which the Futhark were derived, but these have little support in actual findings. If there ever were genuinely Gothic runes, they were soon replaced by the Gothic alphabet. The letters of the Gothic alphabet, however, as given by the Alcuin manuscript (9th century), are obviously related to the names of the Futhark. The names are clearly Gothic, but it is impossible to say whether they are as old as, or even older than, the letters themselves.
The wind whistled past my ears, dragging my thin brittle hair forward tickling my nose. I could hear my breath becoming more frequent, shorter. The rain from the upcoming storm hammered down on my back soaking my already damp black shirt; molding it to my small fragile body. I looked back into the darkness, they were following me. Carrying what only looked like some sort of box. I recognised it. It was one of their black cases. It held everything that haunted my kindest thoughts. Every needle, piece of rope, belts, knives. Anything that would drive my 'insanity' out of me.
I was running away from my mind, from the prison. It had held my mind and soul for too long now. My days were filled with treatment, the electric chair most days, not strong enough to kill, just to drive out those voices.
Thoughts left my usually busy head as two bright white headlights glared at me. Pushing me against the wall. My eyes slid closed as the voices consumed me. Warning me. Leading me to my destination. Keeping me company.
A flash lit up the sky behind me. My pursuers were slowly catching up. Purple, blue, black flashed through the sky, the overhead power cables threw sparks towards my enemy. I smiled spitefully, thanking my voices for protection.
As the straight narrow road continued I began to wonder when this would all end. Maybe I should just accept the welcoming blinding white sponge walls that would help me hold onto any last form of sanity, but I hold a contrast where even in the confinement of my cell I still don't fit. I'm an outcast from society; I don't match the clean happy white that symbolises the purity that I do not hold; the simplest of purity, the kind that doesn't run through my veins.
The darkness inside of me resonated, stronger this time. I stopped and screamed with pain, my hands flying up to protect my mind from the attackers. They had become stronger and they were holding me back, they didn't want me to reach the end. They wanted it to be over. The mindless torture. The control. They wanted out of the asylum. Who cares what happened to me? They didn't; as long as I survived long enough to bring them back out here. Back into society. Where I still don't belong. Even without the voices I was an outcast. My pursuers were closer now, less than a meter away. Lightning flashed in front of me, casting an eerie light on the jagged peaks of the rocks below. I wanted to escape this similarity right? I lifted my leg over the wall that separated me from oblivion. Two men crouched over me as I fell into the darkness I could only imagine as death.
'Ebony, Ebony, wake up, we have to escape!' The voices were back, well one of them, where do I have to escape from? I jumped, I'm dead! Or at least, I should be. I lifted my eyes. I was in some sort of laboratory; knives, pills, acids, tubes, everything. You name it. I tried to move, to get out of here, only to find I was trapped. Tied down. Corner to corner.
'How do I escape? I'm trapped. There's no way out.' The voice just laughed, 'wake up Ebony. Wake up.' What does it mean?! I am awake; I kicked my legs, the rope keeping me immobile.
Click. The metal door swung open, bringing the nameless men into view, they wore the long white lab cloaks, as if I was some sort of experiment. Something new. I thrashed around even more, trying to break away from the impossible. I was bound tight, unable to flee this nightmare. They smile; not a warm, care-free smile, no, it was cold and empty. Cruel. I screamed kicking my legs around, hoping that this time I would achieve something. No luck. I looked towards the men and one truly caught my attention, his solemn posture and his eyes bright beneath tightly joined brows. Meeting my gaze he re-masked, taking and locking away his emotions. The other moved towards the work bench, running his hands over numerous objects. Pondering on a 'tool' to use.
'They are going to drive me away, Ebony. Rid you of me. You don't want that do you, Ebony? You want me to stay with you, keep you company? Talk to you?'
The man at the table stopped and hovered over the needle. He grinned and walked towards me, I started thrashing again. You'd think I'd stop trying, not getting anywhere. I locked eyes with the same man as before, 'help me' I mouthed.
He shook his head. 'Sorry,' was all that moved on his lips.
The voices were coming back stronger, I screamed not able to clutch my head.
'Wake up, wake up, wake up,' was repeatedly chanted through my mind.
Wake up? Why, I am awake. What do you mean? I slowly slipped back into the abyss of my unconsciousness as I neared my fate.
'Wake up, Ebony,' the voices whispered.
My eyes shot open with an ear piercing scream, I sat up, no longer bound to the lab table, 'You're awake, Ebony, you escaped,' echoed through my mind, I looked around, I was back in the confinement of my white sponge walls . How did I get here?
I dragged my legs from the bed to hang beneath me and rested my head in my hands. I screamed. I had escaped. I was running down the road. It had never happened. I had never got out of here.
I looked in to a small shard of mirrored glass from beneath my pillow. Dark, black emotionless eyes stared back at me. Someday I will escape. Someday.
*****
Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Awake. Now. Medication.”
'No Ebony, don't take it, don't. They're driving us away Ebony. You don't want that do you Ebony?'
No! Get out of my head! I hate you! I thought I'd escaped last night, I thought I'd escaped this place! You're nothing but a blip in my brain, I want rid of you.
'Ebony, we are your friends, we don't want to hurt you, it wasn't our fault, you were dreaming.'
I screamed.
The door flew off the hinges and in came those men.
It was the same men every morning, the same white coat, that same hair cut every time, that same smell. The smell of meds, the smell of doctors, the smell of a prison. All because of your mind. Everything around here was because of your mind.
I'm different to the others, I really am, they have visual problems, ones that you can see, hallucinations the lot, they say I'm not safe.
Am I not safe? Why aren't I safe?
'You are safe Ebony, you have no reason not to be, we keep you safe, we keep you going'
No! No, you don't! You don't do anything for me! You got me here in the first place, why won't you go away?
'Because we're your friends Ebony, friends help you'
I shook my head, desperate to get the voices out; I heard the door bang shut, I turned my head to see they'd left the usual paper cup, holding those three small tablets, my escape route.
All in a tiny little cup.
And so I went by my usual daily routine, shower, breakfast, educational time, lunch, nap, dinner then once again, back into that dreary room, all of which consisted of unwanted attention from others and that constant stare those men in white coats give you; they watch you, every second of every day, never do they leave. They're like unwanted shadows. A darkness to your day, well like it could any darker in this hell hole.
I had to escape. I just had to. And so I began to draw up an escape route, the blood pumping around my body with adrenaline. Nothing, and I mean nothing, was going to stop me this time.
Not even those voices. They're not going to get to me, I won't let them.
I folded up my yellowed paper and slid it under my pillow, along with my shard of mirror. I pulled it out and stared into it deep; my once soft and shiny black hair now brittle and knotted, no life left in it, my deep almost black eyes were sunken in there sockets, falling deeper and deeper, my skin once perky was now colourless and pale from the lack of sunlight. A small tear fell from my eye and splashed onto the mirror causing a ripple upon the image of my now broken face. Nothing was the same anymore, there was no life left in me, nothing.
This place had dragged it out of me, every smile, every happy thought, stolen and smashed right in front of you, it's almost like they want you to keel over and die.
'Ebony, they want to drive you to insanity, you're not insane, you're normal, we're normal, you need us to carry one, you need us to survive,'
I pressed my hands against the side of my head, why won't you get out? I pulled and pulled upon my hair, pieces falling out in my fists.
I have to get out of here.
Now.
^^^
My novel I'm writing for NaNoWriMo :'D 50,000 words here I come!!
Do you remember when we were just kids
And cardboard boxes took us miles from what we would miss
Schoolyard conversations taken to heart
And laughter took the place of everything we knew we were not
To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The Runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes, formerly used to write Germanic languages, mainly in Scandinavia and the British Isles. In all their varieties they may be considered an ancient writing system of Northern Europe. The Scandinavian version is known as Futhark (derived from its first six letters: 'F', 'U' 'Th', 'A', 'R', and 'K'), and the Anglo-Saxon version as Futhorc (also so named after its first letters). The earliest runic inscriptions date from ca. 150, and the alphabet was generally replaced by the Latin alphabet with Christianisation, by ca. 700 in central Europe and by ca. 1400 in Scandinavia. However, the use of runes persisted for specialized purposes, mainly in Scandinavia and in rural Sweden until the early 20th century (used mainly for decoration as Dalecarlian runes and on Runic calendars). 
