Spring Clutch 2022 - Szetamirath & Daejienth

Dam: Gold Szetamierath
Sire: Bronze Daejienth

Someone Tried Their Best Egg
The bright whiteness of this egg is contrasted by the scrawled play of bright colors across its surface. It's as if someone released an entire creche of toddler Harper-wannabes upon it with little more than colored wax sticks and a declaration for them to 'have fun' and 'go nuts'. Most of the seemingly scribbled markings are aimless and meandering and wholly unidentifiable. Yet, there are a few scribbly bits on this egg that will surely raise an eyebrow or two - surely, they aren't intended to be so… questionable. Are they? No, no, never.
1 There Was An Attempt doesn't… really know why its here. Do you? What is it? What are you?! Confusion abounds for what feels like an eternity of tangled threads of thought while it strives to pull itself together. It would say it's not always like this - but is it? It isn't so sure. So it asks, in its way: am I like this? As if you'd know. But maybe you do? Maybe you don't? Perhaps it'll accept wild speculation while it makes neat coils of thoughts here and there in an attempt to make something coherent of itself. You seem more put together - but are you? Really? Uncertain, it wonders at your very nature even when it has no grasp of its own, until it finds a knot and is distracted enough that the connection breaks.
2 There Was An Attempt ohs. You're back. Wait, were you here before? The madness is building - can it remember? Can you? Oh, memories! It knows memories. It knows the shape and feel of them. It knows what memories are. What are your memories like? Maybe that will help! It reaches and digs, sifting through your thoughts to find just the right memory, but nothing seems to catch or make sense. Nothing seems to be of immediate interest - well, except for that memory. You know the one. The one that pops up late at night and leaves you sweating with worry. The one that eats at you in your waking hours. The one attached to emotions that are strong and visceral. It likes that one. Of course it would! And it will turn that memory over and over again until its tired and puts it back and is forced to retreat and consider the meaning of it all.
3 There Was An Attempt is confused, but this is nothing new. Hello. Hi. How are you? You are new! … Or are you? The dance of memory is engaged until, at long last, it's forced to concede that you have been here before. But why are you here again? That seems to be the interesting part now. You've come back again and again and now, now, the question is 'why?' What are you seeking, stranger? What do you desire? And do you truly think you can find it here in this snarled mass of madness, of tangled thoughts and absent-minded disarray? Did you lose something here? Did you lose something out there? Suddenly, its curiosity is pointed and keen and sharply aware. It's finding some kind of shape. There's a method to the madness, a pattern to the chaos. But just as all becomes clear, it's gone, gone, gone - lost forever. Maybe.
Festive Fingers Egg
This egg somehow looks rumpled, with its off-white shell appearing more like crinkled parchment than a smooth shell. It's also not especially noteworthy from most angles - except for one side that looks undeniably like someone dipped a hand in paint and slapped that directly onto the shell. The four finger-like bits are pointed up, toward the apex, with each one a different color: green, blue, yellow, and orange. Bold colors. Bright colors. The part that would be the palm and thumb is brown, with a blot of bright red signifying something on the 'thumb' part. But what does it mean? That is the real mystery.
1 Artistic Abstractions stir into some kind of wakefulness, with abstraction coalescing into a sensation that's best described as synesthetic. Colors are plucked from your mind and associated with events, with flavors and scents tied tight with hue and hue alone. What does it mean? Does it mean anything? This one seems inclined to dig a little deeper, but only just, with an impulse to get to the bottom of what these sense-memories mean to you, while attaching them to a fickle palette of colors that seems to shift and change with every twisting thought. Yet, the desire to get in deeper is not strong enough and the tenuous tether is broken, with all the colors going black and with you left with the taste of a memory on your tongue.
2 Artistic Abstractions shift once more into liveliness, this time with a blank canvas laid out. This seems a better way to capture the state of memory, of thought, and so it goes, with one mind prodding into yours with questions and seeking answers that will spill on blank white material. What do you like? Who do you like? What is your favorite memory? Your least favorite? The questions are rapidfire in their generation, a stipple-staccato of inquiries that print themselves like amateur pop art on canvas. And, when all's said and done, the result is a beautiful thing, a piece of art just for you - because it is you, as this one sees you. For just a moment, a fleeting moment, it's a concept that crystallizes - and then is gone, with the cloak of darkness dropping once more.
3 Artistic Abstractions shudder yet again, but slowly this time. No canvas. No paint. Just a blank stage laid out against your mind. But what does it mean? That's the question that plagues every artist, no? Are you an artist? The question is rhetorical: this one seems to think everyone is, on some level. Just think of the works you've already created with its help! And isn't that the root of the matter, in the end? For it needs someone and maybe you do, too. Someone to bring out an inner quality that you don't know exists. More probing continues, but the stage remains empty. Creativity spent, it leaves you with your thoughts and your thoughts alone to populate the stage. What are you really seeking here? Who are you? In the end, there's a bid for you to take a bow, for it will exit stage left and leave you alone with your thoughts.
What Lies Beneath Egg
Dark as night, black as pitch, this egg is the theater before the spotlight flares to life, rife with possibility and promise and wonder. And then, the eye focuses, the light strikes it just right, and color flares to life, thin lines of shimmering hues dancing across the shell. They trace and trail, swirl and spiral in a cacophony of shape and color until an impression is formed: a dragon, curled up and sleeping, rotund belly replete with food. Is it true to life? No - 'tis more the rendering of some child-artist, seeing with an eye and imagination untempered by reality, wondrous and strange, carved into sable shell by a creative hand.
1 Stark Monochrome Perfection is no color, but is white and black, bound together to create a landscape as starkly beautiful as any found on Pern. Mountains rise in the background, a thousand shades of gray, and before them stretches a forest made of light and shadow, split through by a silvery river. It is oddly peaceful despite being so colorless, lulling the viewer into a sense of contentment. Within the monochromatic landscape rises a presence; it is not seen so much as felt, an awareness lingering just beyond sight and hearing, but tangible nonetheless. It seems content to watch in silence, not interfering with your exploration of the picturesque landscape beyond you. It seems curious as to how you react to seeing life in black and white and gray, without the nuance of color. All too soon, however, the image fades, and the mind slips away, apparently satisfied, and you return to life in all its chaotic colors.
2 Stark Monochrome Perfection returns at your contact, startling and stark in black and white and gray. This time, however, it doesn't offer a landscape for you to explore - instead, you're greeted with snapshot images of your own memories, made manifest in monochrome. There's a serene quality to every picture offered to you, the landscapes of your life laid out in perfect perspective. Sere and clean, the images are far from sterile - no, there is a beauty here, a calming quality. Memories made whole through an outside eye, the places of your life made more inviting with all the color leeched from them. The places you spent the most time in. The places you loved. The places you wished you could return to again. So many places, so little time… and, in the end, it leaves you be, with fading memories of your own to consider.
3 Stark Monochrome Perfection stirs again, with shadows clinging a little more tightly to the images that it offers. From its own landscapes to the lands of your memory, a new vision is born: possibilities. Pieces of your memory are brought out in those cool, but comfortable, hues of silver and white and black. A road is found and followed, but it goes nowhere that you're familiar with. But is it what you think should be there? Or something that it thinks should? Or, perhaps, is it a rare moment of alignment, a shivery, silvery sort of synchronicity where minds meet and make something new and beautiful? Life is frozen in those monochrome snapshots, fleeting images of flowers trapped in time or rock structures left in stasis. For, no matter what happens after the darkness descends for the last time, you will always have the starkly beautiful view from another mind to remember.
Paper-Thin Patches of Color Egg
Vaguely ovoid and rather lumpy, this egg seems more a child's approximation than the real thing. Patches of color are slathered across the shell: reds and greens, blues and purples, all mixed through with some rather bright oranges and a particular chunk of a rather unappetizing brown. There's something decidedly unsturdy about it, almost as though it should give beneath the touch, and at the top of the egg is a small gap in the coloration that might lead one to wonder if there is truly anything within the egg at all, or if it is merely a hollow shell encasing nothing but air.
1 Up the Down Staircase snatches you and drags you in. Up and down, round and round, in and out you go, pulled apart in every direction until you have no certain which way you're facing or what you're doing. The mindscape around you doesn't help; staircases climb to the sky, sink into the ground, and wander off into nowhere in defiance of every known convention of science and physics. Some appear to be upside down, others sideways, and others seem to curve around on themselves to form some kind of endless loop that only has one side. Reality seems to have taken a vacation, and left behind this delightfully disturbing dream. On top of everything, you just know someone is watching you. You can feel it, that press of eyes between your shoulder-blades, those pinprick darts against your face, the pressure of attention that rides over you like a dark cloud. Someone is watching. Someone is waiting. Someone, perhaps, wants to see how you'll react. What you'll do. Will you ride with the flow, or will you go mad from the nonsense? Just when you think you're about to find out, you're back on the sands, and everything is normal. Or is it?
2 Up the Down Staircase glomps down, and a flock of birds comes from nowhere, streaming past you in eerie silence. You feel the wind of their wings, the brush of their feathers, the shadow of the presence watching you - but you hear nothing. As you turn to watch them fly away, you note that where once were wings now are fins, where once were beaks now are gaping mouths, where once were feathered tails now flash shining scales, and away swim the school of fish, still absolutely without sound. The weight of consideration prickles against your neck; perhaps the hair stands on end, perhaps goosebumps shiver against your skin. Is it wonder you feel, watching the transformation from fowl to fish, or is it terror? Are you fascinated, or frightened? How do you react to the unexpected - with excitement, or trepidation. The answer matters, but the presence does not wait to discover it: out on the sands you go, with the brush of wings and the rush of the ocean echoing in your ears.
3 Up the Down Staircase swells around you, filling your vision. It's you. Your face. Your eyes. Your nose. Your lips. Your hair - wait, is that glitter in your hair? But wait - it's you… but it's not you. There's a distortion, a sense of rounding, of skewed perspective that means that what you're seeing isn't necessarily what everyone else sees. It's you, but it's a you seen through your eyes. And again, that waiting presence hovers - but this time, it's almost tangible. Almost, you can see the artist behind these nightmarish dreamscapes - almost, but not quite. You can feel it though, it's curiosity, its wondering. What do you see? What do other see? How do these two views line up - and where do they diverge. Is the you you see the one you want to be? Is the you they see the one you want to be? Will you change, or will you stay the same? Think on it. The wordless suggestion echoes in your mind as you are deposited on the Sands the last time, and the door shuts firmly behind you.
Strings and Glue Egg
One might have a number of words to pick from when describing this egg, though certainly not the typical ones. Oval? Of course. Large? Sure. Smooth? Absolutely not in a million years. The shell of this tan egg is marred by ridges, as if yarn has been wound around and around the surface from top to bottom. Without rhyme or reason, the thin lines cut over and under each other, circling back on themselves time and time again as they go. Unmoving, as if held in place by permanent adhesive, the pattern they create is random and haphazard. It isn't the only randomness on this egg, however - is that.. glitter? Hints of random colors cling here and there amidst the ridges, a decoration on the carefully crafted ovoid.
1 Controlled Chaos is a clatter of beads in a bowl, bright and rainbow-hued. Glass and clay and bone all rattle and bounce until they settle, at long last, into a dubious state of calm that can be upset by any kind of hard thought. Even the barest jostle will be enough to disturb the balance. In that stillness, though, there is much to be found, with colors glittering bright against the matte finish of bone and ivory. Are there reflections of you in there? Perhaps. And maybe, just maybe, you'll think you catch a glimpse of what resides within - but, oh! No, that's a little too far, too much, too fast, and the bowl is tilted, setting the contents spilling and scattering and in dire need of being picked up. The urge to help might well overwhelm - until the sensation of a broom whisks in to make short work of cleaning up a thousand individual pieces of a self that's not yet formed.
2 Controlled Chaos tries something different, this time, with another bowl - this time packed full of- wait. Is that macaroni? Just dried tubes of pasta? In a bowl? But why? What does it even mean? This time, at least, there's something else to look at - a disk of some sort, with a pot full of something sticky beside it. Thus are you bid to put the pieces where you think they fit, glue them in place and make them into something. Don't ask what it wants, though, since it doesn't seem so sure itself. If anything, it's curious to see what you do with those plain, if unorthodox, elements of creation. When you're done, it seems to study the result, with a whirling sense of contemplation and uncertainty. What does it mean? Is it even asking that of you? Or of itself? Most likely both, though a philosophical discussion on the merits of art will have to wait for another time, as exhaustion is quick to swell over the mind and push everything off into the darkness.
3 Controlled Chaos seems to be done with presenting artistic conundrums and settles, instead, on a small thing - an offering. A treat. A piece of candy. But that, too, is no easy matter, now is it? Not when there are so many ideas of what candy is. What is it to you? What is your favorite kind of treat? Suddenly, it's full of questions, probing at your preferences and desires in the oblique while it digs through pockets full of lint and other oddities left by previous hands on its shell. Snacks of all sorts are laid out in array and, perhaps, your favorite is there - but that's the hope, isn't it? That you'll find what you desire most here? It's a thought that cuts too close to reality and, abruptly, the presence retreats and fades into a state of existential despair. Hopefully, you aren't lost with it.
It's Like Watching Paint Dry Egg
An impossible large range of colors blast in a colorful explosion to completely cover this rough textured egg. On the larger range of sizes as far as eggs go it certainly catches your eye from a far. Oblong shapes of various sizes form within the colors. Red and blue mismatch in areas to show purple bleeding through. Alongside those mixed up colors yellow and blue intermingle to form long green finger-like shapes. Swirls and lines dance along the colors and the egg in no particular pattern that can be easily identified without a long study of these colors. Slowly more and more colors will show as if as the egg hardens the colors are drying. Pinks, teals, bright yellow and plenty of others will emerge over time.
1 The Eye of the Beholder turns its attentions on you with a sensation of something bold and awake and alive. Bright color sprays across that liminal space between minds, letters rendered large and stylized and impossible to read. If there's a message there, it's lost for the sheer audaciousness of its own existence. Still, there might be something meaningful to draw from the blocky assembly of graffiti'd lettering that marches ever onward - a persistence and drive to create, no matter the circumstances. What do you stand for? What drives you? A rattle and sputter mark the end of the line for the time being, though, and all the color drip, drip, drips to a chemical conclusion before being wiped away.
2 The Eye of the Beholder is aware again, but the colors are washed out and powdery - an artistic scrawl on the ground, or so it feels. Yet, there's nothing there? Or, rather, what's there seems strange and incomplete and there's a compulsion to walk this way, then that, until a shift in perspective brings everything into clarity. The world is a beautiful one, this one seems to say - but sometimes, it just takes looking at it from a different angle to truly see it for what it is. More images rise and fall, each requiring a different angle or view to truly see what it means. No words at all, just pictures of things and places that may mean something or nothing at all. Art for the sake of art - or, at least, art in the eyes of the one within the shell. The last images are finally washed away, chalk on a sidewalk left to stream off into nothingness.
3 The Eye of the Beholder opens itself once more at the renewed contact, this time with images that start at the top and flow downward in a steady stream of controlled paint flow. Faces are formed on the walls of the mind, portraits of people that you know - and some that you surely don't. Is that a fellow candidate? Does this one remember? It's hard to say, but the styles are wildly variable, from neon dreams to classical qualities to everything in between. Experimental whorls form another familiar face before dissolving into a collection of stamped question marks that don't deviate in design. You. It seems to be stymied by you. What style would you be? What style should you be? Are you eclectic and original? Stodgy and traditional? It dances around the topic for a moment before retreating at long last - leaving you to ponder whether the art left behind is truly art - or is art only in the eye of the beholder?
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