Live. Laugh. Lie in wait beneath the murky black waters of the lake, wreathed in seaweed and smiling at the horrorstruck man in the boat with your sharp black flashing teeth as you snake your cold gnarled fingers around his wrist so tight the bones creak, pulling him down down down into the dark cold quietness of the foul rancid muck where you make your bower, watching all the beautiful glinting bubbles cascade up up up from his mouth as his scream dies with him
#PennedPossibilities 311 — What is a memory that makes your SC swell with pride?
That armor. The black dragon armor, light as an autumn breeze. The last who owned it, legends say, a million died to take it away from her, but failed in the end.
She gave it to me: The ruler of the world, the most powerful thaumaturge alive. I was the one who nearly killed her, when we fought for our lives incidentally breaking the Curse of Harmony upon her.
I didn't break the curse but was the one who nearly killed her. Yet...
My friend—whose life I saved by pushing her out of the way of a plasma bolt and getting my flank burnt as a result—reminded me of the legend. Made me test the magic, which let me fly like an arrow and loop and dodge more agilely than a sparrow. She added, "She told me it's the first time anyone's got that close in a century. It's a bribe, you know, A loan. She wants you to work for her. You impressed her. "
I was working at Microsoft again as a Software Test Engineer and discovered they had broken the microwave feature. It could no longer detect if you had put metal in the microwave and it was sparking.
When I put the bug report in it was closed with the note. We can’t fix this.
I reopened it with the comment, “This worked in Windows 10.”
It was closed again, and a project manager told me to drop it. It was too late in the product cycle to fix now.
So I came in early in the morning, lined up all the computers in the test lab. Put metal cans in the microwaves and blew up the computers and the electrical system of the MS campus.
#PennedPossibilities 310 — MC or SC POV: What was your favorite day or holiday when you were a child? Favorite Day Remembrance CW: Sad.
Why are you making me remember this now? My favorite day? When I was a child? It was /that/ day, each time Mom returned home. She would sing to me, but she belonged to the world, the theatre, to the concert hall. Plenty of her albums proclaimed that. "Midnight, the Voice and the Heart of the Nation." Those albums, they're all I really have of her. She wasn't one for family pictures. Or family. It's why I can't listen to them any more, and walk out of restaurants when any of her show tunes play.
I do sing her songs in the shower, unthinkingly. My roommate doesn't know who I really am, but she's told me my voice is just like hers. Stupid memory. Stupid reflexes.
I remember being /so happy/ when she'd return home. She'd sing to me, but wasn't at all "hands on." She'd sing and she'd listen to me telling all the things that happened that day with friends and nannies—always with a smile, but I was always on the floor or in my bed or in someone else's lap. Her manager—with whom I share my hair color and skin color so he likely fathered me—would hold me while she sang sometimes. He'd read to me. He'd call me his little tomato, since that was the hair color we shared.
I remember the pair once laughing after I'd been put to bed, not sleeping. I'd peeked through a barely opened door to see. /Him/ she held.
I loved them both.
You've made me remember. Are you happy now? How many times could it have been that I remember her returning? A few dozen? They died before I was five, and now I remember /that,/ too.
[That's the Aurora Midnight, the devil girl from the Reluctance stories. Author retains copyright (c)2024 R.S.]
#WordWeavers 2405.10 — Antagonist POV: What do you like the most about yourself?
[A short tootfic. Likely canon. Her Highness speaking. From /Inklings:/]
My jaw almost dropped at the shear gall of the question, but the Midlands plenipotentiary was, if anything, expert at being jovial. His smile was disarming. He was a diplomat. I didn't gape, but put the tea cup down carefully.
"You're referring to the dragon incident, aren't you?"
He nodded. He plunked a couple lumps of brown sugar in his tea, stirring. It accounted for his corpulence, something rare amongst his gaunt brethren who spent much of their day running on forest paths. He'd made it from the Midlands in just weeks, on horseback I guessed. Poor horse. "It's on everyone's tongue. You'd mobilized the militia. Detailed reports hit the Forest Ridge High Tower as if carried by a thunderstorm."
He was making sure I knew "people" kept him well informed, and that my military wasn't what interested him. Much, anyway. I sighed, crossing my legs as I sat back.
I'd mobilized the best and most radiant of my magic users. None could best me, but we expected to face a wyvern the size of my in-town mansion. It had burnt up part of the Fell Woods. A good thing, thinking about that unassailable haven for monsters and wild beasts. Then it attacked a farm.
"The attack on the farm was an accident," I said off-handedly, steepling my fingers.
He paused. Blue eyes speared me. I'd never announced the details of what happened because if I made them official rather than rumor, the public might panic. Nobody died.
The Midlands ought know, I decided then and there. It'd be to my advantage. I'd let him decide the implications. "The grain silo had a moisture problem. It had started to ferment. Who would have thought a dragon might like beer?"
He chuckled, then, "You're serious? You know this? /How?"/ He put down his tea cup with a loud clink, spilling some of the reddish liquor.
I'd rode in with an elite company of my army, through a wood arch that proclaimed "Cornfeld," into a farm yard. I'd been ready to use my radiance to repel fire; dragons of all shapes breathed fire. My troops had the best spears, but it had been centuries since anyone had needed weapons against dragon scale. Would newiron even work? Drowning the beast by swirling airborne the farm's pond was almost our best offense, if the magical beast decided to fight. I knew they disliked fighting. I hoped that I had that much correct. If I had to resort to radiant kinesis to heave rock from a stone fence, it might decide to retaliate against my Townships—if I failed.
What I found was a half-naked girl, barely a woman though very tall, mollifying a distraught farmer and mediating with a red dragon who looked to be hanging on her every word. I could tell this, even though the dragon had the form of a giant bat.
Apparently, with her mediation, both parties were apologizing to each other!
Worse, though covered with mud and ash, visibly scarred, the young woman was devastatingly beautiful. The type of beautiful that made a seasoned and well worn woman like me think of a different kind of bedmate. I wasn't a man...
Wintereyes was her name. She had befriended a dragon.
Innocent and kind.
And immeasurably dangerous.
The ingénue now attended my magic university, despite being uncomfortable around people and wearing clothing. Learning to be human. One of mine.
I said, "What I like about myself is that I know when to fight and when to make friends."
The main antagonist. This is the person she once considered as the person who ruined her life. She once worked for someone whose stated goal was assassinating her, and didn't care if they succeeded. For the last few months, the MC lived in a roommate situation that made them neighbors. Her roommate was being trained by the main antagonist, but also had a bad relationship with her. Their proximity was always a background tension in the story. In the current story, the MC is now working for the main antagonist and understands the MA's "evil" reasons better, but still dislikes her. The MC could ask for her own suite, free of charge, in the same building but is planning on taking her new salary to live elsewhere.
#WordWeavers 2405.02 — What are your MC’s living conditions like? Are they better or worse than average?
Wow, this question! A bit of background: I wrote the original novella, then wrote a prequel novel based on the history in the first story, then retconned the novella, worsened the situation and followed it with new events to make it a novel, /then/ wrote the sequel. It's her life story, now.
In this last story, the answer to this question is the running joke. The new work takes place over three days. She starts having been living with a fellow student, an ever-seeking-male-companionship elite who months ago offered her a free roommate situation—so long as the MC slept with her in the same bed (and her new roommate only sleeps well being held). The next day it's the couch after the MC is reunited with a former coworker (bodyguard) whom she introduces to her elite roommate. They hit it off. Noisily. All night long! The next night, not wanting a repeat performance, she connives to spend a (satisfying) night with her new boyfriend in "palatial" digs in the Residency where the main antagonist lives, but is currently out on a military adventure. Having reconciled with a childhood friend, the subsequent night she ends up on his bed, in a Residency guest suite, sleeping with him and a pile of thaumaturgy books they nerded out over. She regrets not having had more fun with him, but he's too sweet and obviously not ready for that. The next day, she's fighting for her life in a hospital.
Her living conditions are way above average, arguably superior.
Previous Living Conditions
Born in a nice house in an obscure village
Raised in a newly built mansion for a newly titled elite (her)
Homeless for months, having run away, living in encampments and wandering the east coast
Big city hostel for over a year
Gangland trainer's nice apartment with separate beds
Boarding house with aspects of a brothel, where she must defend herself
Leased a one room dance studio where she sleeps on a mat between a wall of open windows and a wall of mirrors, having no need of further furniture
A series of high line hotel and mansion rooms owned the Doña she works for
As for the homelessness, she was moving around without money while hiding her identity, and rarely stayed long. The worst was trying to sleep under eaves in the city during storms; she didn't always have a tent. Regardless, it qualifies as below average living conditions for a total of about a year. It did focus her like of asceticism.
#WordWeavers 2405.01 — Introduce your setting as if it’s a character in your story.
[/Well, I decided to jump ahead in the WiP and write what might be the start of the next chapter. The title may be named:You Have Mail. Pardon the Dickensian texture; this is a first draft. —RS/]
I never expected a human habitation to feel as protective as my dorm room did. Sure, my lodgepole tent protected me through the blizzardy winters in the Fell Wood, as it did the wolf pack that had adopted me. I provided the tent, though. I repaired it, stored it, and raised it year after year. I maintained the cooking fire for all the wolves and cubs. It was I who was being protective, not it—or so it felt.
My dorm room wanted me to know that for the next few years, at least, it existed solely to protect /me,/ to comfort /me./ Increasingly, it did so as I added memories. Mother Wolf and I used one of the two small beds, the left one, piled with fuzzy brown blankets as needed or clothed with luxurious white cotton sheets that felt cool against cheek or jowl. Since I was tasked with the cleaning instead of the dorm servants, my room smelled of us, faintly of yeast, sweat, and a wolf that occasionally hunted rabbits but favored the cafeteria's pasture-beast stew.
The little red iron stove kept us warm through winter; the room's wood panel walls kept us shaded from the hot summer sun. It lovingly provided a rare enclosure—almost like walking within the orange and white rock walls of the slot canyons of the south woods—creating a remarkable silence in a land of noisy humans and huffing machines. This and its soft radiant cloud-light ceiling made me feel... what? Swaddled? Like being /home,/ as my parents would have used the word back on the farm when I was a child. My spirit books, fashion magazines, and papers cluttered the worn ink-stained blond pine desk. I ran my bare feet over the oval tapestry rug letting the patterns of wands and dryad trees caress my toes. My skin stuck to the cushy tan leather chair as I stood, but I knew that was it hugging me.
Situated to the rear of the building on the first floor, the casement window at the end of the rectangular space opened to the clay roof of a shed. Crisp autumn breezes fluttered the gauzy drapes as I looked out at the barrier forest beyond the stables, lit by the setting sun. The window conveniently allowed Mother Wolf to jump up, as she did right now, and clatter into the room as she pleased. She greeted me with an ever-wet red tongue on my face and backside. (A white wolf opening the front door of the women's dorm, with a key in her mouth, and walking in always frightened at least one student or professor. People called me their Wild Woman, but still never got used to the implications of the name.)
Best of all, as the special guest of Her Highness, nobody dared inspect my room. Everyone knocked, no exceptions. Wolf inside, right? Framed pictures of my boyfriend hung suspended by single powder blue silk ribbons, and they were /very/ inappropriate. Looking at him warmed me deeply, reminding me of being /us,/ together—so I didn't care that my foolish "civilized" human brethren might think. People existed to enjoy themselves, regardless of what nosy people might say. This room supported me as I lived here, trapped in the Townships because circumstance required me to learn to be "more human" as Her Highness was fond of saying. My little supportive enclave encouraged me to be me, and allowed me to dress or not dress as I pleased behind its closed oaken door.
When the House Mother knocked, I simply threw on a dressing gown. I turned the pictures around before answering—to be respectful. It tickled me that she never asked why I always smiled when I opened the door.
#PennedPossibilities 282 — Are there any insignificant memories that stick with your SC to this day?
Well into my teens, I had made friends because by then the last and least of the chieftain's sons was not and was know never to rely on his status for anything. People thought me safe, and I earned my place amongst the fishers and the traders. It's the girl whose name translates to "the winged silver fish flying" who became my best pal, as the Endless Islanders use the term. We sailed together, fished, ate together when we were in the same village, occasionally explored the two volcanoes that make the eyes of Crab Island. Boy or girl, didn't make a difference to us. Strong, she was always trying to prove herself my equal in strength and courage. In the end, she proved more courageous.
That particular day... She put her hands on me, wanted what could be shared by becoming closer as boy and girl. Very close. I remember her yellow-brown eyes. Her smile, her kiss.
But also who I was. The throwaway son of the chieftain, but his nonetheless. Yes, Islanders can't marry unless she's pregnant and we knew how to prevent that. We agreed, not ready. But it's not 100%, never could be.
If we had had a child... If it were known we loved one another... With what would happen after my father was murdered, it would not have been simple worry for her safety during succession as Mother had taught me, but that she'd be a hostage—or killed.
That day, I said "No." We'd never discover if it were love. We both cried.
That "No" comes back to me every time I meet women, especially exiled in the Endless Island where I feel guilty that I'm safe.
#Writever 2404.01 — Time
[/Apologizing ahead of time. —R.S./]
"Are you sure using /Unlock/ on his door— what?" Céline said, getting her first look inside the centuries old Montpellier townhouse. Dust coated everything in the foyer, and the apples in the crystal bowl on the Art Deco console looked like shrunken heads. An orange was covered in blue-green and the dried soup might have been a banana. Little flies and a cloud of spore swarmed up in the gust of air when Béatrice shut the door.
Celine covered her mouth with a kerchief as they walked around the rat droppings on the red Persian rug toward the stair. She added, "So, Risgold died?"
"Not exactly..." Béatrice's voice trailed off.
"Well, I'll miss the old fart; was missing him is why I mentioned it at the Sorcerer's Club. Always good for chuckle, his misinterpreting things in spells." They descended the stairs.
"Yeah. Always discovering the unexpected by accident—"
"Needing us to point it out. Why are we going to the servants quarters?"
"He lived alone, so he cooked."
"Ah. Of course—"
Béatrice sped ahead. She held out an arm to stop her from entering the kitchen. The stately woman shook her head.
Céline groaned. "He is dead, isn't he?" She sniffed. "Something smells off."
"It's the icebox; he left it open. Please be careful. Open the door but don't enter. There's an active spell."
Céline nodded. With eccentric Risgold, it was /always/ a spell. These days, male sorcerers wore a business suit when working with customers, or jeans and a white t-shirt when they worked because they were comfortable and easier to clean. Risgold? Robes. Shades of the 17th century. His white hair wasn't a powdered wig, but at his age looked like one. He even used a finger flame to light women's cigarettes, the few that still smoked, anyway. Then there was his candles. He used them around his house instead of electricity.
The sconce beside the door held a melted down, drippy sample.
The door was a swinging door, the better for the servants to push open with a foot with filled trays for the upstairs. Béatrice had Céline pull it open, possibly because it kept Céline from reflexively stepping in...
Risgold looked up in the light of the ten candle chandelier, blue eyes sparkling in the dancing flames. "Ah!" he said, tugging on his long wizardly beard. "I'm glad you showed up. This is a half-recipe, but should prove plenty for all of us. It's really simple—" He squinted at the /Provence Cuisine/ cookbook he had propped up before him.
Céline's smile grew as she cried, "Risgold, it's so good to—"
Béatrice restrained her by grabbing her shoulder tightly. She pointed to this side and that. The icebox door stood open behind the old man, rotted meat on one shelf, a burst carton of milk having toppled itself to the floor. Inside of a sphere centered on Risgold, everything remained fresh. The chicken on the marble top. The sliced vegetables. The stock pot on the gas fire, bubbling and steaming. The man: very much alive.
Risgold looked up, his finger on the recipe book. "Just a minute. I'm trying to figure out what this means." He tapped the page with a finger, then grabbed his ebony wand. "Don't know how to measure 3 grams of time, but I can certainly add 3 minutes—" he finished, swishing it.
The flash was blinding. The next instant, the stock pot splashed as Risgold dropped cut potatoes into it, then returned to scrutinizing his recipe. In the space of three minutes, Risgold noticed his visitors, greeted them... grabbed his wand and swished it.
#PennedPossibilities 275 — If your MC could convey one last message to someone they have lost or left behind, what would it be? The Letter
Midnight sat at the table at the back of the jazz club, listening to the clarinet solo on the stage. You couldn't smoke inside, but the space still smelled faintly of smoke and... gardenia perfume today, for some reason. Cait handed her an Aperol Spritz in a martini glass and said, "Twenty minutes until your set."
The dark-skinned woman nodded, but as she put down the stemware with the icy orange liquid, she found a letter on the table. It was sealed with red wax. She put the drink aside and flipped the parchment-like envelope. The only writing was a faint image of a full moon almost completely obscured by a black cloud. The edges of the envelope were burnt. Recently. It was the smoke she smelled.
She blinked at it and stiffened.
The symbol /meant/ something. She just didn't remember why. Like how she woke on a sidewalk a decade and a half ago, with a broken skull and no memories, but knew things. This letter was for her.
She broke the seal and took out a thick card. The calligraphic letters weren't English. Crescents and blots that swamed in her vision until they aligned into words. She put down the card, gulped the champagne cocktail, then with a few breaths looked at it again. Her thoughts of the songs she would sing tonight vanished. Why was this here? Now that she'd found a life singing, and had met a man she could spend time with? She had no need of old memories that had refused to come, no matter what the therapy.
She pushed the card across the table to the candle flickering in the red jar. It read:
/I was told to write it, to get it out of me, so I humored the silly little dragon. I don't remember your face anymore, and I avoid your records because it's too painful to have lost you. Nothing went right after your disappearance. I later ran away from home, which made it worse. Nevertheless, at this point in my life, I can say I've done well. I've saved lives, I won a championship as a prizefighter, I've protected a city, and am making an alliance that may prevent a war. Through marriage. I don't believe I'm going through with— You might be a grandmother soon, were you here. I don't know where you are but, if this letter somehow gets to you, I hope it can bring you peace. I want you to know that the daughter you left behind has done well for herself. Maybe you can be proud of that. With love, Aurora./
The woman knocked over her her empty glass. The ice scattered on the tile floor. She knew that name. "Aurora." She remembered...
Cait, standing by the bar, looked as Midnight shot to her feet and said, "I'm going out for a cigarette."
"But you don't smoke—"
"I'm going to start!" she cried, rushing out, forgetting her purse but remembering... Other things.
#WordWeavers 2404.01 — MC POV: Write a Mastodon introduction post.
#Introduction I'm really new to the #Mastodon thing, but Her Highness told me I had to do this and taught me how. Everyone at school calls me their "Wild Woman," thus my @WildWomanOfFellWoods handle. I'm becoming used to that because it's true. I've lived amongst #wolves since I was 7 with the Blue Feathers pack, so I'll be posting lots of #wolf spark renders, like the one of Mother Wolf below. (Read the ALT text.) She's the third white wolf in that role because people live longer. I #hunt with #knives, but am learning #archery because I'm not yet a provider for the pack. I can't run as fast as they can, so I use my #knife once they've brought down the prey. My #gift is befriending #beasts. I can speak with them and they become smarter. I'm not sure if the effect is just on those beasts I've met, or if it spreads. If you've noticed wolves being smarter or more friendly to people, please private message me! If you want to. Not trying to impose. This goes with red #dragons. I befriended the one all over the news who burnt up the farm—and, no, she wasn't going to burn up the capital! She sneezed. Next to a grain silo. 😅 Nevertheless, if another shows up and turns out friendly, let me know! Sorry. I don't have any #dragon pictures. You can ask me about dragons, though. I also do #modeling, so you've probably seen me in a magazine. Yeah. I'm that #model. I won't post pictures, though, because I'd have to CW. But you can ask about that. I'm #shy so I don't do meet ups.
In the wands universe, it seems (so far) that the magic revolves around the concept of spirits and something quantifiable as "spirit." I don't fully understand it, yet, but semantically it is unlikely that working with radiant spirit is the same thing as being spiritual. If I know me, I'll certainly twist the word to encompass it anyway, to make the readers think about the topic. I'm writing /Inklings/ with Wintereyes as a prequel to another story I wrote for her where she encounters a god, but I found that story incomplete. Still... capital S Spiritual? I don't think so.
The devil-girl in the reluctance universe is a natural-born Buddhist in how she approaches life. She isn't spiritual, however. She just... /is/.
None of the current WiPs include the concept.
That said, I have written such characters in other novels. The /Walking Trees/ MC was that, on steroids. Many of the SCs in the balance universe were spiritual. Just nothing currently.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 7 Nbr 30 — How do you keep track of your work? Do you have a system?
How do I organize my headspace and digital authorial sprawl? It's fun reading your work again for the first time, right...? Not.
Previously: One Pages document per work, whether fiction or an essay. All in folders in the iCloud documents Page folder. If I had to track events, characters, treatments, plot points, etc., I'd have another file named Work + Treatment.
Now: I have switched to Scrivener for new work. It's not perfect, especially in that there isn't consistency in functionality between the iPhone, iPad, and Mac versions, with me using the iPhone for review, the iPad for composition and proofing, and the Mac rarely for composition and reviewing. I like that there are options for storing meta information in folder, including pictures and links. I've actually used the character templates so I don't forget who's who and what they look like. I like that it has build-in versioning (snapshots and mobile snapshots), and that when there are sync errors, I can set a snapshot of the current chapter and paste the conflict document over it, then compare with the snapshot to see what got out-of-sync. It's annoying that snapshot functionality and file diff/versioning is a Mac-only feature, but it does sync, so there's that!
You'll get a kick out of this: I use Scrivener for tracking my Writers Coffee Club responses—actually, for all the prompts—especially since I currently can't get my Masto instance to generate an archive for me. (I think there may be a storage restriction around 110 MB, possibly a bug.) Anyway, I've included what that looks like as an image.
I use the status and color features for tracking publication for serialization of the work as is shown in the other image.
However, there is the other thing: I recently bought a Kindle Scribe. I use it for when I wake up in the middle of the night, with the backlight at really low power, to longhand write notes, to get them out of my head so I can sleep. This is working out very well, and it lets me email versions of the notebook file (good enough) so I can view it as a PDF in Books on the Apple platform. I've included pictures of that, too.
[Author retains copyright (c)2024 RS of text and pictures.]
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 7 Nbr 27 — How does it feel knowing that strangers will read your work?
When I got that fan letter (as in /on paper/, in an envelope, relayed from the publisher, in the days when people wrote letters), I was beside myself. Indescribable. Well, at this point it certainly is. Many many many moons ago. I didn't think to save it. Good; I remember it was good.
I also had a fan that would show up at BayCon and talk to me about the book she loved. Such things from a stranger are very nice experiences.
Yeah. Writing is about communicating. Why go through the trouble otherwise?
Instead of letting me go, she said, “You shouldn’t. That’s a graveyard and she’s dead.”
Everyone said that, but it was a mistake. I had seen Mikawa, and she was definitely alive. Why wouldn’t Ume let me go? All I wanted to do was be with my girlfriend. Did this damn bitch think I would go with her when I had Mika?
“Fuck you,” I said and tried to get away. “She’s waiting. Mika is waiting.”
A slice-of-life character sketch developing Kan-chan as a character a year after the close of “My Girlfriend Almost Got Me Killed.” An altered version of this may appear in “For Love of a Konbini Idol.” Please regard this story as an AU and not canon.
By the way, it is a shaggy dog story. There isn’t a point to it, but I talk a lot about a dog, Tomino.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 7 Nbr 12 — What would one of your stories be like in an alternative universe?
Me: "Well, my first story was about a white-feathered dinosaur girl who falls in love with a human—"
Her: "Non, ce n'est pas vrai! She had the red scales!"
You: "White /feathers./ Baka! They proved that with fossil—"
Watashi: "You're both wrong! She was white, but she was a fox of five tails."
Boku: "She wasn't female. My MCs are always guys—"
And with that I closed the parallelogramaphone. Sorry. Next question...
[Author retains copyright (c)2024 RS.]
#PennedPossibilities 249 — MC POV: What is something you were insecure about when you were a child? Violation Physics, Six Blind People, and the Elephant
I've never told anybody this. I'm not even certain I can explain what it feels like to a throwback like you, but I'll try...
Imagine for a moment that you are paralyzed. You cannot move, but you've lived all these years somehow able to feed yourself and able to interact with the world with ease. You have friends, lovers. Somehow, it all works. It's normal. That's biology. That's physics. That's... reality. People have families, children, live their lives, die—/and they never move a muscle/.
Imagine the world being that way.
Yet, before I can remember, I'd learned to walk. It was immensely fun. I could lay back down, never move a muscle, and live a life just like you, /but why?/
Walking, when nobody else does... Wow! What an experience. Seeing colors after being blind.
Though nobody taught me how to walk, as far as I could remember, I had a friend, a boy, who could also walk. I stumbled a lot, but he'd explain to me the problems with my gait, how I placed my feet wrong, didn't flex my knee right... things like that, which allowed me to run like the wind. He could only walk, but it allowed us to play like nobody else could. I thought we were soulmates.
I was aware that a few other people could walk. They didn't help us. Adults weren't teaching us. I had a library full of things about /moving/. It was up to us to learn the big words, and together, with his help, we did.
At age 8, he left me. I felt betrayed. Worse, I could walk and run, but I knew I could sprint, jump, leap, pedal, swim, and so much more. Unfortunately, I needed help to understand that little bit I didn't get.
And...
Nobody would teach me. Adults would tutor me in /anything,/ and it seemed they tutored me in /everything./ Every waking hour. Of every single day. Except...
/Moving./
I was alone, with my books. I'd read about swimming, how to float, how to stroke with my arms and paddle with my legs. Yet, each time I'd enter a pool, I'd sink.
Drowning doesn't feel good.
Would I kill myself? Would I forget what I knew? Would I stop walking? Nobody else ever moved around me.
Without companionship, I ended up walking less, never running anymore. My muscles became noticeably weaker. I felt myself becoming paralyzed.
I needed to find someone who would teach me to walk before it was too late! I began to fear I'd forget the joy of movement under the deluge of /important/ lessons, the craziness of dealing with my body growing up, and the responsibilities of becoming an adult.
/That's why I ran away from home./
Walking. Mostly, it was about walking.
The ability to walk is what you'd call magic. Folding gravity, turning it dipolar, may look like magic, I suppose. What it feels like is too hard to explain...
#WordWeavers 2403.01 — Introduce yourself as if you were a character in your story. What would your role be?
Can my story be autobiographical?
My first recollection was looking up at a dashboard in a car. It was green, made of metal. My dad was driving, but I don't think there were seatbelts.
I don't remember much from those days because I acquired language late, and then it was French because Mom sent me to a Montessori. I don't remember French, so I don't remember much. Autism was a secret that ran in the family, though I wasn't as bad as Uncle who stayed home all day building houses with cardboard and tape.
My specialness would account for other factors when I grew up, and, oddly, lead me to becoming an author. I think I had little native understanding of people's behavior, less of their expressions. It led me to intensely studying them, learning to predict what they'd do as if my life depended on it.
It did. If I didn't get it right, bad things happened. Don't remember specifically what, but I'm sure of this. Not understanding the language, nor the people, made it hard to remember more than images.
My next recollections come from when I was 7 or 8. It was night and I was home alone, no lights on. Batman was on primetime (/POW! Zowie! Holy Guacamole!/). By the flickering light of the the TV, Chef Boyardee raviolis heated in the pot and smelled really good...