Writings on Various Themes and Melodies

I didn't quite do it justice, but we shall see later. And many thanks to the fair Dann, for his prompt of Raven, Wedding, Sword, which took me far too long to reach.

David stared at the woods behind them, his banner snapping quietly at his heels, not quite in the lee provided by his mount. It was important, he told himself. It was important, it was the turning point of their lives; it was... beyond his mind, beyond all he wanted to think about, after all he'd seen-- it was, simply put, too much.

"C'mon," Alec told him, cantering by. "We don't have time for this lollygagging if we're to make it to the glen by tomorrow morning; the moon's already rising, look."

He shrugged, spurred his mare, and followed his companion North, into the hills. Behind them, behind the woods, the moon rose over a field that had seen more blood than ground ever should. The carrion birds had already gone; they never lingered anymore, knowing a battle would soon come on to give them a newer, better respite.

The company rode on, rode hard, over dale and through vale and mainly around fords, where they could; it had been a bad spring, for rains and for flooding. They did not need to take unnecessary risks, as David was reminded constantly. The glen awaited, somewhere ahead, some time in the morrow.

And somewhere on the other side of those hills, a quieter night was spent, as Rhia and her sister left the camp, their dresses turned in for easier clothes, their hair bound, their knives sharpened and secured to their waists. It was far from perfect, and they knew it, but the ash on their skin would hide the moon's searching rays, and as far as these things went, it could have been far worse.

"The stars in the West are brighter," Dana told her as they ducked beneath the boughs of a snaggled willow. "I don't remember if that's a good sign or not."

Rhia shrugged. "It hardly matters. We're on our way, he's on his, and the night isn't a bad one; I'm not going to ask for signposts from the heavens, not anymore."

Somewhere between their road and the other, an owl sang softly on the wing; Dana winced.

But when the moon was overhead, and the roads crossed, the glen was nowhere near silent, and the knife was left in the bark of a long-dead apple tree, and the horses were tethered on the outskirts, and the ravens were silent somewhere else, and all that mattered was the song beneath the trees - quietly, even with Dana's flute, for sound carried, on these clear nights. And in the morning, with a day as long as years between their nights, the ravens could not seem a bad omen, even on the wing in mass.

Of trespassing, of love unsated (perhaps), of restlessness and growth.

A girl, who wandered many days, who slept where she would of a night. Who never met the eyes of the forest creatures around her and therefore had no companions, who did not stop to pick flowers and thus never met the Wolf, who did not carry bread and so attracted no dwarves or witches or princelings under a curse.

A young bear, growing faster than his parents would have liked, who sat in his high bedroom on top of the nightstand (and leapt down quickly when four heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs) and looked out on the world around, and watched the comings and goings (of which there were few, near the house of bears, but many farther out, only visible from atop the nightstand), and dreamt of their beginnings and endings without meeting their eyes.

The unlocked door, so inviting in that chill wind that bites through your bones in late winter, before the flowers have poked out from the snow, as the mud beneath the trees begins to dream of thawing, when the frost disappears into the air and the sun is more for light than warmth. A warmth, a smell of something cooked, something born of love and passion.

Unselfconscious, for she has never met the eyes of the forest, she wanders throughout, looking, smelling, feeling, thinking strange thoughts.

Curious, he patters about, almost - but not quite - leaving his parents’ watchful eyes. He thinks, he sees, he wonders if someone may be dreaming of his beginning and end.

Hungry, she sates herself; thoughtful, she is seated; tired, she finds a place to sleep, to dream.

It is but a moment, when the roaring shakes the whole house, and the world comes crashing down, around both of their ears; the noise she could take, but when their eyes meet, all the careful illusions shatter, and life begins anew, with something crucial between them as their lines diverge, violently.

One moment of love, in a world of cold; it is enough.

For a friend, whose griefs and sorrows all but break my heart, betimes.

The music soars and dips and leaps and bounds and spins around - and I play my harp, my pipe, my voice of silver wood, in the stillness of your breaths; you never know I'm here, you never see, it's all one, all one to me.

When the flames leap up around your life, I play their beat while they smoke out the color of the world you lived in; someone must be there, there is a voice to witness all that falls upon the just, the pure, the robbers in the world.

At night when you fall to your knees, a voice must be to see your tears, a pipe will play to soothe your soul. When your life becomes naught more than pain, I will sing your sorrows from your bones, your blood, your skin, and hope the wind upon the harp pulls the tears from your very soul.

But one must be there, when your heart cracks, breaks, and snaps, someone must sing the song of your tears. When your castle crumbles, and though you be the laird of a thousand men no voice still your cry, a pipe will play your sorrows upon the dust and ashes of what you once loved.

At darkest moments, when the light itself leaves your eyes and heart, I will be there to draw the stars around you, to sing peace into your mind, for one must bear the price of grief, and it need not always be your burden.

Touch me, I will vanish, like the wind upon the mist; reach for me, I'll slip through your hands like water in the brook, like moonlight on the grasses in the twilit night. But when you have forgotten me, though a legion cries your name, ye shall remain but one soul, beneath the weight of all the world, and there will yet be a pipe to play your song.

And ye cannot call my name, for none will catch my form; and ye cannot feel my own body, for it is not; and ye cannot bring me from the darkness of the wilds, for there lies my own love--

but in the darkest nights, friend of friends, when e'en the moon will not rise to soothe your tortured soul, I will light your way. On the hardest days, when all you hear is mocking laughter, I will silence the air around you, and give peace through music, ne'er words. When your song dies on your lips, a wind will stir your harp; when the words fail you, and anger's all you see, the sun will burn it off, like the fog upon the sea; when the pain is too much to bear, I will fall on your sword, and let the world play your song.

I don't know. My friend said something about this, the idea stuck. I... I should probably be on meds again.

The house sat alone on the edge of the village. Though it appeared cozy from a distance, up close it was too quiet. No smoke rose from the chimney, no light shone from the windows; the steps were unshoveled, the hedges untrimmed. You might say 'desolate,' but no one said anything about the house anymore.

[Two Years Prior]

The caution tape stood a stark contrast, neon yellow and sharp black against the picturesque snowy landscape. It wasn't nearly as unsettling, strung around the cottage like a sinister garland, as what they had found inside. Days like this made it hard to be a cop, even in such a quiet village.

All three pillows were drenched in blood. All three doors swung open, hinges rusted to hold them that way, wood swelled oddly towards the bottom.

The house was dead silent; there was an oppressive chill in the air, all around, despite the smell of woodsmoke from the stove, which had apparently been burning all night.

There was a puddle in front of it, strewn with some lumps of dark coal and flint, a red ribbon, probably from someone's mittens, and a limp and bedraggled carrot.

The case went cold before Christmas was over.

[Twelve Hours Prior]

'Twas a night cold and wintry, and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

The door creaked in the night, but no one was awake to notice. It swung shut quiet, like footsteps on newfallen snow.

[Four Hours Prior]

Footsteps, errant and reckless on the snow, leading in and out and in and out again. Mittens astrew on the Welcome mat, bright and colorful.

Laughter, cheering, jeering, and a ringing triangle to end the day, leaving but one round and perfect silhouette alone on the open field.

Holy crap, this is terrible. Ah, well. Getting back into the habit-- perhaps tomorrow will be a better one.

She looked across the bridge one last time, as the rain fell all around, spattering into the water, far beyond sight beneath her, and this endless cliff. This would not have been the way of her choosing, had she had a say in how and when to go, to leave this place - but the time for that grace was passed, and needs must where choice would not.

The wind pushed, the moment howled around her, and she knew there would be no more lingering, then, and turned away. The island was gone, that life was out of her grasp now, and the world opened wide before her like the maw of destiny, the gaping jaws of all eternity, dark and swallowing and endless.

There were stars above, somewhere, and maybe they were shining on this night, but she saw none, nor could have beyond the rain. That voice echoed over and over in her mind, the song of a heart broken, the song she left behind, the cries of gulls against the shores, and the love that should have been denied from the start.

Long, shining hair beneath her fingers, soft skin, and a heart, beating, perfectly in rhythm with her own. Not really, of course - their rhythms were almost always off. But she'd still loved to hold her head against the huntress' chest and listen, that beat like hooves on sand, like the surf pounding against the rocks, like love itself, wild and untamed and tied to her heart like hot coals...

Cities, she thought. Tall and shining and beautiful and bustling, and not nearly as beautiful as my love's eyes beneath her own moon... Cities. Glorious triumphs of man against the dark and the wild, new sights and sounds-- silk, and jewels, and beaten gold, not nearly as fine as the still pools of starlight on a calm night...

The second bridge was out; she would have to swim. The water, cold and cleansing, would be the undoing of the last strands of love, she thought, as she leapt swanlike into the depths and pulled forwards up to that icy surface.

And beneath that moonless night, many leagues behind her, the sun made a bet with the moon his sister, and a bow was drawn, and in the dark, an arrow loosed.

I know. I fell off the face of the earth entirely.

This is why: Okay, so, let me give you a timeline.

Saturday about 1pm: it starts raining
Saturday about 2pm: it is snowing, hard, flakes as big as my hand (and WET) no exaggeration
Saturday 3pm: things start closing, lights flicker a bit, roads are full of slush, sky darkens
Saturday 3:30pm: Sister calls from West Hartford, where her asshole friend stranded her
Saturday 4:30pm: We close at work and I go to pick her up. I shall copy-paste from the IRC

So I drove, terrified, all the way out to get her, around innumerable fallen trees, branches (seriously, there were entire trees down, also big huge branches), and entire lines draped across the road.
Then I picked her up and drove to a restaurant nearby.
(I know the owner fair well, she's awesome.)
And I did /not/ want to drive back on an empty stomach.
My car skidded two or three times when I tried to come to a stop. It was terrifying. Three times branches narrowly missed falling on our car, branches that would've stopped us in our tracks. One we saw fall on the line and throw up a flash and subsequent shower of sparks.
We got stopped by cops who'd blocked off a road twice and had to change routes. Finally we got to the restaurant, ate, dallied for three hours because I was hoping things would slow down (they didn't), and eventually headed out.
The ride home was EVEN MORE TERRIFYING.
The roads were damn near impossible to navigate, all the lights were out, there were lines across the road every block or so. But we finally made it home, and have been cursing the dark and lack of power since.
We got like, six inches of snow.
And I had to shovel it off my driveway.
And I've been carrying an obscenely heavy generator in and out of the shed and house to keep the basement from flooding for three days now.
I will be okay.
It's stressful, but that is life in New England. I'll be glad when power comes back.
This is seriously weird and unsettling.
There are autumn leaves scattered over deep snow and puddles of ice.
That is so weird.

So... no idea when power will come back on. I'm typing from a coffeeshop in Manchester, where they picked up fairly quickly. In another half hour or so, though, I'll pack up and head back home. Tomorrow I'll see if the campus is open and charge more stuff there.

Also NaNoWriMo. But I'll try and get back on this when power comes back. Take care, y'all.

Alright, I know, I missed two days in a row there. Saturdays are bad days for doing things; I've no excuse for Sunday night. Anyway, as penance have this thing, which I wrote years ago as a response to a friend, and am still rather proud of.


“We could play a game!”

My head was resting against the cool glass of the passenger-side window. I glared into my own reflection, too tired to turn and glare at Brian. It was pointless to answer, anyway. He already knew the answer.

“But I want to entertain you. You look so bored and lifeless.” I could almost hear the wistful sigh behind his voice. “You were so cheerful and bright before!”

“I was cheerful and bright back there because it was my own life, Brian. This place is flat, and gray, and just… this.” I gestured out the window with a limp hand, and did turn to glare at him this time. “I hate it, I hate being here, and I hate this.”

He made a humming noise under his breath and sort of shrugged a little, his voice briefly – very briefly – devoid of its customary too-cheerful energy. “You’ll get used to it though. I swear you will.”

I snorted. There wasn’t an answer to that. The hours stretched on before us, bleak and lifeless as the endlessly sepia-toned miles we traveled together, and as devoid of promise.

“Look at that!”

I’d seen it about ten minutes prior, or the signs for it – the only signs of life or color we’d seen for a good three days, you’d better believe I was interested, even if it had only been for a moment, even if it was only a county fair, the kind of which you really have seen one, and seen them all. The only weird thing on passing the sign had been that Brian had withheld comment – a situation which he apparently had decided to remedy. Great.

“Oh, great. A way to make the trip even longer.”

He gave me one of those dazzling, bright, sugary, creepy smiles. “Savoring every second!” I ignored him. “Come on though! It’ll be really fun!”

“I honestly don’t care, Brian. Like I said, it’s just another way of dragging this thing out.” He was like a little kid – he liked it, and he did not honestly understand why I didn’t. Free will, choice, freedom of exit or movement or what have you – they meant nothing to him, as far as I could tell. Just words.

As the multi-colored tents grew larger and larger in the distance, I was filled with a sense of foreboding – I didn’t want to get out. Brian changed the atmosphere around him – others seemed to relax, to be more cheerful, or at least more energetic. I… I felt the atmosphere change, but to me it only felt more oppressive. I wondered about him, sometimes, if he took me along because of that. Mostly, though, I just wished he hadn’t.

Unfortunately, he pulled into the gravel parking lot, and gave me another dazzling smile as he leapt out of the car. I followed him, reluctantly, like a woodchip pulled into the wake of a ferry, and we swept into the fairgrounds in the bustling crowd. It looked like things had just opened up – the ground was still clean, and the food and fun stands were mostly empty. The crowd spread out before us, and Brian immediately headed for one of the stands, grinning like a child. I followed him, more like the tortured parent in the equation.

“You, sir, look like a man who enjoys a good game of skill!”

The man stood there, tossing an oddly shaped ball from one hand to the other, an almost predatory glint in his eyes which seemed out of place in his round face, which appeared to be, otherwise, the very embodiment of good cheer.

Brian gave me one of his very cheeriest grins. I stared back at him. Undeterred, he fairly bounced over to the game, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll win you an animal! That’ll cheer you up!”

“Ah, to win an animal for the lovely lady, sir, you must win only three games – surely a simple feat for one so clearly accustomed to the masculine arts as yourself!”

Have you ever choked on air? It’s like choking on water, but when life throws something so unbelievably insane at you that you choke on the very substance which you are accustomed to breathing, because reality demands that you choke in disbelief, almost as if reality was a narrative of some sort. I mean, 'masculine arts'? What was he going to do, wank towards a target, or just look big and strong and manly, maybe flex a couple times, or just kill something with a caveman stick... I don't know, something about the very phrase 'masculine arts' conjures a pretty skeevy image. Maybe it's just me.

But the man only handed him one of the balls, which were a dark sort of coppery color. Brian gave him another cheery smile, which he returned-- or reflected, more like. A thin, faded image of the real thing, but just as nauseating. Maybe more so, actually. I watched as he pointed to the hoops which needed to be targeted, and the pyramids knocked down, and so on, and so forth. I concluded that 'masculine arts' was just one of those things people say to patronize the girlfr-- the companion. Companion. Not girlfriend, not significant other, not even friend.

Companion was bad enough. In its own right, it held just as many irritating connotations as masculine, or even girlfriend, but it was truer than anything else. I don't know. Maybe prisoner? Unwilling companion-- no, that just sounded wrong.

"Look! I almost won!" He seemed so... enthusiastic. I fought back the smile and gave him a dirty look. "One more try, and I'll get it! Which animal do you want?"

The man, no longer oozing greasy charm, grinned at me as well, fully caught up. He handed Brian another ball from the crate. "On the house, my good man, on the house! An animal for the lovely lady!"

I shook my head at the pair of them, and the teenage kid who'd wandered up behind him, androgynous, face three-quarters of the way hidden behind a curtain of hair that held a wave, despite the gallon and a half of gel attempting to hold it straight. He watched for a second, visibly tensing as Brian wound up for the throw. I kicked at the dust, noting the weird spirals it formed into, three-dimensional, like smoke, or a drop of ink in water... Sand in air, ink in water, cloud in empty space?

"Name it, name it!"

The three of them were all laughing now, like old friends. Brian tossed the ball back to the showman, an easy underhand throw, and the teenage kid clapped him on the back and wandered off into the crowd again. I'd caught a glimpse. A girl, under the frayed, loose clothing and sexless piercings. Huh.
I looked at the little plushie zebra. It didn't seem to be smiling. In fact, it looked more or less like a regular zebra, a horse with stripes, complete with the intelligent, intense sort of face. Strangely enough, I liked it. I didn't want to name it and push it into this stupid scene. I shrugged.

"I don't know." He looked down for a second. "Thanks, though."

It's funny, from the sudden sparkle on his face, you'd think he actually cared whether or not I liked it. Didn't he enjoy the game? The attention? The cameraderie? Maybe it wasn't cameraderie. Maybe they were just players in his game, maybe they were just fellow actors in the scene, almost captives, and it didn't count. Maybe I did feel bad for him. The fucking psychopath.

"Anyway, what do you want to eat? I'm getting hungry, well, not really, but you probably are, and I feel like we should probably eat something while we're here, because the granola gets really old, or just boring, because it's like, even though it's nourishing and technically it won't go stale in the sealed packaging and it hasn't been that long anyway, I still get tired of the same texture over and over, and the taste isn't that great. So while we're out of the car, I kind of want something to eat that's not granola. Not that the granola's bad."

Really, you'd think my mother had made the granola or something. Had she? I'd remember that, though, and besides, her granola was way better than the stuff we'd brought. It had raisins and pineapple, not these dates. Dates were good, the first one and second one, but more than two in a handful, every handful, and they just got to be too sweet. It left a bad taste on your mouth. He was looking at me somewhat expectantly, his eyes like a puppy's.

"Alright, Brian. We'll go get something to eat. Where's the foodcourt?"

He gestured, and set off with that same spring in his step. I followed him as he exchanged cheerful greetings with every damn person we passed, even in the crowds, and managed to nod to most of them without actually saying anything. Their eyes don't glide over me like they did when we started this stupid trip. ...When -he- started this trip. Not we. He. I didn't have a choice. I didn't start anything, just got sucked along. I hate how memory distorts things.

"It all looks so good!"

I looked at the big chalkboard. Corn dogs, popcorn (extra butter), fried dough, fried batter, fried doughnuts, batter-dipped cracklings (wait, what?), pork rinds, bacon-onion-battered-mushroom-nacho-ham-double-cheeseburger... I stopped reading about a quarter of the way down and stared at him. He was already exchanging blond jokes with the couple in front of us. I briefly wished I was blond so I could feel offended.

"Do they have anything even remotely not poisonous?"

He guffawed, as though I'd made some hilarious joke, and pointed to the bottom of the menu. "Look! They have fruit salad and stuff!"

The couple stepped away, with a cheery wave, and the clerk looked us both over, somehow seemed to do a mental double-take without actually registering it in her conscious. "What can I get you folks today?"

Brian began chattering, of course, listing three or four things he wanted. I looked over the "fruit salads," which, I saw from the counter, were mostly whipped cream with a handful of sugar-dipped berries thrown in. Eventually, the clerk finished talking to my benevolent dictator slash companion slash kidnapper and turned to me, a wide smile on her face.

"I, um. This. Uh, Brian, this stuff all looks disgusting. No offense. Pick something off the fruit menu, I don't want to think about it anymore."

He gave me a slightly concerned glance, which would normally have been rather disconcerting, but for some reason, it just made me tired. Pointing to an item on the menu, he handed the clerk some money, and we stepped to the end of the counter.

"Are you alright? You're... you're not acting right."

I stifled the strange impulse to laugh and shook my head. "I'm fine, Brian. Really." I looked down at the zebra, which contemplated me with its preternaturally (for a stuffed animal) intelligent expression, and winked at it. It did not wink back, which seemed to me impolite. I grinned. Brian, just out of the corner of my eye, looked alarmed.

"Here's your meal! Enjoy the rest of your stay, folks!"

He took the tray, looking at me instead of the clerk, strangely enough. "You're not fine, though! You're not being sarcastic, or snide, or anything!" He sounded like a panicked little kid. I grinned. I don't know why.

"Ah, Brian. I'm fine. It's a nice enough day. Let's go eat, eh?"

"I, I... okay. Okay, let's eat." His voice lacked the cheerful, over-confident, nearly strangling enthusiasm it usually possessed.

We wandered off to the picnic area, a stretch of lawn, fairly lush, under several decently sized trees, and found a little wicker table. I looked down at the dish he'd picked out, and began to laugh, manically, despite the fright that seemed to be spreading from him to every face in the area. Laughter is worth it.

...Somehow, I got behind on entries. This should catch me up for the day count.

Her heart exploded.

That was all. It was there, and then it was bursting out her rib cage like a mouse on speed.

And the dragon smirked, and she wondered aloud why, and the wind sang through the holed and whittled mountains like a ghost in the desert.

There was blood everywhere, in the drawing room, and I watched with wary eyes when the scene began to truly unfold.

The dragon smirked, and blew smoke like a stroke of calligraphy, and her heart began to beat again, all the pieces together on the floor, like glass singing after the stroke of iron.

I said nothing, and the drawing room continued to be too fine for this sort of shit.

She blinked at him like a maiden betrayed, watching the shards of bone that should've been her saving knit once again, in all the wrong places, leaving her poor unstabled heart to lie, unprotected and vulnerable, upon the table where the dragon could feast on his sacrifice.

The master of the house, of course, would not have approved - but what was I to do? One does not interfere in the matters of dragons; they will as they will, after all. She knew it from the start, anyway, she chose to drink with him, and she ignored the sparks when they flew. What was I to do?

I did as I was paid to do, and I filled their glasses once again while the traitorous silence continued to reign. The table, polished neatly, gleamed in the candlelight despite the clearing smoke. All tackled and taken, the silver lay forgotten on the edges of the reasonableness that could have been.

She forgave the dragon, I think, with not her dying breath, because the eyes in all their depth and wisdom lie, and sometimes it's all you can do not to believe lies. What would you have done, after all? What was I to do?

It's easy to say, oh yes. It's easy to decide after the fact, and oh, it's hard to forgive someone's giving a drink to a dragon in your own home, but her heart lay beating on the table and the walls, and what would you have had me do, then? With her eyes suddenly staring, with her bones knitting to the silver and her silence begging me for peace?

I do not judge your response, of course. I did what I did. I did as I was paid to do, I filled their glasses again and watched him breathe again, a deep inhale, and of course the smoke flew when he breathed out. They always do. She was as she was, it's like incense when you've had that much to drink, and it was only then they rose. She rose, and stood with him, and when he took her hand those staring eyes smiled. And when he walked from the room, she followed him, and left her heart there in the room, in pieces and she the lighter for it.

The blood will be cleaned, of course. I don't do that, though, that is after. What comes after, when the party has left, the maiden and the dragon, and someone has to make sure the drawing room stays tidy.

Somewhere in the sea, there is a castle. A ruin, now, crumbling beneath the pressures of time and... well, pressure. But still, recognizably, a castle, standing tall and proudly in its dying twilights. It's all twilight, you see, beneath the ocean. But there is a dignity to the castle, still, a tallness to its ramparts, and a straightness to its towers, even the broken and crooked ones. The stones say something, to those who gaze upon their surfaces and their cracked depths. There is an air - no pun intended - of glory around them, as though it had once withstood the charges of millions, as though this death, the death of time and ocean tides, is fitting; no mortal could have done the same.

Your body, love, lies beneath it. When I stare, from this lonely, cold, and deadened rock, down to the light of our realm, I fancy at times I can see that castle, beneath one of those great oceans. This, of course, is a lie - it is a wonder I see the oceans at all, and only by prior knowledge know them for watry bodies, and not vast deserts, as they might be in another world. And you, were you even alive, could not see me, through all the great depths between us, those of void and space and darkness and water, and dust, and skies of both direction. But i fancy, at times, that you are looking from your own crevasse beneath the sea - the deepest, I know, in that world - back up at me, at those moments when my own refuge is aligned with yours, even for the space between us.

Ah, it was a grand time, back then, was it not? Though we ended, though it eventually fell, we made them remember us, for a moment, love. The skies knew our names! The people knew our faces, and the very stones, it seemed, bore our weight as though in favour. Your home, your father, with his cruel reign, and my own queen mother in her castle of terror, but when we met on that battlefield, we both knew what would come of the day. None could withstand us, no army, no serfdom, no band of knights in prime; all fell beneath our own force, when we'd united.

That island, our first meeting and to be the bloody conquest of one of our masters, our home eternal, so we thought - the land of wonder for the world. You knew, as I did, when we built that castle - laying half the stones with our own hands, I'm sure you recall - that it would be the envy of mortal men infinite. The poets brought back word, the empire wondered, the councils too. We withstood all we could, in the end, and no mortal nor god ever could have taken us down, the perfect dream of two such as we; it took the very land itself, the orb - if only we'd known it! that we lived upon, to crown the story.

And so eternity passes, and I stare into the gulf between us, and wait for the end of an eternity, and wonder if you think same thoughts, in your rest beneath the castle, at the bottom of the deepest trench in the deepest ocean, the darkest hole the Earth could hide you in - but not from me, love. I know your resting place, and I know that betimes, someday, you will rise from't and we will meet again, on the fringe of the sky that lies between us, and the world will be ours once again. Until then, we wait.

I've been slacking. This one was just sort of... what it says on the tin, staring out the window at the lovely, lovely New England autumn and waiting for my sister to be ready to go to the Renaissance Faire (worth it, if you're wondering). Next time, less babbling and more fiction.

Everything is in a bubble - it's like a falling leaf, but there are millions of them, floating past each other in all directions, through each other but never intersecting on any real plane. This is the truth of the first world. They are all removed from each other by only a fraction of a reality, but it's just enough - they intersect in every direction but one.

You're in one of them, watching the others drift by. The pockets of empty space are the worst, where you can see no other small piece of reality, only the edge of infinity on your plane of lonely existence, but those are getting more and more infrequent all the time, until you wish and wonder for those moments of terror and loneliness; this is the truth of the worlds we inhabit.

The currents fall, they flow, they intersect unhappily and happily. The emotions of the bubbles don't effect the currents, though maybe they should. It would make the world a more chaotic place, and that might help. It might also hurt - what do we know, after all, about the world? You could fill a glass of water with the most tightly packed of any substance, destroy all the spaces between it with stuff, reality, and substance; nothing would matter to our sense of self.

The knowledge, after all, is tangential to the reality of it.

I have been reading too much mathematical stuff. This is probably true.

I write fiction; I don't like lies. It is as pointed out by the lovely Ursula le Guin; science fiction (or, as Lewis put it, scientifiction) writers throw a pack of lies down, a figment of imagination privvy only to them and all th eworld they share it with, a pack of untruths and airy imaginings, and they say "There! That is the truth!" And it's right, and it's true, and it's far better than those who go around shouting about what they believe the real world to be, warning us of the dangers of imagination, the dangers of their imagination, because when they are not in control, they are afraid.

Fiction tells the truth; it's far more reliable than fact, sometimes.

Where else could I tell you all about the guitar in my corner, how he's called Sean, how his voice is unlike my own but that's the way it goes-- the world says guitars are female, but he disagrees. I disagree, anyway.

Or how the trees glint more beautifully than gems, when the light is on them in the wind. Any wind.

I think we treasure polished stone more than trees because trees pass. They live, they die, and sometimes their leaves don't shine. But doesn't that make the moments when they're alive all the more beautiful?

Why don't we propose to love with trees? Why don't we propose to love with a song, with a smile, with something as passing and fragile and eternal as we are? Why use rocks? Why not ice?

I always thought the important part was in the feeling, which is technically a transient thing. It doesn't last outside the heart, anyway - you can't put it in a box and sell it when you're hard up for cash, but you can give it away, easily and with difficulty and with pain and with pleasure. It's better than a rock, maybe even better than a tree.